Poyta's GT

[poyta]

Hi everyone.

I thought I might start a thread and post some details/DIY's and photos of the various modifications that I've done to my GT TDI. Should really have started this back when I started all my mods years ago but I guess its never too late to share my experiences. Hopefully you all will find some use from these. I've got over 3 years to cover so please be patient as I'll add posts when I can.

So lets start all the way back in 2007 with my stock standard 6 speed manual black magic GT TDI - factory extra's I bought with the car was the Latte Leather Interior ( I so wanted beige but its wasn't available ), sunroof, floor-mats and tinted windows.

[poyta]

First modification I did was an easy and cheap one. Red brake calipers! The GT has the same 312mm brakes as the GTi only they're a boring silver finish. The rears on the GT are surprisingly different to the GTi. They're Euro spec 255mm but again they're a boring silver colour.

To get them red the easiest way is to get some VHT Brake Caliper,Drum & Rotor spray. One can at about $13 is more than enough to give them two coats each. You'll probably have half a can left.
I wanted to do this mod immediately because the calipers were brand new and didn't have any built up brake dust- if yours are older now they will be filthy so you need to thoroughly clean them before you spray them. I used Prepsol and some Metho to clean mine and they came up perfect. You could go to the trouble of taking the pads out but I left mine in place, only removed the steel clip and just masked everything up. Two coats and they end up looking like this.



Its just a matter of going around to all four corners and doing the same. Took a good full day to do but a cheap and easy modification that I thinks adds a lot of visual improvement.



God I cringe now looking at the stock height with the standard springs!! And to think that these GT's are already 15mm lower than the stock standard TDI's !!!! This will be fixed later.

[poyta]

The standard GT comes with GT badges on the front but at the back there's really no clear identification that the car is a GT. It simply says 2.0 TDI same as a stock TDI. Enthusiast can identify the car as the GT from the dual exhaust outlets and the "I" in TDI is red. I wanted to make it a bit more obvious so I removed the 2.0 badge and replaced it with a GT badge to clearly spell GT TDI.

GT badge was a $30 item bought from Ebay. There's plenty there but you can also buy them from OEM plus.

The badges are glued on with a double-sided adhesive so they can all easily be removed for a clean look if you prefer. I found the best method to remove the badges was to use dental floss as a saw to cut through the glue. The floss is gentle enough that it wont damage the paint and sharp enough to cut through the sticky glue. Once removed you may need to polish the surface to remove any remaining glue residue and then its just a matter of sticking the new badge on.

[poyta]

Ok - lets get this car lowered. Even with the standard 15mm lowered springs I felt the car sat too high especially with the lower profile 17" wheels fitted to the golf, the gap in the wheel arch was just too much. I looked into getting some coil-overs but they were far too expensive so I searched for a cheaper alternative which is to replace the standard springs with lowered ones. Surprisingly its hard to find some lowered springs for a TDI. There's plenty for the standard Golf, GTi and R32 but little for the TDI. The most common springs that were available were H&R's and Eibach , both available as a 30mm drop and an extreme 50mm drop specification. Australian prices were expensive at around $600 -$700. I searched around on the web and could get either set imported for around $400 delivered so it pays to look around. Luckily I was able to buy a set of 2nd hand Extreme 50mm H&R springs. Jimmyjames from this forum was kind enough to sell me his at about a quarter of the price I could get new one's for. Big thank you to Jimmyjames



As I didn't have access to a hoist and lacking the time to fit them myself I decided to get my local VW mechanic here to install them for me. All up just over $200 to get them fitted.

I believe that the 50mm that H&R specified is an average drop height which takes into account all VW models across the board so with a standard TDI golf you might get the full 50mm but with a GTi thats already 25mm lower than standard you may only get 25mm. That's what's been explained to me anyway but from what I can tell every car is different so the drop will vary. I certainly didn't get the 50mm drop I expected. The front dropped 30mm and the rear only dropped 12mm. I can advise that over a short time this will sag some more and when I recently checked it again I found the front was now 35mm lower and rear was 15mm.





Its not exactly a low-rider now but it certainly looks a lot better. Whereas before I could fit my hand in between the wheel arch I can barely get my fingers in. The photo being dark around the arches doesn't show the drop as clearly but in real life you can easily tell.

