[NorthernPhil]

Hmmm... the plot thickens...

For a long time I thought that all quick racks were 2.5 turn (like the R32), but apparently I was wrong. Having talked quite a bit with @GIULIVER71 over the last couple of days, I found out last night/this morning that TT/S3 quick racks were 2.7 turn, not the 2.5 I was expecting.

So, it looks like the "055 T" rack is a quick rack after all. Which is good.

My apologies to @samc for doubting the rack. I never doubted you that it had come off of an S3, but I was anxious about the hardware due to my inaccurate understanding/misconception. My bad.

I may well still get the LCR rack I sourced yesterday, and have a bit of a comparison/cross-referencing exercise.

Out of curiosity, @PokerProTDI150, is your rack from an R32 or a TT/S3/LCR?

In other news, the WIP sketch for the artwork that may potentially be going on the car when the bodywork gets done came through the other day, and it's fricking awesome. Like, daaaaaaaaaamn hawt...

 

[NorthernPhil]

A bit of filler while I sort out the handling and suspension parts:

Answers on a postcard, what do you think it's gonna be?

 

[NorthernPhil]

I wanted to get something done while I get the last few bits for the handling/suspension upgrade together, so started working on an idea I've had for a while.

Basically, making a gearstick out of this:

So, after getting a wooden gearknob from the local scrappy and tearing it apart for the boss/mount within, I started tearing the joystick down...

...carefully, mind you. I wanted the wiring intact...

As expected, everything was connected in at the base, and most of it was blathered in silicone grease. Annoying stuff.

Quickly got the stick itself separated and dismantled, though:

Carefully removing the loom...

That the important bit safely extracted, leaving me with the body of the stick separate.

Only bit of this idea that I'm worried about: the "neck" of the stick is quite narrow. I hope it has sufficient strength for... vigorous gear changes...

The mount is going to need a lot of surgery before it'll fit properly:

The reason for being careful when taking the joystick apart, and keeping the loom intact, is that I fully intend to keep the buttons usable. I don't know what they'll be used for yet, but I want to keep that option open.

For example, if I were to fit a nitrous system at some point down the line, I'd love to be able to rig the solenoid control into the joystick. Or if I ever get air suspension (unlikely at this time, but still possible) I might want to use the joystick buttons for pre-set ride heights.

I'm also looking into 3rd party ECUs, and what is and isn't possible, so if I ever have the opportunity to run switchable maps (with on-the-fly selection) at some point, they might use the buttons (assuming the aforementioned air suspension doesn't).

Oh yes, nearly forgot... the "head" of the joystick has a 3mm LED in it, so I'll have that powered, I think. It's bright blue, which doesn't fit with the rest of the interior lighting. However, when I got the gearknob I picked up an ASR switch for two quid, specifically to tear the LED out of to put into the joystick.

 

[NorthernPhil]

Five years since my last build thread post.... a lot has changed...

I still have my Bora, that at least hasn't changed, but what is in the works for it has changed completely.

The S3 steering transplant didn't happen, and all the parts I'd acquire as part of that operation (cast wishbones, quickrack, hubs, ARB, and larger brakes front and rear) all ended up getting sold. I'm not going to go into the whys and wherefores, but suffice to say it was very much not fun for me.

I didn't even get the joystick shifter done.

...but if I'm making a build thread post, something must be happening, right?

...yup.

So, I STILL have my original set of JOM coilovers on, and by now they are totally flipped. Like, will fail the MoT (next weekend). So this weekend, I've got the car up on stands to fit the following:

• KW Variant 1 coilovers.
• LCR front top mounts.
• A crapload of polybushings: SuperPro bushings for the steering rack, front ARB drop-links, and dog-bone (both ends), and PSB bushings for the control arms (front and rear), subframe, ARB mounts, and rear beam.

Once the MoT is passed, the next thing that NEEDS to be done is to get my wheels refurbed again, as the lacquer is peeling and they look crap, and it's driving me nuts.

Going forwards, I've got a few little things planned for definite (wheel spacers, bodywork tidy-up, silicone coolant pipes, etc.), and some BIG ones that I'm looking into but not committing to until I have more technical info and, far more importantly, a great deal more money.

Hopefully, all goes well...

