Lately I've been working on the interior and electronics. The interior is close to being done. Seats and door panels are in. Since I went with the red stripe seat belts, I carried the theme through to the door panels. I had the upholstery guy make a red welting to break up the all black door panel. In addition, I found a new old stock leather multi function steering wheel with red threads. I haven't installed the dash panels on the drivers side as I'm still doing a bit of wiring.
For the radio and cluster, it took a bit of work to get it the way I wanted, but I'm happy with the results. I particularly like factory radios, for the quality, fit and how they integrate with the interior. With that in mind, it took several different radios to find one that worked with my collection of factory and aftermarket electronics.
The first thing was the cluster. I'm using a full height FIS cluster that is likely made up from several clusters and has some reprogramming done. I like the feature where it shows which door is open, but on a 2001 this requires changing from the 1J0 to 1C0 CCM. It's a fair bit of rewiring and swapping out the power window motors to the 1C0 compatible motors. Once that is done, with a little recoding, you can get everything to work like it should. So with that sorted, I moved on to the next part, which was the radio. With the new CCM,. I went with the double DIN Delta 6 radio and it worked fine. The next step was a
FIS-Control. This is a slick box that allows lots of information to be displayed on the FIS cluster screen. However, between the radio and cluster, it just wouldn't work. The radio was sending information over the canbus overriding the FIS Control. I tried everything and with a lot of emails between the FIS-Control developer in Germany and my cluster guru here, we determined the cluster was not compatible with the Delta 6 radio and the FIS-Control. Once the Delta 6 radio was removed, the cluster and FIS-Control worked fine. To further complicate things I also had plans to install a
Bluestar Onstar converter. This allows cell phone bluetooth connection to the factory radio if you have an (obsolete) OnStar installed in your car. No extra buttons or add ons, it uses the OnStar microphone in the sunroof control panel. It's designed to be plug and play if you have OnStar from the factory, not really an add on if you don't. As you can probably guess, a 2001 Golf didn't have OnStar but I figured it could be added without too much trouble. Well, maybe a little trouble. Actually, it wasn't all that bad. Studying wiring diagrams and figuring out what exactly was needed, add a few wires and there you go, OnStar added! Now all I needed was a non canbus factory radio that was compatible with an updated CCM, a Frankenstein cluster, steering wheel buttons, OnStar and several aftermarket devices that connected to it. I ended up with a VW Navi radio. It works great and gets along with all the electronics. When I get a call (or want to make one), the radio mutes, I push a button on the OnStar panel. The call plays through the speakers and it is as clear as any other factory Bluetooth. So was that it? Of course not! Instead of the factory CD changer, I use a Dension controller to play my iPod through the radio. I realize I could have found an aftermarket radio that did all that, but what fun is that? My setup does exactly what I want and looks factory, because it is. I don't have the navigation part of the radio working yet, but it's coming soon. One neat feature of the FIS-Control is the ability to remotely display a Valentine One on the upper portion of the FIS screen.
Door panels with the red welting. I replaced all the plastic door hardware with non soft touch pieces.
OnStar control panel fits where the rather useless center visor normally goes. Green light indicates it is paired with my phone. The button on the left answers or initiates a call. Valentine One resides just to the right of the OnStar panel.
The sunroof panel & switch are lighted W8 parts.
Multi function steering wheel and FIS cluster. That is the standard boost screen. The upper section of the FIS screen is the Valentine One. The GPS is a Garmin with built in camera.
Navi radio and Climatronic. Hard to see but I have the Myrtle wood trim on the radio console.
Cluster shows which door is open. A not so easy task on a 2001!
I still have a bit more to go, but the car is coming along nicely. It is a great daily driver, reasonably quick and fun to drive. It needs a few more tweaks and tidying up. It is a long way from where I started!