Aerofabb V2 Spoiler Extension

I'm a big fan of spoilers and ducktails (as evidenced by ducktail on the Cayman) and while I'm happy with the general shape and lines of the GTi, I always thought it needed a little extra on the rear spoiler. The little black ones that stick on the top look out of place and some of the other aftermarket options are just too big. I decided that the Aerofabb V2 spoiler extension fit the bill quite nicely. It's not too noticeable but adds a little extra hint of black in the rear that gives it a bit more of a defined shape.

Aerofabb v2 spoiler extension - 11-23-2019

The actual installation instructions call for heating up and cutting the glue that holds the OEM spoiler to the side pieces then removing it completely so you can drill holes to mount the spoiler extension. I personally didn't like the idea of having to drill the OEM spoiler so I decided to just use more automotive grade 3M tape as well as 3M adhesion promoter to make sure I'd get a nice bond between the tape and the painted surface and not drill any holes at all.

3M adhesion promoter

It's getting pretty cold right now so using tape and the promoter is not really a great idea since this is supposed to be used when it's warm out. Not wanting to wait until the Spring, I stood there with my wife's old hair dryer heating up both the extension, the spoiler and the tape so they'd all be nice and warm before proceeding with the installation.

Aerofabb spoiler extension installed - 11-23-2019

Aerofabb spoiler extension installed - 11-23-2019

Aerofabb spoiler extension installed - 11-23-2019

I think it came out quite nicely. I applied constant pressure on the spoiler extension while continuously applying heat with the blow dryer (not heat gun as that'd probably be too hot) and left it in the sun for an hour. A few spirited test runs later and there was no sign of movement or loss of adhesion so I think I'll leave it like this. I'm sure it'll only get better as it stays on longer. Overall I'm happy with the product. The gloss black finish matches the other black sides of the hatch quite well but I suspect it's going to attract quite a bit of dust over time but perhaps a nice polish and ceramic coating will take care of that after the Winter.

GTi Exterior Mods and Putting the Toys Away

One thing I always thought was peculiar about the styling of the MK7 GTi was that it has black side skirts and rear valence but the lower front of the bumper is all mostly body-colored. I wanted to complete the black outline look in the front as well so I picked up a textured black plastic Maxton Designs V2 lip.

Maxton V2 Lip Installed - 11/16/19

It doesn't really make the front much lower but it does extend out the sides an inch or two more so I will have to be a little more careful when going up steep inclines. The upside is that this is plastic and relatively cheap so it's mostly a sacrificial lip.

Prepping the lip for install

It came very nicely packaged from ECS Tuning and included a slew of bolts and nuts to secure it to the bumper. I felt that was unnecessarily complex so I grabbed a pack of self-tapping screwed instead and just used the included washers to help spread the force a little. You're supposed to install this with two people but it's a light enough piece that, with the car on the QuickJack, I was able to hold it in place with one hand while getting the first screws in then I went to town putting in around 16 screws to make sure it doesn't fall off at high speed.

It's even TUV certified

bolts securing the lip

The fitment is really good. It follows the various contours of the stock bumper so it's actually easy to align. Overall I'm happy with it and I'm actually glad it's not too rigid so it'll have some give in case I scrape it on something. The car's only lowered an inch so I don't foresee there being too many problems.

deAutoLED brake/tail/turn LED set - 11/16/19

A lot of people retrofit the Euro LED tail lights or the MK7.5 lights but I'm personally quite happy with the rear lights. I do wish they were LED because I hate dealing with burnt-out bulbs and I like that they're brighter and redder. I picked up a set of LED brake/tail/turn bulbs to replace the factory incandescent ones and more importantly, I also replaced the reverse bulbs with very bright LED bulbs so that I have great visibility even when reversing in dimly lit places.

Tail lights removed to swap bulbs - 11/16/19

It's a pretty simple process. Just had to remove the rear lights to access the bulbs and also open up a panel on the hatch to replace the rear bulbs and reverse LED there too.

LEDs swapped in

deAutoKey LEDs installed - 11/16/19

I also spent the better part of the morning enjoying driving the Cayman out one last time through Bear Mountain. With the temps constantly dipping into freezing and salt being laid on the roads, it was time to put her away for the winter. I forgot how amazing this car is to drive. It's just so visceral and it truly is a different driving experience from my other cars.

Final drive for 2019

Getting her clean before being put way

She was also pretty dirty so before putting her away, I got her washed and put the cover on to mark the official end of her 2019 driving season. Lots of fun adventures and looking forward to taking her to track next year.

Tucked away for winter - 11/16/19

Better Airflow - Racingline R600 Intake

We're going to be putting in an IS38 Turbo for more top end boost shortly but for now, I wanted to improve the air intake. The stock intake is actually pretty efficient but not as good as it can be. The air comes in through inlets on the front passenger side only and then is routed to the driver's side via a plastic duct where the actual intake is.

Stock intake removed - 11/9/2019

I wanted a stock looking intake that would pull air from the entire front, be sealed to avoid heat soak and have proper inlets for secondary air which the car is equipped with. The obvious choice was the Racingline R600 intake. Stock, there's a small coolant line that routes on top of the intake that I wanted to replace so that it routes under the intake instead for a cleaner look. Thankfully, Racingline also makes a coolant underhose with an OEM check valve for a straightforward fit.

Stock coolant line - 11/9/2019

Racingline coolant hose - 11/9/2019

I was a bit annoyed to find out I had to drill my own hole to fit the secondary air fitting. For the price of this thing, I feel that's something they should've done for me but they probably did it so they can just make one mold and have people cut it as needed for secondary air. What should've been a 20 minute intake install took much longer while we carefully cut the holes to mount the fitting.

