stephen8512's Candy White Golf R

[stephen8512]

These to go in next... (not my photo, but you know what they are)



Initially planned to upgrade just the tweeters with the Focal units and upgrade the 6.5" speakers front and rear to some similar Focal units or Boston Acoustics. Might even go as far as Dynamatting the whole car and changing the headunit to a larger screen Alpine touchscreen unit with Nav, but we'll see.

I'm not a big audiophile and just a nice simple speaker + tweeter upgrade would suffice for me. Dont need a big doof doof in the back. Might do a DIY install on the speakers myself. Taking apart the door cards and installing the focal tweeters doesnt sound all that difficult, plus theres a YouTube step by step guide already so most of the work is already done for me!

[stephen8512]

Got this today.



Forgive the ****ty pic...but the car is cleaned. Snowfoamed, washed, waxed and polished, re-nanolexed the wheels and the windows

[stephen8512]

Finally fitted the MK7 Climatronic unit. With my trim pieces being painted in Gloss Black, I had to get the trim surround of the MK7 climatronic unit painted as well to match. Greg at Baileys Smash opposite Exoticars got it done for me.

Install was very easy. Remove the trim, remove old climatronic unit, install new one, check to see if it all works, put the trims back in place, done!

Before :



In progress :





After :






Small cosmetic update but makes it look a little neater.

Next DIY : Focal IFVW speakers.

[stephen8512]

Recently made a trip to Heasmans Steering to get my coilover and camber sorted. I wanted the rear raised a touch and the camber to be even on all sides (the left had more camber dialled in than the right for whatever reason). The left rear was a touch lower than the other side and every time there was a big dip in the road, the wheel would scrub on the passenger side only.

Doug measured up the coilovers and firstly made sure that all 4 corners were set at the same height. Then, he dialled in around -3 camber for the rear and -1.5 at the front. Now, no more scrub issues!



This sweet R35 GTR was getting some suspension work done too...



Heasmans always seems to have nice cars such as this Camaro and a Shelby Cobra putting out 1000hp! You can also see peeking out a Fiat Abarth 695 SS peeking out from the side



With the suspension finally being sorted and no scrubs (haha TLC >D), decided to give the car a wash. I was running low on car shampoo and other car wash products so I recently went a bit nuts and bought a bunch of products by DodoJuice from CarCareProducts.



Gave the car a wash using the DodoJuice "Born to be Mild" shampoo. I used to use Duragloss before this but I found this to be just as good. Very strong concentrate.



Also used the DodoJuice "Ferrous Dueller" and sprayed it on the wheels. This is meant to lift of any iron or brake dust deposits and it will turn purple after about five minutes of spraying as it dissolves the iron fallout/brake dust. It was really quick and easy. Just spray, wait 5-10 minutes for it to do its thing and then rinse off.



After drying the car, I applied the DodoJuice "Red Mist" detailer, which is a synthetic spray sealant meant to give existing wax layers an extra layer of protection as well as improving the water beading characteristics. Also used the DodoJuice "Clearly Menthol" glass cleaner a go. Streak free and smells quite nice. Very impressed with the DodoJuice range.

Finally, added a small detail to the car which I think looks great



Close Up

[stephen8512]

Few new additions coming to the car :

1) Will be ditching my trusty DEFI gauge in place of this P3 vent gauge with blue/white dials from the group buy (thanks Frazza)




2) OZ Futura 18" wheels. Going to rebuild these. Overall very good condition with little to no blemishes on the face of the wheel however it will require a respray. Planning on keeping these as OEM as possible so will prob respray in silver. One barrel has a very very tiny crack on the edge of the barrel (about 0.5cm) but easily fixed, and the lips are worn so they will be replaced with some brand new polished lips. Some TLC and care will be needed to bring these wheels back to life. Current specs are 18x8 +35 and 18x9 +45, but after rebuilding, final specs will be 18x8.5 +40 all round, which should theoretically sit quite flush and still be functional for daily driving purposes.

Pic for reference. Should look like this when completed :




3) Still looking for some BBK's, namely TTRS/RS3 brakes. Haven't had the chance to measure up other brands such as AP/Alcon/Brembos but I'm in no rush...

[stephen8512]

So got this today from BKS Tuning.



Going to DIY doing the reverse light on the driver side so that I can have dual reverse lights and get rid of the useless rear fog. Going to replace the bulbs with B1 Hybrid white bulbs instead of Bold Sport LED.



I currently have my reverse bulb installed with one of these and it's been great and no chance of bulb out error on the dash unless it actually dies on me.

