CLICK
Page 1: Engine removal, stripping, turbo and accessory fitment.
Page 2: Transmission work, wiring work, steering rack work.
Page 3: Mounts, brakes, belt/pullies, manifold spacer, throttle.
Page 4: Spacer, test fit, new stuff, injector cleaning, starter.
Page 5: EGT, final assembly, turbo flange, install engine, downpipe construction
Page 6: Intercooler/ engine & trans coolers/ radiator/ chargepipe/ intake install.
Page 7: Mostly mindless blathering, fuel system install, engine management & rad fan wiring, fwd exhaust section.
Page 8: First start up. IT'S ALIVE!!!!

UPDATE:
Work on the rabbit has been minimal lately. Tough to find time. I think it's pretty obvious that it won't be running before the end of june. I just received an email flyer for a local car club's proslalom event at the end of next month. I'm sure to have it going by then, so it'll just be a matter of can I get it to competition status before then. Time (or lack thereof) will tell.

I bought some M8x1.25 threaded rod, and cut new studs for the new manifold spacing. SmokeyJeff is going to hook me up with a good price on a 4'x8' sheet of stainless steel. 1/4 of the price of the local metal supply store. Thanks Jeff! He and I went to Mississauga and retrieved that rabbit shell tonight. I'm going to cut off all uneccessary body metal and put it on a giant BBQ spit. That way I can flip it upside down to mock up this exhaust syste m. Curious yet? Hahahaaaa! You'll just have to wait to see WTF I'm talking about. I can just about guarantee it'll be like no other exhaust system you've ever seen. I dreamed it up while I was in Hong Kong earlier this year. I spent two months there, which was cool, but while completely cut off from anything interesting car-wise (it was all riced-out crap there) I was slowly slipping into insanity's murky depths. My only relief was to get out a pad of paper and a pencil and start drawing up ideas. The chief idea was this project! Then smaller facets started appearing, like the mystery exhaust, and a very funky rotary ITB intake setup among other things. It's one thing to conceive ideas and put them on paper, but another thing entirely to actually bear them to fruition. The exhaust system's components are almost completely collected, as well as the equipment needed to build it. Just a matter of time now. July 28th is the time to beat!

I've got a sneaky little plan to defibrillate some momentum back into my project. Lack of progress lately has been driving me mental, so I'm reduced to having to perform a shifty-eyed, smoke and mirrors sleight of hand trick to buy me some much needed garage time. See how it pans out. If anyone knows how I can get the paychecks without actually having to show up at work, please let me know! That'd free up a whole whackload of time.

Update:
Well, I got a bit of a late start today. Maybe too much smoke and not enough mirror, or just not rapid enough eye shifting, but it was for a good cause. I stopped at a junkyard and found some gold. A boost tube from a volvo 850 turbo, a mint pair of bosch H4 headlights and a very special model of CIS fuel system. Maybe this unit will show itself on this page at a later date.
With the properly spaced exhaust manifold installed, I drilled and tapped it for the EGT probe before bolting on the turbo.
With that done, I bolted on the intake manifold and throttle body. I looked closely at the rabbit's throttle body linkage, and discovered that there was no way in hell that it was a drop-in replacement for the passat TB's cable attachment arm. With a little grinding and welding, an agreeable solution was reached. I had to heat and bend the idle switch contact arm to work properly. I then tested the switch wiring and found it to be the same as the G60 throttle body. Perfect.

Next I briefly considered making a bracket to mount the throttle cable to. Laziness, combined with a need to save time prompted me to simply replace the aluminum G60 valve cover with the original Rabbit steel one. With some adjustments, the cable is now in place and works like a charm.

Next, I blanketed the starter motor with some header wrap, and bolted on the turbo. In it's new position, I had to lengthen a part of the oil return line.

There are just a few more small items to fiddle with on this engine before it's ready for dumping into the car.
I've got a good deal on a set of 42 pound injectors so in the near future, those 4 piston holes in the hood are looking more and more likely. Hopefully in the middle of the autoslalom on the 28th! Maybe if I'm lucky, the pistons will take out the windshields of four Hondas when they come back down!

