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I made the long trip from Stonehaven (near Aberdeen) to Nottingham to pick up this wee gem. 52k Miles, 1 owner from new, 23 services and all original panels, windows and lights. I'm a part time trader and bought it through the business as a 'potential' long term asset/project and I haven't had to add another owner onto it. As you will see from some of the pics it's in need of some tlc but that is more than reflected in the price I got it for (IMO) anyway. Underneath is not to bad and I would imagine I will get what I can blasted and powder coated. The exhaust is ok but seen better days - I'd love to get my hands on a new one! An old gentleman had it and I don't think the interior has been cleaned since it was new. It's very grimey but I think will potentially clean up like new as it's kinda been protected being that way. I might need a new steering wheel and door handles etc. On the bodywork - it solid apart from a few areas. The decision is whether I get said areas seen to and try and keep some original paint work or go full respray. I am not concerned about the cost of the respray more losing the originality. However, the respray is the only way I'm going to get it 'mint' if I want to go that way. I've never entered cars into shows etc before but I'm getting a bit older now (nearly 44) and quite like the idea of it. Locally I can enter cars before 2005 and none of my others are there yet. I also have the 3 big V8's in my collection (last of the normally aspirated) from the noughties - Merc Amg W204 C63,Audi B7 RS4, BMW E92 M3 and an Mondeo Ford ST220. So, I've always wanted to add a wee pocket rocket to the collection and I'm looking forward to the project., it's a hoot to drive. Id welcome any thoughts or suggestions on said project. That aside , hello to fellow forum member 👋

Haha! @sj2112 still got it ☺️ Acquired a new reg plate last year!

Hi, Just wanted to point anyone interested in buying a GTI to my auction on Collecting Cars. https://collectingcars.com/for-sale/2001-volkswagen-lupo-gti-1 I am the second owner, 2001, 71k miles, 6-speed, Leather and Aircon, Great service history, Full respray last year due to lacquer peel.

Nothing wrong with a bit of car on fire now and again.

Will follow with interest. Nice find

Could be the bearing, mine can be a bit noisy also but has been that way for years. So chances are yours will bee the same. Thrust bearings tend to get so loud you’d need to change for your own sanity before it a tually fails. Great work there compiling it all into one thread. I really hope this helps more owners. With my plate I used 5mm steel so no flex,at all. But that said you could probably do it with thiner then add a bigger piece over the top spot welded to the first piece, which could bridge the recess the first plate sits in. That way the load would be spread even more over the substantially stronger bulkhead. Using that method I cant see it failing before the car is no longer road useable or they just out right ban petrol cars from the road. Looking at other manufacturers who used similar gear box set ups a d in some cases actual VW gearboxes none I have checked used VW’s Polo/Lupo method add used a bulkhead brace or thick plate bolted to the bulkhead. What I-see here is VAG dropped the ball and then just pretended it was ok.

