Andy Mac's Passat project thread - Expensive month.......

Well guys here is my build thread, I got some interesting plans over the next few months if cash allows, hope u like it!

Bit of back story....

Bought the Passat as a replacement daily so I could put my Escort cabriolet in the garage and start workin on her.

The Escort


A 1.9 tDI B5.5 130ps bought in January 2012 with 92,000 miles, FVWSH and new clutch but the daft woman who had it before me never had a cambelt change so that was first thing (was crackin all the way round so was very lucky) the car was tidy as hell, couple of scratches that will be easy to sort, no visible rot (touch wood) and no dents, fairly clean interior but could do with seats cleaning.

Was rather cheap and I found out why on the way home from manchester to rotherham where i live, turbo kept cutting out and going into limp mode so after getting a vag-com cable and loads of help from Desertstorm we found it to be the MAP sensor so a quick trip to Darkside Developments in Barnsley and £25 later the car was flying down the M1 back home, dealer thought turbo was F****d so he sold it cheap, cost me £25 to put right - WIN!

Heres what she looked like when I first bought her





Then I sprayed the door strips black as they were looking a tired grey



Then got a good deal on some 16" audi a4 wheels (sset of 5 with good tyres) £100 just to put me on until I get some 17's or 18's


A few night pics





The day she clocked over to 95,000 miles


Then my first visit to lowdownvw.com meet at Meadowhall Retail Park Sheffield


Then it was time to debadge the rear
Before



And after



I also took the VW badge off, took it apart and re-sprayed the backing in black as it was looking a tired grey like the other plastics on the car lol


And thats it for now!

Hope you like and all comments welcome, she's still a work in progress so keep an eye on her!

Thanks guys,
Andy

for some reason only half of every photo is visible? Not sure why so sorry about that guys.

Can a mod shed any light on this?

Yeah, nice thread BTW, jareds working on it summet to do with the forum software not liking big photos, am sure he'll sort it though :-) must admit I'm not rate good with the setup

Probably somethin to do with the html coding, if he has no luck I can put u in touch with a lad who writes html code he's a mate of mine and can probably find the problem lol, also i think you're running the same forum template as UKPassats and the same pics show full on there so maybe get in touch with Ant (vwnutant) who is the forum creator he's a sound guy so will no doubt help out

Well guys its about time i added these pictures as these few bits have been done for a while
now but I haven't got round to uploading the pictures yet (-|

A few little cosmetic mods just to bring me a little closer to what I want her to look like

First of all, tinting the rear lights, E-tech lens spray (about £5 off ebay)

during the job (had an idea hence the electrical tape :wink: )


Fitted to the car - they need to be a bit darker imo to make the clear strip in the middle more effective






Then a new front grille was sourced, same as my standard one but I didn't want to ruin
mine so bought this to have a go with -




Sprayed up black and fitted back to the car -






One of my fave pics, taken while I was on holiday back in august with a bit of drizzle on the car lol -


And the last pic for now -




got an awesome deal on these brand spankin new FK Coilies, £100 - jobs a good un!

So a couple of weeks ago the weather wasn't bad and in the space of about 6hrs
(pathetic I know lol) I managed to fit the fronts only lol, main reason
being I was windin the nut the wrong way so it just kept goin lower
(it was already too low when I first put it back on the ground)
but I realised my mistake and wound it up a bit :











Then on Tuesday I managed to get the rears done and she was sittin ok :



After a bit of driving she settled in a bit more :



Now as you can see from one of the pics further up, the engine undertray is near
enough touchin the floor so the front will be gettin wound up a bit to stop her
scrapin the tray on bumps etc and the rears will be goin down a bit cos I'm not
happy with how high the back end sits.

A bit of trial and error but hopefully in the next few days I'll get her to the
perfect ride height :-bd

Any comments welcome :ymhug:

Thanks for lookin

Andy

Had a bit of a disaster a couple of days later, was outside lowering the rear coilies an raising the fronts and while I was doin the rears I had it up on axle stands with the car in gear but it must not have engaged gear (possibly coz of dmf? not sure) I was jackin the rear hub up to take the weight off the strut and the car decided to move sideways toward me, I shouted the gf to push the car back onto the now 'leaning' axle stands while I put the wheels on as a precaution, then it swayed again and crashed down to the floor wedging the axle stands underneath, luckily no damage was caused as i got the wheels on in time, be it only with 2 nuts but better than none at all. I carried on with the job making sure the car was definitely in gear and locked on the clutch (I stalled it to make sure) but I was very lucky not to have the whole car on top of me crushing my legs under the rear hub x_x

All in all I was very lucky and I realised after that the reason it swayed to the side and not forward is cos I had chocks under the front wheels but the one on the front driver side had moved allowing the front driver side wheel to roll forward.

