Mk2 Storm Restoration

[Dr. Dub]

Way back in March 2002 I bought my Mk2 Storm, which is my second Scirocco having previously owned a 1989 GT. My mission, return the Storm to original. Here’s a pic of it on the day I bought it.



Luckily the dude that was selling it didn’t realise how rare the car was. He was asking £650 for it. The car had 15” alloys that I didn’t need as I wanted it to be 100% original. So I managed to acquire it for £500. To bring the car home, I fitted a set of Avus alloys I had kicking around.



For some strange reason, a Mk3 Polo steering wheel had been fitted. Other than that the interior was in great shape. A few other original bits were missing including the Storm grill badge and Blaupunkt MR23 radio. Surprisingly I picked a grill badge up in a matter of weeks for free through a classified ad in VW Audi car.



The engine bay was in the usual state but had no major oil leaks to worry about. Alas there was a proper bodge repair on the bulkhead clutch cable hole, a prime trouble spot as we all know. A little smoke on acceleration was evident from the exhaust but I had budgeted for a cylinder head overhaul.




At Stanford Hall in 2002, I got hold of the correct leather rimmed steering wheel for £15. Sometime later ebay provided the original radio. Amongst the paperwork that came with the car was a handbook for the radio and the cars original bill of sale.




Next it was time for the cylinder head to be overhauled. Engines are not my scene. I don’t mind servicing and straight forward jobs, but I admit this was beyond my skills. JBS Autodesigns were entrusted with the work. They gas flowed the head at the same time. A later model oil deflector plate was also fitted under the rocker cover. Whilst the head was off, it made access to the clutch cable bodge a lot easier.



As can be seen in the pic, a piece of steel was riveted in by the previous owner as a make do. I removed this and welded in a proper repair plate. JBS let me use their MIG whilst the car was beached on their site.




The plate was sealed and hopefully should never cause a problem again. A new clutch cable was fitted after the pic was taken. JBS did a fantastic job on the head. Performance and economy were vastly improved. Now the engine bay could be cleaned, although it’s never going to be concourse.



At some point, the car had some minor accident damage. Both bumpers were a little bent. Nothing bad but I wanted them to be spot on. Of course Storms have headlight washers so tracking down a replacement set took a while. Eventually I came across a GTX in a scrappy and paid £15 for the pair, bargain.



Something that really helped the restoration along in a big way were the wheels. A set of 14” Montreal alloys were advertised on a VW parts website for £60. Bargain, apart from the fact they were in Cardiff and I live in Chesterfield. Luckily I incorporated a trip to a VW Audi day at Malvern showground into the same trip so I was well on the way to Cardiff anyway. After getting them home, a set of Pirelli P6000 tyres were fitted. These were the closest thing to the original P6s that I could get hold of.



Now it was looking like a Storm again. Everything was there, but quite a few bits of rust needed treating. Above all else, the thing that bugged me most were the different shades of blue on the offside between the door and rear quarter panel. It was like night and day. Most people didn’t notice it and said the car was in great shape. But I knew I had to repaint the whole car.

[Dr. Dub]

Lots of little dings and rust spots like this needed sorting. By this time the Storm was no longer my daily driver so I could take it off the road if needed. Panel wise the Storm needed a replacement tailgate, bonnet and N/S wing. The wing and bonnet were sourced from a scrapped green pearl effect Scala, the tailgate from Andy’s (polov8) Monza blue GTX.



Because the wing came from a post ‘85 car, it had a hole for a side repeater. As Storms don’t have these, I plated the hole.



The bumper and old wing were removed. No easy task as VW apply copious amounts of sealer down the rear mounting edge of the wing making it reluctant to part from the A-pillar. When removed, all the bolt holes were checked for rot. When I restored my mates Mk1, most of these fell apart. Thankfully Mk2s are better corrosion protected so no problem areas arose. Still it was prudent to apply a protective coating before fitting the new wing.



Looks better already. I was half tempted to paint it green at this point as I really like the colour. But I soon saw sense.



Removing the screen is straight forward and it allowed full access to repair the scuttle corners.



The rot was ground out, treated and filled. After a good coat of primer, I re-sealed the seams.



Here I’m gluing down the A-pillar trim before putting the screen back in. That is a pig of a job on a MK2. Usually you can ’string’ a screen in in no time. But due to the rake of the screen, the squared of corners and the serrated bottom edge of the aperture it takes ages. Eventually it went back in just as the daylight was failing. Oh for a garage.



Replacing the bonnet was no problem. Painting the underside before fitting saves lots of time later in the painting process.



Four M6 bolts, a few adjustments and hey presto it’s fitted.



Next piece of the jigsaw was the new tailgate. Andy (polov8) was breaking his GTX so bought his tailgate and a few other bits and bobs. As you can see in the pic, GTX’s have badges on the tailgate whereas Storms don’t. So the mounting holes would have to be filled in time.



Before fitting the new tailgate, I painted the inside of it Cosmos. Seeing as it was a small area, I just used an aerosol. Shame to paint over Monza blue though. Naturally the surface was keyed and degreased before painting. Luckily I had the use of a garage for the weekend.



Being a Chesterfield fan, I made sure this report was on display in the masking. Sorry to any City fans.



Made good use of the garage time. Good thing too as when the old tailgate was removed it was monsoon season.



Whilst the Rocco was undercover, I dropped the headlining on the nearside to reveal the source of a nasty water leak. The sunroof drain had rotted away, hence water running down the a-pillar and into the passenger side footwell.



