The current state of play.......

Lowered 35mm all round,17in RS4 reps,Kamei mesh sport grill,de-badged,de-aerialed,smoothed front and rear bumpers,painted Volvo Signal yellow,touch switch operated door handles and stealth front side repeaters.

Pioneer DEH-P9800BT,Vibe Bass 4 monoblock amp driving SNG audio Jatt JT12 with 900 watts RMS in a 2.5 cu.ft vented box tuned to 34 Hz.,Vibe Stereo Four driving Image Dynamics CD1 horn loaded compression drivers (ooooohh get me!) with 220 watts RMS each and Vibe Stereo 4 driving a pair of old skool USD 821 8in midbass also with 220 watts RMS into each one.

Winner of best of show for most innovative and unique mod (my touch switch operated electronic door handles) at the Uk-mkivs Mega meet 2010. 

HOW AND WHY TO UPGRADE YOUR MK.4S SPEAKERS

HOW TO TEST       

HOW TO CHOOSE AND INSTALL AMPLIFIERS  

HOW TO INSTALL AFTERMARKET REMOTE CENTRAL LOCKING        

HOW TO MAKE FIBREGLASS PODS          

HOW TO REMOVE THE FRONT BUMPER         

HOW TO REPAIR A BROKEN WINDOW REGULATOR          

HOW AND WHY TO CHANGE YOUR HEAD UNIT            

HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT SUBWOOFER BOX           

HOW TO GET THE BEST FROM YOUR CAR'S CHARGING SYSTEM

HOW TO MAKE A CUSTOM FIT SUBWOOFER BOX

HOW TO GET RID OF UNWANTED NOISE FROM YOUR CAR STEREO

HOW TO FIT REMOTE CENTRAL LOCKING TO A MK.4 GOLF

THE ONBOARD DIAGNOSTICS THREAD

Why a mk.4 Golf I hear you all ask? Well after a mk.1 Cortina 1500GT, a Singer Gazelle, , a Vauxhall Viva estate, a mk.3 Cortina 2000GXL,a mk.4 Cortina 2.3,a mk.2 Capri 3 litre X pack, a couple of mk.1 3 litre GXL Capris, a Vauxhall Viva HB with a Rover V8 in it, a mk.1 Escort Mexico with 3.1 Ford V6 in it, a Honda Prelude, a mk.4 Astra diesel estate and a couple of Peugeot 306s, it was obviously next on the list!

Back in 1998 (or was it 1997?) I got to work one of the very first batches of mk.4s in the country, lots of basic models that didn’t have remote locking fitted and needed it, and as they were even then much sought after as repmobiles, lots of Nokia hands free car kits. I was immediately impressed by the build quality and attention to detail from the very first one I ever worked on (a reflex silver 5 door if my memory serves me correctly), in fact more so than any other new car model I’d ever worked on before this. In fact I was so impressed that I promised myself that as soon as the price came down enough I would buy myself one. I’d never payed Golfs much attention before this as they always struck me as just another medium sized hatchback car, but the mk.4 Golf was a cut above the rest with an air of German quality about it that nothing else at that time had in my opinion.

What else impressed me? The headlights were a work of art and should really have been hung in an art gallery, even the more modest models had line fit remote locking and a very posh remote key fob, they were the first cars to be fitted with the equivalent of a Thatcham category 1 alarm on the production line, along with the Audi A3 they were the first cars to use the then revolutionary CAN-bus system that saw the mk.3 Golfs wire count cut by about a half, and of course those front doors with the then unique fully removable inner skin that made them one of the best mobile speaker cabinets I’d ever heard, the 11th post down in THIS thread explains some more about this.

2006

So I waited, and I waited, and I waited until luckily the most minor of roundabout scrapes saw my Peugeot 306 written off and me looking for a new car. It was early 2006 and I really wanted a 3 door Tornado red or Jazz blue GTI non-turbo petrol engined car with air con. My 306 was written off sooner than expected, meaning I had buy what ever I looked at that day. Most of what I’d looked at before this point had been at London private car dealers, all of whom would have been very much at home at an audition for an Arthur Daley replacement and were selling cars that fitted perfectly with his reputation, or private sellers who ALL insisted on proudly claiming that it only had lady owners before this, or was only ever driven by their wife/girlfriend/mother/grand mother/sister etc. Why so many sellers find it sooooooo important to emphasise this point above all others when selling a car is beyond me.

