Golf III Thread

My mom drives a 1.9 TDI

How much do you think I could take off it?
I was thinking that down to 3k might be pretty nice, but I don't know how much that seat will cost to fix, and I thought clouded headlights were a fairly cheap fix.

>denver.craigslist.org/cto/d/2003-volkswagen-gti-for-sale/6273823404.html
Sorry to tell you but Im pretty sure thats not a genuine GTI.

Why's that?

nvm just realized they actually made 1.8 "GTIs".
Its still not a "true" GTI. Its basically just a normal Golf with a GTI badge on it, pretty mundane. Also careful with american/mexican VW's theyre rust prone because of different alloys.

What the fuck are you on about..

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What exactly triggered you there?
The 1.8T is fine, its even DOHC but its still the weakest GTI, all the others are NA and make more power. The true successor to the Golf III GTI was the R32.

And mexican VWs are shit, look it up.

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Got a 17 tsi 1.8t
Do you guys think I should get Springs or coil overs?

Did you get any sport package of some sort? Stock shocks on GTIs and Rs are pretty good i heard. Good coilovers are never a bad decision.

I got a milestone sport with the aee 1.6 8v 55kw engine. Pretty disappointing in absolute power, but it has a sportier gearbox with shorter 2nd to 4th gears and good torque in the lower band despite being n/a. It can still spin the wheels at peak power in 2nd gear.
I currently have the engine pulled out to replace a broken gasket (not head gasket). Polo forums are pretty enthusiastic about this engine and say it's a good engine to get a few more horses from, or am I better off swapping a larger engine in? Main downside of that would be the price of those engines since the amount of boiracers blowing up gti's made the prices rocket.
For the aee I was thinking of a larger throttle body (looks so small that I think it's one of the main reasons for having so little power) and a larger air intake pipe to the stock air filter, and with that getting rid of that bend for the warm air valve at the same time.
Don't really want to buy another one since I fixed all the rust spots on this one and all faster models are riced and worn to hell.
Anyone got experience with this engine?

Wanted to add that the stock exhaust headers look pretty good, no too sharp angles or thin tubes. It ends in two separate tubes that combine in the exhaust system. Would it be beneficial to get a new system with 2 separate tubes each going to their own muffler?

There's already a golf thread up but just a reminder the MK4 golf is total shit and the only "good" one was the R32.
>inb4 turbo swapped mapped 300bhp 1.8t understeers off a straight road.

This.

Id say depends entirely on your budget and location. In europe you can pull GTI engines for almost nothing.

If you wanna go full madman, put in a 1.8T.
A 16V head swap or even G60 swap would probably require less fab work though.

They're OK, just finished the crack pipe on pic related

what the fuck
How old are you?

The AEE is the 1.6 litre mono-point injected. Not a whole lot you can do to it. You can swap in a more aggressive camshaft from an older Polo GT which elongates the engine a bit. But that's pretty much it.

Swap in a GTI engine, it's really not that hard and they're pretty inexpensive.

The AEE is one fucking bulletproof engine though. Nothing ever goes wrong with those things.

Junk car. Hate everything about it. But at least it isn't mk4, so it has that going for it

The 16v head was something I read multiple times, the cylinders need to beed honed to accommodate the extra valves right? Or do I need completely new pistons? Would be a waste since it's running 1:10 compression stock.
GTI engines are sadly very expensive in my country, they go for €1000 in decent working condition to €3000 mint. At that price I rather fix up an old rwd volvo I got in my yard. Ricers like ruined the whole golf market here.
You mean the 1.8T from the golf 4? Or was there also a 1.8t golf 3? What I read is that the golf 4 has 4 mount points, while the golf 3 has only 3. I have driven newer vw's with a 1.2 turbo and they drove terribly, at 2000rpm exactly the turbo kicked in and you went from practically none to max torque instantly.
I guess that effect will be a lot less with the 1.8 though.
With the g60 swap do you mean the entire engine or just the throttle body? I heard that one worked well on the aee.
Also read about some projects of putting bike carbs on it but sounded to me like it would make terrible as a dd.

