My Black Magic VR6

[Lukey. 381]

Ive had the car back for a couple of weeks now, and had a ride to croft circuit on the weekend and she behaved impeccably.

The interior was a bit grubby after being out of the car for so long so i got some chemical guys fabric clean and did the whole inside of the car while the seats were out aswell as the seats themselves, they came up like new.

The plastics were treated to some carlack68 plastic protector, which doesnt leave a nasty oily film like other back to black type products.

I fitted my new head unit, an Alpine 9886R which is absolutely awesome, feeding the Ipod and USB connectors into the newly fitted and much more handy glovebox, and connected the light up to a permanent live so even if the key is out of the ignition it lights up up you open the glovebox.

[Lukey. 381]

I got my HEL braided hoses on when the brake fluid got changed, but it turned out both rear callipers needed replacing too, so had to have 2 new callipers while i was on, the list of original parts on this car gets lower by the day!!! Along with my balance!!!! :-#

Looking at my wheels even after a good clean they are in pretty corroded and bad shape, and the whole centres are absolutely buggered, beyond repair, the dishes are either bent or dented, the cantre bolts are peeling too and the centre caps are delaminating, so they are being replaced with new ones, dishes, centre bolts and centre caps all with brand new. So these will be sent off next week to be refurbed.

Check the HEL braided hose peeking out behind the disc

They are going off to a place called aerocoat in great yarmouth for their special aeromax finish. I wanted a polished effect like the mk4 GTI anniversary wheels and these guys seem to be the closest finish.

The BBS RC wheels are prone to corrosion, on the stock BBS finish the laquer lifts easily and corrodes the polished face quickly.

Aeromax is actually a powder coat finish so will be a lot tougher, speaking to them i think its a 5 stage process, basically they strip the wheel right back to bare metal, galvanise the wheel, zinc coat it some more then powder coat it then a heavy layer of clear powdercoat to finish.

The finish behaves pretty much exactly what i was looking for. In high light they are a bright polished finsh but in low light they only reflect off the surfaces which gives them a lot of added depth. Seeing as my car is looking pretty mean and moody i think they will compliment each other quite well.

Some BBS RC wheels that have been refurbed by aerocoat.

These 2 appear a lot darker than they are as they are inside, the only decent pics i could find of them without tyres

Stock finish

Aeromax finish

So those will be going off for a redo next week, along with the new centre dishes and centre bolts so the colour match is perfect

All pack up nice and safe and off to aerocoat

When they come back they will have new plastic threads as the original ones are starting to crack

and new carbon fibre BBS centre caps

[Lukey. 381]

This fault code keeps popping up on VAGCOM

00553 - Mass Air Flow Sensor (G70)

31-10 - Open or Short to Ground - Intermittent

Think it means i need a new MAF sensor, which seem to be rare as rocking horse sh*t unless you want to pay a trillion quid from VW direct, even searching the bosch part number and even the corresponding ford galaxy part number dont turn up much luck.

As I have found out, theres 2 types of MAF for the VR6, hot wire and hot film, the hot wire one seems a standard VW car MAF, they all use it, you can buy one for a 2.0 mk4 for half the price of the VR6 one and its the same part no. on the sensor, but the hot film one is a bit more specialist, only 2.8 VR6 engines use it. Just my luck

[Lukey. 381]

Ive replaced my front speakers as the new head unit has managed to overpower them and they buzz crack and reverberate now.

I orginally wanted some Alpine TypeS 171a components that i had a couple years back but they dont make them any more.

So on recommendation i got a set of InPhase XTC6 components as they have similar power handling and will work well with the head unit driving them, and for the money they are well worth it!!

They are the same striking yellow that is shown on the box!

The audiophile bit

I chose to set the speakers in the original locations and use the orignal grilles so as to keep a factory stealth look.

The woofer install was straightforward, i just cut the plugs off the wires and ended them with spades.

They fit straight in with no clearance issues on the back side.