February 16^th 2006 and my 306 is officially a cat D and I have to buy another car ASAP, so back to Farnham we go to for a final look at this three door,  satin silver GTI with 88000 miles on the clock, six previous owners, first registered on April 1^st 1999 and an after haggling price of £3250.

The only things wrong with were a small patch of lacquer flaked off one front wing, both rear quarter panels had been blown in a different shade of silver to the rest of the car, the tailgate had quite a few scratches on it where a cycle carrier had been attached, it had an annoying flat spot or hesitation/bogging down kind of problem below 3000 RPM which despite numerous attempts I still haven’t solved, and it had one of those awful Gamma tape deck things with this weird function that increased the distortion the faster I went, changed it to my Pioneer DEH-P9400MP before work the next morning before the neighbours found out and mocked me in a really cruel way.

About a month into owning ‘KDG the OEM 15in alloy wheels were changed for a set of 7 X 17in Audi RS4 replicas wrapped with Pirelli P6000 225/45/VR17 tyres and the windows were very subtly tinted at 50% all round, all courtesy of the shop I work in. That was it for visible external mods for a few years until I got the sound system exactly how I wanted it.

I quickly fitted the remains of the sound system from my 306 until I could get my schizzle together and do it properly, for now just a JBL 150 watt amp and cheapo JBL 12in sub in someone elses home made box.

It took me this long to find time to lock myself in the workshop every night for a week or so after work to find out exactly what makes these cars tick, at the same time I fitted a Sigma cat.1 alarm and ran all the cabling for the “proper” sound system,4 gauge power cable along the left hand side of the car (1^st used sometime in the last century in my mk.1 3 litre Capri) and a couple of four way triple screened RCA leads down the right hand side, with 18, 16 and 12 gauge speaker wire down each side as well.

The next week I’d decided on a very expensive front end speaker set up in the shape of the three way DLS Iridium 8.3 system consisting of an 8in midbass driver, a 3in soft dome midrange and a 1 1/4in soft dome tweeter. I’ve always favoured kick panel mounted HF drivers as A pillar mounts just don’t sound right to me no matter how much I play with them, so as detailed HERE I made a set of fibreglass pods and the midbass drivers were mounted in standard off-the-shelf plastic adaptors with the intention of this being to do some proper solid doorbuilds as soon as possible, three years on they’re still there as they do a much better than expected job!
A five channel Mutant amp fixed to a false seat back powered them in a sort of passive/active setup with a 12in Mutant sub in a sealed box tucked away not all that neatly against the left hand side of the boot, changed a few months later for a US Blaster sub.

2007 coming as soon as I’ve written it.

Chris.

nice one chris... about time too!! was going to ask, how is the plastic welding on the bumper holding up? mine crakced on first thud!!  lol

hamidi:

nice one chris... about time too!! was going to ask, how is the plastic welding on the bumper holding up? mine crakced on first thud!!  lol

I gave up in the end,I didn't have the nozzle that also lets you feed the filler rod through,so the heat wasn't localised enough and was melting everyhing around it,used fibreglass in the end.

Chris.

2007

Ever since my first big system back in about 1989 in my mk.1 Capri 3 litre, I get bored every year if I don’t have something to keep me occupied through the winter and into the summer. Every year since 1989 and the first national sound off at Bristol docks I have the urge to rip it all out and start again for the next years season, something I did right up until my last one in 1995 at RAF Fairford.

The systems in the Golf are a lot simpler than I did in those days. Or in a way they’re simpler as all modern cars have a lot of the stuff such as charging systems that don’t shut down when we need to use main beam at the same time the heater is on, the 30 amp alternator fitted as standard didn’t do us any favours. We now have a whole host of complicated resident electronics that we need to get along with in perfect harmony, in reality we only share 12 volts and ground with the rest of the car’s systems but we now have a lot more electronically generated noise to contend with.

