OK, since you are so enthusiastic
My wife was sitting in our 2004 Passat TDI in a parking lot a couple months ago, and the tractor trailer she was behind decided to back up... he bumped the front of the car, and it needed to be repaired.
Since the guy gave her false information and my wife is FAR too trusting (I would have had the police there... and it would have been for the truck driver's own protection as I probably would have beaten the crap out of him.. but I digress...). So he skated, and the repair was on my dime.
I took the bumper cover off, had our body shop smooth out the minor crease in it, and they refinished it. The lock carrier was cracked, as was the upper intercooler tank where it has the two little mounting tabs, along with the left headlamp assembly lower mount.
Ordered a new lock carrier, from Volkswagen, which is not too terribly priced. Was able to get a new genuine Hella headlamp assembly through Worldpac, again not too bad. But Worldpac had no intercooler, which is made by Modine, even though they can always get other TDIs' intercoolers that are made by Valeo. And they are always MUCH less than the dealer.
I was having a moment of cheapness, which I should have gotten over, and decided to see what I could find on the intarwebs for BHW intercoolers. Found one for $80, delivered, on eBay, which is much less than an OEM one from Volkswagen at $320 my cost.
When I got it, it had no name on it, but *looked* OK, and looked correct. However, the little bales it came with were not the same, and the charge air tubes would not snap in place, and the car quickly blew them both off as soon as I tried to drive the car.
Luckily, I was able to take the old bales off of the old original intercooler, and put them on the eBay one, and the tubes snapped in place properly. No big deal, I thought. For the amount of money I saved, it was OK.
The car did not even make it 10k miles. This past weekend, on the way to a conference in Washington DC for Lowe's Syndrome (my boys have this) the Chinabay intercooler decided that it had had enough, and went I went to pass someone (I was doing about 80), it completely blew the bottom tank clean off of the core. The little seal was hanging out the bottom of my splash shield.
I limped it a few more miles, and on the border of Indiana and Ohio, I rented a Uhaul truck and tow dolly, since I knew there was no way this car was going to make it through the mountains with no functional air charging.
Towed the car to DC, where I left it (and the truck) at Case de Compudub, and Lawson was nice enough to give my wife and I a lift to the hotel.
Jason tried to order a new one from a local dealer, and despite the nearly $100 extra price gouging, they could not get one to me until Tuesday (and we inquired about this on Thursday). So, after the conference, Jason and I took the bumper cover loose, and zip tied as best we could the intercooler back together, hooked it back behind the truck, towed it back to where we got it from (across the mountains), and I limped the car the rest of the way back home.
So, the $80 intercooler ended up costing me an additional $720 for truck/dolly rental, a pile of gas money to feed the 2015 GMC Sierra (although it did get 15 MPGs.... not too bad considering how fast I was going, mountains, and two tons of sick Volkswagen and tow dolly hanging off its ass the whole time).
Incidentally, I ordered the part from my local dealer on Tuesday (yesterday) and it is already in my hands.
So, I broke my #1 rule of not being cheap.... and I got stung.
