Karl Czer has been through it all.
After purchasing his first VW, a 1995 Canadian Corrado, it wasn't before long that he started to fall in love with the MK1's. As we all know, these cars are becoming harder and harder to come by, so if you're able to scoop one up, you do. It doesn't matter if it has rust, doesn't run, or doesn't roll. If one were to fall right onto your lap, you would think it's a sign from the heavens?
Mr. Czer's beloved MK1 Cabby did just that. He picked his 1981 VW Rabbit convertible up from a friend of his for the comical price of $1.The vehicle started life as a 1.6L CIS fuel injected car. He spent countless hours in the garage, moonlighting, trying to learn about the car and of course, getting it running.
After what seemed like weeks, it was alive and it wasn't long before he stumbled across a Callaway Turbo Kit. The owner of the turbo kit had it installed on the same exact car, but just couldn't get it to run, so Mr. Czer took on the challenge. The first time around it was built using the stock motor and while slapping the Callaway bits on, to his surprise, he realized that the kit had a mixture of upgrades.
It was a Callaway racing stage 1 kit with some Drake racing parts on it that included a CIS fuel distributer out of what he believed to be a 6 cylinder Porsche. The additional fuel lines from the fuel distributor were run into the intake elbow to supply more fuel to the system. As you can imagine, there really wasn't a good way to tune it and he needed a better way to meter the additional fuel. Unfortunately, on the way home from the local parts store to fix a valve cover oil leak, the car caught on fire.
As sad and upset as Mr. Czer was about the damage, he decided to rebuild the car better than before. All the fire did was motivate him to make the car better. He repainted it Audi's Negaro Blue and added some ghost flames in memory of the fire. He shaved the body lines and installed a Stayfast canvas convertible top. He sought out a way to improve the engine and decided to build it from the bottom up using Swain Tech coating on the pistons and the works. He found a HKS additional fuel injector controller and added modern style electronic fuel injectors in place of the old style. He pulled the Porsche CIS unit and swapped it for a VW MotorSport. This was a rare find.
This combination was where he finally found the power he was looking for. The car was running great. It was just before Waterfest, where it was going to go down the track pulling a banner to propose to his girlfriend when the car started acting up. He didn't end up taking it due to what ended up being a loose throttle body air screw. Fast forward about a year and it was finally going to make it to Waterfest! It was a few days before the trip when he thought it was a good idea to take it out for spin, to make sure everything was in proper order. While he was racing down the highway on a "test run," he blew a hole out the side of the motor.
She was dead AGAIN....
Now, reincarnated for who-knows-how-many-times at this point, he decided to drop the turbo approach and build a naturally aspirated car.
"Less headaches and more fun,"he laughed.
This time around, the car was going to be built for his fiance as a wedding gift. He made it driver friendly. He installed power steering and power windows.
"The car was still a shit load of fun and a screamer," he said.
He shaved and painted the engine bay, installed a 2.0L 16V running dual webber 40 DCOE carbureutors, all matched with headers to a custom exhuast. He used a MSD ignition box paired with an Innovative Motorsport Wideband O2 data logger. He installed a custom aluminum radiator and converted his V-belts to Serpentine. The engine was joined with a Corrado G60 cable shift transmission and he converted the clutch over to hydraulic.
To handle the load, he bolted up a set of Weitec dampening adjustable coil-overs, front and rear strut bars, a lower " X- Bar ", installed a Corrado big brake upgrade. He upgraded the soft engine mounts. The interior dashboard was removed and replaced with a Corrado dashboard which was fully wrapped in alcantera. A custom guage cluster was fabricated using Autometer guages and an all new electrical system was installed, using a Painless Performance 21 circuit harness kit. The custom dash was accented with Recaro racing seats and a Corrado tilt-wheel steering column, as well as a Sparco Racing steering wheel.
Presently, Mr. Czer claims to have driven the car less then a hand full of times in the past year.
"To put a long story short, I never ended up marrying that girl, " he said.
The car will ultimately be put up for sale this spring to fund and complete another project. Mr. Czer has moved on to his latest project, a 1981 Rabbit Pickup, in which he plans to install a complete 2.0L FSI swap with a complete custom air ride suspension, all around.
You can view his post here on the build:http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?3347128-Rabbit-Schnell-well-not-yet-anyway/page4
