I've been looking for an A2 as a beater/commuter car since the Rabbit diesel is a bit too crude for my tastes (not to mention that it's sunflower yellow). After looking at a 16v Scirocco for $1500 that was rather beat, I saw an ad for an '87 Golf GTi 2.0L asking $1000 so I figured I'd take a ride to Baltimore (about an hour from the office) and have a chuckle or 2.
It gets worse, the car was recently purchased by a gent who needed a beater himself. Now that his car "fixed itself" with a tune-up, he was selling the VW. The car is butt-ugly - primer black with hideous big bumpers (yes, I like the small bumpers, sue me) and a set of denuded but relatively decent teardrops with center caps (again, barf-o-rama). It also has a nice hood scoop of sorts affixed to the hood - can you say "ghetto"? Inside, the headliner is nice and new but the drivers' seat is from a GL. The hvac controls work but their mounting point is broken. It has an am/fm cassette and lots of leftover wiring from one of TEPO's "systems" - all I want is to be able to listen to the traffic reports. Under the hood sits a 2.0L with a fresh starter and a bypassed heater core - lots of new looking hoses however along with a Eurospurt short shift kit. Hhmm - things are looking interesting now. The car doesn't start too easily and the clutch engages at the top of the travel. It runs nicely and the clutch seems strong although the master cylinder is wasted and the parking brake doesn't work. All the bad stuff aside, the car seems decent enough and if it turns out to be a POS, I can always part it and use the shell as a spare SO I took the plunge. Somebody save me from this sickness!! I really don't need a 2.0L 16v - in fact, all I really wanted was a nice, early 8v GTi but this damn thing came along!! Reading later, it turns out that the car has been thru several owners, most of them who were pinheads. One owner spent multiple thousands of dollars having the 2.0L motor installed and then having the timing belt break 2 years later. When the last EPO had the car, it was in rough shape - in fact, one service ticket reads "bad master cylinder - UNSAFE" and yet the pinheaded EPO only replaced the pads. Good thing I have a supply of A2 stuff in my shed - maybe I'll even use some real racecar parts on this one to make it go faster. In fact, since the damn hood scoop is so stupid looking, I may put on my old hood that has holes for pins AND my car number. BTW, anyone want an '81 Rabbit diesel? $1050 with 157K miles, 5-spd, new shocks, front brakes, tie rod ends, ball joints, axles, clutch, belts, hoses and tires. ===== Matthew Yip http://www.geocities.com/mgyip/ '81 Rabbit diesel - '87 GTi 16v "General Li" - '88 M5 - '99 F350 psd __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices http://auctions.yahoo.com/ _____________ List Sponsor: http://www.netsville.com To remove yourself from this list, send mail to [email protected] with 'unsubscribe a2_16v' in the body of your message See us on the web at http://www.a2-16v.com Visit the 16V Homepage at http://www.gti16v.org
