Mats Mk6 - Tornado Red GTi - Detailing and mods

[matmk5]

Hello all!

After three happy years with my Mk5 2006 GTi, I made the mistake of swapping to a sensible economical 2015 Ford Focus Zetec S… predictably after less than two months I was utterly bored to tears and despite it costing a small fortune swapping cars again so soon I’m now back in a GTi!

It took me six weeks of hunting to find the perfect car, 2010 Mk6 bought from JCT600 main dealer in Bradford 3 weeks ago, just 1 owner from new, only 56k miles, FVWSH with 9 stamps in the book all from same dealer. Climate, unmarked heated leather, front and rear sensors, 2 year’s warranty, absolutely mint inside and out.

Unfortunately, a few days after I got it home I found a couple of big issues, the aircon pump was very noisy and the clutch intermittently made the dreaded ‘throw out bearing’ whooping noise when reversing uphill under load.  Returned it to the dealer with a description of the faults and I have to say the service team at JCT600 were fantastic, no quibbling, took the car back, kept me up to date with progress, loan car provided and after 5 days ready to collect.... full new air con pump fitted, new condenser fitted, complete new clutch kit installed with DMF and bearing also replaced, I mentioned what looked like a leak on the main boost pipe so they swapped it with a full new unit.... just under £3k of work with parts and labour!  Genuinely delighted with the service, fully expected a long drawn out wrangle, especially with the clutch issue as it was working just noisy but nothing of the sort and the car is now perfect.

As soon as I got it back I headed off to Midland VW to get the timing chain tensioner updated to the latest ‘K’ revision, I want to enjoy driving the car without the worry of it imploding lol so for me it’s worth every penny for the peace of mind… highly recommend Midland VW, very professional, £350 all in with a new lower cover and sealant, all done while I waited with no fuss.

It came with standard 17” Monzas so I have picked up a shiny new set of 18" Santiago's this week which I love the look of and then fitted them with new Uniroyal Rainsport 3’s all round, the grip difference is ridiculous!

A few more modifications planned, as you can see from my old Mk5 at the bottom I prefer to keep the OEM look but would like to drop it a few CM’s so I will update as I go along.

2a

3

4

5

Ohh and this is how it looked when I picked it up a few weeks ago.

6

This is my old MK5 GTi.... does anyone here have it or know where it is now? :-)

7a

[prp74]

Looking good. Nice little MK7 touches. Santiago's suit the car 

[gttdigoof]

good choice, nice looking GTI

[peter_booker2003]

Superb choice. Looks a stunner too.

Must be local to me as i use Midland VW too. Can't fault the service and always well priced. Mine was only in last week for the Cam chain and Tensioner too.

I'm based Stafford side if you every fancy a meet up etc. 

[matmk5]

Thanks all, much appreciated 

Cheers Peter, I'm about an hours drive from Midland VW (I'm right on the Notts/Derbyshire boarder) there's plenty of closer specialists to me but when I spoke with Jody on the phone he clearly knew exactly what he was talking about so decided it was worth the run over... will definitely use them in he future. 

Hoping to get to a few shows this year as its been a while so will give you a shout if your heading down too 

[peter_booker2003]

Thanks all, much appreciated 

Cheers Peter, I'm about an hours drive from Midland VW (I'm right on the Notts/Derbyshire boarder) there's plenty of closer specialists to me but when I spoke with Jody on the phone he clearly knew exactly what he was talking about so decided it was worth the run over... will definitely use them in he future. 

Hoping to get to a few shows this year as its been a while so will give you a shout if your heading down too 

Brill. Yeah, i'm hoping to get to Fitted UK, Vag Tuner Live and Edition 38 in September. Looking forward to seeing how this progresses.

Love the Tornado Red paint too although i may be a bit biased 

[matmk5]

I have been really happy with pretty much everything about the car and it’s not missed a beat but one thing that has been niggling me is the paint.  It just looked dull and flat and under direct sunlight the swirl marks were absolutely everywhere... its only had one previous owner but he must have put it through the car wash 4 times a day to attain the world record for most swirl marks on a five door hatch lol!

It really detracted from the rest of the car which is absolutely perfect so I nipped to a local detailer last weekend and was quoted £700 + VAT to put it right as it needed two full days of labour, to be fair that is about right for two full days of labour but there’s just no way I could justify spending that, so after a few days of research I bought this full kit, a clay bar, some decent cloths and a paint depth gauge and after watching a few hundred YouTube tutorials I set to work.

All told it’s taken 22 hours (five nights at it lol!) of hard graft but I’m absolutely chuffed with the results, genuinely looks better than a new one, dripping deep red shiny gloss, no swirl marks, scratches or scuffs (trust me I have been over every inch of every panel with a Lenser P7 lol!)

Routine for each panel was wash, clay bar, wash again, dry, dual action machine polish stage 1 to get rid of the most severe scratches, hand polish, dual action machine polish stage 2 fine scratch removal to refine the clear cote, then machine polish with stage 3 finishing polish until perfect.

The rear quarter, doors and boot were especially swirltastic so I hit those first… before and after:

Roof and spoiler next, before and after

Bonnet and bumpers:

So after five nights and 22 hours of machine polishing it was sat waiting for a some wax this morning to finish and seal, I tried Ultimate rather than the classic gold mainly hoping for it to last a while

And finally, all done, aching arms, aching back, but car looking unbelievably glossy, not a swirl in sight and beading like a dream after this afternoons downpour :D

Ohh and I added the GTi seat handle inserts

[prp74]

Looking stunning after all that hard work. Well done to you 

[doylebros]

Top job - worth all that time and effort 

[dervdave]

Fantastic job !  like the Cemetery shots do you live there ?

[Kai96]

Paintwork looks stunning. You have some good camera skills to 

[RobC]

Absolutely stunning looking car! A credit to the work you've put in, top job mate 

[matmk5]

Thanks for the kind comments all, very much appreciated 

Error free LED sidelight bulbs arrived today so after some fiddling with my fat fingers I got them in... look great bur ARGHHH! only part of the car I didnt machine polish was headlamps and the white light showed up swirly swirls! lol... soooo a couple of hours three stage polishing the headlamps tonight, sealed and then buffed and Im happy again... super clear swirl free plastic 

P7241472

P7241403

In an effort to deter the wife from hitting me with a pan if I spend one more night in the garage I'm going to give the polishing a rest now and concentrate on a few other bits I want to do... probably a performance exhaust or some subtle lowering next I think 

[matmk5]

Fantastic job !  like the Cemetery shots do you live there ?

No, its just down the road from our house though and its good for photos as its always dead quiet... 'dead' quiet... Ill get my coat 

[matmk5]

Well, we had a 850 mile family road trip around North Wales planned so before we set off I thought I had better get to the bottom of the annoying ''rumble feeling and strange fan howling noise'' that happened every time I was sat stationary in traffic.

After some fumbling around under the car with a torch and some trial and error with different ancillaries running I finally tracked it down to a piece of the air con fan having snapped off throwing it out of balance and causing the vibration and noise.  I managed to find an OEM replacement, GSF, £260.. ouch... Euro Carparts £65 plus 30% off.... oush! 



I'm almost certain that JCT600 will have done the damage to the fan when replacing the old aircon pump with this new super shiny super sexual one but there's no way of proving it.. hey ho....



Air box out, four bolts, radiator fan frame all out and old fan removed.



New fan fitted... good as new



Ahhh... vibration free and no noise, and off to Wales we go... quick snap of her sat on the seafront in Caernarfon