This 2024 Graysons Ladder raffle car has a long history in the VW community.. Lets go back to 2009..
2009 Matt Ford (owner of MF Auto in Knoxville) decides to he wants to build the a super clean 4 door jetta to pair with his clean AF jetta coupe. He finds this low mile, locally owned car and has it stripped for paint and begins to assemble parts for it. When it finally comes back from paint, Matt like a lot of us had realized his priorities had shifted to other things in the shop, so the car “rested” for a while. Our friend Jeff Bynum had seen the car and knew it was “resting” and hit up Matt about buying it and finishing it. They worked out a deal in 2011 and the car came to the Bynum Builds Garage in Oneonta, AL. Jeff had the bay sprayed the Porsche Toffee H8Z. Matt had already had Kip at Loves Trim Shop build a set of Recaros and door panels for the car before it had even come back from the paint shop. Jeff was going to use a 12v motor and trans already color matched to the engine bay, the car was close to being ready to assemble. Jeff passed away in Dec of 2016, leaving the car to rest and the Colonel to try to sort out what to do with the collection of cars and stuff that was Bynum Builds.. Fast Forward to 2022 and the car has come back to MF Auto as part of a deal worked out with the Colonel and Matt. Matt was still working heavy hours and not ready to take on a build project, but the car wouldn’t rest much longer. As fate would have it, I was struggling to find a good canidate for the 2024 Graysons car. I had bought a cabriolet that was sold as very nice paint, good interior, ready for a swap and detail. It is a nice car, but it felt like it was not nice enough, and not nearly “patina’d” enough to be the right car for this raffle. I had just missed an early barn find scirocco that Matt had put up for sale and when I asked him about anything else, he mentioned this jetta. We came to an agreement on price and the car came to see me at the first of the year.
Jan 2024 the jetta arrives!
I had already begun to assemble the motor, trans, anything I could to get ahead of the time crunch I knew I would be on. Taking a car from a rolling shell to a ready to drive car in 2 months was not going to be easy with my already busy schedule. The car had “rested” for almost 15 years, it had moved to 2 different shops, all while disassembled, lots of things were lost into the void that is a VW enthusiast garage. Lots of calls to my favorite people like Brian at TwinCityVW parts, for those missing bits like window frames, sunroof parts, wiring harnesses, etc.
The driveline is a CBTA 07k sourced from a 2011 Jetta from Alex in Douglasville, GA. He bailed me out with a motor when the BGP motor I had prepped for the install developed a rod knock shortly after the first start up. (story for another time). New clutch kit was sourced from Aaron at Cascade German, he hooked us up with a lightweight flywheel kit and LUK kit. All new accessory drive pulleys and idlers, new alternator, starter, coils, plugs ect, all sourced by Perry at Quick Everetts Garage here in Chattanooga, TN. 
The mk1 07k kit requires an 02j trans so we used a 1.8t 5speed, swapping the axle cups to 100mm, changed the fluid, and replaced the release bearing guide, a new clutch fork and release bearing and we were ready to marry them for install into the jetta.
Once the jetta arrived the race was on to catch the chassis up to being ready for the new drive line. New 10.1 brakes and bearings, new master and slave from a 16v mk2, ST Coilovers from Jeremy and Glen over at Suspension Source, mounted to the car with a set of the S&P raised strut mounts. The original fuel tank was in rough shape so I replaced it with an aftermarket unit, and a new sending unit from Germany. 
A new mk1 044 style fuel pump and a mk5 fuel filter finished off the fuel system up to the engine bay.
The last thing I like to do before I set the motor is finish up the bay wiring, but we were still looking for a harness for the front section of the car, as the original had been lost to time somewhere in the nearly 15 years since it had been taken apart to the time it arrived here. Brian at TCVW took care of us finding a clean rabbit convertible harness that I could modify to work with the jetta. Removing all of the stuff we didn’t need didn’t take long and made it easy to see what I had to work with for the chassis wiring, mostly lighting, a few cluster inputs, alternator exciter, starter, brake and reverse light switch inputs. 
Installing the driveline is always a great day, its a big step in the process and its fun to see progress on a project. With the motor set in place using the S&P MK1 07k Swap kit, I could get started on dressing the motor with an intake manifold made in house using some killer billet pieces made by P-motorsport. A great valve cover made by JAAATT Engineering, the S&P 07k spin on oil filter housing made for us by Iabed Industries and the stainless S&P 07k mk1 header. Last I installed the shift box from a mk4 under the car, leaving room for the stainless exhaust and borla muffler from TT finished with a turned stainless tip. 
With the engine in place, wiring the 07k to the chassis was no problem our wiring service provides an easy to install labeled harness for you (or me) to get you new motor swap running in your car. The ECU is tuned by United Motorsports with a SRI tune, and our swap file only available from UM through S&P or TDC shop.
I sent a set of BBS RA rims off to see my friend Jason at Top Notch Powder Coating in GA, they got the same Toffee coating that the intake and valve cover received, but with polished faces and lips. Jason’s shop also did all of the other coatings on the pipes, radiator/shroud assembly, mounting hardware, cross brace etc.. If its been powder coated, he did it!
I called Kip and begged him to come help me finish up the interior on this car, I hate setting carpet and have always struggled with getting it down right so a lesson from one of the masters was really what I was looking forward to. 
Kip came up and we (I watched and asked dumb questions) installed the carpet and a hat tray. Like I mentioned earlier Kip had already built the seats and door panels for this car, so installing those was no problem. I mounted the Recaros to our S&P seat bases and slid them into place. 
I dyed a set of door pockets, the center console and lower dash so they would look fresh and match the new interior. 
I ordered a full set of hardware from Davies in the UK, outer door pulls, window cranks and inner door handles and surrounds, his work is top notch and a great asset to the community. New weather stripping from Classic-VW in the UK also provided us quality parts for these older cars.
Lastly was a bit of flourish from Tim Spearman on the intake manifold and some awesome vinyl from Ben at Mark One Graphics. I have to thank Jarod at JSRS.art for the awesome design on the t-shirt and sticker! 
The car was now running and ready to go see Perry again at Quick Everett to get an alignment, with that done we were ready for a road test to a gas station! After a fill up it was time to head over to the Volkswagen Nature Park next to the VW plant in Chattanooga, TN to get a few photos of the Beige Bomber in front of some old ammo bunkers . I hope that whoever owns this car loves it as much as I have, thank you all for participating and supporting the Graysons Ladder Raffle to benefit EndAXD.org
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