Making an 82 Rabbit pick-up not suck at moving

Honestly you might be surprised. My friend drove his MK4 TDI Golf for many years completely straight-piped and the only time it seemed particularly loud was when he'd shift or let off the throttle. He eventually got tired of the crazy turbo noise and welded a scrap resonator in (I think from a Mitsubishi) and you can hardly hear the exhaust. You have a wastegated turbo iirc, but as long as it exits from the underside of the car somewhere it should be basically the same as stock. The turbo cuts noise down by a lot. Most of the noise of these motors is up front, in my experience. 

When I bought the truck with the little 1.6, it had the same exhaust set up. It was much quieter than I expected but I also only drove it down the block and back. After I have the sound deadening in it and drive it the hour and back to the Swap meet/ drag strip then I'll know for sure. 

Very awesome. 

Congratulations on spinnin' tires! 

I tried posting twice yesterday just to have my work thrown away into a 'bad gateway' don't do me like that.

third times the charm.

Now that I have the shifter cables running through the floor of the cab, the plastic is too close to the exhaust. 

So I made up some heat shields; Cut a little caterpillar out of aluminum, 

Cover it with some cheap reflective tape. 

And weld a bolt to the exhaust hanger and the cable clip I already made. 

After starting up the truck and revving it up, It didn't seem to rattle, even though it's closer to the flex pipe than I would like. 

It does, however, hit the side of the truck...

I hate to admit that I actually like this hoon-ish exhaust pipe made by the PO, but it looks like it's gotta go. 

I'm torn between cutting it off completely, or cutting/welding it an angle to give it more of a side-pipe kinda look,

Thoughts?

Cut it off completely.  Looks like one of those Japanese cars with the cartoon-esque 6 foot exhaust tips right now.

Cut if off and put a down turn there?

Had a nice long Sunday working on the truck, I did a ton of little stuff that doesn't really show up too well. 

I think it was on Friday that I flipped the seat sliders. 

The Mk1 seats and MK2 seats have the lever on opposite sides. I was going to swap the passenger and driver since this is running MK2 seats. However, the driver seat has extra adjustments I didn't want to loose. 

So now they are ambidextrous! 

I also replaced the heater fan and added fresh foam to it to keep the rattles down. 

Then I set about mounting the clutch interlock switch. 

First I made all of the these prototype parts. 

Then I threw them all out and welded a chunk of the MK3 pedal cluster to a little bolt clamp and didn't take any pictures of it. It's ugly anyway. 

Next up trying to get the MK3 gauges into the old dash.

Well that's not gonna fit. I ended up cutting away a bunch of the old dash plastic. 

It kinda fit after that but it still ran into the steering support brace, so I had to nick that too. 

And she's in... mostly, there are still some spacing and visibility issues that everyone on the VW forums says is fine... we'll see about that.

I also mounted the ECU so it's not just kicking around on the floor anymore. 

Then I would finally get to put the Dynomat down on the floor!

No, wait.

Some dumbass painted POR-15 on the floor for no good reason! 

Well that side took me hours and was enough of a pain for me to say berkeley it to the other side and just stick the Dnyomat down over it. Oh well... that's a problem for future me.

In other news, The wife told me she needs some 8 foot chunks of lattice that wouldn't fit in her car this week. So I said, "Hey! I have a truck, I'll get them for you!"

Can I get the floors done, the seats in, the fenders, doors and hood on in two days? Stay tuned to find out!

Things are going fairly well, 

Got the dynomat finished up. (High priority in a diesel with no A/C yet)

Here's the CPU mounting location behind the dash.

And  speaking of the dash...

And some doors!

Some seats and of course those plush floor mats. 

I plan to put the fenders on tonight and I can get the grill and hood in the morning. I've never been so excited to run errands! 

More lines drawn on the list 

And she's up and running! It's a rolling restoration now. 

Patches did great on his first trip to Lowes, stopped on the way back to buy rearview mirror glue since driving without one is maddening. 

Only hiccups include, The shifter bushing for the cable came loose and then got jammed on the cable, luckily I could still disengage the clutch(barely). I glued it in with some seam sealer which will hopefully handle the issue. 

Also the gas, erm, fuel gauge reads whatever it's feeling at the moment. Not surprising since I jacked up the wires on the sender unit when cleaning it. oh well.

Hoping to get the carpet and maybe even a radio in this weekend!

Congrats on it being in driving condition!  I'm very glad to see it all come together for you.  I've enjoyed following along for the past months as you worked through the issues!

A hearty congratulations on rolling restoration status!

Thanks guys! It's a long way from done but I feel that I will be driving it around looking this ratty for some time. 

I do have an MG sitting under a hefty layer of dust that also needs my attention... 

Awesome! Glad to see it driving.

Last week to work on it before I take it to the VW Show. It's at Maple Grove Raceway in PA if anyone nearby is interested in coming out. 

Over the weekend I got some carpet in. 

You can see me working hard, (taking pictures) while my brother does the grunt work. 

We also threw a stereo in it. 

The budget is getting short but I went all out and got a Bluetooth stereo, for... wait for it... $16. New. 