I thought I'd post an update here, for two reasons - one simply to share the update, but, secondly, to signpost and link directly to earlier posts in this thread so that people coming to this from Google etc are able to get to the relevant parts quickly and make informed decisions. Firstly, things have moved on a fair bit since earlier posts in this thread. It's basically impossible to get a new VW pedal box, at least quickly, anyway. Maybe they're still out there, but every VW parts dealer we rang in central London couldn't get hold of one. There are, of course, grifters on eBay selling them for £250-300. This means the options left for most people in a situation where it's snapped out on the road, and they've been recovered to a garage, are: (a) welding or bolting the clutch cable bracing ear back on, ideally with a reinforcing plate to give it a better chance, because even the new pedal boxes are described earlier in this thread, by @bIg F here in 2023, as being still very weak - this requires removing the pedal box, which itself requires removing the steering column, a difficult task that is much discussed in several earlier posts in this thread. Potentially 4-5 hours work (i.e., expensive - in southeast UK, possibly £500+) for a mechanic who hasn't done it before; or (b) using the stronger metal of the car's bulkhead to brace the plastic/rubber grommet that carries the clutch cable to the clutch pedal, as also described earlier in this thread, first by @robertiles here in 2012, then again by @Slammedrollerskate here in 2021, and illustrated with photos and a specifically-cut bit of metal by @bIg F here in 2023. Essentially it requires finding a piece of metal big enough to cover and brace against the hole in the bulkhead and with a hole in its centre just big enough to allow the pedal-side part of the plastic grommet to pass through. I will add some photos below to make understanding this and showing this to a mechanic quick and easy. Although (b) was described by @robertiles back in 2012 as 'not as good as a new pedal box', this doesn't necessarily seem to be the case, with a bunch of people sure that it is perhaps even stronger. I was on the verge of going through with the weld. Garage was thinking the clutch would have been worn and wanted to replace that too (which @elajf1 warned would be what garages would tell people, in the thread's first post), of course about £450. So I was looking at £800-1,000 all-in to get the car back on the road. What swung me was seeing this video on YouTube, and this one, both showing the bulkhead-brace fix - i.e., option (b) above. It makes it very obvious to even a non-technical person what the fix is doing, and how easy it is. It shouldn't take a mechanic more than 30-40 minutes, and requires basically no disassembly beyond taking off the engine splash shield (the plastic 'lid') to make access easier. Finding an appropriate piece of metal could take a little while, but there will be something lying about - the key thing is it doesn't want to be much thicker than about 5mm - as there's not enough slack in the clutch cable to be able to accommodate anything thicker. Here are some photos to help: (1) The hole in the bulkhead in question is located just below here, marked with a red circle. Removing the engine's plastic splash cover makes it easier to access. (2) Here's the hole, closer up and visible, circled in red. In the green square is the plastic grommet for the clutch cable that needs to be braced (and that was formerly braced by the now-broken pedal box 'ear'). What's needed is a piece of metal that can brace this grommet against the bulkhead, while allowing the cable to pass through the hole in the bulkhead. (3) This is the idea - any old piece of metal can do (for the time being, at least). Here's my fix with the piece in place. It can be glued to hold and prevent water ingress between the two metal parts and to hold it there while the cable is reattached, but it will also hold itself from the pressure of the clutch cable once it's taut. The pedal end of the cable can now be connected to the pedal. (4) The final thing is to obtain a little bit more slack in the clutch cable - because it's now routed in such a way that it travels a slightly longer distance, the cable as it is won't have enough slack to be able to be connected properly at the engine end. @bIg F above suggests filing down the piece circled in red below. See that post for good description of that. But there are a few ways of getting the slack, including a fair bit just from the freeplay in the coil (see (5) below). (5) To do that, you'll need to remove the plastic nuts off the engine end of the clutch cable (they would have been where the green squiggles are in the photo). Others have suggested you can also file down a little bit the plastic part here, too (red arrow). But bringing the coil in a little bit also gives some slack (blue arrow). And that's it, really. It's good to drive, probably for the life of the car. My clutch now feels brilliant. Bite point is right up high, no crunching into reverse, no stiffness into any gear. --- I posted the above to hopefully save some people some £ and stress. I have some questions though: (i) My sense is that, ideally, the brace plate should be as large as possible, within the limits of the moulded bulkhead panel, to distribute the stress as widely as possible. Current piece of metal is only just wider than the bulkhead hole itself. Should I worry about this, and re-fit a new plate now the car drives and time is less precious? (ii) How does what this mechanic has done at the engine/coil end of the cable look? The second nut wouldn't go on any further. Should I try to tidy this up, too? (iii) I get a little bit of light grating sound from the clutch when I depress the clutch now. Is this just the throwout bearing giving notice that it'll be on its way out soon or is this something induced by the fix? Cheers to all, glad to have this forum.

Finally repaired my central locking issue, I had a broken wire in the driver's door and to who ever owned my car before decided to chop every ground wire going but I've repaired them all to the best of my ability and have covered it all in conduit. As for the CCM under the dash, what a laugh it is getting that out. Luckily you don't have to remove as much as most people say. Just pop the corner of the driver's side dashboard and get your hands under the area and it comes out, not sure if it suppose to have screws as mine didn't, but after i got it free and opened it up everything looked fine and nothing out of the ordinary. If anyone needs help with the same issue feel free to message me for help. Shout out to @Rgillett for the help with all the wires and getting it all tidy. A females touch is always welcome 😁

Yeah, the trifecta of you, @danno or @mscherryviolet always amused. I think you've calmed down a bit now @Rich. Even Ray allows all your posts these days... You need to meet a guy I know that is also a 6N2 wizard (he's also an MOT inspector/examiner). He has a rare 1.4 AMF and has properly GTi'd it. Very nice...