I would not recommend this to anyone who thinks they will still have a plush soft ride. The GT was already a bit harder in the suspension than stock but was still very nice and only the biggest hot pots were ever felt. After this drop its a quite harder - over smooth roads you can't feel the difference but hit a bump or a speed hump and you'll get a knock - hit a big pot hole and it will send a nasty knock right up your spine. Everyone that has taken a ride in the car after have commented on how much harder it is so its defiantly noticeable- my wife especially is displeased with my decision as evident by the first pot hole I hit with her in the car when she turns to me and says " What the hell did you do to the car! ". Yes, no hiding this modification from the wife. I guess that's the price you pay for a lowered car.
One benefit is that there is less body-roll so handling on corners is improved - not that handling improvements was my main motivation for doing it but it helps justify the sore ass and angry wife.

[poyta]

Very soon after joining this forum like a lot of TDI owners I became fascinated with idea that you could get some much more power and torque with just a simple modification called a re-flash. I'm not expert on the technicalities of how its done but from what I understand someone takes the maps off your ECU that dictate how the car runs and modifies them to try and extract some more power/torque and apparently improve fuel economy. There seems to be no shortage of companies or products on the market that can do this. You will find hundred of threads on this forum dictating which is better and why but from all my research they all seem to be very similar and claim to deliver similar results. Initially I was recommended by most to go with an APR flash but the local price for one of these was around $2000. In the end I decided to go with a Bluefin from Superchips in the UK.

They claim that I would increase my power by 30hp (20kw) and my torque by 77Nm!!!!!! This would get my standard 125Kw (170hp) up to a GTi matching 145kw (200hp) and my already impressive torque figure of 350NM to 427NM. Apparently I could get an aggressive map setting on mine because my GT is a 6 speed manual and can handle that torque. The DSG gearbox apparently is designed to handle about 400NM so DSG maps are a little more tame.

The beauty of the bluefins were that I would be given a small hand held unit that would store my standard factory Map on it and the modified Map together. I could then plug this unit into my car's diagnostic port like in the photo below



and could change from the standard Map or modified using the controller. This allowed me to go back to stock when I wanted to take the car in for any warranty work and the car would appear unmodified. Big bonus for me is that I could load the modified map by myself without actually taking the car in to a workshop. Another big bonus is that at the time it was very cheap compared to other similar products. I got mine from WA Superchips for $950 delivered to my front door.

The process of putting the map on is pretty simple. You plug it up into the cars diagnostic port - It will download the standard map onto the controller ( takes about 10 minutes ) . Then you install some software on your PC that can communicate to the bluefin controller. The software will get you to set up a personal account to Superchips in the UK where you are given a name, password and email contact to contact Superchips about inquires. The program will ask you plug the BlueFin up to your PC ( you get a USB cable with it ) and it will download your standard map off the controller and will email it automatically to Superchips. They will modify the map for you and will email you back when its done. For me it was done in less than 24hrs. The email advises you to plug up your bluefin again to the PC and start the previously installed software. As soon as I plugged the unit up it began downloading the modified map to the Bluefin controller. Within a few minutes it was done and the Bluefin now had 2 maps on it - standard and modified. After that it was just a case of plugging it up to the car and following the onscreen commands on the controller - basically it ask which map you want and you choose. Takes about 15 minutes to transfer and you're done and ready to go.

Now for the results......to be honest at first I thought what a waste of money. The car didn't really feel that different - certainly not the massive improvement that the salesman told me. Perhaps I could feel something but I have a feeling it was just a placebo effect from having spent nearly $1000 on something. I never tested my 0-100 times or had the car on the dyno so I wasn't sure. I contacted Superchips and explained the situation and they ask if they could have another go at it. The process was repeated and a new map was put on - this time there was a noticeable improvement. I wouldn't say the difference was like night & day as some people claim ( nor can I believe this outrageous claim considering its only supposed to be a 17% improvement ) but it defiantly had more "balls".

1st gear is pretty much useless , you get nothing but wheel spin with anything more than 1/4 throttle and with 2nd gear you can't give more than 1/2 throttle without the tyres firing up. I love this new power increase but I did found it came with a few niggles .

