Poyta's GT

[poyta]

The Basslink needs a number of things to work. One is a dedicated power supply straight from the battery, a ground wire, a remote line ( basically a 12V powersource that only comes one when when you switch the car sterero on ) and some kind of sound input from the stereo. Apparently the Basslink will accept high level inputs - ie the signal from your rear speakers but I found that this didn't work very well ( more on that later ) or it can accept low level inputs - ie RCA outputs. Most aftermarket decks will have both a remote line ( usually a blue wire ) and RCA outputs out the back of the stereo making things easy but the standard VW stereo that the GT comes with sadly does not. I found this out the hard way - by removing the factory unit - here's how its done.



To remove you need to start by taking the top windscreen diffuser grille out. No screws, its simply clipped in but use a rubber coated screw driver or something soft otherwise you'll dent your plastic surround. Once this grille is out you can see all the screws that hold the aircon vent box. Unscrew these and the box comes out. Then you take out the radio / air con dials surround which is clipped in. Give it a good yank and it will pop out exposing the screws holding the stereo in. Unscrew these and out she comes ( make sure to remove the antenna and the large plug from the back of the stereo ).



Using a voltage tester pen I was quickly able to figure out that there is no remote line in the factory loom and there's no RCA leads which was not good and really made removing the unit almost pointless but while I had it out I though I may as well get the sound input so I got this from the wires from the rear speakers. I can't remember exactly which ones were the rear speaker wires but you can find them here

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I soldered some some new wire leads into these and ran them through the car eventually to the back where the Basslink would sit ( you can see these as the green/white wires in the photo above ).

Next is to add a dedicated power source from the battery to the basslink. I bought some 8G red power lead from Jaycar along with some end terminals. Below is photo of the path of the powerlead. If you remove the black plastic windscreen drain from the inside of the engine bay it will reveal a convenient hole in the firewall that leads into the cars interior. Run your lead through there and into the car. I also ran an inline fuse right next to the terminal end and connected it to one of the battery connectors as shown.



Then its a matter of running your power lead and your wires from the speaker input to the back of the car where the basslink is found. The remote line I managed to get from the cigarette lighter socket thats in the boot - this only powers on when the ignition is turned on so it was perfect. For the ground wire I again used an 8G cable from jaycar ( black this time ) and just earthed to the nearest bolt I found in the boot.

Initially I connected the speaker leads directly into the basslink for its signal but for some reason this didn't work - the signal must be very weak as the basslink only turned out with a high volume so I had to come up with another alternative. A High to Low level converter was bought again from Jaycar for about $15. Basically you run your speaker leads into this and it creates two RCA outputs so you can run RCA leads out of it into the basslink.



Then it just a matter of connecting all the leads in the basslink and mounting the unit into the boot of the Golf. When installed it end up looking like this -



As you can see it doesn't take up much room at all but adds a substantial amount of extra bass to the standard audio system. Don't get me wrong you're not going to be heard DOOF DOOFING from miles away and you won't go resonating any neighborhood fences with it but It will add a nice deep kick that can be felt in your gut. Like I said before the fantastic thing is that it can be removed quite easily and when it comes time to sell my Golf it will be going into the next car.