First Drive of Jason’s VR6-Swapped MK3 Cabrio — Carmudgeon w/ Cammisa & Derek Tam-Scott — Ep. 221

I thought you were done.

Were you done?

They're listening.

Welcome to another episode of The Cormorant Show.

Cormorant Show is driven by Hagerty.

I am Jason Camisa.

That is Derek, Tim, Hyphen Scott.

And in this episode, we have a Mark III VR6 swapped

Volkswagen Cabrio behind us,

because that means Jason has got it into a functional state.

Enough functionality for it to be driven here under its own power.

No humans or anything else were harmed in the process of getting it here.

I drove it.

Why did squirrels fall out of trees?

No, I'm excruciating pain.

I'm very sore from this whole project.

No fatal injuries on the way here.

No one has died in the pursuit of a VR6 engine Mark III.

So we'll go through the discussion of the, I won't say conclusion,

but the latest chapter in the swap.

And I now have a drivable Mark III VR6 convertible.

Dashboard delete.

You had to go there, right?

You just keep pointing out any other flaws you'd like to point out?

We also just to show, it's Cal Shake, of course,

but nothing near that other one.

So I also have my Mark I Cabriolet here, which by the way,

in case you guys at home don't know, Volkswagen's are jealous bitches.

I've owned that car for I think 13 years, the Mark I,

and it has never failed to start.

I put some huge amount of work into another Volkswagen.

And this is in the VW community.

I see the look on your face and I know how stupid the words coming out of my mouth sound,

but these are jealous bitches of cars.

And so like years ago, sorry for the tangent pre-bumper here,

but years ago I was calling my VW parts guy and I ordered some stuff for,

I think it was for my VR6 Golf back in the day.

And I said, oh, you know what? Throw a set of 16 valve plug wires in.

And he's like, Jason, you just bought them like a year and a half ago or something.

I said, I know, and I can't believe I'm admitting this to you,

but if I don't buy the Scirocco something, it's going to break.

And he was like, Oh my God, you're, you didn't just say that.

And I'm like, I did.

And I'm embarrassed.

He's like, no, that's what I do.

So he used to take his cars out of the garage when he worked on one.

So the other ones couldn't see what he was doing.

This is a guy who very successfully ran a Volkswagen aftermarket parts company.

He was a great guy.

And he was like, my wife used to think I was crazy.

And then she would see what would happen when I didn't, when I didn't do it.

They got jealous and they would break.

So I would take them out of sight.

I'm like, yeah, I always have to buy this is your gift.

I love you too.

Please don't break on me.

So today I come in, I pulled the VR6 in, it gets here or whatever.

And I have to move the Mark 1 had been here, it's never failed to start.

It cranked and cranked and cranked and cranked and cranked and cranked and

cranked and the fire it and died and cranked and cranked and cranked and cranked

and cranked and cranked and would not start, killed the battery trying to start it.

Had to put a jumper box on it and cranked it some more until the jumper box was half dead

and it finally was like a final live.

So I took it for a ride around the block and I pet it

And I'm like, I still love you.

And by the way, you're going to be in the background

with your now younger sister.

Shut the fuck up.

And was it due?

Start right up.

Completely happy.

Absolutely perfect.

They're jealous little bitches.

Okay, and baskets.

And I'm not crazy, bitch, baskets.

Anyway, I'm not crazy, I swear.

And the men who are coming here

to put me in the little white coat

will be happy to tell me that.

Okay, all right.

I think that now is the time that I clap.

And we listen to the jingle.

Are you applauding my insanity?

Yes.

Expresso.

Expresso?

Is that what you're going to call it?

I hate it.

Where I grew up, this is called expresso.

This is spelled wrong.

The S's pronounces an X, it's expresso.

What's your fucking problem, huh?

Will you talk?

Look right to that camera over,

one of those cameras over there

and talk to the New Yorkers

and tell them it's pronouncing it wrong.

It's also waiting in line, not waiting online.

No, we wait online in New York.

I was waiting online at Dwayne Reed.

Damn it, what was I going to say about the expresso?

Oh, expresso was also a really cleverly named package

for the Plymouth Breeze and Plymouth Neon.

It was a sport pack, they called the expresso.

It's cute, it's like a cappuccino,

but only without the milk and with extracts.

Dodge Neon.

No, Plymouth Neon.

Plymouth, Plymouth had the expresso pack.

Dodge might have also,

but I know Plymouth it because I work for Plymouth.

Anyway, we're not here.

We are here.

You see how that turned out.

We are here to not.

For Plymouth, not free.

We're here to talk about other cars

with double overhead cam.

No, hold on.

Yeah, anyway, behind us,

or technically to my left and your right,

but from their perspective behind us,

we have two engines swapped,

actually entire driveline swapped,

Volkswagen Golf Convertibles.

I surprised you.

In fact, we have the video of you walking in

and as always, Derek emotes so much.

I was hoping for like,

I'm like, we have the car stage in here.

Derek walks in and I'm videoing in.

I'm expecting you to be like,

holy shit, it made it here.

Cause as of a couple of days ago,

the car had just started and you said what?

I don't remember.

You pointed to it and said, car,

hold on, play the tape.

Car.

Surprise.

It made it.

No dashboard.

You know, you have to point out the flaws.

Yeah.

You just didn't emot and the first thing you notice

is the thing that it's missing,

which is the basically entire interior.

