So the missus and kids were away for a long weekend. I took this as the opportunity to install the headunit bits I'd been collecting. I aimed to complete the retrofit in a day but I decided to book the Monday of work in case I broke the car somehow.
I bought the rcd 510 dab second hand and although the screen was perfect the piano black surround had some scratch's around the knobs from nails at a guess. On a hunch I ordered from the O2 store some displex polish for mobile phone screens. The night before the retrofit I polished the piano black areas with displex applied to cotton buds. Some of the scratch's were fairly deep but after a few applications I was really pleased with the results.
The day started wet and I started hungover, I had picked up all the essential kit I needed leading up to the retrofit. The most critical being some decent trim removal tools. I would have been lost without these they are that good, caused no damage/scratches to any trim pieces and can really handle the force you have to put behind them.
This was the last time my car would be whole again for the next few hours.
First job disconnect the battery first as a safety measure, don't forget to open your boot first as I did. Nothing left but to dive in, I followed various guides, if anyone needs any help with routing give me a shout and I will put the guides on here.
Headunit removed, clocks removed and trim down drivers sides for dab cable routing.
When I looked at the bits on the table I did start to worry. I have to confess I did break a piece of trim when getting access to replace the aerial, man was I pissed off. This will be replaced next month along with the airbag badge from c pillar.
When peeps say this is a bitch do do there not lying, you have to drop the headlining and have to be mega careful not to crease it. It's really fiddly, with not a lot of room to work on removing the nut to aerial base. The nuts massive which doesn't help as you need a huge socket or spanner.
Removed old base I grabbed the new dab base (it has different connections to the standard one, black for dab) and replaced.
Huh looks the same.
Headunit installed the dab cable was routed behind the clocks along drivers sill and up the c pillar to the headlining. Many airbags in the car hiding behind trim.
Easy part next put it back together, whilst I had the trim of I replaced the gateway with a newer pre coded version which was probably the easiest part.
By Jove it only bloody works.
When everything was back together I did have a number of fault codes, upon scanning and on the dash. Dash faults were cleared in usual way steering left to right driving forwards etc. codes found by vcds were cleared. Planning on scanning again this weekend to check there has been no reoccurrence of these. These are more than likely related to the gateway change as opposed radio installation many thanks to the guys who answered my urgent pleas for help.
A few close ups of polished piano black fascia, scratch free.
Love it when people who are supposed to be helping sit in your car programming Christian radio stations into you new headunit.
Having changed the aerial I spent a lot of time crawling around the boot, I realised that the dark brown colour in the boot carpet was not oem and was in fact red animal fur. I can only hazard a guess the previous owner ran some sort or fox/animal rescue buisness and used the gti and its boot as an emergency vehicle.
It was everywhere apart from the floor which had mercifully been lined.
It wouldn't Hoover so hopping on the Internet I found this handy tip, it works best with the yellow marigolds, didn't have them so raided the first aid kit for latex gloves. With gloves on you can rub the fur into balls and then out of the carpet, simply Hoover these up, looks a lot better now. Will give it another going over then a shampoo, wierdly there has never been any smell of dogs which you would expect with this amount of fur.
The whole interior had a good going over after this and came up lovely. It left the outside feeling neglected so was only right she had a little wash.
Sorry. And favourite.