Last years system was only ever intended to be a stopgap until I made up my mind which way to go, the Mutant amp could never hope to do the DLS front end justice both in terms of quality and at 50 watts RMS to each speaker channel didn’t get close to giving them what they really need.

We’d just become a Fusion dealer at work, so what better choice for my new multi-amped system than their middle price bracket Powerplant range.
A 1000 watt monoblock powered a couple of Vibe Space 8s in a sealed box on the left hand side of the boot, and a pair of 450 watt two channel amps using one for left and one for the right channel in a bid to improve stereo seperation, the three way front end from the previous year being run in an active and passive style.

A lot louder and crisper sounding than the previous years system with a lot more control over the sound, the dual 8in subs meant the bass was VERY tight and accurate, but lacked the real power handling and deep bass I really craved.

Finally! Been waiting for this one for long enough lol. Looking good so far, bring on 2008.

If it's raining tonight 2008 will be along fairly early,if not I'll be outside with the grey primer and 600 grit again.

Chris.

2008

My old faithful Pioneer DEH-P9400MP finally gave up the ghost this year when although still playing ok refused to eject any the CD that was in there, so it Was replaced with it’s successor and Pioneer’s very first Bluetooth CD tuner-the DEH-P9800BT.
A similar spec to the previous unit with a few more bands on it’s equalizer function (13 up to 16), less crossover functions and a very fancy display that could be customised with my own screensavers. At the same time a USB adaptor went in meaning it could also play anything on USB that had music stored on it, and as I’m a non smoker the obvious place was in the now redundant lighter socket.

I was determined to get more output from the Vibe 8in subs which would have lost some of their available output by firing into empty space across the boot, so I made a box that would drop neatly into the spare wheel well and should in theory be more efficient by making use of the boundary loading effect of the rear panel of the car. This is used a lot in home cinema applications where a small sub can have it’s output effectively increased by putting it tight against a solid surface such as a wall or even into a corner.

This worked to a small degree by making the bass much tighter and a lot more accurate, but still didn’t give me the really deep bass and power handling I still needed, so it was back to the old faithful 12in sub again.

The boundary loading effect of the spare wheel well did work well enough to make it a permanent home for all the successive subs that went in, but this time a bit more scientific but unpredictable with it’s own little chamber to fire into, and the amps on a false seat back. This time a Vibe BlackAir 12 was used driven by the same companies BlackBox bass 4 amp producing 900 watts RMS into it’s 2 Ohm load, a Vibe stereo 2 giving 2 X 110 watts RMS into the DLS midbass,and a Vibe stereo 4 giving 4 X 110 watts into the kick panel mounted soft dome mids and tweets. Using a combination of the headunits crossovers and the very comprehensive ones built into the amps the whole system was run fully active meaning a separate amp channel for every single speaker.

At least it wasn’t a retrograde step, the front end sounded better although the mids still sounded to “middy” no matter what I did to them with crossover or equalizer settings. Even when fully run in the bass always sounded boomy and lacked any real bottom end and punch even though it was in it’s optimum box.

Some time spent playing with box sizes in WINisd meant Vibes top of the range sound quality sub the Space 12 should work exceptionally well in the small sealed boxes I’ve had in all my cars for nearly 20 years, in this case exactly the 1.2 cubic feet I had to play with.

I hadn’t used an inverted sub or done anything fancy with fibreglass resin for ages, so instead of boring old carpet or trunk liner…….

The following technique can be used to create perfectly smooth repeatable curves a lot easier and quicker than how we used to do it. This involved lots of bulking out with plasticine, then fibreglass filler, then body filler, then lots of rubbing down, then more filler, more rubbing down etc etc. Even after all that you didn’t always get exactly what you wanted.

We can use mould cloth (fleece) stretched over a wooden former to give us the perfect curves.

