Hi all,
Here is my replacement for my camper, which has been prone with continuous mechanical failure, due to poor maintenance by the previous owner, a dodgey carburettor, and bad fuel. This ended the spending of lots of money over the last 6 months. After the last head blew, both my wife and I lost patience.. (My wife actually had lost patience a lot earlier!) So it was time for Maggie to go.

So I needed to find a replacement. I required something economical and reliable, to do my daily trips in and out of the city.

I also was looking for something special, which you don't see everyday. But it still needed to be VW.

During the previous repairs to maggie, I had discovered an 84 caddy ute down the back of Mark's workshop at Imported auto wreckers. This immediately came to mind.

So, I delved away from aircooled to watercooled.

Now for the uninitiated, the Caddy is basically a Mk1 Golf, set up as a ute. On inspection, I discovered that this one was a factory RHD, and came out of a South African factory with Mk2 running gear.

Anyway, the car was moved, a new battery fitted, and after sitting for two and a half years, fired on the third crank. She needs a little work, but nothing which cannot be done after she is back on the road.

She is having some minor rust issues attended to (Tray wheel arch on the passenger side), and will need to have the bonnet resprayed, after it being used as a shelf for these many years. The a/c unit will be refitted with one from a mk2 Mark is about to strip.

The interior is standard, except for and Audi steering wheel, and porsche seats.

She is fitted with an injected 1800 and mounted to a 5 speed box. So I'm expecting that she will go hard on the highway.

I'll add more as I go, but here are a few pics...

Thats cool, ive always wanted one of those.

Why the hell VW Australia did not import these is beyond me.
They would have cleaned up selling these here, most other places in the world got them!
Good score, always liked em.

sounds like a fun little ride, will get some looks on the street when people read the tailgate!

Thanks guys for your positive comments.
When I have the time, I'll be raising the letters on the tailgate. They came out of the factory black, however this one was blown over for the sign writing which was placed on it by the original owner. I'm thinking about red...

The comments give me a little more confidence going into this, as I've never dealt with water cooled VWs before. But give me a couple of years, a bigger garage, and I'll look for another air-cooled varient again.

Toby

awesome, I've always liked the caddy utes, see one around Brissie every now and then, same colours too.

There have been some awesomely modified versions featured in Performance VW magazine....definately some potential with them!

Have found a caddy forum in the UK, which gives a person ideas...

its hard looking at the tailgate and expecting to see Toyota or Chevrolet, not Volkswagen!
LOve it, maybe you should rat it and dump it while running air cooled engine then it's a real true
blue Volkswagen.HAHAHAHA just kidding but mate a set of radars and dumped with old signwriting,
Sweet! Good luck with it. Must be worth a bit and rare aswell as i have never seen one here
before.

Cheers Will.

Well, shes been cleaned up, and will be collected tomorrow night. Will post pics then..

looking nice i say convert the front lights to mk1 with the early bumpers.

I am sure u will make it look sweet Caddy's rule!

Was thinking of a MK2 GTI Front end. Easy to get, and looks good...