Today I officially became the owner of my first vehicle - Swissie - a sliver Volkswagen Golf MK 4 Estate 2.0 litre Automatic. It was previously my parents vehicle which they have owned for five years and originally bought second hand. This makes me the 6th owner of a 10 year old vehicle with over 115,000 miles on the clock.
Notionally this has been my car for awhile being gifted as a Christmas present and I have been borrowing the car on and off for a few years but now it's properly mine. My parents bought the car as a run about and it has seen a fair amount of wear and tear doing regular trips to the local recyling centre and moving bits and pieces around.
Whilst the engine is running fine it's in far from perfect condition. My parents were not particularly interested in doing any work on the vehicle past the bare minimum to help it pass an MOT - which it did - but beyond that it has had very little love over the past few years.
I on the other hand have different ideas. In the worst case I get a relatively decent car which will get me from A to B which I can used till it falls apart. But a car of this era is now considred a Modern Classic. It's currently in a poor state but I'd like to see how well this car can be restored to it's former glory. And perhaps well ... we'll see if we can take it a bit beyond that, but one step at a time.
A bit about me - I'm a 32 year old guy who is fairly technically minded with a background in computers and work as a Software Engineer. Whilst I've had plenty of experience tinkering with PCs, I'm new to maintaining and fixing cars. I suspect many people may consider investing in a vehicle this old is a waste of time and money, but to me I'm seeing this as a bit of a challenge and a fun project to see what a transformation I can make.
Since the car has a present resale value of no more than about £500 pounds I've taken the decision that as far as possible I'm going to make repairs and improvements myself. A few weeks ago I ordered my Haynes Manual for Volkswagen Golf 2001 - 2003 so equiped with this and the help of YouTube I'm going to see were I get to.
This blog is going to be where I share the road to recovery of Swissie, and as a new car owner I'm hoping to enlist the help of the Internet to get tips and hints on how to make the car the best it can be.
In the next installment I'll give a run down of current state of Swissie an a list of all the jobs that need to be done.
Feel free to comment and let me know what you think of this hair brained scheme or tell me if you think you have any great suggestions by leaving a comment.
That's it for now - thanks for reading!
scoob_2000
Notionally this has been my car for awhile being gifted as a Christmas present and I have been borrowing the car on and off for a few years but now it's properly mine. My parents bought the car as a run about and it has seen a fair amount of wear and tear doing regular trips to the local recyling centre and moving bits and pieces around.
Whilst the engine is running fine it's in far from perfect condition. My parents were not particularly interested in doing any work on the vehicle past the bare minimum to help it pass an MOT - which it did - but beyond that it has had very little love over the past few years.
I on the other hand have different ideas. In the worst case I get a relatively decent car which will get me from A to B which I can used till it falls apart. But a car of this era is now considred a Modern Classic. It's currently in a poor state but I'd like to see how well this car can be restored to it's former glory. And perhaps well ... we'll see if we can take it a bit beyond that, but one step at a time.
A bit about me - I'm a 32 year old guy who is fairly technically minded with a background in computers and work as a Software Engineer. Whilst I've had plenty of experience tinkering with PCs, I'm new to maintaining and fixing cars. I suspect many people may consider investing in a vehicle this old is a waste of time and money, but to me I'm seeing this as a bit of a challenge and a fun project to see what a transformation I can make.
Since the car has a present resale value of no more than about £500 pounds I've taken the decision that as far as possible I'm going to make repairs and improvements myself. A few weeks ago I ordered my Haynes Manual for Volkswagen Golf 2001 - 2003 so equiped with this and the help of YouTube I'm going to see were I get to.
This blog is going to be where I share the road to recovery of Swissie, and as a new car owner I'm hoping to enlist the help of the Internet to get tips and hints on how to make the car the best it can be.
In the next installment I'll give a run down of current state of Swissie an a list of all the jobs that need to be done.
Feel free to comment and let me know what you think of this hair brained scheme or tell me if you think you have any great suggestions by leaving a comment.
That's it for now - thanks for reading!
scoob_2000
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