Make: Lupo Model: GTI MOT: 23 November 2024 Engine size: 1.6 Fuel type: Petrol Description including modifications: Selling my Lupo GTI as I have a second baby incoming next month and won't have time to look after and enjoy how I want. I bought it 3 years ago, after looking for this sunroof, leather and A/C combo for a while. Haven't seen one with this since. Garaged all of my ownership and the previous owner too. Runs perfectly and taken out every other weekend for a few hours. Cleaned, polished and waxed with Bilt Hamber products throughout time with me. 96,000 miles Lupo GTI with everything original apart from updated VW 6 CD changer and tinted windowed by a previous owner 6 speed gear box Rare heated leather, sunroof and AC combination Have service history from 2013 (71,396 miles), All at VW specialist's Paint in excellent condition for age with no rust. small touch up next to driver side door handle (pictured) New Toyo TR1's all around Spare battery cover (bought as thought it was broken but was in fact battery not fitted properly) Wheel arches covers cleaned out last year (common place for rust) To be super picky on things that are stopping this being perfect: Drivers side rear disc brake is not painted red Front driver mat is worn Drivers side window regulator isn't the strongest, but works fine Car auto locks even with drivers door opened or closed (unless key in) Drivers side door card leather coming unstuck near window switch Steering Wheel is a bit worn (have perfect condition replacement included but not fitted) Location: Great missenden, HP16 Price: £7,500 Feel free to call between 8am - 8pm or Whatsapp whenever too on 07545969025. Thanks, Andrew

Oh bloodyhell noooo! I had a similar thing happen to me and one of my mk2s.... Not as bad as that though. Burned the rear seats. Cavity wax generally burns like kerosene, so I now always expect an ignition somewhere when welding waxed bits. I bet your heart sank when you sat back, staring and swearing. But not as bad as that team that set fire to the WW2 bomber they'd just rebuilt in the remote wilderness (in greenland?), and were about to fly out having just refuelled it. But OMG, that's going to be a pain to repair. Whole dash out I'd say. But one consolation, at least it is less effort than bodywork. And it's really a case of swapsies, which is relatively straight forward. I think it's also happened to @Rich and @danno in the past. Welcome to the set-fire-to-your-car club!

As a general rule of thumb I removed the pedalbox to weld it as asides from the two shear bolts for the column it is very straightforward to remove. Even those annoyances aren't that bad.

Considdering there is only 5 of them in the UK that will take along time. I know one of the owners is a memeber on here.

I look more or less every day in the hope a mint, stock, laser blue with low miles and owners pops up. its a bit like waiting for the lottery jackpot, but I buy a ticket twice a week as you have to be in it to win it.

But you're looking.

I have had one black and two reflex GTI's and personally I think reflex better suits the car than black. If I was to buy another then I would be looking at the rarest colours of anthracite and raven and in an ideal world laser blue. I think that boat has sailed though as everything I look at for sale nowadays is rubbish.

I'd say that colour isn't overly relevant and what you pay will come back in returns, unless you modify beyond belief or stack it. Black wasn't anything that special, I'd say that there's a lot of imports on the market and they weren't really black in Japan.

100k isn't anything I'd worry about.

This is the first axle I bought. It's the one I made the mistake with when I used hammerite paint. I've attached the pictures of the damage which the paint caused due to trapping moisture in.

If the car isn't fitted with ABS then you should really swap the brake valve to the disc version. If you do have ABS then there is an adaption for the ECU. I fitted Audi A3 8P seats in mine.

Brakes - 6n2, golf mk2/3 to simplify it. Seats, I would always fit some mk4 seats if I was destined to be in a lupo for a long time, they are comfortable, sit lower and just all round nicer.

Thought I'd finally add the "how-to" which people keep asking about.... Old EGR systems jam up or just don't work once the car is over about 50k miles or 10 years. The soot builds up and mixes with oil blow by droplets/fumes which mix together to form a sticky, gungy mess that is very difficult to shift (inside the engine). The backs of inlet valves get coated and coked up and inlet ducts get smaller and smaller reducing air flow. In a diesel engine, less air means less power. Also lots of hardened crud builds up right around the injector nozzles affecting the spray pattern. And because the ECU has no idea that the engine is clogged up, it still delivers the same quantity of fuel as if the car were brand new. So with excess fuel and not much air, the emissions suffer terribly, resulting in even more soot and lots of smoke from the exhaust. Clogging up the oxidising catalyst and subsequently an MOT fail. Even fitting a brand new air filter just before MOT time doesn't help, to try and suck in that last bit of fresh air. There are three different solutions to get the car running like new again- 1. Clean out the inlet system and decoke the cylinder head. Fit a brand new EGR valve. (BTW cellulose thinners works best to remove the black goop) or 2. Clean out the inlet system- if you really want to- and disconnect the two vacuum hoses to the choke flap and EGR valve. That will help improve the system a lot. (block the vacuum pipes so nothing gets sucked in) or 3. Clean out the inlet system, block off the EGR system, plug the exhaust gas inlet ducts to make the air flow more laminar, disconnect the choke flap vacuum pipe and divert the low oxygen sump gases away from the inlet. (my favourite solution for 15% more power and phenominal MPG). Pics follow:

Hello everyone, i am starting this abit late as i have done quite abit to the car since i got it, but better late than never! so i will try and start from the beginning and then carry on from there on wards. So to start off with i got the car June last year, it was advertised as a 90% finished 20VT Conversion, so i got it with the intention of finishing it off with my dad and then just having it as a weekend toy. Here are some photos from the Ad. I unfortunately dont have the photos of every bit of progress i made, but i will try and dig out everything i can! So first problem came when driving the car home, it had a horrible knocking noise when driving and turning to the left. which we later found out that the near side drive shaft was too long. So just to make sure that the driveshaft was the problem, we had a family friend that works at a fabrication company shorted the driveshaft about 40mm, which cured the knocking, but the car to this day still does have a weird vibration when turning to the right, which im yet to find out the problem. but its still drives fine. So after the knocking noise was seen to, i then moved the air filter back up into the engine bay and got rid of the big plastic pipe. changed the MAF out for a new one as the old one was playing up pretty badly. so that cleared up any running issues. so now the car was running and driving fine it was time to get down to business time for a colour change ! So i unfortunately don't have any photos of prepping the car for paint, but do have some photos of it in the booth and afterwards. I didnt have thousands of pounds to cash out on a crazy re-stray so basically me and my dad prepped the car at home, and then it was driven to a friends bodyshop where he painted it pretty much free of charge on a Saturday morning, then driven home about 25mins after coming out of the oven i know not the best ! So just the outside of the car and the door shuts were painted at the bodyshop, the inside of the car my dad was going to do in the garage at home as that didnt need to be perfect and could be done with a small paint gun and compressor we have. Also my dad smoothed the front bumper before painting because why not ! Once the car was back home and painted, i had a delivery that week of 2 Corbeau Pro Series seats, some harnesses and sub frames This is the best photo i could find of when i first fitted everything up As you can see the inside of the car was painted by then. Also some photos of the car in the driveway after a clean Something i forgot to mention abit further up was the general spec of the conversion, it has had the sub frame removed and cleaned and painted black, both new lower arms and all new OEM bushes, it is the AJQ engine from an audi quattro but with a golf 5 speed box which im unsure of the gearbox code. It is on JOM coilovers with a set of front springs from a Raceland audi a3 coilover set as the JOM front springs were too soft for the extra weight up front. Corrado g60 from brake setup and lupo gti rear brake setup with custom brake lines to the back of the car. i have also fitted a Whiteline RARB since then aswell. So the next things on the list at this point were a decent wheel and tire setup. i went for a set of Team Dynamic Pro Race 1.2's 15x7 in black and then fitted them with some nice sticky AD08r's on my lunch break at work Some photos with the wheels on Also which i dont have photos of are a crappy ebay deep dish steering wheel that i fitted, must get round to getting a proper one. and also a 6inch Kode gearstick as the standard gearstick was not tall enough after fitting the bucket seats So all of that and the addition of a Sharan rear VW badge and a Speedhunters windscreen sticker that is how the car sits today. So last week was Trax at Silverstone and i had 2 track time sessions booked so was pretty excited to see how the little lupo preformed bearing in mind the alignment has been done by eye in my garage with my and my dad so it has no sort of track geometry setup or corner weighting or anything. The first session on the Sunday was at 10:20am and it had been raining all morning so the track was soaking wet and SUPER greasy so in the wet i suffered with a lot of under-steer and a fair bit of oversteer which i think was a combination of the rear anti roll bar being on the stiffest setting and the back end being so light compared to the front. so im not too sure what i could have done to help that other than soften the roll bar. But in the dry it was a completely different story! i had my second session at 12:20am and by that point it had just dried up. and i could fly round the track! there was not much that could stay with me through the tight corners and i was getting held up by a few cars as well Only managed to find one photo of the day So next things on the list are 1. BC Coilovers 2. Polybushed front end 3. full fastroad/track geometry and corner weight. 4. Rollcage 5. need to get my exhaust system redone aswell to get the cat removed and also it is rubbing on one of the rear brake lines Thanks for looking sorry for the very long introduction

Regrettably no. Finding a clean Lupo GTI is a tall order as even the last of the line are 19 years old. You probably need to double your budget and even then the car will undoubtedly have some issues. Take a look at the one Flash Red GTI which is currently in auction on Collecting Cars. It looks better than most but is by no means clean. Good luck with your search.