6 Oct 2024 • 2 min read

Breathing Life Into the Engine

After countless hours and parts sourced from everywhere, the GTI’s engine rebuild is almost complete—here’s what we’ve done so far and what’s next on the journey

The old timing belt in the Edition 35

Since purchasing the car, we've already covered a lot of maintenance required to get the car running smoothly. A lot of packages have been sent both internationally and domestically, and a lot of old engine parts are now swimming in the bin.

While working on the car, we have replaced the following parts:

HPFP Cam follower
Old battery
Vapor canister
Evaporation hose
PCV breather valve
PCV seal
Serpentine belt
Serpentine tensioner lever
Timing belt
Timing belt tensioner
Timing belt deflections
Water pump
Inlet manifold gasket
Rocker cover gasket

We've also removed a rubber dog bone insert that made the car really stiff. The reason we removed it was because the car would shake violently at low RPM's. This was a huge problem, and made driving the car in the city quite unbearable.

What's remaining in our current plan is:

Replacing:
- Coolant thermostat
- Oil filter housing
- Fuel filter
- Evaporation hose seal
- Hood hinges
- Custom tune with stock tune
Installing:
- The tested and serviced injectors, from BAR-TEK, Germany, with new seals
- Focal IS VW 165 woofers (plug & play woofers, similar to Dynaudio quality)
Performing:
- Oil change
- DSG fluid change

We also need to visit the scrapyard to find some original woofer connectors. The previous owners replaced the original Dynaudio woofers with cheap ones, throwing away the old connectors in the process. These connectors are universal, and can be found on any VW Golf (and most likely other VW models).