If the shape is complicated we may need to use more than one piece of fleece so that we don’t get any wrinkles. Stretch it as tight as possible and staple on the sides that won’t be seen.

Mix up resin and hardener and pour it inside so it coats all of the inside of the fleece and soaks into it as much as possible. You will also need some on the outside where it didn’t soak through.

Once the resin had set properly I squirted some expanding foam into the cavity, left it overnight to cure and trimmed the excess off.

We’re now left with a rough surface that needs lots and lots of rubbing down by hand until we get as smooth a finish as possible. I started with 60 grit wet and dry followed by 120 then 240 and finally 600.

Filler primer next, three or four coats followed by rubbing down, more primer and more rubbing down repeating until all the surface imperfections have gone and we have one continuous smooth surface.

Ready for the colour at last, a basecoat of VW (what else?) brilliant orange first……

Followed by a topcoat of Lamborghini Arancio pearl orange and about four coats of clear lacquer on top of that.

The sub box was treated to a decent internal coating of V block sound deadening spray before the sub was bolted in (T nuts and not woodscrews).

The box and the rear shroud where bolted together and in turn bolted solidly to the boot floor around the spare wheel well, the top of the box coming about four inches above the boot floor.

A false floor to mount the amps on along with new side walls for the boot were made up, there is also a one piece sheet aluminium cover with cutouts for the amps to go on once everything else is finished.

Overall the sound was getting there and much improved over the last system, but it still didn’t live up to the hype, £600 front speakers should sound a lot, lot better than they ever did.

Impressive as always, glad it rained . Now put as much effort into the exterior as you do to the boot!

2009

I finally gave up on the mid/tweeter part of the front end and figured I needed to go old skool yet again and go down from a seven way to a five way system.

Back in the 90s I had my first pair of waveguides or horn loaded compression drivers In my Honda Prelude, inspired by [URL=http://www.usdaudio.com/sw/cars/buick/page2.php]THIS[URL] which is without doubt the most famous sound off car of all time.
A quick bit of theory as to why they are so good.

1.  The horn shape makes them VERY efficient, up to 10db more efficient than conventional mids and tweeters.

2.  They play a lot lower than conventional drivers do, in this case down to 600Hz so taking the crossover distortion down to well below where we’d normally hear it. This also means one driver can now cover what it previously needed two to do.

3. They produce far better imaging than any conventional drivers do as the effective path length of the horn places them forward of the bulkhead, this all but cancels out the path length differences between A pillar, sail panel or kick panel mounted speakers where one is always closer than the other one.

4.  Their transient response is a lot better than other drivers making them react very quickly to fast musical events, making them sound a lot “snappier”.
5.  They sound a lot more open, and don’t collapse into a mush when complex musical passages are played at high volume as normal HF drivers do.

And why they’re not so good.

1.       They are very expensive, these ones cost £800 when new.

2.       They are very big and heavy making them very difficult if not impossible to fit into a lot of modern cars. The magnets on these are bigger than on some smaller subs..

3.       They need a lot more EQ (equalization) to get them sounding good than other speakers do.

I sold the previous years Fusion setup of just the amps, amp racks and sub box on e-bay for just £200, a lot less than I intended to when I forgot to put a reserve on them. The same day I took a trip to Croydon where I bought the horns from their second owner who’d given up trying to fit them into his 306, £200 was a bargain as they hadn’t even been in the car before his for long enough to be run in, so effectively the compression drivers were still brand new inside.

This how they were when I got them, still expertly trimmed in grey carpet.

The good thing about these is that if I’m enough of a doughnut to overpower them, the diaphragms shown here can be changed in a couple of minutes once the horns are out of the car, not cheap at $120 each,but still very good considering how much it would cost to replace an equivalent mid and tweeter setup should they get damaged.

Fitting them in proved to be a lot easier than I had originally thought, the left hand one needed the heater speed control resistor pack to have the large plastic lump cut off the bottom of it and replaced with some aluminium sheet. For those that don’t know these resistors are connected directly to the fan control switch and get VERY hot, hence they are always somewhere in the direct airflow of the fan to keep them cool.