The car is now more often going into a regeneration process to try and regenerate the Diesel Particulate filter. Maybe with the new map the car is producing a lot more soot and therefore requires a more often regeneration process. Also, the car is drinking quite a bit more diesel now – not that I was expecting any miracles but whereas I used to average about 5.8 – 6.0 l/100km I now can’t get any lower than 6.5l/100km. Like I said I’m not too concerned with this as I’m happy to burn a bit more fuel for the extra horses.

Overall, for $950 its not a bad investment but If I got these results from a $2000 APR re-flash I would have been very disappointed and think the money can be better spent elsewhere. I do intend to one day get the car on a dyno and run both standard and modified maps and see the actual difference. When I get this done I'll post up the dyno results.

[Highlander]

My CC 125 TDI bog standard pulled 104KW at the wheels at the 2010 Dyno Day in Sydney. Same for a Mk VI GTD that was there on the day. That should give you something to go on as a standard base when you finally put your chipped car on the dyno

[poyta]

My CC 125 TDI bog standard pulled 104KW at the wheels at the 2010 Dyno Day in Sydney. Same for a Mk VI GTD that was there on the day. That should give you something to go on as a standard base when you finally put your chipped car on the dyno

Yeah like I said I can revert the ECU back to stock mapping to set a standard base but thanks for letting me know what to expect - all dyno's are different anyway and each shows a different figure so you can't really compare - you may have got 104kw at that dyno but try at another dyno and you could get more ( or less ). Hey if anyone knows someone in Adelaide who'd be happy to strap my car up to their dyno let me know.

[poyta]

I was actually quite happy with the standard audio system in the car. The 6 stack in built CD player with MP3 capabilities was nice and I thought worth keeping. It seemed to have a decent set of 3 way component splits in the front and some nice 2 ways in the rear. The 8" drivers in the doors particularly impressed me with some decent kicks from them. Make no mistake its not a high end audio system to compete with the some aftermarket gear but to be honest the only thing it really needs is a something to play the really deep bass notes so a simple solution is..add a sub-woofer.

For those that don't know a sub-woofer is simply a speaker that is specifically designed and tuned to play lower frequencies , anything from 20Hz to about 150Hz and are typically 8" - 15" in diametre and driven by a separate amplifier as they need a lot more power than your general speakers to get them seriously moving. The speaker also needs to be mounted in an enclosure where the frequencies coming out the back are separated from the front and most of them require quite specific sized enclosures ( usually quite large ) . A lot of people go down the path of getting a separate amplifier and a separate sub-woofer in its own enclosure but I wanted to get something that included everything all in one - a subwoofer in a box with its own built in amplifier - typically this is called an Active Subwoofer. There seems to be no shortage of them on the market but the one I chose for me was the Infinity BassLink II -



Details on this unit can be found here -

Infinity - Car Audio

Reasons for this choice was that this was an extremely compact item that wouldn't take up much room. It has a really nice class D 250W amplifier built in ( class D amps are very compact, generate heaps of grunt without much heat but because they are noisy at high frequencies they are only good at running low frequency speakers ), and it had two 10" speakers in there. One of the speakers is actually called a passive radiator, its basically a speaker without the magnet at the back and is not actually driven by the amplifier, it moves from the compressed air inside the enclosure. So essentially when the speaker driven by the amp moves back and forward so does the passive radiator - its not exactly the same as two driven speakers but similar to the outputs that a ported box creates plus it allows a very tiny enclosure. Another big bonus for me is that the whole unit can be removed quite easily to make more boot room if you ever need it ( say a interstate holiday that you need all the boot room ) or if can be transferred to your next car if you ever sell yours.

They were for sale in Australia anywhere from $699 to around $900 but again I got mine from my best friend Ebay - even with the high transport costs to get it from the USA it was only about $400 delivered to my door.

Plugging it up is a little more complicated - I'll attempt a DIY in my next post.

[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

Find Answers

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.

[poyta]

In the end I decided to go with a Bluefin from Superchips in the UK.

Quick update guys - I may be selling my bluefin unit as I'll be looking soon to remove my DPF which means I need to get a completely different re-flash to suit. This means my bluefin will be of no use to me. I can pay to get the unit reset back to zero meaning anyone can use it. I think so long as its got the same diagnostics port as my Golf and its listed on the list of cars that Superchips writes a map for anyone should be able to benefit from it. Still got the box and all. Anyone interested just PM me.