 

[adam-]

Bring back build threads!

 

[NorthernPhil]

Bring back build threads!

It seems there's been a sudden rush of updates since I posted! :lol-lol:

In all seriousness, my own updates will likely be few and far between, but I hope to keep things ticking over.

 

[NorthernPhil]

Few little updates, and plans.

First things first, when I washed the car the other day I took the headlight protectors off, and found the lenses were badly scratched up. They were dinged up before, but I have a feeling there's been some crap between the lenses and the protectors, abrading them pretty badly:

So I started working on a restoration job. I bought the Holts Restoration Kit, but quickly found the little sanding discs to be a pain in the ass... far too small. So, I did the sanding by hand. Started with 600 grit Wet and Dry, then 800, then moved on to 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000, 5000, and finally 7000. Lubed with a water and Fairy liquid mix, and regularly cleaned off with water and brake cleaner.

After a thorough cleaning, I broke out the liquid polish. Started with the Holts Headlight Polish that came in the Restoration Kit, then went over with Autoglym Super Resin Polish.

After a good clean up (more brake and clutch cleaner), I left the lights to properly dry out overnight, then cleaned down with 99.9% Isopropanol, before the last step - application of the UV Sealer from the Holts kit.

Final result of the restoration:

Pretty damn good result. Really happy with it... but I wasn't finished there. As a bit of an experiment, I applied SPI Vision tint film stuff to the headlights. It's like Fly-Eyes, but the base layer is black rather than the white that Fly-Eyes uses.

Came out pretty good...

...so back on the car the headlights went:

Headlights aren't the only thing I've been fiddling with this week, for I have a new acquisition.

During March, I discovered that one could still buy Oettinger Grills for the Bora DIRECT FROM OETTINGER . Being discontinued with very limited stock, they were HEAVILY discounted to boot (like, they were discounted to a third of the original price). After a brief email conversation with the supremely helpful Jutta Voelkner at Oettinger, and a hurried conversation with like-minded Bora peeps (hastily arranged group buy), the last three BNIB Bora Oettinger Grills were winging their way to me.

I didn't have enough Black Magic Pearl paint left over from sorting out a replacement bumper (with 4Mo valance and LCR splitter) a while ago, but I wanted to get the grill on the car ASAP. This, coupled with my wanting to try my hand at vinyl wrapping, lead to clearing the kitchen worktop and trying to wrap the grill:

It didn't come out as well as I'd hoped, but was somewhat better than I was expecting. Plus, it's only a temporary thing until I can get some paint mixed up in the next couple of weeks.

Looks pretty good on the car, but I think I might need to fine-tune the fitment of the grill, bumper, and bonnet a little:

I'm currently looking for an Oettinger roof spoiler as my next acquisition, and will be body colouring the wing mirror bases soon (I intend to paint these at the same time as the grill). I've bought some black aluminium honeycomb mesh to go on the grill, as the panels Oettinger provided are fairly flimsy-feeling plastic mesh, and I have a fear that some crap on the road might smash through the plastic mesh and into my radiators.

 

[NorthernPhil]

Time for an update, given I've done a fair bit and not put anything up.

Maintenance first. Finally pulled my finger out and tackled the rust eating the passenger front wing. Got a used replacement (in LC9Z) from ebay - it was in good nick, but had a few rust spots and was the wrong shade of LC9Z.

Given the rust, the wing's first port of call was...

...electrolysis bath.

After the rust was removed from the bottom of the wing, the rest of the lacquer, paint, and primer was removed, all the way to the bare metal.

Rust treatment, zinc oxide, and grey filler/high-build primer came next, before disaster: despite doing everything properly.... something... happened. Primer went all weird:

...so it all had to come off again.

Second time round turned out nice, though:

Side note, we had some issues with out extraction system:

After the primer was sorted, flatted, etc., and most importantly, DEFINITELY not having the same issues as the previous iteration, I sorted the paint. I use a mix of Novol and Lechler paint systems. Not had a problem so far, but the Lechler mixed paint is hella pricey (worth it, though).

I'm far from a pro painter, but it comes out nice. Lovely and smooth, barely a blemish, even without having the lacquer.

Once the lacquer was on, it started looking like progress. I painted a speed-shape and my Oettinger grille at the same time, as I had the time and resources available (and I was itching to get the grille sorted).

