Just shoot me. I hopped into the Rabbit after my lunch errand yesterday and I heard a “plink” sound from the back end as I released the ebrake. Increased rolling resistance and a newly non-functioning ebrake cable meant I was not going anywhere fast. I babied the car home after work, and pulled the driver’s side rear spindle apart to find that the self-adjusting wedge on the drum brake mechanism had fallen and basically stuck the brakes on. Rear drums aren’t really that efficient, so it wasn’t a major crime to drive home on it, but what a pain in the butt. Now I either have to find a brake shoe to replace the fried one with, or finally get around to installing that rear disc conversion I started building last fall.

Every year, I pull the Rabbit out of the garage a few days before the insurance goes live, just to see what I am going to need to attend to immediately. This year did not disappoint. After firing up perfectly on Sunday afternoon (Easter Bunny?) and running in the driveway for a few minutes, I hit the neighborhood roads for a quick tour. I made it a grand total of six blocks before experiencing catastrophic failure. You eventually know exactly what the mode of failure is when the car dies just by how it dies, and as you can see, I had a collosal fuel leak right after the pump. I managed to leave a 150-foot-long trail down the street I was on, too. I guess I know what I’m doing next weekend!

Honestly, I thought it was kind of silly when VW brought the Rabbit name back. But now they killed it again. For 2010, the Golf nameplate returns. Make up your mind, VW! Via Jalopnik

I’ve been following Wes’ wheel project, which turned out great. Now, it’s time for mine to start. This pile of wheels and tires was dropped off on my back deck this week and includes four old 15×7 Rial basketweaves that will eventually grace my Rabbit. They need a lot of work before that can happen. I plan to go whole-hog 80s-style and color-match the centers to the planned body color of the car – Cirrus Grey Metallic. The best thing about this is that the wheels were free in return for some work I did on a friend’s BABE rallye car last year. I only got it running safely, no big deal at all….

Ryan just sent me this. Kind of cool, huh?

After a few more hours of work and a few more trips to the fastener shop, I’ve made some substantial progress on my new rear axle. Volkswagen’s ingenious way of mounting the bearings inside of the brake disc had me going through disposable gloves by the box. I got all the way up to the calipers and discovered a broken off screw in the emergency brake lever mount of the passenger caliper, so that will go to the machine shop on Monday. In the meantime, I’m fabbing up some new hard lines and getting ready to put the finishing touches on my latest and greatest mod. I’m really happy with the Prothane bushing kit I installed—it went together really nicely, and the axle beam has rotational flex at the mounts that it didn’t have before. That should work out nicely with the factory swaybar that I added, and the free coilovers I picked up this summer.

I’ve been fighting a losing battle for about four weeks now, and I’m about to give up. About two years ago, I had the bright idea to do a rear disc brake conversion on my Rabbit, and started stockpiling the parts needed. But this project seems like it’s been cursed from day one. First, the $70 I spent on a "ready to install" set of spindles, calipers, and carriers netted me one good spindle and no good calipers, and now the new rear beam I snagged for $25 has two bolts stuck in it that are so rust-welded into place that I finally just cut the bushing mounts off with with my Sawzall last night. Junkyarding has netted me no good parts, either. I’m staring down the idea of buying a NOS axle for $100, and it’s looking better every day. This was supposed to be an inexpensive upgrade, but so far it’s just been throwing money away. Grrrrrrr!

The picture is pretty crappy–cellphones do that–but you can clearly see what a friend of mine gave me for Mother’s Day: coilovers! His wife is working on getting the extra parts out of the garage, so he made two ladies really happy in one move. They’ll be going onto my Rabbit in the near future. It’s riding at stock height right now, and yes, it looks like an SUV. It also has just about the squishiest stock springs ever made. The humor associated with the stock springs is that they are so soft that they rattle, and VW’s fix was to slide plastic tubing over the coils to quiet them down! I don’t think that rattling will be a problem with these coils. This is shaping up to be an amazing week for my bunny–if all goes well, I’ll pick up a new powerplant this weekend that kind of just dropped into my lap. For the price I’m paying, it’s a lot of hp. I’ll be keeping you updated on my progress as I move along.

The journey of a thousand steps starts with the first one, which I took, oh, about a year ago when I started designing a new headliner for my Rabbit. About a week ago, I took the thousandth step–I finished installing the new convertible top, pad and headliner just in time for decent weather here in the D. This was, hands down, the most complex job I’ve done on the car. It’s right up there with doing a head rebuild on an OHC engine with chains, only there are about twice as many steps! I hesitated to tell you about it until the car saw some rain and didn’t leak, and as of yesterday, that’s the case. There are some jobs that you just can’t call a success until Mother Nature has her say. I can see some spots where it’s pretty clear this was my first top install, but it fits and is watertight enough to stand up to a spring rain. I’ve had the car on the road for a week solid and it’s running great aside from a small vacuum leak at idle and a possible motor mount issue. I’ll take a look at those this week–it’s hard to even think of putting her back in the garage for any length of time right now as the sun is shining and warm summer nights await. More pics on my ride page.

