Felicia 1.8T transplant thread

[TeflonTom]

wings are on, ignore the swirl marks, they will all polish out, just need to stick the front bumper on now, then chuck the front brake pads in, then the front end can go back onto it's wheels..

more on this thread later..

[TeflonTom]

It will be rolling on 15" golf g60 steelies and hopefully a set of oem skoda hub caps from an octavia if I can find a set.

[TeflonTom]

This is my spare axle beam that I've decided to use instead of the one that is on the car at the moment, stripped all the brake pipes, drums and stub axles... I'm going to overhaul the whole thing

it's fairly easy to remove the rear axle beam bushes, I used a 30mm socket as a drift and knocked them out

[TeflonTom]

mk3 golf gti rear stub axles, carrier and brake caliper, the stub axle is a direct fit, same bolt pattern... Also mk2 golf rear calipers will fit but these have a smaller piston. I got these calipers from the breakers yard for £20 and they were painted red when I got them, they looked like they had been recently overhauled too which is good.. Always check that you can wind the piston in and that the hand brake mechanism isnt siezed on scrap yard calipers folks.

The brake discs will be from a mk2 golf gti, these have a 4 stud fitment.

[TeflonTom]

new genuine oem brake pipes are £3.79 each for the rear axle beam, obviously these are intended to be used with brake drums so they are the wrong shape, I've chopped them half way along that piece of pipe before the last elbow in the picture above so that I could join it up to a mk3 golf rear brake hose to the calliper.

I've stripped it all again now so I can put a wee drop of paint on the it.

[TeflonTom]

all the front is back together now except I can't find the bonnet at the moment, all I need to do is put the front brake pads in then the front end goes down on its wheels, also cant find the indicator bulb holders but they can't be too far away either

[TeflonTom]

For the rear disc brake conversion i'm planning on using the original oem hand brake cables with a home made special spacer at the caliper end to take up the slack left over, i will provide details of this when i get round to it..

[TeflonTom]

Major milestone reached today, it's the first time it's been sat on it's wheels since august 2011, it does look absolutely kosher on the g60 steels too.

oh yeah I've found the bonnet now too.

[TeflonTom]

I've set the ride height to roughly standard so I could check a few things over, there is approx 12cm of clearance from the sump to the floor which is not as much as I would like but it is acceptable, I may stick a spacer under the drivers side engine mount to lift it a few cm at some point

[TeflonTom]

set to work on the rear end today, stripped all the brakes and axle beam off the rear end, there's a fair bit of work to be done in there, as you can see the rear wheel arches are completely shot, I had no choice but to use axle stands on the sills unfortunately due to certain load bearing components needing to be removed, it made a sickening crunchy sound as I lowered it onto the sills so these are going to need repairing too.

above shows one of the rear coil springs broken, I'll clean the inner arches up and stick a couple of coats of stone chip on there, I'm not going to do anything with the outer wheel arches till its has been mot'd.

my other axle beam shown on the previous page is in better condition that one that was on here so I'm using that, this is painted up ready to fit now.

[TeflonTom]

any who rear suspension

pulled the rear suspension out, quick comparison with the mk3 golf rear coilovers.. Broadly speaking they are largely similar, the eye at the base is a little bit narrower so I'll need to insert a few washers to pack it out a bit when the time comes.

[TeflonTom]

the small bush goes under the top cap and rests against the shoulder which is just visible near the spring.. This locates in the recess in the bottom of the spring seat cap, both of these parts come with the mk3 golf kit.

[TeflonTom]

The stainless steel bush supplied with the golf kit is approx 5mm too long, the bronze gold coloured one is the oem skoda one.

The damper piston on the golf ones is 11mm, the skoda one is 10mm so shorter skoda oem bush has a smaller bore size.. There is 2 option to solve this, either drill the hole out to 11mm on the shorter one or turn down the longer one in the lathe to a smaller length.