Smooth and beautiful, even off the gun. A couple of days after spraying the lacquer, I set the parts out in the sun to "bake".

I left it a could of weeks before fitting, because life. I had intended to keep the old wing for experimenting/welding practice, relating to a another project I have, but soon found there was more damage than first thought... so the old wing got folded up and put in the scrap.

Also found a shocking amount of shite behind the wing:

 

[NorthernPhil]

While I had the wing and arch liner off, I took the opportunity to sort the cooling fan resistor fix out, ticking another common problem off the list.

After fitting the new wing, I swapped in some replacement black side indicators, as the ones fitted at the time had faded horrendously. These were actually the original stock side repeaters that I'd tinted long ago, but never got round to fitting. I also fitted the Oettinger grille, which started the front end's transformation...

Maintenance aside, during the last year I've started do modification work again, after a long hiatus (because reasons).

One of the things I've wanted to do for a long time is the hybrid Passat cluster mod. My cluster is the full FIS Sport cluster already, which is nice (although the screen is dying a slow death) but I want something that pops a bit more. So I gathered a few second-hand clusters to tear apart. Didn't cost too much, either... ebay's great when people don't know what they're selling/mislabel stuff.

So, here we have a spare mk4/Bora Sport TDI cluster to use as a base (bottom), basic mk4/Bora petrol GTI cluster to take the needles from (left), mk6 diesel cluster which donated the needle caps/bezels (right), and B5.5 Passat TDI cluster for the foils and rings. LEDS were harvested as well. Thanks to @aRd for the info for doing the various bits here.

The Plan (tm) for the cluster is:

1. Passat foils and rings.
2. Custom needles using the GTI blades and mk6 bezels (I like the mk6 bezels, but want the blade to be "fully viewed", if that makes sense).
3. Backlight LED colour swap. Backlight to change from blue to red, and the needles to change to something a bit special (more on that later).
4. Screen replacement (at a later date), changing to a 3DColorMFD.

I elected to go with the 3DColorMFD over ColorMFA as I like the idea of being able to customise the display myself. However, the screen change is for down the line... don't want to do too much at once, just in case something goes wrong and i need to troubleshoot.

Teardowns and mock-ups ensued:

Getting those front plates off without breaking them is a SERIOUS pain in the ass, but with care and patience, I managed it. The foils are only half FIS, but it'll be simple enough to cut out the window with a scalpel blade.

Next up was the point of no return: cutting stuff.

Quick mock-up, before starting on the needles:

Preliminary needle mock-up:

...however, I wanted to change the colour of the needles, ideally to purple, so the red paint came off, and I started experimenting with spare needles (good ones for the final build carefully stored away).

 

[NorthernPhil]

The new colour options really pop, and look great.... in daylight. Unfortunately, they don't work very well when backlit, and obviously one needs to be able to see the needles at night.

I put the needles aside for a bit, and moved onto the LED change. I knocked up a rough power loom (to connect to my bench PSU), and used the carcass of the mk4 GTI donor cluster as a testbed for the lighting mods. Red dial backlight was already decided, so I got those swapped over before looking at the needle backlighting LEDs specifically. Though red dials and red needles doesn't look too bad, I want some contrast.

I started out thinking just to go for a colour inversion, red dials and blue needles, or use violet LEDs for the needles, but it didn't really work. In the photo below, the rev needle is cleaned of paint and has blue backlight, coolant has a blue LED with non-cleaned needle, and fuel and speed have violet LEDs with non-cleaned needles.

After a bit of discussion with a couple of chums, I tried the white LEDs from the mk6 cluster. Red dials and white needles worked well enough on the 8L S3, after all. So, I cleaned the paint off of the other needles, swapped the LEDs over, and fitted the needles. Phone camera doesn't really like getting the brightness realistically, but it shows it well enough.

I liked it, but I was still thinking it could use some tweaking. So, I lightly sanded the rev needle (to give a little move diffusion), and painted the speedo needle with Vallejo Metallic Medium (gives a kind of Mother of Pearl look). Still trying to decide which I prefer.

And then... something happened. Something I did not expect.