Yeah, it's a lightweight model right now.

And you said structurally deficient as a result of that.

I mean, it's missing a couple of dash board braces.

And by that, I mean all of them.

It has profound cowl shake, I will say that.

But that will be reduced when all that stuff is installed.

Yes.

And I also, so once the bracing's in, it'll get better.

Once the dashboard cross member is fully tightened,

cause I did a cursory tighten on it.

That should also help.

And then I bought Euro sport accessories,

sells an upper strut tower brace and then a lower brace

that's already on the Mark one and makes a huge difference.

That's good because I noted a lot of cowl shake

and that thing, I mean, not to expose the lead too early,

but I was like, I would like this car better

if it had a roof because of the cowl shake.

Yeah.

Which is funny because well.

They did make a factory version of the car with a roof.

It's called the GTI VR6.

With no swapping required.

Yeah, but when I built a four door, so GTI VR6,

GTI was two door only for Mark three.

I think I've talked about this ad nauseam before, but for.

And four and two and one, two door only GTI.

GTI was two door, but they made a four door golf,

but not a four door GTI.

But that was true of the GTI

until the Mark five came out, right?

Was there ever a four door GTI until the Mark five came out?

Not in the U.S.

Okay.

But yeah, for Mark five, they started to offer both.

And in fact, for Mark five,

they introduced the four door first.

And I, no, there was two door first.

And then I went on the launch for Mark six in Europe

or four door.

Anyway, neither there nor there.

I built many, many years ago in the late nineties,

early 2000s.

I think it was probably 2000, 2001.

I built, I bought a four door Mark three golf

and had it by way, by the way it turned out,

I had swapped to a, it was an automatic two point slow

with 29,174 miles on it when it was 10 years old,

roughly almost 10 years old, say eight years old,

had it swapped to a VR six and five speed.

And the reason I had it done was because the interest,

the exchange rate between the U.S. and Canada

at the time was outrageously.

Favorable.

And so it wound up being less expensive.

I looked it up, I think it was almost 5,000 bucks.

But I dropped it off, had the best shop in Toronto

do a five speed swap and the VR six swap

and then got it back.

And then did suspension and brakes and seats

and steering wheel and you name it.

I did everything to that car.

Was one of my favorite daily drivers ever.

In fact, when my mom just saw the red car,

she's like, what are you doing with this thing?

I'm like, remember the silver golf?

She's like, oh yeah, that's one of my favorite cars

of all time.

So that thing was so much fun.

I'm like, well, we're doing it.

Anyway, I did that car and I had always regretted

after a couple of years of dailying it,

I regretted not just swapping everything into a cabrio

because actually I thought this is a special engine.

It deserves to be heard from inside and out.

So it's funny that you want it with a roof

and I'm now doing this 20 years.

It's a summer of 2005 is when I sold my four door.

20 years later, I'm recreating my,

one of my favorite cars of all time.

So anyway, yeah, so we have a theme.

The Mark I, that's a Mark I cabriolet,

the Jewish racing gold one.

That originally came with an eight valve,

1.8 liter with 90 horsepower.

It now has a two liter 16 valve with call it 170.

The Mark III came with a 2.08 valve

that had 115 horsepower.

It now has 172 soon to be more than that.

Allegedly, when it was new, it had 172.

I bet it still does.

Didn't feel quick to you?

It felt quick.

Yeah, certainly felt quicker than the two points low.

That was the, okay.

So we've talked about that.

That was the dog, which is insulting to dogs.

Dogs are fun and peppy and have a lot of personality.

Two points low does not.

Yeah, so it has much more personality now.

Okay, so we surprised you here

and then we didn't talk really about anything

I said, just go drive it and we can discuss.

It feels very OEM.

Congratulations, you did high quality work.

I mean, I think the brakes need to be bled probably,

but in terms of how it functions,

more still again, more brake bleeding,

the brakes a little soft.

Twice, two and a half times really.

I have gone through a couple of quarts of brake fluid

and I keep getting a lot of air out.

Yeah, it was originally, I can get it into ABS,

but the pedals at the bottom of the travel,

but that is a new master and all new lines.

This is a common Mark III issue.

Apparently it's what the internet tells me

is that they're a bitch to bleed.

I bench bled the master cylinder

and I bench bled the lines and still,

there's still air everywhere.

And then I bench bled the master and slave.

Is it getting better?

It is better than it was,

but yesterday the right rear last night,

so I got the car ready for you last night

because I wanted you to drive it before we recorded today.

The right rear line had, God,

six, seven inches of air in it.

So I mean, and I had gotten all the air out already twice.

So where is it coming from?

It's just the way that there's,

there are six brake, flexible brake hoses on the car

that I've replaced.

And so one each for the front wheels,

which are straight shot down.

So they should be fairly easy to do.

The rears, you have hard lines that go to the trailing arm,

to the suspension basically.

And from the body over onto the twist beam,

there's a flexible line with a high spot,

which is really stupid

because that's of course where air will wanna collect.

So it goes up and over

and then it goes back to a hard line over to the disc

and then flexible from there.

And on my Schiracco,

I did brake lines now probably 13 years ago

and have never gotten them to bleed.

That brake has never felt as good as it did before I did it.

I vacuum bled them.

I've done everything I knew how to do

and then two other mechanics.

So I asked, hey, can you guys do this?