I've got a set of Tokico Illumina adjustable shocks on order, and a little fuel pressure gauge to wind into the fuel pressure regulator, so tuning won't be a total shot in the dark. In the pile there are four threaded coilover sleeves, and I think 3 pairs of different weight springs to choose from. That setup, my oldschool polyurethane upper strut bearings, a 16v scirocco lower frame brace and rear sway bar should have this lil bunny handling mint in time for the slalom. Maybe if I have time, I'll build upper front a rear strut braces to compliment. I'm covered for tires, there's a set of BFG autocross tires on 13x6.5" Cheviot rims lurking in the pile. Time's ticking! I hope I can finish in time!

Update:
I managed to spend a few hours making some very important items. For maximum flow, I decided on 3" piping for the exhaust. You've seen the pic of the 3" exhaust donut, from which I'll construct the downpipe. Well, the turbo's outlet is only 2.25", and the flange studs won't allow a 3" flange. Solution? a 2.25 to 3" adapter and flange all rolled up into one!

I'm rather proud of this piece! I took a section of 4" diameter exhaust pipe (don't ask) and cut a slice out of it so that when bent back together and welded, it formed a cone. Then I cut the flange off an old turbo diesel downpipe, hogged it out a little, jammed in this cone and welded it. After some trimming and grinding, the above piece is produced. This is what the donut section will attach to.
Ever wondered how to acquire an O2 sensor bunghole on the serious cheap? Take one old catalytic converter, hack out the bunghole, grind/trim it such that it'll easily install into an appropriately drilled pipe.
Voila!

No need to shell out for another thread tap.

Speaking of taps, there's more work on tap for tomorrow.

Update:
I've just realized that I stopped naming updates by the day number. It would seem that I haven't managed a full day of progress in over a month! Today was no different, having worked nightshaft the night before. I allowed myself 4.5 hrs of sleep before getting to work in the garage in an attempt to gain a little headway. I did accomplish a few things.
I went to a local parts store and bought $115 of fluids and some brass parts. I'm going to start and run the engine initially on the cheapest, cat-piss oil I can find. Once I'm sure there are no leaks, I'll let it cool, and add a bottle of engine flush. Run it to temp, dump it and fill with Mobil 1 0W40 synthetic. I wanted 10W40, but apparently they don't offer it anymore. Well, at least the bearing surfaces and turbo will see oil pressure very quickly on startup. I also bought transmission fluid. I almost went for the synthetic fluid, but on second thought, I decided to stick with the regular stuff to begin with. No point in blowing $10/Litre oil all over the road if this cooler setup doesn't work worth a shit!
Speaking of cooler setup, I plumbed in the shutoff valve. Unfortunately, the parts store didn't have any miniature Disney Mouse Ears to attach to it, so you'll just have to imagine them on there for now. It won't be hard.
Hopefully this valve will not puke. It'll only have to hold pressure for a few seconds once a week or so while I check the fluid level.
I got a little sidetracked, and yanked out the front inner fender liners, and the evap emmissions crap.
For no good reason other than to take this picture, I temporarily installed my flare adapter flange on the turbo. I still think it looks kinda cool. The flange outlet is twice the size of the turbine wheel!
Next, I ground down the underhood air temperature sensor flange to fit a recently vacated tapped boss on the intake manifold. Now that the aluminum G60 valve cover is gone, it's manifold support brackets are not needed. This temp sensor used to attach to one of these brackets. Now, it bolts to the intake manifold. Hm.. I wonder if manifold heat soak will affect this sensor? Well, it would have before, but perhaps just slightly sooner now. No biggie, I'll just put a phenolic washer on each side of the bracket.

Next, I clamped the oil supply line to the rigid metal coolant pipe. It won't be able to vibrate now.
Then I installed the dipstick tube, and dumped almost 4 litres of ATF into the tranny, and chased it down with the dipstick.