On a whim, I'd asked a new friend at VW to run a part number for me. I expected it to come back as "discontinued"... it didn't. It was very limited stock, though. There were none left in the UK, but there were FIVE left in Germany. I had to have one. The order was placed without a moments thought.

A little over a week later, I was informed it had arrived. I'd made some supporting purchases during that week as well, but the big one was the first to arrive. It was collected and test fitted ASAP (with the grudging aid of me mum).

Genuine Bora R Front Bumper! 😍


The cluster mods were put on hold. I had to have the bumper on as soon as possible, though I had to wait for some bits to arrive first.

The bumper grilles turned out to be a bit of a ballache, though. The Bora R bumper uses the same grilles as the R32, but not all of those grilles are still available from VW. Centre grille is still available, as are the closed-mesh side grilles and the drivers-side open-mesh grille, but the open-mesh passenger-side grille is not. More importantly, NONE of the fog light grilles (open- or closed-mesh) are still available from the Stealers.

Luckily, the mk4 still has sufficient following that the aftermarket can provide, so soon some knock-off grilles were winging their way to me from Ebay. The fog lights themselves were not available from VW, either, but HELLA still make them (they're also used on the Lupo, Fabia, and I think the Polo too).

Side skirts are ABS "R32 style" reps from Ebay. They're not spot-on identical to legit 5 door R32 skirts, but they're close enough. Good quality, fit well, and decent price to boot.

I did, however, manage to get a brand new genuine LCR splitter, from SEAT (because great big hairy bollocks to paying ebay scene tax).

But, such is the story of my life, there was a bit of a hiccup. In my excitement about the bumper, I had failed to notice that a corner of the bumper had been broken off! Worse, one of the mounting brackets (to hold it onto the body of the car) had also gone missing. I checked the photos I'd taken when I first got the bumper: both bracket and corner missing, I just hadn't noticed. I called my chum at VW, concerned. He checked the photos he'd taken (because enthusiast and rare part), and found the part were missing when the bumper had arrived at the dealership. It had obviously happened in transit, but it was not too late to do anything about it.

(Photo taken after removing old mount adhesive, it didn't arrive with those scratches).


Balls.

Luckily for me, I had the skills and materials to fix the problems. The Bora R bumper, like the R32 bumper, is made from Polyurethane, which is a bitch to fix if it breaks. I do, however, have a selection of nefarious adhesives for working with "difficult materials". So, with a strip of shaped HDPE plastic and a load of minty blue structural adhesive, I rebuilt the corner:

Once the structural adhesive was fully cured, the corner was shaped and contoured roughly...

...before the (now much reduced) HDPE strip was removed, and replaced with suitable flexible filler. Once the filler was cured, final shaping was done, before I tested the strength of the repair. Happy with the result, I moved on to the next stage: test fitting and adjusting the LCR splitter.

The genuine LCR splitter is, obviously, not a direct fit to the bumper (unlike some aftermarket offerings, like Maxton's) as they weren't designed to go together. So, the splitter needs to carefully heated, bent, shaped, and trimmed, to get the desired fit. I also don't like the textured finish on the splitter, so as well as shaping it to fit, I smoothed the surface. Came out pretty well, but there's a couple of areas I could've done better. Still, in all likelihood no-one will notice.

The final piece of the bodywork puzzle was another Oettinger item. After lucking out on the grilles, I got in touch with Jutta again, asking about the roof spoilers. As with the grilles they still had a couple, so I grabbed one (no pre-paint pic, though).

 

[NorthernPhil]

So... paint.

Our garage isn't big enough to do everything in one hit, so I had to do things in groups. First up was the bumper, splitter, and skirts.

Still hadn't sort extraction, but the finish was fine so not a huge concern it seems.

Grilles and light surrounds were up next, primered in yellow because a) it was easier to check coverage on the honeycomb, and b) I'd run out of grey (more on that shortly).

While the bumper parts were curing, I addressed the fog lights themselves, adding the same SPIvision film that I'd used on the headlights (to bring everything together).

Then came the Oettinger spoilers, both boot and roof. Few reference pics of the roof spoiler, as I'm told not many people have seen them:

After years of having the boot spoiler on, the car looked weird without it 😕

My boot spoiler had had a crappy DIY vinyl wrap for many years (using heavy signage vinyl, not proper automotive vinyl), after a paint job with Halfords rattle cans went bad. Primer and colour had gone on fine, but their lacquer was crap, and stayed soft. Everything had to come off for this endeavour, though.