A couple of brackets pop riveted onto the top edge of the horn used the Torx T20 screws that hold the bottom of the glovebox in to secure the front of it, while a very sturdy piece of perforated metal strip bolted to the fixings for the compression drivers magnet was bolted at the top to one of the main heater box fixing points.

The right hand side needed a bit more work, the relay rack had to be relocated as high as it would go and secured on new brackets…….

…..and a large hole had to be neatly jigsawed into the underdash trim above the drivers feet to clear the compression drivers magnet. As before the front of it was secured with small  brackets using the original lower dash trim fixing screws.

It’s important they they fit as flush as possible to the bottom edge of the dash as it forms a continuation of the mouth of the horn.

.

They were connected to the Vibe Stereo 4 amp run in two channel bridged mode so each one had access to 220 watts RMS f they needed it and high passed at about 600-700 Hz.

Sooooooo, how did they sound? Well at first they sounded absolutely crap, lots and lots and lots of hours of listening and playing with the equalizer got them sounding a lot better, to get them sounding as neutral as possible meant massive amounts of midrange cut and equally massive amounts of treble boost.

Maybe it was lack of EQ range (ONLY 16 band in my ‘9800BT), so I looked for a more old skool approach and managed to find a Phoenix Gold EQ230 for just £70 that would have sold for about £500 when new in the early to mid 90s. This is a dual 30 band 1/3 octave graphic equalizer with seperate left and right channels and able to take up to 9 volts of balanced signal input, this then drove a Vibe Deltabox line driver/splitter before being fed to the three amps. The main advantage to this type of setup is the headunit would be set totally flat and all the adjustment would be in the analogue domain at the back of the car, so wouldn’t lose the settings and take ages to tweak again every time I disconnected the car battery.
I still couldn’t get any improvement even after several days of playing, and also as the colour didn’t fit in with the scheme of the rest of the car the equalizer and line driver went back on e-bay again.

As with any new drivers they needed a lot of careful running in, but once they had about 20 or so hours of careful use they really came to life. The soundstage was all at eye level and spread across the dashboard with the outside limits of it as far out as the door mirrors, the dynamics were superb with plenty of space and ambience around the instruments, and they played VERY loud and VERY clean, that ticks ALL the boxes in my book.

I lowered it by 35mm sometime this year using a set of second hand H&R springs I bought from a member on here whose name I forget and met at Ladymead in Guildford.

This is what 35mm looks like.Strangely enough they also cost £35.

 Chris.

Can't complain at that price. The back could do with going down a bit more at some point though. Next time I'm anywhere vaguely near Gatwick, I'm coming to hear your system!

Good choice of cd

Antvw:

Good choice of cd

By some bizarre coincedence I used to play Nirvana's "Nevermind" on my first set of horns back in the mid 90s,didn't even notice until you pointed it out.

Chris.

drfeelgood:

Can't complain at that price. The back could do with going down a bit more at some point though. Next time I'm anywhere vaguely near Gatwick, I'm coming to hear your system!

With several tons of wood and metal in the boot I'm surprised it isn't a lot lower than it is.

Gissa shout when you do head for the deep,deep,deep,deep south and we'll go from there.

Chris.

TIME FOR A NEW ALTERNATOR

The charging system and wiring on these cars is about as good as it gets straight out of the factory, but put in a 1000 watt plus sound system and it starts to run out of steam pretty quickly for reasons that are explained HERE.
I did a voltage check one day out of curiosity, at idle with no load it was about 14.5 volts and went up to nearly 16 volts when under full load, meaning the regulator was well and truly goosed.

A trip to my local breakers yard to see if I could find an uprated VW alternator produced an unexpected find. This 150A one was from a 2006 Renault Laguna petrol that was fully loaded with everything you could ever fit into one,  I was expecting no more than 120 amps as fitted to to VR6s, R32s, 4MOTIONs etc, so this was a real bonus at only £70.

