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SOT: Topless 16v resuscitated!



First off, I want to give a shout out to Tobias. Where do I begin?  This guy has given me more of his time and pulled me through more fits of frustration than one human being deserves. How does one top that?  He NEVER complained about it once. You 'da MAN!

After four weeks of having my cabby on jack-stands in my driveway, one for removing the old JH (200k miles and still pulling like a champ - 8-valve's are bulletproof, I tell you), one for cleaning the engine bay (and mistakenly painting it Fool's Gold), one for swapping in the CIS-E harness and rear disc setup, and one for installing the 9A.

For a "stage 2" (engine + wiring) swap such as this, I actually got off pretty easy - it started after somewhere between 10-15 attempts. Problems included:  snapping a steel brake line (resulting in install of rear disc setup), repair of several cracked wire sheaths, rigging up bracket for control modules and cutting an appropriate-sized hole in the rain tray, broken speedo cable, having to graft a few coolant and vacuum hoses, needed fuel line to DPR and having to cut the exhaust and cat bracket. Of course, it was more difficult than that, as it _always_ is when you tinker with VWs, but I'm quite proud of ourselves for getting it running on the first few tries (all I have to do is harken back to how disheartened I was when we couldn't get the 9A running when we put it into my mk2).

Just had to share - I haven't felt such a sense of accomplishment in a long time. Next up, turbo!  :)

L8R, Jeff