While I worked on the painting process of the spoilers, I fitted the bumper assembly together, and got it on the car. Even with just the bumper on, it looked really good (despite the motorway gunge coating the car).

The roof spoiler, being new, didn't need much prep. Light sand, clean, adhesion promoter, and it was ready for paint. Boot spoiler needed primering and everything else. Roof spoiler went on lovely. Lined up easily, applied body adhesive (read: shedloads of Tiger Seal, as per Oettingers instructions), taped in place and weighted down. Easy as pie, and came out great.

Fitting of these parts was not stressful, despite breaking the bonnet release/lock handle (which is, it turns out, NOT common between the Bora and Golf).

The boot spoiler? Yeah.... that turned into a F-ING NIGHTMARE...

 

[NorthernPhil]

So, the boot spoiler...

I painted it up at the same time as the roof spoiler, but didn't fit it at the same time - I wanted to give the roof spoiler plenty of time (few days) after fitting to make sure there were no issues with the adhesive grip strength on the window. Once I was satisfied, I moved on to fitting the boot spoiler. I sorted the positioning, put some tape markers on the boot so I could quickly get the spoiler back into position, applied Tiger Seal adhesive to the legs...

...and promptly dropped the bloody thing. I may have sworn loudly in the street at 8pm.

Sizeable chunks were broken off of the tips of the legs. Luckily, that was all. I collected the pieces, and parked them in the garage, and abandoned in in favour of booze and angry cigarette (had to wait for the PU adhesive to cure before I could sort it out, anyway).

The paint was buggered, scratched up and gouged, but it was going to have to come off anyway once the repair work was done. I wouldn't be able to blend it properly, so it would need to be from scratch.

Then it got WORSE.

When I started to remove the paint, it started coming away really easily. Coming off in big strips, in fact. The primer layer hadn't bonded properly, despite proper prep (cleaning, keying, adhesion promoter), and had basically just formed a rubbery skin around the spoiler. I managed to basically flay the paint off of the spoiler, removing about two thirds of the paint as a single piece. I couldn't work out what had gone wrong, as I did everything the same as I'd done on previous paint work. Spray-gun set up properly, proper spray technique and air pressure, primer and paint mixed in correct ratios, etc. Actual products were the same as I always used: UPOL surface prep and adhesion promoter, Tetrosyl grey primer, Lechler colour coat, and Novol clearcoat. Everything came from the same tin or bottle used on the roof spoiler, bumper, skirts, etc....

...except for the grey primer.

I'd run out of primer doing the bumper, skirts, and splitter. I'd ordered a tin from an ebay shop (getting those Nectar points) as soon as the previous had run out. The boot spoiler was the only thing I'd used it on, luckily, but I didn't want to write it off straight away, just in case I had overlooked something. Putting primer thoughts aside, I repaired the spoiler, and took EVERYTHING off of the surface, sanding clean through into the base material (again, polyurethane). More minty blue adhesive to fix the broken tips, with flexible filler to rebuild and reshape the points.

Surface was re-prepped, and I worked to re-primer, double checking everything I used and did. Gave the primer a couple of days to dry fully, before so much as moving it. I carefully tested the primer, and unfortunately the same rubbery-ness of the last iteration was present. Again, I managed to get almost the entirety of the primer off in one piece. "Disappointed" would be an understatement. The ebay tin got binned, and I got a new tin from my normal supplier (wasn't able to for the last tin, because work timetable). For the third time, the spoiler was prepped and primered, receiving a holiday in the spare room for a few days to ensure it was fully dried (and being carefully checked for rubbery-ness), before the colour coat went on. Found no issues with the primer, so colour was a go, followed by clearcoat.

Finished item received another week of holiday in the spare room (for stable temperature) before I was happy enough to fit it. Before and After:

Final piece was the skirts, as I still hadn't fitted them. 3M VHB 5952 tape and Tiger Seal PU Body Adhesive combo was used to attach the skirts. The 3M tape was used to hold the skirt in place while the PU Adhesive cured.