[TeflonTom]

drilling the bush to 11mm using a tailstock chuck in a lathe, i don't recommend trying to drill these by hand

the bush slides on then a nut screws on.

[TeflonTom]

the rest it just skoda oem parts, there are 2 rubber mountings, these cost about £1 each from the skoda dealer... The largest of the 2 rubbers slides onto the steel bush....

strictly speaking this is all that needs to be done off the car, the remainder of the components are fitted after the damper assembly is raised into position.

the upper rubber has a steel collar and a concave washer.

[TeflonTom]

the small collar pushes into the top of the smaller rubber mounting

then the concave washer pushes into the other side

then there is a dished washer, a shake proof washer, then a nut screws on and holds it all together. Normally there is only one nut on the oem dampers but I'm going to use the nuts supplied with the golf dampers.

[TeflonTom]

this is what it looks like all assembled together.... Like I said earlier the larger bush goes on, then the damper is put into position, the large bush goes underneath the body with the damper, the remainder of the components go above the damper mounting on the body of the car, the place it mounts to the car kind of looks like 2 cones which face away from each other and as the nut on top does up it squeezes the 2 rubbers either side of the mounting.

[TeflonTom]

I spent a good couple of hours cleaning up and painting some of the brackets and components associated with the rear axle beam assembly, I've decided to buy a new rear anti roll bar because the one that was on the car has rotted away quite badly and a brand new one is only £21 from skoda anyhow.

the above picture shows the axle beam attachment bracket, this bolts to the rear chassis rails then the axle beam bush bolts to this... These brackets are handed as well, the sticky out bit with a hole in is where the rear brake flex hose attaches, on the other one it's on the other side of the bracket.

[TeflonTom]

Spent a fair bit of time scrubbing out all the road grime and muck from the inner arches, quick coat of stone chip its a bit patchy in the pic but I will stick another coat on tomorrow.

[TeflonTom]

still need to pick up a few parts from tps tomorrow too, I've binned the modified oem brake pipes too, I wasnt happy with the flare that I put on them because the skoda brake pipes are steel and my pipe flaring too is designed for copper pipes so I resorted to making my own brake pipes for the rear axle beam...

more on this thread later... Can't do anything else till the parts from tps are in.

[TeflonTom]

sorry for the out of focus images folks, today I retrieved all the outstanding parts from tps, which mainly consisted of nuts and bolts... I like to buy the proper genuine oem bolts for things wherever I can

the rear axle beam mounting brackets bolt onto the bottom of the rear chassis rails thus so, at this stage they are not tightened down hard because they may need to be slackened off and jiggled about a bit when the axle beam goes up, these bolts are notoriously difficult to get to once the beam is in place too, you have to use a jack to raise and lower the beam to the exact right angle to let you get a socket on an extension in to get to the bolts

[TeflonTom]

mk3 golf rear coilovers went into place next..

The top of the rear suspension mountings can be easily accessed by peeling back the carpet in the boot, it's quite tricky to get the nut on the top of the damper when the rubbers are new because they haven't squashed down yet, so I helped it into position using a trolley jack till I got the nut on a few turns, then released the jack and tightened it up... This nut should be re torqued once the car is sat on it's wheels.

[TeflonTom]

Ooh I have just spotted from that pic that there is an exhaust heat shield missing....

[TeflonTom]

Both of the rear wheel arches are completely shot, they would both make it fail the mot due to the proximity to the rear seatbelt anchor point. I've ordered up some repair panels but it's a very tricky and time consuming job to do, the rear quarter is made up of 2 separate layers and they both have to be cut back and repaired with a special rear wheel arch repair panel, as luck would have it I did manage to buy a complete new rear quarter panel off eBay for 99p some time ago but it's not a good idea to change that whole panel unless it's absolutely necessary, I'll just chop off the piece I need

[TeflonTom]

Got home earlier than expected today so got in the workshop for a few hours

Freshly painted rear axle beam, the pics don't do this justice tbh