I'm sharing this as I dont want anyone to have the same problem and maybe not be as lucky as me in the way of damaging the car or even worse, damaging themselves :0

As you can see from the picture below taken after the scary incident, the cardboard was where I was sat at the side of each wheel, which gives you an idea of how much the car moved.



Just be careful

Andy

A few new pictures, after a few days I raised the front as it was way too low and dropped the back a bit as it was a bit too high, I'm pretty satisfied with how she sits now, might go a bit lower at the back in the near future but I'll wait till it settles in a bit to see how she goes :-bd

Nearly killed myself in the process but the work paid off and she also had a wash to celebrate haha















Hope you like!
As always, any comments appreciated!

Thanks,

Andy

I like this a lot wish I'd bought a passat insted of bora

Thanks mate appreciate it, don't underestimate the bora tho u can get em lookin sweet, same situation as the passat the right mods can make em look good but some things look propa gash lol we just gotta be careful haha, so far I'm jealous of your wheels, turbo-back exhaust, remap and leather seats haha so u must be doin somethin right! Was it you i was talkin to at the lowdown meet back in may/june i think? I was askin about wheels and lowering, I thought I was talkin to shrek at first but he hasnt got a bora lol

So a bit of an update, was my birthday in September so I treated myself to some wheels for a little refurb project courtesy of G60steve from UKPassats

As said they defo need a refurb as they look like they've been subjected to a cheesegrater attack haha but I wanted to change the colour anyway so it's all good, they have 2 good tyres and 2 will need replacing so I'm on the lookout for some 205/40/17 or possibly 215/40/17 as long as its not gonna mess up the traction control being a slightly different size to the front tyres, they're Rs8 replicas and they need some centre caps too but the price was very fair! As you all know one needed a bit of welding as it had a couple of small cracks but £40 later and a trip to APTyres in Parkgate this was the result - guaranteed too!





I also thought it was about time to sort the rear light tints out as they looked a bit crap so I bought another can of E-tech lens tint and got to work, the end result being this-




I am much happier with this result than the previous attempt, they're as dark as I wanted them and they have a nice gloss sheen too so I'm just waiting for some led bulbs to arrive (any day now lol)

I also ordered some flyeyes cos for some reason I couldn't get on the spi-vision website to buy any so £8 later and this was the result of about 1hr careful cutting and sticking work-





I was proud of myself for being patient and taking the time to make sure I had no noticeable parts due to cutting too small but this stuff is very easy to work with and easy to peel back if you make a mistake.
I love how it just makes the front of the car look much darker and meaner and ties in the black grille nicely as opposed to standard lenses.

Here are a couple of 'poser' shots lol




Hope you like the small improvements guys, this is a build on a budget and as always any comments are appreciated!

Andy

actually i realy, realy like this, theres somthing gangstar about it, keep up the good work mate,
close call with the car moving on the jacks i've had this happen a few times, once was rate funny cos it trapped my arms and i couldn't move, well it wasn't funny then but it is now when i think about it lol,
i like the rear lights as well, its a little diffrent with that line, somthin i used to do to get a rate good shine on tininted rear lights was a layer of laqure, just a light layer, nothing drastic but it makes them shine rate well

Thanks mate, the 'murdered out' look is kinda what I'm goin for hehe, I think Tank was tellin me about u gettin ur arms trapped he said it was piss funny lol was a comical story! I was thinkin laquer at first cos there was no shine at all but then got told that the e-tech stuff that I have used is removable (maybe thinners or somethin) if I ever wanna take it off (mot/plod etc) but if i cover it in laquer it wont come off without rubbin the whole light down but like I said, the shine it has to it now it's had another 8 coats (18 coats in total) is good an will gleam up when I wash it

headlight tint makes a big difference looks good

cant wait to see the alloys fitted

B47t0n wrote:

headlight tint makes a big difference looks good

cant wait to see the alloys fitted

lol I literally just left the same post on ur thread haha how wierd is that?

Thanks mate, might be a bit yet still gotta 'furb em, had a new idea too hope i can do it cos its gonna be sweeeeeeeeet

Black badge for the rear next ? I hope your idea works too sounds interesting

B47t0n wrote:

Black badge for the rear next ? I hope your idea works too sounds interesting

You read my mind lol, black outer but my 'theme' colour for the backing ;-) hopefully its gonna look awesome :-D

Just waitin for some more money then gonna make a start on the wheels

here you go pal

front and rear half leather seats £80







http://lowdownvw.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=c71b4939e207b58ad4f78e83d2812864&topic=21042.msg247754;topicseen#new

I know mate just seen em lol

Would love em but they're wrong colour haha and don't like the idea of the rear seats not flipping down but if I had the cash I would probably still have em haha

thanks for the thought mate

Small update!