The only mod i had to make for the OEM grilles to go back on was to bend the rim in 2 places to flatten it out.

I customised the factory tweeter mounts to accept the bigger InPhase ones.

First stripped them of the OEM tweeters, capacitor and connectors, then i cut the bigger holes into them till the new outer cases fit like a glove, after test fitting in the car i then fixed them in place with epoxy.

The driver side tweeter went straight in and cleared the grille fine in the stock orientation

The passenger side didnt clear so i flipped the disc 180deg and snipped out 3 new tabs for the clips to lock onto

I put some epoxy on the tabs aswell to make sure it doesnt fall down.

The factory wiring uses the tweeter as a basic crossover, the main input goes to the tweeter which goes through a capacitor to the tweeter and the lower frequencies carry on to the woofer, finding which was the input and woofer is just a case of unplug 1 plug, if the woofer goes off but the tweeter stays on its the woofer plug you took off, if they all go off its the input you took off. In my cae the black and brown wires on 1 side and the white and brown wires on the other were the main input. I had to extend the driver side wires as they werent long enough.

I then connected the relevant wires to their posts on the crossovers and secured them to dash support bars.

between the gloveboxes on the passenger side

and above the fusebox on the drivers side, i removed the vent to gain access to this area.

[aminder 4]

Very nice,

Managed to get any pics of the body work after you've flat and polished it all up?

[Lukey. 381]

its a bit dusty atm and on the stock wheels. When i get my 17s back and on im gonna give the car another once over with the final finishing polish and seal again ( after the feckers at the garage marked up all the panels with their grubby mechanic hands grrr ) and take pics of her in all her glory

had a more pressing issue today too, my Y-pipe was split and had leaked out some coolant, not a lot, a litre at most

So I got the mk4 y-pipe, part 1J0121087B, for a tenth of the price of the VR6 part as that comes with a length of pipe too which i didnt need

Was a bit of a pain in the arse to get met up as its kinked, but got there in the end with me pushing them together right tight and the gf holding the mole grips on the springclip and releasing the clip at the right point, much to her delight, not.

I topped up the system with de-ionized water for the mean time

I got the bonrath intake pipe on after the OEM one split too, its not the easiest thing to fit in the gap you have, im sure they are designed for LHD cars that have a little more room in that area. I put some dense foam between the pipe and suspension turrett to stop them rubbing on one another.

And in the next couple of days ill be doing a cooling system flush and drain and fill back up with fresh up to date G12 plusplus

[Lukey. 381]

I flushed the cooling system which removed a fair amount of crud, before the coolant was a milky opaque pink but after the flush and a good rinse its now clear pink, result.

While the coolant was drained i disconnected the header tank as it had so much crap on it you couldnt see the level of coolant in it. I tried everything to get the crust off the inside, dishwasher tabs, bleach with ice cubes, fizzer bomb things.

In the end the thing that worked was a bottle of coke and some kiddies play sand, then about an hour of rough shaking and swirling then left to stand overnight and then more shaking in the morning sanded/erroded all the shite off. Then i left it in the sink full of boiling water and fairy to soak and then rinsed till all sand was gone. Clear as day now.

[Lukey. 381]

Got my wheels back, in record time too seeing as they said 3 weeks.

To say this is a powdercoat the outcome is awesome, they glint like diamond cut but without the score marks, in sunlight they flash like chrome, in dark they go shadowy and close up they look like polished metal.

As they were stripped down i weighed them, not too heavy either

[Lukey. 381]

Got my wheels on now and given the car another going over with a good wash, polish and good coat of sealer.

And ill tell you what it rides a lot better on the bigger wheels

[Lukey. 381]

After all this hard work my D-Day came, MOT time.

The car flew through without even the hint of an advisory, i would have hoped not after all the work i did but its awesome to know that it actually did.

The tester even commented when examining the chassis, first thing he said under the car was "ooh this has had some money spent on it hasnt it" then "and a fair bit of time and care" when he said that i felt quite proud i can tell you

[VR6Gill 1]

Very nice, job well done!