This problem was remedied by 2-pack bonding in a piece of nylon air pipe to replace the rotted original. It’s the same diameter as the original so is a perfect fit into the flexible a-pillar pipe. Fingers crossed, no leaks since.

[Dr. Dub]

After fitting the new tailgate, I turned my attention to some external damage. Unfortunately I had to destroy the original Scirocco Storm sticker to repair the damage below the O/S tail light. Once the worst of the rot was ground out, a little panel beating was called for.



The area was then rust treated, fully primed and seam sealed.



The same treatment was given to the above area.



Now pretty much back together, it looked like this. I was still trying to keep it roadworthy at the time.



With some better weather came the chance to fill in the badge holes on the tailgate. I considered welding them up, but decided against it because I wouldn’t have been able to protective coat the inside of the welds. So I jammed them up and skimmed them over with filler.



A nice application of primer filler and then a guide coat to assist in even wet flatting.

[Dr. Dub]

Various other bits of stoppering and wet flatting were done over the coming weeks and it was more or less ready for paint. Sadly things came to a grinding halt. In February 2008, my Dad had a stroke and three weeks later he died. We were very close and he had a keen interest in my Storm. He often came with me on scrap yard trips and such. He was a body repairer before he retired. In fact he worked at the local VW dealership in the body shop in the 70’s. That’s where my VW obsession came from. It was upsetting when working on the Storm because I could see my Dad was itching to pitch in with me, but he was just not well enough. Still he enjoyed watching ’his lad’ doing what he couldn’t.

A few months passed and I just didn’t have the heart to get any work done on the car. Most of my time was now spent looking after my Mum (as it still is). One day I realised that my Dad would not want me to mope around forever. More than anything he would have loved to have seen my Rocco be finished. That was the push I needed to get cracking again.

During our spring bank shut down week last year, I managed to get the use of the spray booth at work for two days. So I started at 6am and worked through until 5pm without a break.



Normally, the booth is used for painting buses and coaches so you can imagine how big it is. Plenty of room for a tiny little Scirocco.



After masking up, the new bonnet and wing were primer filled. After baking, they were wet flatted with 800 grit paper.



The car was re-masked, de-greased and tacked/blown off. As I had so little time to get the thing painted, I decided not to take the glass out. After some careful masking, that was good enough for me. Now I was ready for the fun bit, painting.



With the Storm being Cosmos blue metallic, the only choice in paint was a clear over base system. For anyone not familiar with this, a satin effect basecoat is applied first. Purely to give the colour, NOT to give a finish. The above pic shows the finished basecoat process. That was about 3-4 coats if I remember right.



Then it was on with the clearcoat or lacquer stage. Three coats of lacquer were applied, each one being a little ‘wetter’ than the previous. The first coat is know as a medium ‘gripper’ coat. Too wet and it runs off, too dry and you get a dull finish. The second coat can be a lot wetter as it can now grip the first coat. You need to go for a finish at this point. If you are feeling brave, there is the option for a ‘wet on wet’ or ‘double header’ coat that really flows out nicely. But there is a high chance of runs. I elected to let the second coat flash off before applying the third heavy finish coat.




Once I was happy with the finish and coverage I allowed a little flash off time to let the lacquer flow. Then I set the oven to bake . That was the end of day two in the booth. Only just got it painted in time.

[Dr. Dub]

Day three was a case of de-masking, de-nibbing and buffing then re-fitting the headlights and newly painted bumpers etc. Now clear of the booth. time was no longer an issue. After buffing the roof and bonnet, I was ready to drop having been working non-stop for three days solid. Time to take the Rocco home, I'd had enough.



This is the first pic when everything was fitted back together. It looks a mess as the flatting water needed to be cleaned of the tyres and trim. The coach in the background is what normally goes in the booth. It was chucking down with rain in this pic.

With the car back home and thankfully much better weather, I could properly clean up the Rocco. Unfortunately, the paint needs to be left for two weeks before it can be wax polished. This is to allow any solvents to fully escape from the new finish. That was the longest two weeks in history as I was aching to get a good layer of protection on there. Still it looked pretty good.





As can be seen here, the new Scirocco Storm sticker was not yet fitted for the same reason as not waxing the car. I had a new sticker made at Ultimate signs here in Chesterfield and I was really pleased at the result. Although I did all the spade work by making the jpg. image that it was printed from.




Now with the Storm sticker in place, it’s finished. Not that a restoration can ever be called finished. Other parts to have been replaced during my ownership are the brakes (now using a 16v Golf servo and master cylinder with Brembo Max discs), new genuine VW fuel filler neck, oil pump, dampers, timing belt, radiator, numerous hoses plus loads more that I could list. With very little exception, namely the brakes, everything is 100% original Storm spec.

Next job is to replace the fuel tank that has decided to start leaking. Typical.

All in all I’m really pleased with how it came out. There are some areas that I look at where I think I could have done better. But considering I have no garage it’s pretty good but a long way from being the perfect Storm.

[Dr. Dub]

This week, the Storm will finally get a replacement fuel tank.

It's a decent second hand one provided by poloV8. Cheers Andy.


The tank had a good coating of underseal anyway. Just to be safe, I piled on a good coating of smoothrite around the seams and underside. I elected not to paint all of the exhaust heatshield as this would prolly burn off anyway.


Speaking of heatshield, I took the precaution of using a bolt and repair washers on one of the daft crimped mountings. The one thats on the car now rusted off. Best to be cautious me thinks.
The Rocco is going to my cousins garage in the morning for work to commence. I will try to get more pics of the procedure if possible.
Edit Friday 14th Aug.
New tank is now on. No pics of the procedure I'm afraid as I was at work when it was changed.