It was bigger than the original alternator by about 1cm, but apart from that was identical with the exception of one extra mounting lug. The Renault one also had a freewheel front pulley that had to be changed for my original fixed one. You need a special tool to do this as shown HERE.The brushes were ok and had about ¾ of their life still left, but it needed a new front bearing at a cost of £6 from my local RS branch. If anyone needs to change this bearing you MUST use an impact driver to undo the four countersunk screws that hold the bearing carrier in place.

A quick scrub with a wire brush to clean it up, a couple of 13mm headed bolts hold it in place. Grip the flat lug on top of the tensioner with Molegrips to allow you to move it to get the final part of the belt back on.

It had been tested at the scrap yard before I bought it, so I knew it would work, but just not how well. Soooooo…. A textbook perfect at idle of 14.4 volts, and when under full load (air con, mainbeam etc) it dropped no lower than 14.1 volts, all this without even doing the legendary TB3 (The Big 3) upgrade.

I could really do with one of those but the hassle of having it fitted has put me off. Have you laid down your 0awg yet?

drfeelgood:

I could really do with one of those but the hassle of having it fitted has put me off. Have you laid down your 0awg yet?

 

No real hassle at all apart from changing the pulley.

I've got as far as put an M8 terminal on the end of the 0 gauge with ny fancy new hydraulic crimp tool if that's any good?

Chris,

Is it illegal to not have a spare wheel? I love your boot build, the first one u did in 2008. Looks amazing how does it sound? I listen to metal/rock/heavy bass stuff is it good for that?

No it's not illegal, plenty of high performance cars don't have them.

 No spare isn't illegal as stated above,but if you do have a spare then it has to be legal,I carry a couple of cans of Tyreweld instead.

izzy_007:

Chris a bit OT but my sisters car has exactly the same last three letters of yous car

Maybe spooky,but more likely bougth new from the same dealer?

For some time the sub……

…….didn’t sound quite right, not surprising really.

Soooooooo………after reading about a new British company called SNG Audio and a very good review on TalkAudio on their so far only product,the JATT JT12.At a price of only £100 for something that looked this sexy it had to be worth a listen. This is their offering in the “streetbass” category, this means it will still have the finesse to play proper music accurately, but courtesy of it’s near 2 inches of excursion and 800 watt power handling it can still be used to play loud hard hitting bass, but without the massive power hungry needs of the proper SPL subs with their very heavy cones.

A quick play with WINisd gave an optimum sealed box size of 1.3 cu.ft, and as I had exactly 1.24 cu.ft from the previous Vibe sub, other than making a new front for the box it was more or less plug-and-play. The Vibe bass 4 amp that had killed the previous sub was perfectly matched giving 900 watts into the 2 ohm load the dual voice coil sub showed it.

Didn’t have any of the matching Lambo orange I used before, so sprayed the front of the box with some very old Kawasaki green for now.

After a surprisingly short running in period (about 5 to 6 hours),it really came to life. This is the sixth 12in sub I’ve had in this car that have all been in their optimum sealed boxes, and every single one of them before this sounded as if they were underboxed, all lacked any real deep bass and didn’t have anywhere near the power handling it was claimed they should have. Easily the best sealed box sub I’ve had in any of my cars, and hopefully when I get round to it also the best vented box sub.

This one however was different, it dropped VERY low and still kept everything under control when being pushed to it’s limits, and still produced nice tight punchy bass. Truly remarkable for £100,it could easily sell for twice that and it’s very rare in this game to find anything that lives up to the hype, this actually exceeds it by a mile.

That's about it for now with the stereo system as I desperately need to get the respray done while we’ve got some sort of summer left. I’ve still a somewhat unique custom made fusebox to go in, and I’ve had a length of 0 gauge power cable that along with the new fusebox will form the basis of TB3 (The Big 3) upgrade as and when I get the time.

At last the bodywork.

I’m thinking along the lines of debadged, smoothish and two tone in matt or satin paint. The car is also somewhat tatty from its previous five owners with lots of stonechips on all over the bonnet and front wings that need seeing to.