We can't, we just can't get it back to where it was.

Cabby for whatever reason,

bled perfectly and was super easy.

But anyway, so the cabrio still has work to do.

Obviously there's no dash in it.

The clutch also catches right on the floor.

So it still has air in there too.

Hydraulics, but yeah, otherwise it feels very OEM.

It feels like a product they could have made and sold,

but didn't.

They should have, I mean, they absolutely should have.

I am incredibly proud of the fact that I started it

and it has no codes, no faults, no check engine light,

no warning lights at all.

Everything works with a couple of exceptions.

The turn signal, if any electrical people are listening.

So when I turn the right turn signal on,

it pops the fuse immediately.

The left works fine.

And so clearly there's a short to ground

and yesterday I went through to try to troubleshoot it,

pull the bulb, did it again.

So I just wanna make sure there wasn't a problem

with the bulb contacting the socket.

Still popped a fuse.

Then I pulled the whole connector popped a fuse.

Then, so those wires that are on the very front of the car

are part of the Cabrio's harness.

And there's a big connector.

So I didn't change that connector.

It's a big, that harness is a big connector

that then connects to the Jetta's harness,

which then goes all the way to the fuse block.

You can ask the previous owner

if he had functional right turns.

I think it did.

I drove it, I'm pretty sure it did.

So I did disconnect the, that harness.

So now the Cabrio harness is disconnected

from the Jetta harness and it still pops,

which means that the fuse-

It's upstream.

Exactly.

The issue is upstream, somewhere in the Jetta harness.

Somewhere in the Jetta harness, most likely.

So there's two places for the Jetta harness.

There is the original Cabrio's wiring

from the turn signal stock to the fuse block

and then the Jetta harness from the fuse block

over to the front of the car.

And I suspect I pinched a wire in the dash somewhere.

So the dash will go in once the turn signals

and the cruise control doesn't work either.

And I don't know why.

I haven't looked.

Did it work before?

It did, on the Cabrio.

But what about the Jetta?

No idea.

But I'll swap over the switches.

So it's a very simple system.

So I did swap over the pedal boxes between the two cars,

which takes the actuator with it.

So I'll take the hydraulic actuator

or the vacuum actuator,

which literally pulls on the gas pedal.

I'll take that from the Cabrio, which I know worked

and the switches, it's two of them,

one for brake, one for clutch, that I knew worked

and we'll see what happens.

I'm not too too concerned about that.

I would say these are small details,

all things considered, considering that the cars had

like a complete heart, lungs, transplant.

Kidneys.

Yeah.

Testicles.

Full system transplant.

How do you feel?

Tired.

Tired, huh?

So last night I drove it to the gas station and back

and then went through, did another bolt check,

torque the wheels again,

just kind of went through everything,

bled the brakes again,

and then thought it was like 10 o'clock

and I'm like, the roads are mostly empty,

it's 12 miles-ish from my shop to my house.

Fuck it.

I have a haggardy roadside.

I mean, just hopefully not needed.

So I drove it home and I was safe.

I'm still a little bit nervous that like,

oh, I forgot, like I'm a steering rack bolt

or something major.

Drove like a million bucks and that was a huge relief,

but I did get home and wondered,

I'd been asked, one of my coworkers asked

how many hours I put into this project

and I guesstimated 60.

You, did you actually track it?

You guesstimated 60 before doing the job?

No, I guesstimated 60 the other day.

And then you tabulated.

And then I tabulated it based on when the,

so I get notifications when the garage door opens,

I have cameras and whatever else.

Plus I took pictures of everything.

I probably have a thousand pictures of the swap.

I went to the shop 15 times.

So 15 days total over a course of like 22 days.

So December 15th was the day I put both cars on the lift.

December, whatever, two days ago was the first time

I drove the car, I don't even, January something.

It started December 31st.

That was like my hard deadline.

Like the car needs to start.

It did.

And then I drove it the next time I came to the shop.

But 15 days, a total of 111 hours in the shop.

But that does include one day I spent seven hours there

and all I did was clean.

Like organize tools, clean the tools,

put them all back away, clean all the parts up,

clean the, like mop the floor for two hours.

And there it includes other things like pushing the Jetta

from my friend's shop over into my shop.

So shop hours and end, by the way,

four trips to machine shops with the rear suspension

to get the bushings pressed in and then going to another,

going to car parts stores and stuff like that.

So it's an 111 hour investment.

And at $200 an hour, which is the prevailing rate

for cheap shops in this area,

that would be $22,000 in labor,

which is terrifying.

So I'm an idiot.

I mean, welcome to my Christmas.

I know I said this before,

but I think I'd rather buy a GTI.

The worst part of that is the engine has to come out.

I wonder also if it would be easier and cheaper

to cut the roof off of a GTI.

I don't, now that it's mostly done,

again, I still need to do another engine swap.

And put the rest of the interior in.

I suspect a six hour day would get that dash back in and done.

I'm the car would be fully back together.

Once I get the, you know, the turn signal stock sorted out,

the turn signal issues sorted out six hours and it's done.

So if somebody wrote you a check for 40 grand,

would you sell it?

Yeah.

Okay.

No, I mean, I don't want to.

It's the car, I haven't gotten it to enjoy it yet.

I didn't do this.

No, I know you're not trying to sell the car anyway.

What did the one that was on bring a trailer

that had been swapped sell for?