Managed to get me a Decat pipe as a straight swap for my cat and after umming and arring decided I wasn't gonna be able to fit it on my own, asked the garage and they wanted £85 to fit it as "the driveshaft needs to come out, the whole front driverside wheel/suspesnsion assembly needs to come out and the front driver side engine mount needs disconnecting so the engine can be jacked up" which after posting a help thread on ukpassats turned out to be a load of bollocks! So I asked on here for a bit of help and Shrek and Tank offered to lend a helping hand, to be honest they did most of the work as they are much more clevererer than me lol, Slackyboi also made an appearance bringing with him some German Dicks for us all to munch on while helping us out with the job in hand! Needless to say it wasn't long before the stupid wrong way round engine bay of the passat had us swearing and tag teaming a 10mm nut but before long we had the old manstrosity of a cat out and the new one in!

Car sounds exactly the same for now but the increase in power lower down in the revs is incredible and it also seems to have flattened out a nasty torque spike I was getting at around 1400-1600rpm which must be down to delivering a more steady increase in power rather than overboosting slightly at said revs. Again MAHOOOSIVE thanks to Shrek, Tank and Chris (Slackyboi) for helpin me out with my little dilemma and hopefully next will be an Egr delete and mufflerectomy!

No pics for this as I only took 3 and they aren't very interesting but.......

I do have one pic to share with you all!

Happy 100k to Ms Margaret!!!

[img][/img]

Think this means she is officially broken in lol and I look forward to the next 100k in her! She is officially the highest mileage car I have ever owned!

Thanks for readin guys!

Andy

nice one dude, dont worry about it

It's been a while since I updated this thread and not much has happened to her in the way of modifying as most has been mechanical, I did a full service on her a couple of months ago, did it myself so I'm pretty pleased and I know it's done properly, had a new clutch and dual mass flywheel month ago for £420 fitted (mates rates on parts, mates rates on fitting :-D ) The guy that fitted it all said it looked as though the clutch had only just started going and if it was him he wouldn't have bothered changing the flywheel as it looked fine but as I'd already forked out for them I had it all changed for peace of mind, so the question is, how much is a used good condition dual mass flywheel worth? Could do with recuperating some of the cash I've had to part with haha.

Then i did an EGR delete which improved mpg slightly but can't say I've noticed much in the way of performance.

And then.......

The steering rack popped :-(

Had an awful noise coming from the steering whenever i touched the steering wheel and at first I thought it was the steering pump until the RAC came out to advise me it was the steering rack the seals had gone on either side which I still find strange that they BOTH went at either side at the same time.... maybe someone can fill me in on that one....?

Once diagnosed I went through the seven stages of grief including thinking about breaking her for spares, getting quotes to get her fixed etc etc until I was told it was easy to fit it myself so I sourced a second hand rack from a vw breaker (VRVWS Bradford) for the sum of £45 INCLUDING postage! also had tie rods that are in excellent condition still connected!

Got myself a decent socket set for £45, a 10mm 12 point socket, a rubber mallet and some steering fluid and set to work. Started friday evening (2hrs) had 4 hrs Saturday morning and finished it today (6hrs) I was taking it easy as I was on my own and I am a bit of a beginner with stuff like this so I wanted to make sure I did it right. Took ages to take apart and pull the old rack out but the new one slipped in like a dream lol, put her all back together and filled up with CHF 11s (central hydraulic fluid) from halfords and took her for a test drive.....

Drove like a dream, felt good as new and gained a bit of power back too I think as I found a small hose that was disconnected when I was under the bonnet too - bonus! I would like to know what the hose was tho, it was connected to a 3-way connector pretty much directly below the engine coolant reservoir, anyone know what it is?

All in all it was a huge success and has cost me in the region of £60 for all parts needed and about £120 if you include the price of the tools which I won't count cos I been needin some decent tools for ages lol.

Hopefully she'll stop gettin poorly and let me spend some money on some treats for her soon haha!

Thanks for reading,
Andy

Now then Mr mac. Glad to see your still making progress with this, you'll have to bring her to the next meet, send us a text some time I've lost your n.o.

Oh and is expect the small hose to be a vacume hose for the actuator (on your turbo) or at least along them lines, that would make sense to me if you got some more power from re conecting it, but I'm no jedi master when it comes to diesel engines lol

Yea slowly but surely making progress but unfortunately it's all been mechanical shit recently lol not had any spare cash for mods at all, I am gonna come to a meet but as I said I've been bloody skint haha christmas then mot and tax then clutch and flywheel has kept me in the poor house for a few months haha but touch wood she will be serving me well for a while before anything expensive needs doing again haha, when is the next meet? weather is gettin lovely now so we may have to have a road trip somewhere eh?

Yea actuator sounds about right, it's a little round pot that the hose goes to (how clever do I sound haha) and I seem to have found my lost horses lol I'm no diesel or even mechanical expert either but I'm tryin to learn haha.

Hope you're well mate sorry I've been quiet I have been checkin in every now and again I've just not contributed much for a while haha, my number is 07749 655 909 - I'll send u a text aswell so u have it