fatttty

It was rubbed down, painted red, then a pin stripe tape applied before being painted gloss black, tape removed to leave the red pin striping and the whole things given several coats of lacquer. It was professionally done so a much better finish than would be achieved with rattle cans. Alex

Awesome Ross, simply stunning mate! I think your GTI is the best around at the moment, get the engine bay spanking clean and I'd be all over it! Nice to see my old RM's (well the barrels at least) are still around too Alex

Looks a lovely example Mike, I look forward to what you do with this! Alex

They were never an option on the GTI to my knowledge. To fit pop outs check that you have the holes for the mounting point in the B-Pillars, open the door and pull back the rubber to see if the holes are there. Some GTI shells came with them drilled others didn't. If you have the holes its just a case of having the old windows cut out, fit the pop out rubber seals and bolt the window into the B-Pillar and C-Pillars, oh and you need the pop out specific C-Pillar covers the ones with the cut out for the release clip Alex

We were talking about that one on the owners club. The photos make it look much better than it is. A lad viewed it and found loads wrong- cracked splitter, poor respray (overspray on windows, masking tape lines), wheel kurbed, battery in the boot and badly rewired, spacers on the front wheels suggest discs are not correct, front calipers badly need servicing. If you don't know what you're looking for it would look pretty good. I'd sell mine for around the £8k mark Alex

Hah! She has slowly come around to liking the car, she hated it when I first got it. House hunting now, top of the criteria; a garage, or space to build one Alex

Looks like the Janspeed one to me, I may be wrong though.

Hey mate! Not really touched the car for the past few months, got married end of Sept so been sorting the wedding and honeymoon. The car did make it to the wedding, my best man was entrusted to drive it on the big day. Cheeky wedding photo.. had to be done lol! Got my cambelt and water pump ready to fit over winter and also managed to bag a few rare parts from eBay which will be fitted as well. Will keep the thread up to date as best as I can though Alex

Going to try and get to a few different shows next year hopefully mate Haha nah cant do that, I enjoy driving it. I revert back to being a giggling 10 year old when it pops and bangs on the overun

Cheers Piers, was good to see you at Ford Fair mate Went a little craxy with the blue tape getting ready for the journey... But managed to pick up 'Best In Class' at Ford Fair Concours.. second year running Forgot to take my camera to Ford Fair but did manage to get some nice photos from Wax Stock a few weeks earlier. Alex

Went to RS Day at Castle Combe this weekend, it was absolutely hammering it down with rain on the Saturday morning. I really didnt want to drive the car in it but I had promised I would make an appearance on the FRP owners club stand so I grin and bared the 110 mile journey. It rained the complete way down and eventually stopped around 9.30am. The car was quickly washed, dried and detailed as best as possible given it had traveled so far in the rain it didn't look too bad. The sun came out about 10am and stayed for the rest of the day and the for the journey home so all in all a great day. Got to meet a lot of the other owners and they got to see my car for most it was the first time they had seen it so it went down really well! Couple from the day- Will have to excuse this one, I was up at 5am and forgot to put a belt on in the rush to get out the house on time haha -

Done a few little jobs on the Puma ready for the start of the show season. Replaced my bonnet release cable with a decent condition used one, the original was not long for this world and was frayed really quite badly- I am attending an RS show this weekend so starting preparing the car, I ideally would have had more time but having a mrs I have to work when I am 'allowed'. The car had not really been washed since last year so it was washed, clayed, washed again and dried. The car was given a quite pass with Meguire MF polishing system using the cutting pad and matching compound, I used my DAS-6 whilst my mate 12yan used his awesome FLEX machine. As above ideally I would have spent a good day on the machining but we did a quick once over in around 3 hours, the paint is already pretty good. That saw the end of Wednesday night, tonight I have just applied a coat of AF Illusion show car wax. Love this wax, goes on so well and you barely use any to do the whole car. Lastly the engine bay was hoovered, all the tight areas were dusted using a range of detailing rushes and paint brushed before have a quick oat of AF Dressle. Again this was a quick turn around as time is tight. Alex

That's fine, the engine in the GTI sits at that angle

Cheers guys, cam_d it wont be going anywhere soon. Only just got it back on the road lol! Alex

Saturday was a good day, took the car for a good drive over to a friends workshop / bodyshop to see him new unit and to have a good natter and a catch up. Noticing they had a 2 post lift ramp I got my car on and up in the air so I could take a look at it. Its been nearly 2 years since I started the rebuild and I have never seen it up in the air properly, only ever about 9" from my face on axle stands. Was funny to see the guys faces in the workshop... Got a few small jobs to finish off but overall I am over the moon with it Alex