There was one that sold in 2023.

And I think it was 13,000 bucks.

It only had 40,000 miles on this car,

71, 72, 73 somewhere in there.

And that car upon looks beautiful

with a shriek intake manifold,

which is probably worth money only,

but upon close inspection really is rough.

Scuffs everywhere, you know,

the door panels were failing, beautiful presenting car,

but this is-

You think corners were cut in the swap on that car?

No way to know.

So one of the reasons why I'd really like to go to the referee

that we talked about last episode,

you know, the Bureau of Automotive Repair,

California's smog enforcement bureau,

and just have this registered as a VR6

is because I just want the stamp of approval.

Like this was done correctly

with absolutely no corners cut.

Like that car, for example,

did not have Mark III VR6 suspension.

It had Corrado,

it has stock Mark III two liter suspension

with Corrado brakes on it.

This has the full late-

This is 100% mechanically a GTI VR6

with now shocks and springs.

OEM sport shocks and springs,

it's the only difference.

And that means subframes, everything went,

everything is VR6, radiator, fans, all of it, wiring, so.

This is as close to a factory GTI,

GTI VR6 Cabrio as you can get, you know.

Good choice on the wheels.

Thank you.

I am.

These are the modular wheels

from like a Wolfsburg edition, Mark IV.

Or Beetle, they come up as Beetle, new Beetle first.

I don't remember seeing them on a Beetle,

but I definitely remember seeing them on Mark IV,

right before they put the crazy body kit on the GLIs,

which was I think 0405 or maybe it was only 05.

The Mark, the UK spec Mark III GTI VR6

came with a one-piece version of these wheels,

very, very similar.

Yeah, they're like BBS RCs or something like that.

They're not RCs, I don't remember what they were,

I looked them up.

But these are the two-piece,

basically the two-piece version of those wheels.

And they're available in the US.

They're 16s, which is...

These are 16s.

Yeah, which is big.

This car came with 14s.

They both came with 14s.

The Mark one's now on 15s, that's on 16s.

16s is the absolute upper limit for me for Mark IIIs.

17s just right, actually.

But, you know, the factory,

the car came on these wheels effectively from the factory,

and so that's, I think it's...

Mark III has never been the most beautiful.

I like it.

GTI, it's handsome-ish.

It's handsome enough, let me say.

I don't think it's a Mark one.

I think the Mark one is a, you know,

De Jaro masterpiece.

But Mark III is a little bit bulbous.

It's a pretty car,

but those are the right wheels,

and that's the right look for it.

And to me, it just pulls together.

You know, it puts smoked taillights on it.

I would like to put smoke taillights.

In the style of GTI.

Smoked...

I'd like to put fog lights up front,

you know, just a little bit of a juge,

but NVR6 badges.

Quite subtle, quite a subtle thing.

So it was more or less same hardness as expected

before embarking.

Okay, and what is the origin of the difficulty?

Mostly, and we talked about this,

I think last week, the interior swap.

The wiring scared me because, you know,

mechanical stuff, if I can see it, I can work on it.

Wiring scares me a little bit more

because it's just not what I do.

And I didn't realize I was gonna have to pull the dash.

I didn't want to fuck with that car's interior

because it was so perfect.

Like I said, everything came out

without we didn't break a single clip.

You know, I have all the spares

and everything from the Jetta.

So that car will go back together

as well as I can put it back together.

Hopefully that means no squeaks and rattles.

You know, hope.

They're a little like isolating washers.

I kept them all, they're all labeled and bagged.

I have, when I do big projects,

I get these 20, like they're horrible freight,

like 20 little bin containers.

Yeah, they're like fishing tackle boxes,

but it's meant for fasteners and stuff like that.

Correct.

And I label them, every little box gets a number,

and then I have a sheet of paper and I write

what is in each box.

And so when I'm done with the project,

if I have like, there are two bolts in box four,

oh, those are the steering rack bolts, oops.

So I have two boxes for these cars,

one for the Jetta, one for the Golf.

And so everything is super organized.

So hopefully it all goes back together

with new foam for the, you know, for the HVAC,

because that all fell apart as soon as you touched it

and stuff like that.

Well, it's aged.

Yeah, it's 30 years old.

And that car's 30 years old.

I think he bought it in February of 96.

So coming up here on 30 years old.

So is it making all your dreams come true?

Not yet.

So here's the thing.

So I told you last week, the engine is trash.

Somebody chewed up.

It just needs a head.

Yeah, it needs a head,

but it also needs a transmission.

Oh, that's fun.

It feels great, right?

Yeah, however.

It makes a weird noise in first gear.

So when you're sort of totally around in first gear,

you get a rrrr coming from it.

That goes away as soon as you're in second or clutch in.

So either a gear is, a tooth is chipped or I don't know.

I don't know, but now I gotta find a fucking transmission too.

Can't tectonics.

Why don't you just rebuild it?

That's probably five times as much as buying a used one.

Oh, I come from a world where it's easier to rebuild things

than replace them.

Oh, really?

I mean,

because you can't find, you know, like go find a,

I don't know, transmission with overdrive for a Ferrari 250.

Okay.

Rebuild the existing one.

What is a rebuilds transmission for a cheap car cost?

For a cheap car?

Yeah.

For like, not a Ferrari,

because Ferrari parts are obviously gonna be.

My 996 got a transmission rebuild

and I think it was 3,800 bucks.