And with that, the sudden bodywork project was done, and I am really happy with it:

By this point it was Winter (January), hence the caked road grime/salt. Looks really smart, IMHO, but I can't decide if the rear bumper needs... something... doing to it. Smoothing, perhaps.

 

[northpole]

It needs a matching r-line rear bumper than you have effectively finished the r look on the bora... and after that you'll be looking at the exhaust... as an R has 2 tips sticking out left and right.

So you've almost finished it just one little hurdle... the r-line rear bumper for the bora are hard to find.

 

[NorthernPhil]

It needs a matching r-line rear bumper than you have effectively finished the r look on the bora... and after that you'll be looking at the exhaust... as an R has 2 tips sticking out left and right.

So you've almost finished it just one little hurdle... the r-line rear bumper for the bora are hard to find.

Bora R rear bumpers are nigh on impossible to find. I think I've only ever seen 2 genuine ones on ebay in a decade.

The Bora R didn't share the R32's twin pipes. It only had a single pipe on the left (only a 1.8T, remember).

There's a few places that do Bora R rear bumper reps, such as SRS-Tec, but they all seem to be fibreglass... which I am REALLY not keen on. The SRS-Tec bumper does look the part, though.

I may end up doing something custom, possibly grafting in one of Maxton's items (which I'm planning for the other thing...).

Something I forgot about... Fog light switch! My TDI didn't come with front fogs, but now I have the Bora R fogs, I need to do some retrofitting. I got a loom from Kufatec (courtesy of an ebay.de reseller), and set about acquiring the bits to build my custom switch.

Polo 6R switch is the base, to get the brushed aluminium switch cap. However, I also wanted to have both fog light indicators illuminated (not standard), and furthermore illuminated in red, as I want as much of the illumination in the car as possible to be red, and the Polo switch uses red and green. A modified circuit board would be required, so I've acquired a front fog switch from a mk4, and another from an Audi A4 B6. After frankensteining them together, I'll have a nice aluminium capped switch with front and rear fog light indicators lit with red LEDs. Lovely!

So, that bring me up to date on the TDI. Cluster and fog light switch still need to be finished, and the fog light loom needs putting in, which are planned for the summer. Not much left to do on the TDI now, as it's pretty much where I intend to stop (at least for the foreseeable future), as I have something else to start work on. There a couple more things I want to sort first, though. The powder-coat/lacquer on the wheels is totally shagged, so they'll be getting a refurb in the near-ish future, and I'll finally be getting some spacers for them too (same plan as before, around 20mm each side out back, 12mm each up front). I'm also going to be fitting some Beetle RSI aluminium door pins when I redo the door skin seals (preventatively) on the other doors.


The reason for scaling down the plans for the TDI? I have another project car. Another Bora, in fact.

A 4motion.

It's a late 51-plate car, with a BDE engine, with 75k on the clock. Black, of course. Decent spec: Sport cluster (half-FIS), cloth Sport seats, Climatronics, 12V outlet in the boot, boot CD multichanger, and front fogs.

Detracting points: the halogen headlights are heavily yellowed, the wheels are pretty banged up (although not too bad, but deffo would want a refurb), the walnut trim has been covered with carbon fibre effect vinyl (looks naff), and the handbrake is a bit looser than I'd like.

The biggest bad point, though: the gearbox is jammed in 4th gear. Symptoms fit the classic selector fork sheared rivet fault.

I don't see this as that much of an issue, though. The gearbox problem dropped the price to something quite reasonable, and I have no issue with the car sitting in storage for a while until I have the tools and parts to fix it (it's a Forever Car). Plus, gearbox mods would be required for my ultimate plan, so this gives me an excuse to do them earlier.

So, plans... first and foremost, obviously, is fix the gearbox and get it drivable again. I'll be fitting one-piece steel forks and bronze sliders to fix the fault, but also doing the 4th gear support mod AND 4th gear shaft insert (hopefully eliminating the issue there completely), and adding shims if needed as well. Depending on availability of funds, I may fit a front LSD at the same time (though I may leave this until later, and do front and rear LSDs at the same time).

