Marticus' Red GTI

[Marticus]

Spent a couple more hours on the car today,

Finished wrapping the silver trim:





And start refitting everything to the car:











And finally dragged the car out of the garage to get a look at the front lip in the daylight.



As you can see now the color match sucks, im liking the look but it will need repainting and color matching properly at some point.

Tomorrow off to the mechanic again for the new alternator and a few other small bits and then im really hoping she will be solid.

[Marticus]

Today i gave the car a quick rinse off at the jetwash, and noticed that there was some rust on the exhaust tips, so i spent a couple of hours this evening with my fingers deep up a backbox…

Stupidly i didnt get a before picture so youll have to take my word for it when i say it was rough.

This was after washing and scrubbing with a course scrubbing pad.



And i attempted to finish it there with some polish on a fine pad but realised i hadnt got a lot of the corrosion.



So out came the sand paper, starting at 320 grit.



And working my way through 600, 1k, 2k, and some polish.



They still dont look great, theres some corrosion that even the 320 wouldnt get out, so ill keep an eye on it but for now its better, if not perfect.

Now i got to deal with the mess

[Marticus]

Decided i needed some me time in the garage last night, had planned to spend an hour doing some tidying up and bits and bobs, but 4 hours later i ended up with the induction kit fitted 




I also removed the under bonnet insulation, because i though i might want the extra noise. How wrong i was, this thing is obnoxiously loud lol.

I was really not prepared for what a difference this would make, it sounds like that hoover from the teletubbies has moved in under the bonnet.

[Scheero1312]

I have the same intake lmao

[Marticus]

I have the same intake lmao

How do you like it?

I was a bit unsure the first time I went out for a drive, but I'm actually quite enjoying it now. I think it might be a bit jarring for me if this was my daily driver, but it's a lot of fun getting on and off the gas and hearing the turbo spool.

[Marticus]

My line of credit is running out fast but this needs doing sooner or later.

New dmf.



Ive also picked up a set of s3 340mm brake calipers, which are on the way.

So next up is discs, pads, fluid, then some new tyres, some bits and bobs for the suspension.

And the alternator needs replacing at some point…. Oh and the dreaded p099 underboost error as shown up again, so maybe a new turbo…

damn, who knew project cars are so expensive 

[Marticus]

Postman just dropped these off.

[Marticus]

All new hardware, top mounts etc for the suspension just turned up in the mail.

Getting close now!

[Marticus]

Brake discs and pads arrived today,

Nothing special, just zimmerman oem replacements, but will do to get everything fitted and tested.

[Marticus]

Recently I realised that the brakes I bought had rust on the bolts.

Nothing terrible, but I figured there was no point in leaving it to spread under the nice new powder coat.
So tore them down and gave the bolts a soak overnight in rust converter.
Then scrubbed them down to remove any loose surface rust before putting them back in the rust converter for a fer more hours.
Lastly I cleaned them off with white spirit before giving the heads a coat of zinc primer.
I had previously don't the same to the brackets for the back of the calipers.











Next up is to repeat the process with the threads in the calipers themselves, to make sure there's no rust sitting.

Also on Tuesday I've got new tyres arriving, so will sent those along with the wheels for fitting and balancing etc.

And later in the week I have a buddy from England arriving to help me fitting the suspension, brakes, and maybe intercooler and some other small bits and pieces depending on how long it all takes.

May also try to whip off the turbo and see if anything can be done about the underboost error.

It's going to be a busy week!

[Marticus]

Started to tidy the garage and get everything out in preperation for the weekend, and its looking like a lot now its all layed out,



The new tyres arrived yesterday and i took the wherls to have the winter tyres removed, and tomorrow im taking them to a wheel shop to check because VW mentioned that one of them might not be 100% straight, so hopefully that will be sorted. Then off to the tyre shop tobhave them put together and balanced.

Also updated the to do list and its getting daunting.



Dont expect to have all this done this weekend, and doubt we can do the DMF in the garage even if we wanted too. So going to focus on suspension and brakes to start and see how things go.

[Marticus]

So progress so far is that the suspension is in and is awesome!

Decided to work on the driveway because theres really not enough space in the garage.

And of course the moment we got the car up and the front dissasembled it started pissing down.



In addition to the rain the tie rod ends had seized on both sides so we had to find a new pair.

But got the new struts fitted whilst we sat out the worst of the rain in the garage.






And got the brake calipers back together with the newly cleaned and painted hardware.



And at the end of the day the car is sitting pretty.








I still need to adjust the height a bit and bring it up half a centimeter or so on the front, and maybe go down a bit on the rear, but all in all im super happy.

The suspension rides almost like oem, a little firmer but not bouncy or crashy, no noises coming from the suspension.

I also tried to get the tyres fitted to the alloys but everywhere was full so thats going to have to wait till monday.

Next to do are the brakes which we dodnt have time for, and an alignment.

[Marticus]

Now the suspension has settled down a bit, and after scraping the front and whacking the sump yesterday i adjusted the suspension last night and fitted the wheels and new tyres to get an idea of how everything is sitting.





And im fairly happy. The wheels will probably come back offnintill ive had an alignment done, because i dont want to wear the new tyre in interesting ways.

But before the alighnment is done i need to replace the drivers side cv boot, and i would like to get the brake in aswell.

Once thats done ill get an alignment and try to enjoy it for a while.

The DMF will need doing also sooner than later because i want it done before any track days.

[Marticus]

Failures, more failures, and half successes.

So decided to have a go at replacing the CV boot myself last week. Things did nit go well.

Unfortunately i didnt take any pics i just didnt have the heart for it. I managed to get everything dissassembled fine, but my first f*ckup was trying to do it in place on the car. Because when it came time to seperate the CV joint. That f*cker would not move, after an hour or so if trying to use the bolt to pushbit out, and hitting it with a hammer i finally got it apart, and of course everything went fine untill it came time to get them back together again, i dont know if im just being soft, but after another half an hour of trying to get the two halves back together i resorted to smacking it with a big f*ck off hammer untill it went into place. Then came tightening the clamps, and the cheap tool i bought was f*cking useless. Blah blah blah.

Long story short at about 1am i finally had it back together, but now i need a new axle bolt because thenone i had stripped in the process of getting the cv joint back together, hopefully im not going to have to replace the hole joint, but for now its holding together so will see.

Then today i had the good idea to remove the noise pipe from the car as i dont see the point in it, and its just taking up space in the engine bay.

In preperation for this i did some research and found that other tfsi vag cars dont have the noise pipe, so i ordered an intake pipe from an audi a3.



Here is the twonintake pipes next to one another, as you can see the audibone doesnt have the extra exit towards the top, unfortunately you can probably se that the rest of the pipes arent an exact match either, the brackets dont line up and the angle of the top is a few degrees off.

But not to be put of i removed the brackets from the new pipe and after some messing about, and replacing the pipe from thenintercooler with another one i had bought from an audi just in case. I ended up with something that should work.

Engine bay before:


Engine bay after


And what was removed or replaced:



The failiure here was that when i dug about behind the firewall to remove the rest of the noise maker it looks like someone had already been in there and blocked te pipe off with a nylon bung  so all my hard work was for little difference outside of cleaning up the engine bay and a couple hundred grams of weight reduction lol.

Anyway, its good to make progress even i its two steps forward one step back.

[Gandzior]

Hi,

You're doing great on the subject, keep it up!✌🏻

Pozdro 🇵🇱.