The standard front grill just has to go as part of the total debadging procedure, I managed to find a second hand Kamei mesh grill very cheap in Jazz Blue (thanks lim_walk) which meant the bumper notch had to be filled.
I bought a “proper” plastic welding gun from e-bay (not really all that proper at only £40), but without the proper nozzle the heat wasn’t localised enough and also melted everything around it and didn’t actually let the two parts flow into each other. So I cut the notch out and fibreglassed the pre-made filler piece into place so that it needed a minimal amount of filling afterwards, then filler primer and lots of rubbing down until perfectly smooth.

The front and rear valances had also been done some time ago in filler primer to lose the textured surface effect,they were rubbed down with Scotchbrite first, then sprayed with an “adhesion promoter” before lots of coats of primer with lots of rubbing down in between coats. If you do this don’t be tempted to try to completely sand all the texture away as this leaves lots of small whiskers of soft plastic that are difficult to get rid of, all you need to do is remove the sheen.

There was a small amount of rust visible just below where the front wing bolts onto the sill, so the wings have to come off to see to this. The front bumper has to come off first (covered elsewhere) followed by the plastic bracket just behind the headlight held in place by three Torx T25 screws. A total of 9 10mm hex headed self tappers hold the wing on, four along the top edge in the engine bay, three behind the plastic bracket, and three behind the splash guard held by a number of Torx T20 screws, which will need to be completely removed.
The first photo shows the mud and dirt which always collects there and can be a bad rust trap if not cleaned out regularly.

The bottom screw can be held in place some very stubborn mastic, so be prepared to dig it out with screwdriver.

This would be as good a time as any to give it a really good squirt with a pressure washer, followed by sanding the rusty parts back to good bare metal and then priming them nice and thickly using a brush.

The front wings were wet flatted with 600 grit wet and dry, followed by several thick dry coats of my beloved filler primer, then rubbed down, then more primer etc until all the stone chips have been filled and we’re left with one unbroken and smooth surface.

The bonnet luckily only had about half a dozen or so that were through to the metal and going rusty, but about a hundred or more that had just chipped the lacquer, so a lot more work needed just to get the bonnet smooth.

Both bumpers and valances , the bonnet and tailgate where the recess for the large VW badge had been filled, and the front wings are now all fully primed. The rest of the car now only needs to be flatted using Scotchbrite ( a sort of synthetic wire wool), so took the aerial off to start on the roof and thought it looked so much smoother without it that I decided to get it welded up as I only really use radio for traffic info broadcasts, so I now have to build some fancy new aerial and hide it somewhere.

If anyone can use a MIG welder but hasn’t done car body panels before please be aware that the heat can still buckle the panels if you’re not careful. We used a large towel really soaked in cold water to cool the roof down several times during and after the welding to make sure this doesn’t happen.

The headlining was stripped out to make putting any fires out easier (and it also needed a damn good clean) and a square piece of Fiesta roof was MIG welded into the hole and ground down level.

Easy sand body filler is my best friend now (I’m sure I took a photo of it?),rubbed down with 120 grit wet and dry using a flexible rubber block (never use just your hand as you’ll get finger shaped grooves in the filler), then aerosol filler primed.

Block sanded again, followed by a matt black guide coat, then more block sanding.

This only takes off the high spots and lets us see exactly where the low spots are so we know just when to stop. If we’re careful we should only need the first lot of filler, but if this stage show that we have a large low spot that can’t be filled by the primer then we’ll need the thinnest skim of filler carefully where shown by the guide coat.

More careful block sanding will eventually take off all the high spots, but if the guide coat is still in the low spots it may need more primer depending on how critical you want to be at this stage.

I’m hoping to get it sprayed next weekend, so just a few evenings left flatting the rest of the still lacquered panels with Scotchbrite should see I ready for putting the paint on very soon, all I have to do now is decide which two colours it will be.

Chris.

what? you have a sound system and no radio antenna? you should see face the firing squad chris!! lol

nice to see it getting some tendet lurve and care matey... what else you doing? i heard something about a respray? same colour or different?