Sorting the headlights will be the second task. I'm not going to bother refurbishing the stock halogens, just going to replace them. Preference would be to retrofit OEM Xenons, but halogen projectors would be acceptable. Generally, the early stages of the project will follow the TDI: as much black as possible, and as many R32 parts as possible. Hella don't make the smoked rear light clusters anymore, but I'm currently working on some plans for custom rear lights.

Bought a few things already, although with the car in storage I'm not doing anything about fitting them yet, just collecting. So far I've acquired:

1. Bora R bumper (yup, got another genuine one), with grilles and fog lights.
2. Oettinger Boot Spoiler.
3. LCR splitter.
4. R32 pedal set, including dead pedal.
5. Net Optic dash trim kit, with door handles.
6. R32 Gearstick gaiter (no knob, I have something else planned).
7. Full FIS Sport cluster.
8. Headlight washer kit (jets, 5.5L reservoir, etc.).
9. Aero Wipers.

So, the Grand Plan, then... I bought the car for the chassis, not the engine. The 2.8 will be going, but I will be sticking with a VR6. I want a 3.6. Preferably an R36 engine from a Passat, but the "basic" 3.6 VR6 should suffice, as I plan to build the engine to the Nth degree, and strap at least one turbo to it. Plan to go balls-out on this one.

A few pics:

That's all for now.

 

[rainbird]

Oh HELL yes! Should be a great project, and an absolute weapon once done too by the sounds of it.

 

[northpole]

What the F!!!!! where did you find the v6 4motion i've been looking for one of those for years and decided in the end to stop getting the mk4 platform cars because they'll cost me way to much money... (had the exact same intention as you passat r36 engine, make it a 3.8 slap a turbo kit on it) also the fact that i need at least an estate stopped me from getting one anyway...

been looking at passat estates but decided against them too as finding one at a decent price is just a no can do.

 

[NorthernPhil]

Oh HELL yes! Should be a great project, and an absolute weapon once done too by the sounds of it.

Heh, don't get too excited, it's going to be a slow one. The engine is going to be a couple of grand on its own (for an R36), and the Haltech ECU I plan to use is another couple. Need to have a big saving period first.

What the F!!!!! where did you find the v6 4motion i've been looking for one of those for years and decided in the end to stop getting the mk4 platform cars because they'll cost me way to much money... (had the exact same intention as you passat r36 engine, make it a 3.8 slap a turbo kit on it) also the fact that i need at least an estate stopped me from getting one anyway...

been looking at passat estates but decided against them too as finding one at a decent price is just a no can do.

I put a post on a few FB groups, and got a hit in a couple of hours. Was quite surprising, to say the least, as I thought my requirements (black, BDE engine, sub-100k miles) might be too tight.

There was a nice silver 4mo on ebay last month. Good spec, and had nearly a full Oettinger body kit (missing only the roof spoiler and grille), even had the Oettinger wheels. The guy wanted 6k for it, though.

 

[Projordio]

Hi Phil, love how far the builds came already and the idea of a 3.6 is great. Ive gotta ask where did you find that oettinger roof spoiler. Ive been searching for so long but i dont have the contacts that you clearly do. Any help in getting one brought over would be amazing as im pretty adament about never buying reps. Cheers

 

[NorthernPhil]

Hi Phil, love how far the builds came already and the idea of a 3.6 is great. Ive gotta ask where did you find that oettinger roof spoiler. Ive been searching for so long but i dont have the contacts that you clearly do. Any help in getting one brought over would be amazing as im pretty adament about never buying reps. Cheers

I contacted Oettinger directly, as they still had the roof spoilers on their webstore (like the grilles before). Unfortunately, it appears I bought the last one (again). Got to rely on ebay and cars being broken now, I'm afraid.

Also, two more acquisitions for the 4mo this week: a pair of genuine 5-door R32 skirts, and... an Oettinger roof spoiler. 😬

 

[Projordio]

I contacted Oettinger directly, as they still had the roof spoilers on their webstore (like the grilles before). Unfortunately, it appears I bought the last one (again). Got to rely on ebay and cars being broken now, I'm afraid.

Also, two more acquisitions for the 4mo this week: a pair of genuine 5-door R32 skirts, and... an Oettinger roof spoiler. 😬

Yes you was right mate, I managed to get in contact with oettinger in Germany and they've confirmed that have no more stock left for boras anymore . Absolutely gutted 😂