Thanks to Lucas (Lucas_R) for his help and assistance in answering my questions. Hoping to get this DIY done some time this week....

[stephen8512]

Saturday shenanigans with Bima. Decided to swap wheels for fun. His White BBS LM 18x9 +35 and my Black SSR Professor SP1 19x9 +37 on his GTI. I have to say, I have never seen a static MK6 GTI look that good with my wheels. Stance was on point for his. For mine, if I were to rock the LM's, need to lower it a bit more...







TO be honest, I think the SSR SP1's looked epic on his GTI more than it does on my R, and vice versa...the LM's looked much better on my R than it does on his GTI IMO... Wheel swap perhaps? Going to wait till I get the OZ Futuras rebuilt, then we'll see. Might look at trying to find a set of LM's and rebuilding them to make a square set of 18x9's...

[stephen8512]

Got around to doing the dual reverse light mod. Ever since i saw it on Lucas_R's build thread here when he had a Golf R, it's something I've always wanted to do.

I decided to DIY this but I had never done any soldering before and I'm pretty crap when it comes to wires and electrics. Big, big thanks to Lucas (Lucas_R) and Jeff (In Black) for answering all of my newbie queries and providing help and assistance as well as photos as a guide on how I should tackle this.

In hindsight, it's not a very difficult DIY mod and a seasoned expert/professional could probably do it in about 30 minutes. I decided to take as much time as I needed, making sure I dont miss anything.

I tried to take some photos as I went along but my phone battery died on me so couldnt get many pics, but here we go.

You will need:
- Driver side inner tail light with reverse bulb (you can buy the inner from BKS-tuning)
- Soldering iron with solder (I got mine from Jaycar)
- Wire stripper and a small blade/craft knife (Wire stripper available from Jaycar and blade/craft knife available from Bunnings)
- Two-core power cable about 2 metres (I also got this from Jaycar. 7.5A rated)
- Replacement reverse bulbs (They are a W16W bulb and you can either get LED's from Bold-Sport or if you want to keep it Halogen but still have white light, I opted for B1 Hybrid, made in Japan)

1) The very first thing I did was watch this video as I was a complete newbie to all this and had no clue what to do. This was great.




2) Remove the driver side inner by popping out the plastic cover from the boot and un-screw the two nuts holding the housing onto the bootlid. Also, remove the bootlid trim. This will require some force to do as you will pull on it and it will feel as though it will break or snap but gently keep applying more and more force until it pops out. Doing this will allow you to hide the wire underneat and zip-tie it all together to give it a neat finish later on.




3) There is a plastic latch on the sides holding the tail light housing on to the bootlid. To get this off, simply pull down with some gentle force. It should just pop out. Be careful not to break any tabs.




4) Once you remove the housing, the back of the tail light should look like this. We will be splicing into the yellow cable and the thicker of the two brown cables :




5) Take the ends of your 2 core power cable, get your wire stripper and get rid of the coating to expose the wires underneath.




6) With your craft knife/blade, carefully pierce the plastic cover to expose the wires underneath. Be careful not to damage too many of the wires underneath. Do this for both yellow and thick brown cable, and for both inner tail lights.




7) When you're done, it should look something like this :




Get the exposed wires from your cable and wrap it around the exposed wires from the tail lights and get it ready for soldering. For my application, the red cable went to the yellow tail light cable and the white cable went to the thicker brown cable. Solder away. Repeat for the other side




9) Mount the inner tail lamps back onto your boot lid. (my soldering job probably looks super crap! hahaha!). Make sure you cover the newly soldered connections with some electrical or insulation tape.




10) When it's all mounted, it should look like this. As you can see, I had a lot of excess cable left but thats alright as I neatly arranged it against the existing wires and zip-tied it all together so it doesn't rattle inside when I put the bootlid trim back on. At this point I also swapped out the OEM bulbs for the white halogen bulbs from B1 Hybrid.




That's it! Now, you have dual reverse lights and no more people saying to you that you have a light out when reversing! (excuse the crap picture quality)



Only thing is, if you were to pull the headlight switch to activate the rear fogs, both rear reverse lights will come on but only for a short period of time. It will turn off after about 5 seconds and you will get a "bulb out" error on the dash. For me, this is not a big thing because I have NEVER used the rear fog light ever. Even if you do pull the switch out and get that bulb out error on the dash, it goes away when you turn the car off and start it back up again.

Again, massive thanks to Lucas_R and In Black for helping me with all my queries.

[stephen8512]

Thanks to Ray for this photo :