I have to say... it's not that bad. Under powered? sure, but I'm no audiophile so that fact that it connects to my phone quickly and easily is well worth the price of admission. 

Now the cheap speakers I got stick out ludicrously so I've got some others on order.

Also the truck only has 2 speaker mounts for 3.5" speakers so to say it sounded puny was an understatement.

But the PO had left two 8" boxes behind and I grabbed a free amp from my brother. (Previously mounted in his 1988 Toyota Celica GTS)

So I wired all of that up before finishing the carpet and re-installing the seats. 

All together... I'd say it's the best damn stereo $45 can buy. (I had to spend $9 on a longer RCA cable)

I'll upgrade later, most likely, and I hope to make some door pockets/ speaker boxes like the ones below. I think they used Cabriolet parts here, but on ebay those are going for $150-200 per side. So i'll likely be making them custom unless I get real lucky. 

More little details are getting done. 

I fixed the dome light switches, which took way too long...

And let's see them light up!

WTF mate? Well new LED bulbs are in the mail.

What's next? I started to rebuild the shifter box, only to discover that the bushings are all fine? 

Well, I'll have a kit for when they do wear out... I guess. Now I have to figure out why there is so much slop in the shifter. I've heard generally bad things about the mk3 shifters and that it's possible to swap a MK4 into it, but that's a job for the future. 

For today, door locks!

I can't find a key to fit the doors but no worries there, I want them to match the ignition key anyway. So I pulled it all apart and found it's pretty darn easy to re-pin them. 

Here's the driver's side door. I rearranged most of the pins and pulled two out that wouldn't fit anywhere. I figure I'd rather err on the side of door is too easy to unlock versus I can't get back in to my truck. 

Passenger side was even easier... and... success! 

The list(s) are shrinking.

Great work- congratulations on getting it on the road!

We should all be so lucky/focused.

damen

This thing is awesome. Congrats on drivable!

impressed.  that was a lot of work in a very short amount of time.  way to go! 

Thanks guys! Having a deadline seems to help a lot. Also, not having any babies in your house seems to help a lot too!

Here's the interior coming together.

I took the truck out about 30 miles today for another shakedown before this Sunday's big trip. 

I'm mostly glad I did. On the way home the clutch stopped working and it took me a while to figure out why. 

Everything was still in place and the master didn't need to be bled. 

After a few minutes, I figured the issue. 

Looks fine right? The whole bracket is bent towards the firewall so the lever is no longer in the right place. I tried just bending it back but the metal had weakened. Luckily, I broke down near a shop and they helped me make a real simple bracket to hold the bolt against the firewall and keep it from moving. I didn't take pictures as I was trying to get back to work. 

Turns out the shop that helped me wasn't even a mechanic shop, they are asphalt contractors that were just fixing their own equipment when I stopped by. They wouldn't even take any money for the help so I wrote them a good review on Google. 

All-in-all it got me home but I'll have to make a new, stronger bracket before Sunday. Luckily, I have time.

On the up side, birthday presents!

These are actually from my Mother-in-law, gotta love those amazon wish-lists!

Central locking?! 

I usually end up decreasing features on whatever automobile I'm playing with, so it's fun to see people adding features. The interior is looking nice too! Like really nice now that I look back at it. 

Keep up the good work!

In reply to Gunchsta :

Yeah, I usually pull features out too, I guess I'm getting spoiled by my daily's keyless entry/start. I had added the central locks to my amazon list as a "maybe I'll get that" I wasn't expecting someone to buy them for me so I guess they are going in now! 

Here's the super janky little brace I threw on there yesterday after the break down. 

The guys that helped out didn't have the right size drill bit so after reaming it out with a file I got it jammed on to the top of the threads. I tried to pull it off and couldn't so I said Berk-it and drove home. I made it!

I started working on the replacement clutch bracket this morning. The metal for version 1.0 was too thin and it bent slightly near the mounting bolts. I think the real issue though, was how narrow it gets in the middle. It's too susceptible to twisting. 

I went from sheet metal to angle iron and am doing my best to keep all of the bracing as wide and tall as possible. Now that all of the other items like the brake booster and wiring are in the car I don't have to guess about how much room I need to leave. 

Hopefully I can finish it up and test drive tomorrow. 

The asphalt guys should be allowed to stroke their mullets! Please tell them they have earned an honorary McGuyver award.

So going OT a bit here for a story; Your cable to hydro adaptor unit looks pretty simple and effective.

At a car show I saw something a little more interesting. Dodge rampage truck thing. Honda D16 engine & trans. Rampage has a cable clutch, Honda trans has a hydro clutch. Dodge pedal & cable at the firewall, running to the complete Honda pedal box mounted under the hood sideways, to the Honda hydro trans. I wish I had a picture to share.  It was relatively brilliant in the sense that it apparently worked, but it sure wasn't aesthetically pleasing. New owner said the Honda engine was free from a meth-head farmer in Wisconsin. It was excellent. 

That's how my Forester clutch was done, cable actuated hydraulic, I assume for packaging reasons.

It was working fairly well before the metal fatigue. When I started designing it I was hoping for something as cool as Maschinenbau's little Rube Goldberg machine.

But I will settle for functional right now so hopefully the new bracket will fix it.