Yes matey Got a couple of jobs done over the weekend. Had my exhaust manifold heatsheilds back from being mirror polished and nickel chrome plated. Need to unbolt the torque link and manifold so I can move the engine forward to fit them. Will do that next week. Also picked up a second hand under bonnet carpet, couldn't justify buying a brand new. Brushed with APC on the dirtier sections. Then wet vac'd to clean it properly. I will be dying it with a black fabric dye later this week. Working in APC with a soft brush- We vac'ing Dirty water out the wet vac- With age it had gone a grey colour rather than black so I purchased for Auto Glym Black Fabric dye and gave it a coat. Really good product, just sprayed on like a spray paint and came out lovely, nice and black again. Cleaned up the retaining clips for it- And fitted- Also got a load of engine bay clips from the scrappers. Couple of which I have been after for a while and a few to keep as spares. Cleaned and degreased ready to fit- Also.... (copied from another forum) Big happy update So after about 4 months of head scratching trying to sort out my knocking drive shaft I have finally solved it with a lot of help from a fellow racing puma owner! The knocking was occurring when the car was turning left at 5mph + in the battle to try to fix it the following was changed- 1) Both outer CV joints - twice2) Both inner CV bearings3) Intermediate driveshaft4) Intermediate drive shaft bearing5) Drive shafts swapped over for spare ones None of the above worked!! Turns out it was the subframe, when I had refitted it I had put it back on in the correct place and aligned it, however it must have moved when fitting and shifted to the drivers side by about 5mm. This meant the complete drivers side had reduced the movement of the drive shaft by 5mm. So as I turned left the weight of the car and engine was ushing the drivers side shaft into the intermediate shaft causing the knocking. Loosened the subframe and moved it over, also modified the gear box and engine mounts slightly to allow the engine to fit about 4mm to the passenger side and its sorted!!! Happy days!!

Cheers Al, I'll be happier when its fully working again. Having issues with drive shafts and bearings at the moment. I'll figure it out its just doing my nut in at the moment. Got some new shiny things due soon too so will keep you all updated Alex

Haha I won't let it beat me, got a puma guru coming to look at it later this afternoon to she some light on it. I think it's a mixture if things. Small stuff like the tracking being out, tyre pressures. Driveshaft noise can only really be the inner cv bearings now which are simple to change but are £70 each from ford at trade price so not exactly cheap. I've come this far so will probably bite the bullet and change one or maybe both to resolve it once and for all! The paint is pretty battered so it's going to need some love over the next few weeks. Also somehow chipped a chunk out one of my wheels. Aghhhh!

Thanks Karl! Lol I'll go crazy once it's all done! Though at the moment it is really annoying me. I have a rhymical knocking noise whicj presumably is the driveshaft. Already had the driveshafts out about 3 times trying to solve it. I'll get there in the end, but it is getting me down at the mo.

Ok so today was the big day! All the oils had been topped up, everything check and double checked. Ready to start it. The car started on the button no problems, no warning lights, came up to temperature fine, no visible leaks etc Took it for a drive and all seemed well apart from a slight knocking rumble noise from the passenger side front driveshaft. With accelerated speed and a sweeping turn the noise got really quite bad and could be heard quite easily in the cabin even with the loud exhaust noises. So the car was jacked up and everything was checked again. Can't see anything wrong but there s something up with the passenger driveshaft. So first things first will be to change the outer CV, I remember when it was fitted it was really tight unlike the drivers side, almost like the splines where out of syinc or something. Hopefully will have a new outer CV joint by tomorrow so can get that changed over and try again. Before all that I fitted a new track rod end, I had my camera with me so thought I may as well take some snaps to keep the thread alive. Enjoy the clean Alex

Ok so my thread has been a little quiet the past couple of weeks. This was due to a major issue I was having with the braking system. Which turned out to be completely my fault. The basic issue was a contamination in the brake fluid / braking system which had blocked something and was not allowing me to bleed the brakes. The cause of the contamination was found to be the master cylinder which had been soda blasted, I had blocked up the channels with cut up cloth to stop the soda getting past but obviously it had not worked. So the master cylinder managed to contaminate the brake fluid and in turn blocked up the ABS pump / control unit, the DS front brake line, DS front flexi brake line and DS front caliper were all blocked up! Not good! So a new master cylinder and ABS pump were sourced, the brake lines were cleaned out with an air line and the calipers were removed, split in half, pistons removed and thoroughly cleaned out with brake fluid to remove all contamination. Everything was then put back together, and hey presto! I have brakes Bit of a nightmare, but a good learning curve and I learnt a valuable lesson! Engine bay with the new master cylinder and ABS pump fitted- So now on to the good stuff, progress... I ordered new front flexible brake lines. These are the original spec Goodridge braided hoses for the Alcon front calipers- Fitted new stainless steel unions for between the caliper and brake line- Found these reproduction Alcon service stickers which were fitted to all the calipers when new- Another eBay bargain find was the positive battery terminal, these are still available new but only in red, the FRP was fitted with a black one from new so I had to find one- And lastly a new oil filter ready for oil change- Hopefully I will have the gearbox and engine oils back in tonight or tomorrow, then its go time! Alex

Mmmm looking lovely Ross! Interior depends on the direction you want to take, I love pole positions but they do cry out race car which I don't think is the direction this car is going. CS's are a little over done. OEM+ goodness, MK6 interior all the way for me. In my opinion of course Alex

It never ends Huw

Ah I standard corrected, odd one. I have a V plate and a W plate, the W has the new dash, dials and headrests. W must be the change over year

Nice find! Odd that it has hazard button under the stereo rather than in the middle of the front heaters. They are usually like that on the earlier type ('99 T and V plates) must be a cross over model. Does it have solid headrests or the ones with holes in? Looks immaculate