You can see the cooler's fluid return pipe on the bottom of the dipstick tube.
With that done, I couldn't think of any more reasons not to, so I plunked the engine into the car, aligned it, and tightened up all the mounts. It's been so long since I've had a basic rabbit engine. Beautifully simple. Tasks like changing a water pump are literally a 15 minute job, and with no accessories hanging off the front of the engine, there's a good lot of room up front for things like tranny coolers, oil coolers, intercoolers and coolant coolers!

That little yellow snarl on the right side is the EGT thermocouple wiring.

Next up, I'll be diddling with the coolers, downpipe, wiring and fuel lines. Shouldn't be much more work before this old honey is snorting fit to earn a(nother) noise complaint!

Update:
I got a good, early start to the day today. Mostly because I was unable to get a single wink of sleep last night. Nightshift does some really wonky things to your internal clock. Bad news. They say working shiftwork subtracts 7 years from your life.
Anyway, I managed to accomplish only one thing today, albeit a very important part of the project: The downpipe. That cool 3" exhaust donut came into play. Between that, and part of a 3" mandrel "J" bend from the pile, I somehow concocted this--um, concoction. The adapter flange worked perfectly! The welds didn't turn out quite a pretty as I'd like to see. I fiddled and fiddled, but the welder just wouldn't co-operate. It has two ranges, each with a high and low, for a total of four positions. I think I needed high rate with low-and-a-half. Or maybe I just suck at welding. In any case, after some grinding and a little re-welding in some spots, it should hold together. Even the tight radius donut wasn't tight enough to allow the pipe to simply curve out and down away from the turbo outlet. There was body metal in the way. I thought for a minute I was screwed. So I made a cardboard template of the donut, cut it in half for 180 degrees and started piddling around. It turned out that a 97� elbow off the adapter flange, combined with a 180� section to loop it up and over, then a 28� tweak (all cut from the donut, marvelous thing!) worked perfectly, with a section of the regular 3" mandrel "J" bend to finish it off. Now i just need a 3" flex section, and a couple 3" 3-bolt header flanges. I want it easily detachable.
Here's what it looks like from the passenger fender looking in.
In some of the pics, you can see the inner seam welded shut on the donut sections.
And another shot from just inboard and ahead of the right hand wheel.
Like what you see? Want to get a tight-radius exhaust donut for your project?
click here:
Cool parts from Road Race Engineering

Make sure you tell them you heard about them from "the rabbit page on cardomain"!

The downpipe requires an impossible amount of twisting and tumbling to get it in or out, and only with the driveshaft removed. Small price to pay for such a high flow piece. There's no wonder such items cost so much to buy. It took all frikkin' day to do it. All in all, I'm quite pleased with it. I painted it with header paint and cooked it in the oven to cure it.

Next up is intercooler setup, in a couple days.

Update:
My set of used-for-only-2000km 42lb injectors showed up today.
I took them to Performance Diesel Injection for testing. They looked pretty new, but I wanted to make sure there were no issues. On the machine, they had perfect spray patterns, spec resistance values and didn't leak. Flow testing showed one produced 2cc's more fuel than the rest on a high duty cycle, 60 second setting. Perfect. I'll put that injector into #1 cylinder, as that cylinder is rumoured to lean out slightly at higher boost settings. If true, it's likely something to do with manifold design.
I experimented with flow versus pressure. I used the standard test, set to 15 seconds.
The results:

BAR/CC's 3.0/57 3.5/62 4.0/67 4.5/73 5.0/75

You can see that the increase in flow is incremental, until exceeding 4.5 bar. It rapidly tapers off at that point, as it rapidly approaches the max flow of the injectors. What? 75cc x 4 (to get 60 seconds) doesn't equal 440cc's! (42 lbs/hr) That's right. But this test isn't exploring max duty cycle. If I were to have simply held them at 100%, then it would have reached the rated flow.
This is useful info, for when tuning for higher boost levels later. I know that there's no use in spending big bucks to get a pump capable of exceeding 4.5 bar. Stick with the stock pump and go bigger injectors still. Or, use the magic CIS system I grabbed from the junkyard... Time will tell.

I also found a killer deal on the shocks I was after, and ordered those too seeing as the original joint I was going to purchase them from doesn't answer their phone. I recommend not bothering with statracing.com, as they don't seem to care to do business.