1998 106 gti

[jakebmx]

Hello all.....
So I’ve been a bit of a lurker on this site looking at all the amazing builds and fantastic write ups for a while.
I was never intending to do a “build thread” of my own but after having spent the past week in hospital being kept sane with this site I thought the least I could do would be to contribute.
Mine however is after the fact and has been “finished” for a couple of months.
So after a boring intro here goes some more words to try and make it through..........

I had originally owned this car many moons ago as a cheap runaround and it came back up for sale locally with a whole load of spares and so I though why not. (£500 if anyone cares)
Surely it can’t be that rusty and can be a cheap fast road/b-road blaster. Oh how wrong I was!
I added new metal and did the back end of the car (the supposed only rot) in a small garage with a 50mtr extension lead and some blood, sweat and maybe the odd tear. However I did not document this as it was just a quick turn around for a bit of fun and then I poked a little harder at the front and realised it was gonna be an engine out let’s go for it kinda build.
So a friend and I rented a work space, which required a fair bit of work first and then got to the front end and this is where our journey begins.
If you made it this far I commend you and also apologise for the huge intro!!!
I will try to add a little every couple of days rather than over saturate everyone with 106 pictures.
Thanks
Jake

[jakebmx]

[jakebmx]

[jakebmx]

Sorry about the order of pictures as I’m incredibly useless with technology and have just about managed to upload them!
So the first day we ripped the engine out and asses the damage. Not too bad I though, other than a couple of shoddy repair patches by “specialist garages)




Is

[jakebmx]

Then it was time to start poking and cutting out the dreaded ginger......

[jakebmx]

Then it was time to apply some bilt hamber and let it work it’s magic for a while....

[jakebmx]

So after the Bilt hamber had been left to do it’s stuff everything got a liberal coat of zinc primer as they’re galvanised from the factory I thought it made sense to do this........hindsight however shows that I shouldn’t have painted any in the engine bay as it led to a paint reaction but we’ll get there soon enough!







After having done this I started to make up some repair panels after a bit of CAD work......these are nowhere near the standard of tonybmw or grumpy northerner but for what I was doing “they’ll do”
I didn’t take masses of photos as this was only ever a set of photos to show the Mrs that I was actually working on a car and not disappearing with drugs and girls for Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings!

[jakebmx]

[jakebmx]

Right onto welding the panels in and giving them a lick of zinc based primer, I didn’t get pictures of every step or every repair panel but as stated this is an afterthought!!

[jakebmx]

After the near side it was onto the offside repairs....

[jakebmx]

Most of the welds were not ground down fully as I wanted to leave as much strength in them as I could while making it look presentable (ish). However I tried to make the engine bay look as near as time constraints (and skill) would allow.



Then it was time to attack the chassis rails and “jacking points”.......I call them this as it seems that every 106 has had these crushed in and as a result end up rusting out!!







Time to get the trusty MIG out again.......

[ianw]

Good progress, loved my 106 GTi, would love to own another, pretty much perfect car in standard form which is a rare thing.

[jakebmx]

So onto the next repair and more zinc primer.......looking back at these photos I’m a bit annoyed I didn’t swags the holes in the “jacking point” but hindsight is always 20/20 eh?!!

[jakebmx]

Nov 14, 2019 21:20:44 GMT ianw said:

Good progress, loved my 106 GTi, would love to own another, pretty much perfect car in standard form which is a rare thing.

Thank you very much, I must say I agree I love them standard but I ended up tinkering a little along the way with this one!! 

[jakebmx]

Ahhh damn iPhone autocorrect.....I keep spotting things it changes.....that’d be swage the holes.....not swags!!

[jakebmx]

Then I went a little crazy with tigerseal in the hope it keeps the ginger demon away for a while!!





Then it was time to spray some upol in with the airline and schultz gun......







Thought I’d do the lower half of the engine bay the same as I’m hoping it’ll be fairly hard wearing.....not that the car gets driven in the rubbish weather much....

[jakebmx]

So then in my supposed infinite wisdom I decided that a barcoat would seal the zinc primer ready for the high build primer to go into top.
To start with it looked like this.......





Then a quick bit of guide coat......


And then after coming back the next day ready to sand back for some paint I arrived to see a paint reaction that made me shout a fox picture rather loudly.....






Some of that I’d peeled back after seeing it flake......so much for zinc primer and barcoat. That’ll teach me a lesson for mixing 2pac and single!!
So back to bare metal it is......

[jakebmx]

So I bought a bunch of new supplies all from the same supplier in the hope this would not happen again.


Round two begins, or should I say ends as I only got a picture after having redone the primer and then a top coat of granny grey as dad calls it!!




Then I cleaned the underside and filled the drainage holes and got the Schultz gun out again......

[jakebmx]

As the keener eyed reader will have spotted I’d already started refitting some bits in the engine bay but before I fitted the steering rack I removed the power steering and fitted a quaife quickrack....which as a mod I would highly recommend, but what a fox picture it was to take apart and when they sell something as a “kit form” etc I’d expect it not to require me to machine out the steering rack to accommodate the new “direct replacement” parts.....however less ranting and more pictures!

[jakebmx]

Then it was onto a suspension strip down and rebuild with some Bilsteins, new wheel bearings, top mounts etc......



One of the wheel bearings was being incredibly stubborn so got some heat on it



Then took them to dad to get sandblasted



After that I got them painted and rebuilt, also managed to find some almost new brake callipers for a bargain price, so they went onto the built strut