I mean, that would make this 2,500 bucks.

That's not a cheap, well, it's cheap in the market

in terms of, I paid $17,000 for the car.

The first thing I did with it, I backed it,

I didn't back it, I drove it out of the garage

and I did a fucking immediate burnout.

I mean, I did this,

the first thing I did in the Jetta

when I got in was do a burnout, right?

Front wheel drive, the noise this thing makes.

Yeah, is exceptionally magnificent.

I mean, it made me say,

okay, I need this engine in something.

And I was like, it's time for a Eurovan.

Interesting, okay.

That's why I did this.

So I did this because I need the engine.

It's for the noise, yeah.

It's all about the engine.

I mean, the sensible thing to do would be to buy a GTI,

like I have said now for the third time in this episode

is to buy a GTI with this engine in it.

But I thought the Eurovan would be funny

because it's working harder in the Eurovan.

And so you'd just be at wide open throttle

for a higher percentage of the time.

And so I think it would be funny.

In the Eurovan or put one in a van again if it'll fit.

But I really like the noise the engine makes.

And so, you know, I've always kind of harbored.

I don't think it's strong enough desire to act on it,

but a Mark III VR6 GTI has always been something

that's been kind of interesting to me.

And it's now much harder to find that

than it is at 911 or something like that.

So I don't, the combination of like the extent

to which I wanted and how difficult to be defined

a decent car and how that,

the therefore implication

that it's going to be very expensive.

I think if you found a nice one in a good color,

like I think the bright blue and the bright yellow

are both really cool on that car.

I think it would be probably $40,000.

You're kidding.

I mean, I don't know, not actually,

but they sell kind of a lot.

I've been down this rabbit hole before

and they turn up like once every three years

on bring a trailer and then they sell

for like kind of a lot of money

because there's no nice ones around that have survived.

I mean, that makes me feel a little better.

Because I did tell you how many hours

I have in this project.

I'm not going to tell you how many dollars I did.

Now once I'm, once I'm all right.

I mean, you've spent more than $10,000

on swap parts alone, I'm sure.

And not yet.

The exact number is like $8,800 or something like that.

Less, a little less.

Okay.

Like little.

A little less.

With a year than 10%.

Okay.

So $7,500 on parts and 111 hours,

which by the time of things done was called 120 hours.

My time is hours, valueless.

I am valueless as a human being.

And the car itself, yeah.

I mean, this is something you do because you want to.

I mean, the car itself was very inexpensive.

The Jetta was half of very inexpensive.

So I mean, I'm in, you know,

the two cars for a total of

less than $6,000.

Just to acquire the two cars.

And then more than that in parts.

And that is with, by the way, FCP gave me,

I mentioned this, I should,

and I should mention again,

FCP Euro gave me a huge, huge discount.

And it was like, we stand by all VR6 swaps.

How can we help?

Like they're cool guys.

And then the shipping sometimes,

like occasionally when you order FCP,

by the time you're, the sound is done,

of you clicking buy is done,

echoing around your living room,

somebody's throwing a package of parts at you.

And that's pretty impressive.

And then of course,

I bought a bunch of stuff at tectonics tuning.

And tectonics I've mentioned before,

I've been buying parts from tectonics since 1997

for the Scirocco.

They have always been the source,

the best source of advice, the best stuff.

I just, I cannot say nice enough things about tectonics.

And that is before I called them for help on this.

And they're like, we will.

So when I found out the engine was bad,

did I talk about that last week?

That I called Colin and did I tell you that an hour later,

I got a picture of the head being torn down.

Like he's already,

they're already deep into building a motor for me.

And I think they're doing it because they feel bad.

Like, you know, I brought that car to them on the way down.

Like he, Colin was like, oh man, this sucks.

All right, how fast do you need it?

Like this is the kind of person we're dealing with.

It's not some big, you know, ugly.

Oh, how much can we charge you for it?

He's charging me.

And I hope he, I sincerely hope he makes money on it,

but at the price is fair,

but the service and the advice and the knowledge

that they have is just amazing.

It's worth whatever it costs.

Worth whatever it costs.

And again, 1999, he's been, I think, in business

since 91 or something like that.

97 is a long time ago.

And we're talking almost 30 years

that I've been buying from them

and everything I've ever bought was perfect.

And so, how do we get on use?

Oh, money, yeah.

So I bought a ton of stuff from FCP,

a ton of stuff from Tectonics.

And there's a lot of stuff that I haven't installed yet.

So for example, I have not aligned it yet

because I just got it really on the ground yesterday

and the front wheels were towed out severely.

So I put it up on the lift

and brought them closer to street.

But the problem is at full droop, they tow,

one way or another, I was looking at it and decided.

And so it's now once it ground on the ground,

it's towed in slightly.

So the tires are getting chewed up.

So I need to go and just do a sight alignment.

I'm cheaping out and I don't want to pay for an alignment

because I have brand new control arms

and brand new ball joints and brand new bush,

brand new everything.

I mean, the shocks and springs are new

and all the upper shock mounts and strut mounts.

But I still have the rest of the suspension upgrade.

I have brand new rotors and pads to do also.

So this is stuff that just needs to be installed.

Tectonics exhaust for it, a new speed P-flow intake.

The reinforcements from Eurosport

are still to be done.

Diesel Geek company makes a shifter rebuild kit.

