VW Sport Caravan GTI (Part 6, chassis resto in progress )

It's been a busy past six months. Moving, getting back into the grind of a daily commute and taking on a much larger roll at work has meant very little spare time for much of anything. Whatever there is I've been trying to spend on the Caravan GTI, and little by little, it's getting there. A lot of the tedious and filthy dirty work involving undercoat and paint is 98% there, and so I think we're finally to a point where progress will really start to get to get rolling.



So what have we been up to? Follow and all will be revealed...




Undercoat. I never want to see this disgustingly tan chemical coating ever again. Or at least not for a significantly long time. The Caravan GTI still had a healthy layer of undercoating on the underbody, and while it certainly kept the floors almost 100% pristine over the past 27 years, it was no longer welcome. It's heavy, it's ugly, and it could have been hiding some serious corrosion. Lucky for me, it was not.



I tried a lot of methods of removal, from the purely manual to full power, and although initial results seemed best with a combination of heat / scrape / wire wheel it was just too slow. Using just an angle grinder with a wire wheel was far too smokey. Horrible, acrid, probably life-shortening smoke and vapor was too much to take. The solution? The Crud Thug - a marvelous tool from our friends at Snap On.



The Crud Thug was messy for sure, but it was very efficient and provided the best results with minimal smoke. Plus it got things down to bare metal, ready for prep and paint. Whether down to dumb-luck or a blessed chassis, the Caravan GTI has remarkably little rust, even with the huge sections of fender which were removed to fit the wide fender overlays. The worst areas are at the front of the rear fender wells, but the floors are 99% perfect, and there is absolutely no rust of consequence elsewhere on the chassis. If anything it's got to be one of the most straight Mk2 chassis left in the USA.



In between bouts of Crud-thuggin' time was taken to get the rest of the GTI ready for restoration. After all, removing that undercoat wouldn't take forever right?



But it certainly seemed like it was going to take forever. Eventually the entire under body was stripped, cleaned, primed, painted and looking a lot better. With the dirt, smoke, chemicals and everything else involved, I can honestly say this is one aspect of the build I'm only too happy to be (almost completely) done with. It's absolutely no fun, but worth it.



One of the other bits of good news is that it does indeed appear that the paint will be able to be brought back to life. With only a wash, very mild clay bar and a coat of basic Zymol cleaner wax a small test section went from this...



To this!



Very encouraging. In the mean time suspension work has begun and things are starting to pick up speed. More soon, I promise.

_WRS