Update!

Naturally, most of my spare time was vacuumed up by other crap, but I did manage to spend several hours on the good cause.
I wanted to replace the broken gas tank strap, and run a new brake line to the right rear.
Here's the strap and mounting stud, with their friend rust hole.

Just above the strap, you can see the brake line. Slightly to the right of this picture are the compression fitting splices.
The mounting stud for the tank strap is welded to a V shaped piece of metal, which is welded to the back wall of the rear passenger foot well. There was a rust hole next to it, so I hit it with a wire wheel. Before I knew it, enough rusty metal had melted away to expose the back side of this V bracket and it's buggered up stud! Perfect. I cut the stud out and welded in a new one, then patched the floor. In the process, discovered more rot. It's non structural, and I'll patch it up at a later date. I don't want to spend too much time on non-critical tasks.
Here's a gratuitous pic of the big 3" exhaust, as it exists so far.

You can see the heated O2 sensors, one for the fuel management, one for datalogging. Yep, that's the diesel rabbit in the background. On stands, waiting for long overdue parts from four different completely flaccid people incapable of accomplishing what they said they would. No racing for me this year... =(
Until this page's car is done, anyway!!

Here's the freshly fabricated strap, new stud, and internal patch welded onto the floor well. I'll shoot this area full of rubberized undercoating to prevent further rust.

I flared the brake line and installed a coupler. Next up was to address the missing mounting boss that holds the line securely where it connects to the flex hose. Turns out it wasn't missing, but rather curiously hammered flat against the frame rail. Looking closer, I noticed this whole section of frame rail is quite rusty. You can see the flattened bracket in the left in this pic. On the right is the hole and corroded doubler.

The car's left side frame rail is mint!

For whatever reason, rust really attacked the right side. It's somewhat of a concern, as the rear suspension's main mounting point is here. I think I'll bite the bullet and scrap the car. I could probably get some decent money for this whole setup as a plug and play conversion. Any takers? Just kidding! I'll drop the rear suspension and sand blast all the rust off that section and see what's left. I anticipate having to replace a fair amount of metal. This is the good thing about having such a crappy condition car to work with. Despite the fact that I have very little experience replacing body metal,(the abovementioned patch was the first ever!) I'm not even remotely worried about screwing it up. Not because it's impossible for me to screw it up, but rather because if I do, who cares!? It's an ancient, rusty rabbit (that I do love) and I can just cut it all open and try try again until I get it right. It's a good feeling. In stark contrast is my unfortunate room mate, whose late 90's civic was just painted. He continually anguishes over it, becoming aggravated and depressed over every little scratch. (I've never had that problem! =D )That changed the other day though. We had a wicked hail storm, and now his car is F**ked! My Passats fared much better. German VS Japanese steel... the winner is clear!

UPDATE!
Today I removed the rear trailing beam suspension, gas tank and fuel pump.

This makes for easy access to the rusty area around the suspension to body mounting area. It also makes for easy access to the abovementioned "non critical" rust on the floor pan. I'll fix that up while it's out.

I hit the area with a wire wheel equipped angle grinder, removing all the undercoating and flakey rust. This was followed up by sandblasting. My friend laughed when I emerged from under the car and suggested I look in the mirror. I was absolutely filthy, except for clean patches where my dust mask and safety glasses sat. Raccoon-like!
The good news is the rust damage, while fairly extensive, is not terribly difficult to repair. There is a thick bracket spot welded inside a frame rail, and this is what serves as a suspension attachement point. The thin body sheet rusted away, exposing the doubler. This thick doubler then started to rot, See above pic) and in some areas became quite thin. I decided to build it back up by padding, or, applying new steel through welding. Pile a bunch of weld on the area, then grind it flat effectively bringing it back to it's original dimensions. Then I'll weld a sheet patch over it, and plug weld the patch to the rebuilt doubler. Nice and strong.
The other major problem was the brake line mounting tab was almost completely rusted off. I'll fab up a new one, and weld it in place.
Here's a pic of the cleaned up area.

After only 2 days, the freshly sandblasted metal already has a thin layer of surface rust!! You can clearly see the doubler, and the hole where the brake line mount used to be on the left. Next round of work, I'll finish padding the doubler then patch it all up and build another line bracket.

UPDATE!

Well, yet another 'full day' of progress was cut short. I did make some progress however.

I finished padding the doubler bracket, and cut out a patch from some sheet stock. I have the patch plug welded in place, and partially welded around it's circumference. Pics soon.

UPDATE

Well, in an amazing burst of motivation, I spent a couple hours last night after work finishing up the patch work. That leaves the exhaust tunnel/floor seam repair, and one other little spot... and two holes in my left arm where I rolled over onto two glowing chunks of welding spatter. Taking one for the team!

 Here's the pic of the patched up area, before grinding and undercoating.

 You can see the plug welds firmly attaching the patch to the doubler plate underneath. I think it's time for a new MIG welder. This one is so inconsistant. It's consistantly inconsistant! There's a little more to do above and to the right. I'll have to blast off some more undercoating first.

 UPDATE.

My kingdom for an extra hour!

I ALMOST finished patching up the underside, but had to pull the eject handle. Another hour will see it finished, undercoated, and a new brake line run. Then up goes the gas tank, trailing beam, reinstall the fuel pump and we're finally good to go on more interesting things, like FINISHING THIS CAR!!! (stage 1 at least. haha)

Here's a snap of the almost finished remaining patches.