I mean the 1.8 20VT found in the Golf 4 and TT, yes. Would involve a ton of fabrication since it was never meant to go into your Polo.
As for the G60, yeah, I mean the entire engine. It's the top dog from the same family as the AEE. Probably harder to find and relatively expensive though.

Honestly I'd try to figure out what goes into a 16V head swap and look at prices on that, then compare with G60 prices. 1.8T would be fun, but again, is probably out of the question with the amount of work involved.

Also I can't read apparently, for some reason I though you had a Polo even though we're literally in a mk3 Golf thread.

That does open up your options to the 2.slow 8V or 16V though, bulletproof engines that should be fairly cheap and can actually take a bit of boost. They came in the mk3 GTI as standard so they're confirmed to work.

I looked into the 20v 1.8t before, if I'm going to work on the subframe, that engine is definitely going in.
G60 is rare yaeh, but a decent golf 3 with that engine was advertised for €3000 so the engine will probably be not too expensive.
16v head is apparently a somewhat easy swap, the engine was more similar to the 8v than usual.
Slow 8v gti are somewhat cheaper, but isn't their performance a disappointment for a 2.0t? Larger engine for such a small gain compared to the 16v 1.6 would be a waste.
Any 16v gti engine is out of the question due to the boiracers here creaming over muh dohc gti with fart can.
Are there decent aftermarket camshafts that bring up the power band only a little bit while keeping acceptable torque at lower rpms? All I could find were racing camshafts that make it impossible to idle at 1k rpm. And I don't want to be like the local Shingo in my street with his screeching civic that can barely run normally.

The 2.0 is a fine economy engine and endlessly reliable, but yeah they're not exactly GTI-worthy. They are iron block and actually have pretty solid internals though, so with a 16V head swap and custom turbo setup they can actually make pretty decent power.
They're just often overlooked because let's be honest, the 1.8T is a better engine. Aluminum block means it's lighter, 5 valves per cylinder rather than 4 means better airflow, and most importantly, it's already turbocharged. Building a 1.8T is much more cost-effective than building a 2.0, especially an 8V.

1.8t looks simpler to me than tuning the 2.0. 1.8t "only" requires some welding to the subframe, instead of what you listed for the 2.0

The 2.0 is an easier swap (was available from the factory in the mk3), but getting it to make any significant power takes more effort than the 1.8T.

Yeah that's what I meant, the 1.8t is harder to get in, but is already good stock.

The Golf 3 is considered and Icon and a Godmachine in slav countries here

Yeah, that's why nobody bothers with the 2.0, why would you when the 1.8T exists?

Also another silly idea: a VR5. Because a VR6 isn't enough of a special snowflake powerplant.

I would get a vr and a lpg installation if they weren't either more expensive than an entire bmw, merc, or volvo or blown up by some faggot who can't drive.
Sadly the boiracers here serve as industrial gti demolishers

That's the nice thing about VR5s, they're not "special" versions like a GTI or R32.
And you can pull them from Passats.

I looked a bit at the 16v conversion. German forums said I would need a 1.4 16v (afh) polo 6n gti engine, take the pistons, head and ecu and just built them onto my aee. Allegedly it would make 120hp which is a nice increase from 75.
Seems like a simple one since I'm in the middle of taking it apart anyway.

I though mk3 was the last good Golf.

The R32 was more of a successor to the MK2 Golf Rallye. Both the 1.8T and VR6 were options available in the MK4 GTI, which was the "true" successor to the MK3 GTI

Literally wont die. 26 years later still runs ok, just the occasional black smoke from the low grade fuel.

Can we talk about transmissions?
Do all have the same 5 speed manual?
Whats the torque and power limit on these?

It's the last truly simple and utilitarian Golf.