My name is Matt, and I recently entered the car world, the VW world, and the diesel world at the same time when moving from Brooklyn NY to Raleigh NC and bought a 1979 VW Rabbit diesel. Talk about a lot to learn! My only other car I ever owned was a 93 Corolla, which meant I never had to open the hood except oil changes. The Rabbit is a different beast altogether!
This was part of my plan, though. I make my living repairing musical instruments and as such am decent with my hands and decent with figuring things out, and I love to DIY. So I figured hey, let's kill quite a few birds with one stone- get a car with a simple engine I can learn on, with relatively abundant repair parts, that I can buy cheapish, that will get really good fuel economy since the price of fuel has tripled since I last drove.
Thus I ended up with a 1979 Rabbit, this one a Canadian, so a German import with everything in km, 4 speeds, 1.5, and only 30k original miles- now about 35k. The first owner had used it as a dinghy behind his RV, and the 2nd and 3rd owners had it briefly before abandoning the idea of a full restoration. I don't want to do a full restoration, just get it right for me. And that's what I've been doing for the past 8 months since I've owned it. It now gets 48mpg on the highway (although I think she can do a little better with a timing adjustment), starts right up in all weather, and has only broken down once- although threatened to break down many more times than that! I am still chasing vibrations and tweaking and I don't think I'll ever be really done, but it is at a point where I finally feel like I could road trip with it and where I am not white-knuckling every time I drive straining to hear whether that particular clatter was there before.
I'm also on the lookout for a driver's side headlight surround- the car had a dent (now removed) which had broken the surround, so I am missing that one.
Here she is:
And here is the back deck, where I've removed the back seat and made a cedar plank decking. It really holds an awful lot, and my wife and I are looking forward to road tripping and camping later this year. You can see the original color (blue) here. I had to paint it because the paint was dying and there was some surface rust starting, and a blue car without AC was killer. Plus yellow is awesome on a car like this.
The things remaining to do are myriad: replace a few more hoses, go through the electronics, maybe eventually make it ready for biodiesel, paint the wheels, get the valve adjustment tools, try and make my headlights brighter, install speakers, acquire parts and spares as I find them, and of course the continual tracking down of noises, rattles, and vibrations. Owning a 32 year old VW diesel as your daily driver is a process.
Anyways everyone that's me and that's my baby. The information here has been invaluable to me on many a sleepless night and I hope eventually to be able to give back.