Its always a nice feeling when your car passes its MOT without a problem!

[*P3nfold* 0]

Looks awesome fella

[VRTDan 0]

A lot of work going in here to keep this VR alive. Well done fella! Looking forward to seeing it done.

[Lukey. 381]

I think it pretty much is done for now, until the engine goes either bang or clatter and it needs a rebuild. Then id prob add a schrick VGI, 268 cams and accompanying remap. Of course id like to go forced but its just too expensive on this engine. Id rather keep the VR6 NA and get a pre 01 20VT S3 aswell

[yakuza racer 16]

YOU ARE MY HERO!!!!!!!!!!

top notch job on the car thus far man!!

[dman78 1]

not gonna lie mate i envy you,thats a peach of a ride,does your rears rub when you're fully loaded,i put 17's on and its giving my inner arch a massage,lol

[Lukey. 381]

Cheers mate, all the comments after my hard work are appreciated :-D

Not that ive noticed no, and i went a fair way to croft circuit, bout 100 miles, with a bootfull and 4 adults in the car and it only caught once on the inner edge of the arch lip, just got the dreaded scrape sound and there was a faint line on the offside tyre when i got out and had a look.

[Craig77 0]

Dude looks great! I love the finish on the wheels!where did you get it done?ive got another full set of TT comps here and after the last painstakingly refurb ill rather get some one elso to do it!

[Lukey. 381]

Its a company called aerocoat in great yarmouth if you google aerocoat they are the first hit, my wheels have the aeromax coating. This is a powdercoat not just a polished finish, so is much tougher and is well weather sealed

[Lukey. 381]

Sprayed up my grille badge in a different colour cos i fancied a change, its saab rose quartz, a kind of champagne silver that flips through various red shades, the pics dont do it any justice at all its way different in person, stands out much more than the stock chrome, not sure about it yet, ill see if it grows on me.

And i sprayed up every cap and the cover in the engine bay to make it all look a bit tidier and together, id like to get the inlet manifold polished up too at some point to carry on the polished part of the theme. Got my new Bosch S5 battery on too, which feels a lot more powerful than the old battery i was squeezing every last bit of life out of. :-D

[Lukey. 381]

Replaced the blue white single big LED sidelights i had bought in a hurry when i was just wanting the lights working, with some better super white super bright ones.

i started out with this style,

but when i bought them the big diameter head was too big to fit through the hole in the headlight reflector so sent them back

then i got some of this style,

which kept blowing very quickly, but thats always been the problem with this kind i have found

so i ended up with these,

and they have been reliable, but i didnt really ever like the blue-ness of them and they were very dim, this was made worse by the crosshairs in the glass of the lights to darken them down as they are smoked models

I had a look on all the led websites last week and found that now they do this style in 233 fitment, with groups of 3 leds in 1 yellow spot on 4 sides and the top, before i could only find them in 501 fit and used them before in different cars with very good results,

They were a bit tricky to fit as the bit white ring in the middle was too big diameter aswell,

but i got the stanley knife out and shaved the plastic ring down, at the same time putting a massive 4mm deep slice in my thumb which had to go get surgically superglued back together as the cut was so clean edged it wouldnt stick back together and stop bleeding lol funnily the glueing stung massively more than the cut itself, which surprisingly didnt at all.

Im much happier with the result

Old dim LED sides and compared with the headlights

The camera actually picked them up way brighter than real life heh.

Newer better LED sides and compared with the headlights, you can easily see the improvement

[hvr6 88]

very nice :-) is she your daily?

[Lukey. 381]

yea shes been my daily driver since the end of august 09, and i think shes come a long way from what she was

[hvr6 88]

very impressive mate! some serious work gone into this, you bringing her along to any shows this year?

[Lukey. 381]

unfortunately i have never had the time to go to any shows when they were on no :-(