Just to concatenate all the junk from my silly too-long sig in this one thread... this is mostly for me. I cannot be held responsible if anyone finds this useful.
Roughly in order...
The first was easily the
ventectomy - a must for any MkIV owner. I also
jumped the clutch starter interlock connector to allow for starting the car without pushing the clutch pedal in.
Waaaay back in 2006 at a GTG in Janesville WI, TDI_Norskie (Tryg) was nice enough to help out with the bonehead simple
5 brake light mod - more lights are never a bad thing!
At a GTG in Fond du Lac WI, I got some VCDS help from TDIinRI (Tom)
switching the instrument cluster to have a proper 24 hour clock.
The undercarriage got a nice armor plating with a
Dieselgeek skid plate as a Christmas gift back in 2006. Nothing says "Happy holidays!" like spending the evening lying on your back working under your car.
I've installed a
Sirius S50 in the car and greatly enjoy it. Uncensored, able to timeshift & record, display tells you song/artist info and I keep the same radio stations wherever I go.
Last Christmas, my special lady and I installed in-dash GPS units in both our cars. My Golf got the double-din
Pioneer AVIC-D3. This is by far one of the best upgrades IMO. I'm a big "map guy" and having a live updating map in the dash is fantastic. It's no substitute for keeping a paper atlas in the car, but being able to key in a destination and have an updating display and ETA (not to mention getting measurements accurate to 0.1 MPH) is a great thing to have.
Living in the snow belt, having plenty of washer fluid is a must - and the stock tank size of 3 liters is just too damn small. With the
upgraded 5.5 liter tank, I can dump in a full bottle of washer fluid even before the low fluid light comes on.
Fuel now gets filtered by a
Caterpillar 2µm fuel filter - anything to help out the injectors seems like a good idea.
I also have a
Fumoto valve to help speed up oil changes - drain from the bottom and extract from the top is the way to go.
From 50k onward, I've been using
VW 507.00 Longlife III oil, with good UOA results.
A 1000W Zerostart tank heater helps the engine start easier and generate heat quicker on cold mornings. Here's
one DIY guide,
another and a
third.
At 48k miles, I pulled off my valve cover and
inspected my cam... which looked fine. I also took the opportunity to powerwash my EGR valve and retorque my valve cover bolts. The latter seems to have solved the PD sweating oil down the back of the block problem.
At that same GTG in Janesville that I inspected my cam, I had the stock muffler removed and a custom 2.5" stainless steel pipe put in its place.
For my end-of-warranty 60k maintenance, I drained the transmission and put in two quarts of Redline MTL transmission fluid (70W80 GL4 synthetic) and realigned my shifter linkage. Shifts have been much easier since. It will be interesting to see how this holds up through the long, cold winter ahead but my impressions so far are positive.
As of today, the car has 60,700ish miles on it and runs beautifully. I handwashed & waxed it, as well as Vinylexed the dash, controls, window/door seals and gave it a general cleaning this weekend, and it still looks great.