It was 60 degrees here in Detroit on Saturday, and that meant one thing: spring fever. I have it, and like every other convertible owner out there, the only cure is less top. I’ve been working hard on my Rabbit resto lately, and the headliner installation has been giving me fits for the last two weeks. I’ve had about every fitment problem imaginable, which is what I get for making my headliner myself, I guess. The summery air breathed new life into me as it warmed me up, and I dove back into the project in earnest. By dinner time, I had the headliner re-fit and re-glued. I had started stapling and got well beyond my goal for the day. As I was driving out to meet my patient spouse for dinner, my friend Scott called up to lament not putting his Miata on road insurance in time for the warm day. I could only sympathize: he had the fever, too. By the end of Sunday, I was two springs shy of ready to put the top skin on. Another sunny, warm day was just making the fever worse. I’m hoping to have a cure by the end of the week–a fully installed top and an insurance card that no longer says "storage only." Oh, and that soft-looking gray stuff in the picture–it’s Alcantara. I’m not skimping on anything!

With gas approaching $4 per gallon a lot of folks are starting to think about getting an econobox for their daily driver. There are a lot of cool options out there. My buddy keeps threatening to buy a Honda Fit. I kind of like the looks of the Yaris–I loved this one at SEMA. And the new Fiat 500 really needs to come to the US. How about old school econoboxes? Of course Jen loves her Escort. And I have a soft spot for Mark 1 Ford Fiestas. But if I had to pick I’d probably go with the Mark 1 Rabbit or the original Mini.

What’s your favorite econobox?

Two years ago, I redid the interior of my 1982 VW Rabbit Convertible in black and gray Alcantara. Yes, it most definitely is the awesomest interior evar! It was a big project and took me over six months to complete as I had to strip the seats, pattern them, repair the metal (welding, yay), rebuild the foams, and finally make the new skins and install them. You can see the rear bench in the background of the pic below. It’s out of the car because of the contraption in the foreground – the convertible top frame. I removed it quite a ways back and replaced it with loaner so I could fix it properly. I’ve done some repairs to this one (welding, again), and am finally ready to start the reinstall. Last winter, I made a matching headliner out of the grey Alcantara, and I just now finished off the new synthetic pad that I fabricated to replace the icky OEM rubberized horsehair one. I expect that this will take me several weeks to get done, and I still have to get the loaner frame out. I’ll update my progress as I get going on it. I have the feeling this is going to go down as one of the more complex parts of the restoration of this car.

Yesterday, I did a post about Isuzu leaving the US passenger car market. For the headline, I wrote, "Isuzu to US: Screw You Guys, We’re Going Home." Later in the day, someone who claimed to be the Public Relations Director for Isuzu North America commented that Isuzu never actually said, "we’re going home." I’d like to take this opportunity to say they didn’t say "screw you guys" either. That was Cartman. Here’s the news:

• Looking to buy a new GTR? According to this article, you should be prepared to pay up to 60 grand over sticker. As a reminder, list price is 69 grand. Like Pizza Hut says, double means more. Exhaust Note
• "The King" will wave the green starting flag for the 50th running of the Daytona 500. Nope, not Elvis. But close. NASCAR
• Yesterday, a supposedly leaked brochure for the upcoming VW Scirocco hit the web. The interior looked almost identical to the new Rabbit, and the seats were pretty bland. Turns out it was a fake. Motor Authority
• IIHS studies have shown that speed cameras reduce speeding in a big way. The good news for you speeders is that only 35 jurisdictions in the United States use them in enforcement efforts. Yahoo News

When most people think back to when the sport compact craze started, the Honda Civic and Acura Integra naturally come to mind. However the car to really kick it off and set a baseline for all future "hot hatchbacks" in reality was the 1983 VW Rabbit GTI. The MK1 GTI was only around for two years, 1983 and 1984, and was an instant hit due to its nimble handling and lightweight design. Car magazines praised it, enthusiasts embraced it, and a cult following for VWs was reborn. One of the best examples on CarDomain has to be Vdubjunky’s uber-clean 1984 Rabbit GTI. The GTI is also an extremely popular car for the weekend racer as well, and fornetti14’s GTI is an awesome track-ready purpose built grown-up go kart.

In 1985 VW brought the next generation hot-hatch to the people, the MK2 GTI. The second generation was a bit bulkier, but the styling a little more aggressive. The new GTI was available with two motors, but the 16-valve was by far the most popular, and today is still considered one of VW’s best lumps. The time and dedication put into copperpearlgti’s MK2 GTI is a great example of a Euro-styled GTI that any VW enthusiast would love to have in their driveway. But if I had to choose, silver-16v’s would be my choice. The fully built motor features a port and polished head,three angle valve grind, TT 276 cam set, TT high rev valve springs, and port matched intake and exhaust! He paid only $900 for his addiction project car, and has built a solid daily-driver and weekend track car. A man after my own heart.

By Sean

Editor

This totally custom Rabbit in Bravox’s booth had me floored. I’ve seen quite a few modded VW’s in my days, but not many as clean and well thought out as this. This little bunny started life as your basic Rabbit diesel, but has a new lease on life thanks to a built and polished 1.8L 16-valve motor from an MKII GTI and an intake manifold from an MK3 Golf 2.0L 8V. However, Bravox’s Kevin Siegel informed me the bunny is about to get another boost via a side-draft Webber carb conversion! To really set off the cleaned-up exterior, the vehicle’s owner also added real carbon fiber front and rear bumpers, gas cap, and some super-pimp carbon fiber fender flares. Oh yeah, and the Rabbit rolls on an air ride suspension and some sick BBS 2-piece wheels. The interior is completely custom too… Hop over to the SEMA 2007 Group forum to check out more pics of this amazing ride.