So I did that, rebuilt the whole shifter.

But part of that is they do a side to side shifter reduction

kit that just, it's like a short shift kit

but in the left, right dimension.

That has to be done on the transmission.

Didn't notice that before I put the tranny in.

And so now I'll wait till it comes back out

and I'll just do it on the transmission

when I swap the motor.

So there's a, I still have a ton of stuff

that hasn't been even installed on this car yet.

But I thought, well, if I'm gonna be running through ABS

cycle over and over and over again to cycle the pump,

I don't wanna ruin brand new pads and rotors or tires.

So I have the spare wheels and tires and spare those old pads

and I'll warp the shit out of those

and then put good stuff on.

The mission, use case.

How do you anticipate these cars will differ?

The Cabriolet and the Cabrio.

Mark one and Mark three.

There's, it's kind of strange to say this about a golf

but the Mark three is very, especially with the VR six

is a very sober and grown up experience.

It's very sort of, I hope you agree, right?

It's very sort of.

Yeah, it's refined and like it's a,

it feels like it's a whole era newer, which it is.

It's just more modern feeling and less unhinged

and you know, a little bit more put together.

Right.

And the Mark one is a 70s car.

I mean, that's a 1974, effectively.

I mean, and so it is really raw.

You know the model year difference between these cars

is five, six years.

88 to 96.

Oh, I thought that was an 89.

No, 88 to 96.

But yeah, but in terms of engineering,

start of production, 74, 93.

And so, and it feels it.

And there's strangely, according to Motor Week,

I think only a 20% increase in structural rigidity

between from Mark one to Mark three.

But when you drove that car on,

there's not that much weight increase either.

But that car, when it was stock suspension

and 14 inch wheels rode like a fucking Rolls Royce.

Like I, that was the defining characteristic of that car

was that on the highway,

it's got like a fully lined roof.

It was dead quiet.

Civilized.

Yeah, it's done by Karman who also did work for Porsche

and a lot of other convertible conversion stuff.

They were like a coach builder for hire.

And even the Mark one praised and I found a,

I think a car driver, I think it was from 92 or 93

when the Mark one was still in production at 20 years old

and it won this award as like, you know,

for best value and for all convertibles

because it really did compete in terms of noise and finish

with stuff that was twice as expensive,

even though it was an expensive car.

But the Mark three is just a hell of a highway cruiser.

So there, I sort of think of the Mark three as a road trip car

in a way that I don't necessarily.

You have done it in that car before.

Oh, I've taken that car to LA so many times,

Palm Springs, you know, those are four or 500 mile drives,

rallied it.

I've done everything, but put it on a racetrack.

I don't think I've put it on a track.

Autocross.

Did I autocross that car?

Isn't that where that photo of you three-wheeling it came from?

No, that was in a restoration hardware parking lot.

That was to, and that was the other one.

That was my 89, that was the eight valve.

That was to figure out what was happening

because I felt like it was on two wheels in some corners.

And it turns out it was.

The best picture of it is on three, well, 2.75 wheels.

One of the inside front was unloaded.

Turns out that car had, I think the sway bars

had just worn out.

So it was just immediately flopped over on its bump stops

and the bushings were all loose and whatever.

This one is nothing of the sort.

But, you know, this is a sort of nippy, fun,

like experience car and this should be like

cold air conditioning, road trip car, take it anywhere.

You know, they're huge inside.

You can easily fit four big guys in a golf

and that's what I love about it.

So sort of secondary city car, sort of driving around.

I don't want to do rallies in that car.

You don't?

I mean, I have other things that are better.

Beatrice is better suited for that.

But it does have, you know, the Audi brakes.

So I think those brakes are from an A6 or an A8.

They're 288 millimeter.

So those, both of the cars again, got body swaps.

So that is Chiroqua 16 valve underneath.

So that went from, that has 210 millimeter.

So 10.1 inch front vented discs

when originally had 9.4 solids.

This one originally had 10.1 vented, so the same.

And now is 11.3.

So huge front brakes, you know,

just big upgrades on everything.

But I just don't think, you know,

a back roads blasting in a front wheel drive.

I bet it'll be fun.

Oh, I know it'll be fun.

Yeah, so we'll see.

I mean, it also depends on what the state of tune

of the VR6 that tectonics builds me is.

I mean, we'll see.

I bet you'll do it.

You'll at least try it.

Oh, I will.

I mean, I will have the car on a back road without question.

Whether I do a thousand miles on, you know,

a stone chippy road, is a different story.

Yeah, it's a nice original car.

And the car's gorgeous and condition wise.

It's just, you know, it's got a couple little dings

and a couple tiny little stone chips,

but, and one door was painted by a Ferrari shop 20 years ago.

And you can't tell.

Yeah, no, a hell of a experience.

I'm glad I'm through the most of it.

And I really hope the final stuff.

So you would not do it again or would?

Let me enjoy the car and then ask that question.

Yes, right.

So far you have only gotten the squeeze

and you have not gotten the juice yet.

Yeah, squeezing my hands are,

my right hand is so much bigger than my left at the moment.

And it's not muscle, it's just swollen.

Everything, my knees are swollen.

It's been, you know, putting a car back together

is physical labor.

Yeah.

And to pull 111 hours of physical labor

over the course of effectively two and a half weeks

is while working, you know, partially

and while having Christmas stuff happening was a lot.

