Hiya guys i know you wont like it with my car being a mk4 and not a gti but hey i hear your all nice guys and car enthusiasts, and you never know you may even take me to the dark side
When the R32 first came out I really really really wanted on, but as i was at uni it was never going to happen. But it put a seed in my head that meant when i had my summer and Easter holidays (you know how long these are for uni students, ahhh the days) i work as a scuba diving instructor at a local scuba diving school doing 70 hour weeks.
So with alot of hard work i was able to afford one. But i couldn’t just go out a buy one like that as it needed to be the right one for me. As i had previously owned a blue and a black car these were off the list. I also personally thought/think that silver cars arnt for me as they lack the depth and reflection in the paint. So that meant that i could only get a tornado red one. I found out that of the 2391 made for the uk these are the amount of each colour made:
Diamond Black Pearl Effect = 755
Reflex Silver Metallic = 615
Deep Blue Pearl Effect = 813
Moonlight Blue Pearl Effect = 57
Tornado Red = 44
Indigo Blue Pearl Effect = 76
Grey Anthracite Pearl Effect = 31
So i had to find one of 44 cars for sale in the uk just a year after it was bought (because the extra four colours moonlight blue pearl effect, tornado red, indigo blue pearl effect and grey anthracite pearl effect) were only allowed to be ordered in the last six months of production.
Now as i had previously had a 3 door and 5 door car, i couldn’t live with going back to a three door as a daily driver where i have loads of people in the car. So it had to be a 5 door for me. I also learnt that 1 in 5 cars coming into the uk was a 5 door. So this meant that there were around 8 perfect R32s for me.
So the search was on after working out exactly what i wanted to buy (obviously having had a look at the other contenders for me such as mk1 tt, M3, mkv gti). Luckily i came across what i wanted at Listers Volkswagen in Coventry. So i went up to test out the car, only to find out that the car had already had some nice mods done. They were some Millie Miglia 19†alloys, AMD stage 2 remap, Milltek exhaust, rear drop down screen and 6 disc dvd changer. So as you can probably guess i shook the dealers hands pretty quickly and drove away with my new car.
And pretty much things stayed the same for a year, well except i changed the front grill to a mesh styled one:
But as you can see from the pic the fitment wasn’t exactly up to OEM spec so it was removed pretty sharpish. I then added the carcatere rear boot blend:
Along with me starting my wheel obsession. I ordered up some Ronal wheels:
The exhaust on the car was the Milltek straight through which i absolutely loved when i got the car, nice and loud ïŠïŠïÂÅ . But as i lived in small Cornish village i did get conscious of people hearing the car from a couple of miles away. I also started to get some hesitation between 2-3k so i book myself into AMD and went for a day trip to get the exhaust changed back to a silenced version as well as the new stage 2 map which incorporated the VW 6463 update. Whilst there i was also talked into upgrading the front and rear anti roll bars some H&R ones which were 25mm front and 21mm rear. So i left with a quieter, better handling and smoother ride.
It was around this time i started to visit a few forums in the UK such as Tyresmoke and UKMKIVS. On the latter i managed to find my third set of wheels, a lovely set of BBS LM 147 19x8.5 et25:
As you also may notice i had the Red BBS caps imported from America as they were not available in this country. I also had the grill and side mirrors changed to matt black, along with the Seat Cupra R lower lip.
The next mod was to add a little bass to the lacklustre stock setup. Luckily i found a top installed in the Truro area called Anthony Ewart who had a ST200 mondeo built to a very high spec and used to frequent lots on car audio shows in the uk and Europe.
We decided to install some JL Audio ZR650s in the front and rear run off a JL Audio 300/4 along with a 10w3 run off a JL Audio 250/1, along with a phatnoise to store my tunes to go with the MFD unit i had already in the car.
Now it was time for GTI International 2006, where i had the following run:
A fun run against another TR
Along with a great drive home...................to all those that were there
After Inters i came across a great deal on a set of KW V2s which i couldn’t pass up so snapped them up and got them installed at the same time as a EIP cold air intake, a EIP short shifter, and the Tyrol brake stiffening kit.
The rest of the year was pretty bland and nothing really happened except i managed to clip a boulder lying in the road and dent one of the lips on my LMs..............doh cry time.
This meant i had another set of wheels on:
And this is how they came back
When the wheels were off i also decided that the stock breaks were getting low so i decided to get the ECS 2 piece fronts and stage 1 rear from the TT Shop.
At the beginning of 2007 i was in the need of alot more power. I thought long and hard about which way to go, NA or FI. For me i always wanted more then 300-320 break which is the most i had heard was to be got from NA. So it was forced induction but then it was the choice between Turbo and Supercharger. As im not someone to drive my car hard all the time i wanted something to be able to cruise around with but then also be able to open the taps when i wanted. So i looked a few kits and the reliability factor. Here is the companies i looked at and my thought s about them:
HGP/HPA – very good kits, very reliable with great feedback but out of my price range.
VF – very good kits if you don’t want too much power as the stage 3 and 4 really suffered from bad reliability like belt slip. So these were out after having a long chat with tom about his stage 4.
Storm – storm had just done one of the rotrex charges and the though of it did sound very nice but then as it was an unproven kit i steered clear.
EIP – at the time when i was looking there was a lot of positive things coming out of various places about the eip kits. Was supposedly reliable, well built (i already had the cai and ss and was very happy with these) and a reasonable price.
So i had chosen which kit i wanted and was in the process of doing more research into the kit. I found out that Steven (R32 turbo no more) was selling his stage 2 turbo kit. So after speaking to him further and him convincing me into buying the kit, we agreed on a price and a time frame for them to get me the kit. A cheque was sent off and Steven took his car to EIP to have the kit removed. Basically there was a time frame to do it because i wanted RK Engineering
RK Engineering - Cornwall's Premier V.A.G. Specialists to have enough time to adapt the LHD kit for my RHD car. But unfortunately EIP being who they were they took ages to do this, along with various stupid things happening. These were that i and both Steven were told that the kit was all finally off the car so shipping was paid. But when i received the kit it was missing the ECU chip. So a phone call to EIP only to find out it was all the kit except the chip being redone for the UK market. I had the kit but was useless without the chip so i had to pay for more shipping
.
Well as soon as the kit had been shipping out Steven wrote a big thread on his experiences with EIP, which can be found here:
EIPSUCKS.com - European Import Performance - Performance Tuning, Inc. - EIP Tuning, Inc, 1203 Baltimore Blvd. Westminster MD. 21157 - Advisory - Now Called: IAG, IAG Performance, Integrity Auto Group And i was very annoyed to hear all of this as Steven did know a lot of the facts before he sold and sent me the kit so was blatantly lying to me to get the sale. For this i do still feel a little aggrieved that he did this to me as he was just passing his loss onto me. I spoke to Steven about this but he said there could be no refund and as the kit was fine on his car it would be on mine. Stupidly i did believe him and the kit was installed onto my car by RK Engineering with the boys working their magic and converting the kit to work on my car. The downpipe had to be completely remade and they did amazingly as at the time there was no other RHD R32 with a EIP turbo which kept the air con. The clutch was also changed over to a EIP stage 3+ with lwfw.