Bottom part of intake and filter installed - 11/9/2019

The filter that the R600 comes with is made of black foam and there've been quite a few reports of it just disintegrating over time which is no good since I don't want foam pieces getting sucked into the turbo. Thankfully, a company called MST Performance makes a replacement filter (VW-R6) that uses more normal cone filters which I'm much more comfortable with. The cover just needed to be bolted on and it was all set. I'll have to say that while the intake is quite nice and performs well, fitment could've been better. Things were a bit fiddly but manageable

Intake installed and coolant hose rerouted - 11/9/2019

Air pulling from all the front openings now

It doesn't really change the induction noise much which is what I wanted and it looks like it came from the factory so it stays low key. I noticed a bit of an improvement in throttle response but I wasn't expecting this to do anything major for now. What I want is to maximize the amount of fresh cool air entering the turbo which will be helpful once we slap the IS38 on.

Racingline R600 Intake - 11/9/2019

Overall I'm still pretty happy with it and it's one of the few aftermarket intakes for the GTi that has a proper solution for the secondary air hose rather than just sticking a mini cone filter on it like all the other ones do. Thanks to Alex for helping me today.

Stage 2 + Winter Prep

I dropped my car off with Dion at Drive Auto Works  (DAW) in Mountainside, NJ before going away on vacation so they could load the APR Stage 2 high torque tune. The previous owner already did all the Stage 2 pre-requisites with the CTS downpipe and Sachs ZF Performance Clutch kit but decided to keep it Stage 1 low torque for reliability since he drove almost 20,000 miles per year. I do want reliability but I will probably only put on 1/3 of those miles in a year so I wanted to see what the Stage 2 high torque tune would feel like. It's a nice bump in torque over stock and honestly feels amazing. If anything, this is what I feel a hot hatch should have in terms of stock power. The power delivery is smoother and with all that torque down low, you don't need to downshift as much to get into boost. As you can see from the graph though, it does lose breath after 4500 rpms quite noticeably and we'll fix that very shorty with a nice upgrade but for now I'm very happy with this tune.

Advertised power to the wheel on Stage 2 APR Tune

Since the car was going to be there for almost a week, I figured I'd have other maintenance items taken care of. A previous inspection by the dealership during my NYS inspection indicated that the thermostat housing/water pump would need replacement in the near future. It wasn't leaking yet but it had started to melt a little (it's mostly plastic) so I was advised to plan for it. Well, I'm not one to wait for failure so I ordered one from FCP Euro so in the future if I need to replace it again, I can use their lifetime warranty to simply get a new one. I had DAW take care of that as well.

New OEM water pump/thermostat assembly

Of course, while they were in there, I thought at 50k miles it'd be a good time to have them clean out the intake valves. The problem with direct injection is carbon buildup on on the intake valves since they don't get washed with fuel like they do with port injection. Over time this results in poor engine performance and we don't like that. They use the walnut blasting method and it's very effective. Unfortunately, they were very busy and didn't have time to take pictures but it looks something like this (although mine weren't quite that bad yet).

Intake valve cleaning before and after (before not actual)

Last week when we were aligning the car, we had to jump start it after just leaving the car on but not running for half an hour. Since the battery is over 3 years old now I figured it was time for a change and had them replace it since I was worried it might die during the flashing process and brick the ECU.

New battery - 11/5/2019

One thing I didn't like after we did the lowering springs last week was the length of the stock front sway bar end links. They were a tad too long and causing unnecessary pre-load to the front sway bar so today we put on a fresh set of SuperPro Adjustable end links. The can be shortened to more suit the geometry of the lower suspension setup.

Superpro Adjustable Endlinks - 11/5/2019

Also, with Winter around the corner, I wanted to finally install some protection for the plastic oil pan. VW makes an OEM skid plate for the Golf Alltrack that fits perfectly on the GTi. The front brackets were supposed to be annoying to install but it turns out just removing the 5 bolts on each side holding the lower half of the splash shield was all that was needed to get your hands behind the frame to insert the bolt that secures the brackets.

Passenger side skid plate bracket installed

Driver side skid plate bracket installed

Once those were in place it's pretty easy to secure the skid plate itself, just 4 bolts up front, 3 bolts in the back and 6 little screws on each side. It's very secure and will do the job of deflecting road debris from damaging the oil plan. It even has a nice opening on the transmission side to help with cooling. Yes, you will need to drop this panel in order to do an oil change but the bolts are easily accessible and maybe add a mere 10 minutes to the process.

Rear part of skid plate lowered to show the protection.
Kevlar lined plastic and padding for the oil pan itself

Front view of skid plate

Rear view of skid plate

Finally, to make her fully winter ready, it was time to slap on the OZ Superleggera wheels wrapped in Pirelli Sottozero 3 performance winter tires. So far I'm very happy with how they feel in the dry. Usually when I swap to winter tires everything feels sloppy but no, these feel great even in the dry. I'll give a verdict for how they feel in the snow once that time comes but so far I'm quite impressed especially since I was, um, "testing", the new power unleashed via the tune.

OZ Superleggera + Pirelli Sottozero 3 - Winter Setup - 11/5/2019

She's coming along quite nicely. We have a few nice upgrades left before I call her "done for now" but that'll be for a future post. For now, Chili is starting to feel like a proper Steguis-spec car and it's really living up to my expectations for how a hot hatch ownership experience should feel like.

Maintenance Updates:

Mileage: 51,288

- New water pump/thermostat
- New battery (Bosch)
- Intake valves cleaned