And the-

Well, you got your one week off a year

and you burned through it on a swap.

That I did, that I did.

I mean, I'm so happy that it's driving.

I just, I'm a little bit disappointed

that I have to pull the motor back out.

Like if this were done and buttoned up

and I didn't have to pull this up frame out

and then swap motor and transmission again,

I might be a little bit less inclined to say

I haven't gotten any juice out of the squeeze yet.

Well, it's perfectly usable as it is if you choose to.

Once the dash is in.

I mean, I used it with a dashboard out.

Okay, once it turns in.

It doesn't have functioning HVAC.

It does.

It all blows out the top, but it's, but it functions.

Well, the labels aren't there.

Oh, well, let's just, I can clip that on.

But I don't want to clip anything on

that I'm going to have to unclip

because I'm afraid I'll break it.

Because there's only so many of those

left in its life.

Left in its life, yeah.

I, yeah.

Well, congratulations.

Thank you.

I would never do that.

Seems miserable.

I think most people wouldn't.

Yeah.

And for good reason.

But I, you know, look,

I'm happy to have the bonding experience

again on another big swap car.

And turns out I didn't know this,

but Mark 3 VR6 is on Hagerty's bull market list this year.

So I guess you didn't know that either.

And I was like, guys, I wish I would have known.

And this is with different departments

within the same organization.

I'm like, I wish I would have known.

I would have done this sooner.

But there's a real reason why these cars are special.

You know, it's a golf.

So that means it's, you know, inherently

in good packaging, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

People complain about the quality of these cars.

Is that right?

Mark 3's?

Yeah.

Yeah, they weren't great.

Really?

So it depends on the car.

My perceived experience,

maybe it's just because it's a low mileage car,

but when I got it, I was like, oh, this is nice.

I like it.

I didn't feel crappy or cheap to me inside at all.

The other weird thing to me was.

So where's that origin of that reputation

for them being?

They're just rattled each other.

First of all, I think everyone abuses them.

They also all have 7 trillion miles.

They're golfs.

So people just buy them and drive the shit out of them.

The Mexican cars.

So this was, this is built in German.

Both of those cars, those cars are built

and my Chirac are all built in the same plant.

Also, flash silver, flash red, go figure.

So they're both built by Carman in Osnopoulos,

which now makes 718.

That is, it's no longer a Carman plant.

It's a Porsche plant.

It's a Porsche, it's a regular Volkswagen plant.

Effectively, the build quality difference

between the German Cabrio and the Mexican Jetta was there.

It wasn't as substantial as I thought it would be.

It's little things, like the way that the wiring harness,

so the wiring, the engine wiring harness.

Oh, so the Jetta that you pulled apart was Mexican built car.

Yes, got it.

Sorry, I skipped over that.

So the way the wiring harness is retained

as it goes across the firewheel is fine on the Jetta,

but it's trimmed so much more nicely on the Cabrio.

The fender liners are a nicer quality material.

They're held in with slightly different clips.

The harnesses are held in with different clips.

Things are just retained a little bit better.

Strangely, the Cabrio, so the Cabrio two liter

had three engine mounts on the subframe,

and then two that mount directly to the body.

The Jetta only has a three with a VR6

with twice the torque or one and a half times the torque.

I wonder if that's,

were they using the engine as a structural member?

I don't know if it's for crash.

Apparently, so there's a transmission mount

that bolts right into the frame rail on the driver side,

and then there's a engine mount on the passenger side

that exists on, for example, on the Mark I's.

Apparently, only the Cabrio, of all the Mark IIIs,

only the Cabrio got that passenger side mount,

which tells me it's there for structure

to sort of box in, I guess, the front end.

Yeah, because it has no roof.

But it's so crazy to me that that two point slow,

which is miserably dog slow and just unresponsive

and didn't sound good, whatever,

but it's defining characteristic

was just how complete, smooth as silk it is.

And it's a little bore, very long stroke,

non-balanced shaft motor.

It should be a coarse motor,

and it's attached to the car in more places as well.

Directly to the body, not a rubber isolated subframe.

And so I just couldn't believe.

Is it cast iron?

Yeah, that's part of it.

But I mean, it's the same effective block as that thing.

You know what that- Which is extremely coarse.

Oh yeah, coarse is the wrong word.

It's present.

If I break your teeth out.

In a smooth way.

It's, yeah, coarse to me is-

Yeah, it's like a massage chair.

It's like not coming apart,

but it is, the vibration is present.

So there are engines to me that are smooth,

that vibrate, but are pleasant.

And then the ones that vibrate that are terrible.

And so like an S14 vibrates in a miserable way,

BMW M3 30 M3, a Nissan VQ, interestingly,

is smooth in the car, but the sound is coarse.

And it's inside the car, sounds rough and unrefined.

Whereas so that I think is one of those,

it's a nice sound, but it will buzz the whole interior apart.

Yeah, I cannot say enough for the intake noise

that the VR6 makes.

It's tremendous, it's, you know,

I like six cylinder engines are my favorite engines.

And I think that's a really great sounding six cylinder.

I think it's the best sounding.

Yeah, I know.

I think it actually beats the Troridino V6,

or is in the same league.

This is like modern and fuel injected.

And so it doesn't have quite the same sort of texture

and there's not that chorus of mechanical noise

to go with it.

And so it's, I think a less complex noise,

but the, if you isolate just the intake noise,

then maybe it is better.