Sod the two tone, candy white ftw

drfeelgood:

Sod the two tone, candy white ftw

candy whites pimpin!

[Go to the site to view embedded media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owx-iHsjavc[/youtube]

hamidi:

what? you have a sound system and no radio antenna? you should see face the firing squad chris!! lol

nice to see it getting some tendet lurve and care matey... what else you doing? i heard something about a respray? same colour or different?

The only time I listen to the radio is when traffic info reports come in.The reason I'm looking for a second hand roof spoiler is I wnat to try and integrate the aerial into it,I don't want to mess up a good new one if it doesn't work.

Not sure about colours yet as it changes every day,at the moment it's going to be orange above the rub strips and black below,but it could be completely different tomorrow and the day after and.......

Chris.

Candy white is dead horny,there really is no better colour on a three door mk.4 (apart from red of course),but as it's going to be sprayed by me in a council lockup with cellulose,then it's beyond my abilities and the environment it'll be painted in even attempt that sort of finish.

Chris.

Imagewerx:

The reason I'm looking for a second hand roof spoiler is I wnat to try and integrate the aerial into it

I've been thinking of doing something like this, but don't have the funds to experiment at the mo...(would have to be gps/TV/FM/DAB capable)

just a thought, but is it possible to retrofit a golf plus/mk5 diversity(?) screen antenna amplifier to the mk4...or do you also need the screen to go with it???

On the welding side remember that Golf’s are Galvanised and is important to remove the Galvanised coating before  welding as you can get heavy metal poisoning  ( the shivers ) wear a mask

Good Wright Up

OHH 

Candy White

Impressive stuff mate, liking the install!

Need to sort some sounds out for mine but its last on the list i'm afraid!

Good right up on the bodywork prep as well, I like the idea of using the black to show any low spots, i'll remember that technique

Lambo orange? I think I might try that on my TT alloys

 I have a MK5 OEM "shark fin" style aerial which retails at £110 odd!

FM reception is poor but it can be used to the sat nav antenna

i have fitted a glass mount FM aerial on the B pillar - reception is bearable!

TDIRich:

Imagewerx:

The reason I'm looking for a second hand roof spoiler is I wnat to try and integrate the aerial into it

I've been thinking of doing something like this, but don't have the funds to experiment at the mo...(would have to be gps/TV/FM/DAB capable)

just a thought, but is it possible to retrofit a golf plus/mk5 diversity(?) screen antenna amplifier to the mk4...or do you also need the screen to go with it???

I've not had any dealings with these aerials,but is it diversity or duplex/triplex like the mk.4 roof mounts? True diversity uses two aerials normally at opposite ends/sides of the car,and two seperate tuner sections inside the radio that compare the signals from the different aerials and then tries to cancel out fading caused  by multipath reception and similar problems.Some radios claim to be diversity by only have one tuner with two aerial sockets that are paralleled up inside and don't work any better than a "normal" radio.
Duplex and triplex roof aerials use one mast and an active splitter to cover AM and FM radio,GPS and GSM,but in my opinion don't work quite as well at any of them as a dedicated aerial will.
I want a fibreglass spoiler to play with,I'll probably just put a simple dipole inside it which will be fine for FM,as not being a taxi driver I never listen to talk radio on MW.

Chris.

borachris:

Impressive stuff mate, liking the install!

Need to sort some sounds out for mine but its last on the list i'm afraid!

Good right up on the bodywork prep as well, I like the idea of using the black to show any low spots, i'll remember that technique

Lambo orange? I think I might try that on my TT alloys

Thank you,the bodywork part is what I look forward to the most,I get some sort of strange satisfaction from rubbing filler down.Do you recokon this Is some new sort of bizarre new fetish?

Chris.

Imagewerx:

Thank you,the bodywork part is what I look forward to the most,I get some sort of strange satisfaction from rubbing filler down.Do you recokon this Is some new sort of bizarre new fetish?

Chris.

Ha Ha, I don't know, maybe! I'm wanting to try my hand at welding so i'll let you know cos I'll end up using bucket fulls of the stuff!

Double post