I'd love to show you beautiful welds, and everthing went well for the first inch before the welder went on the rag. How frustrating! I fiddled, piddled AND diddled to no avail. The welds were going to be ugly today.

UPDATE!

I managed a 7 hour streak on this badboy last night! The patchwork is done, the brakeline installed, stainless flex hoses installed, all undercoating applied and the Scirocco 16v swaybar installed on the trailing beam. I undercoated the gas tank too.

So next round will have the rear end back together and then we're in the home stretch!

PICS!

 New brakeline, flex hose and attach bracket.

De-rusted and undercoated tank.

 Trailing beam with 'monster drums' and freshly installed 16v swaybar.

 UPDATE!

I won't bore you with another pic of this rabbit's dirty underbum. Last night my boss buggered off 6 hours early, so we followed suit! A little unexpected time-shot in the arm. I took full advantage and installed the fuel tank and pump. It's fully connected, but I need to make a better pump bracket.

I am curious. Is there anyone who actually reads all this hogwash of mine? Am I wasting my time?

I see that this page seems to hover in the 4th-6th spot under VW RABBIT rides, even spending a while at #1. (Wow, thanks people! I'm flattered!) I'm a little skeptical that 'new' Rabbits could naturally exist in the top 50. Seems to me that they must be artificially lifted to the top, probably by their daddy's-money kid-owners with nothing better to do between 6 hour video game marathons then make up 50 email addresses for the sole purpose of self-voting their car to the top. Be honest. When you think of what "VW Rabbit" means, do you think of a 5th generation golf with different headlights? Or do you think of our beloved oldschool, sealed beam, leaky windshield, lightweight, solid lifter bunnies? Most of these oldschool rabbits are pieces of technical art, with thousands of dollars, hours, blood sweat and tears brining them to the levels they exist at. Do modded-by-money, Pep-boys special, new Rabbits deserve to dwell amongst us? Yogurt sucking yuppies amongst Spartan warriors? 
I was going to change my poll to "Do you actually read all this crap I write?" But I think I'll instead make it "Do you think Cardomain should seperate the wheat from the chaff, and filter out these lame ass "new Rabbits" and bitch slap them into their own lotus-posing, green tea-swilling, granola-nibbling, manicured, man-bag toting section?"  I suppose my opinion is obvious. If the results are high enough, I'll approach Cardomain with it and see if they'll actually make the change. On that note, please check out and vote on my new poll.

Just for prosperity's sake, the old poll asked how much boost you faithful readers think this engine's going to handle.

56% said 15-17psi, 9% said 18-20psi, 6% said 21-23psi, 12% said 24-26psi, 3% said 27-29psi, nobody voted for 30-32psi, 6% said 33-35psi, and 9%, bless your wise-ass souls, voted for "Insta-pop!"

For the record, I believe it'll take 24-26psi, though I'll probably have to change the turbo to do it.

UPDATE!

Scored 7 unexpected hours of free time, and put them to very good use! The arse end of the rabbit is completely reassembled. For a little extra (not that I need it much at this point) motivational boost, I bolted on the race wheels. These wheels will be whored back and forth between both rabbits.

Please, make sure you're sitting before looking at the following picture!!

Pure automotive pornography, no? They look even better tucked up into the wheelwells, trust me!

To that end, I continued by removing the one front strut that I'd modified earlier and made a change to it. I welded on a suitable perch for the coilover sleeve to sit on, in a much more satisfying position. It reassembled nicely and now I'm sure I'll be looking for helper springs to fill the gaps shortly!

Once this car's back on it's wheels i'll be able to determine proper ride height and hence helper spring lengths. These tires will require fender modifications, and that'll come later. First priority is to rip up a few sets of 13" (tall haha, not wide) burnout tires I've been saving up for this project. When all the bugs are worked out and it's running satisfactorily, I'll look at fender modifications. There's still time yet for a couple autocrosses before the season closes!

UPDATE!

It's no wonder projects take so long. Over almost an entire day to mount the battery in the rear. There's not much to it. A friend Nathan showed up and we went to a local parts place. I purchased a battery tray and hold-down bracket, some terminals and a few other things. I decided to save what would have amounted to about $15 (what does a bird say?) and made my own cable ends.
The local drag strip's rules state that batteries mounted inside the car (as opposed to under the hood) must have an externally accessible kill switch. I didn't feel like having a switch on the outside of my car, so I did this instead:

It's attached to the shutoff switch next to the battery.

 To keep things tidy, I modified the rear window washer bottle bracket to hold the switch, and switched the ground rather than the positive. You can see the grommet and pull rod.

I pulled out the left front strut and modified it similarly to version 2 on the right strut. I took a guess at the ride height, bolted on the race wheels and dropped her down:

Here's the result!

Clearly, way too low. Cool looking as it is, you can see the front fender sitting on the tire. I wound the lower spring seats all the way up. The fenders don't sit on the tires anymore, but it's still dysfunctionally low. i'll have to install 2.5" spacers to raise the coilover sleeves. You can see how big a fender flare i'll need to make too. I'll do that later.

I must insist that you click on the next page, without delay!