But I think the, if you include the entire experience

of the mechanical stuff of the car

and the, you know, stuff that comes with carburation,

I think the Dino is better.

That's fair point.

But it's a, it's definitely a contender,

certainly for one of the best sounding injected

six cylinder engines.

I think it sounds better than almost every V12.

Yeah, there's a lot of V12s that don't sound that good.

Right, we've talked about that before

and people are continuously surprised,

but when I say that, but most V12s don't.

A lot of times they go in cars that are meant to be refined.

And so they try to get rid of intake noise

and also exhaust noise.

And so, you know, you need intake noise, exhaust noise

and mechanical noise to have a truly great engine sound,

in my opinion, to be a contender for best sounding engine,

you know, you need all of those things.

And there's not that many cars

that have been sort of unchained

in all of those axes simultaneously.

Cause you go too modern and you just,

you lose a lot of that texture and you go too old

and they don't rev.

And so you need to walk the line.

Yeah, I'm trying to think of.

Although Ferrari's old engines would do seven or 8,000 RPM.

They sounded great.

So the carbureted Ferrari V12s we've talked about

are pleasant.

Proper.

They are fuel injected early ones.

Yeah, the CIS cars.

Anything, any Ferrari with CIS doesn't sound good.

Oh, that's good.

So that's really interesting.

So Ferraris with CIS all sound like shit.

And yet the Cabriolet with CIS sounds magnificent.

I don't know if it's the CIS that causes the change

as much as a sort of host of other changes

that happened at the same time

in terms of refining the cars.

You know, we did have a BBI

that really fills the exhaust system on it

and it sounded amazing.

I mean, I'll try and find a video clip of it,

but it was really, really raunchy sounding.

And that was all exhaust though, but yeah.

Can you get intake noise out of the CIS injected for us?

I don't think I have ever experienced it personally.

Yeah, so the way CIS works is it uses a plate

that is physically pulled either up or down,

depending on which version of it it is,

with the intake air.

And that plate really acts as a muffler for intake noise.

And so the reason why ITBs sound so good,

especially if they're open, right,

with a little tiny filter or no filter at all,

is you're hearing the air getting sucked directly in

and you don't have this complex track.

So most CIS...

The CIS things always have this really convoluted

intake track.

And it's full of metal tubes.

It's not like a plastic tube or something too.

So like the intake manifolds are all of these metal...

Yeah, the manifold sometimes.

But that one, for example, pulls air in the Cabriolet,

the Mach 1, pulls air in from underneath,

pulls, it's an updraft CIS.

So it moves the plate up,

but either way the plate's blocking some of the sound.

From there into a 90 degree bend,

so it's a 90 degree bend into a rubber bellows

that then goes over into a manifold,

like a collector that's aluminum, plenum,

that then has four runners that also goes all the way forward

and makes a 180 down into the...

I mean, it's a horribly convoluted intake track.

And that's very representative of CIS.

But it sounds like the intake noise

that thing makes is the best sound it makes.

It sounds like an S14.

So we don't know what we're talking about.

And also, hold on, also 2.316.

Yeah.

So that's another one that's just dominated by intake noise.

And it's CIS.

So this has been always one of the biggest mysteries

of the world is why is it that some of the CIS stuff

was very little of the CIS stuff

had intake noise come through.

And some of it just was muffled to the point of misery.

I don't know.

Oh well.

But anyway, apparently I have a theme,

which is...

Motor double body swapping,

cabriolet, Volkswagen's.

This I think makes five cars

that I have with motor swaps in them,

which is probably a problem.

Why?

They're a lot of work.

Motor swaps are a lot of work.

Well, they're all done now.

No.

This one's got another one and the Rover's not back yet.

So that's another.

That's not a motor swap.

Motor was out, completely built.

And then put back in.

Built to different specs and put back in.

It's the same motor that you would put back in.

It's not a swap.

It's a motor rebuild.

Okay. Anything, yeah, fair enough.

Yeah, no, but all of them, I mean, yeah, that's too many.

Too many.

I consider anything that had an engine out

and if the engine was a part into its component parts,

it's a swap.

But that's not true.

I mean, if you took the engine out of your Ferrari

and had it rebuilt, it wouldn't be a swap.

Okay, fair point.

Anyway, you have enough swaps.

I look forward to seeing this car continue to develop.

Please don't ever put in, take an air box on it.

It sounds really amazing right now.

It's not good.

It doesn't get much quieter.

Don't worry.

Okay, good.

Great.

Well, thank you for...

Keep up the good work.

No.

I hope you make it to the end.

Of what?

The sorting and refining process.

It'll get there one way or another.

It'll get there.

In some months.

What I really need to do is clean up the shop

because now I need to get all of my cars back in there.

And right now it's just consumed with

boxes.

Cabriol parts and dirt and filth and fluids.

Yeah.

Good luck.

Thank you.

So we'll see you guys next week.

Plan?

We're doing this?

Yeah.

Okay, great.

See you next week.

First Drive of Jason’s VR6-Swapped MK3 Cabrio — Carmudgeon w/ Cammisa & Derek Tam-Scott — Ep. 221

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Volkswagen Cabrio

Volkswagen VR6

Volkswagen Mark III VR6

Volkswagen Mark I Cabriolet

Volkswagen Mark 1

Mark I Cabriolet

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