Rrrr you not entertained?

OK, let's do a thing.  I've been kinda thinking about going full sleeper on the car and the one part that looks glaringly aftermarket is the IE intake.

Since it doesn't add any power and arguably heat soaks more than the stock airbox, especially in the summer, I decided to pull it.  I'd bought an MST turbo inlet pipe and silicone connector used quite some time ago, that way I can remove all the IE stuff to keep together if I decide to sell it.

First off, time to mod the stock intake.  There are two things you want to do here, the first is to remove the "snow guard" in the bottom of the stock airbox.

This is it and it does a great job of blocking air.

And it removed

Next up is air intake tube itself.  For whatever reason VW didn't open up the right side of the vent, which directly leads into the airbox.  Since my car is a 2019 it already has the vents in the grill that match up to the blocked off right side of the vent

Drill some holes to help me know where to cut

I then used a Dremel with a cut off wheel and a sanding barrel to rough out the openings

Then a file and a knife to clean it up.

Then it was removing the IE intake, along with their coolant hose and turbo inlet pipe.  I reinstalled the stock coolant line, which has a check valve in it that the IE hose doesn't, swapped in the MST turbo inlet pipe, then installed the airbox.  I'll order a dry flow filter for it and it'll be all set.

I like the sleeper OEM+ look!

docwyte said:

First off, time to mod the stock intake.  There are two things you want to do here, the first is to remove the "snow guard" in the bottom of the stock airbox.

Meanwhile in the news ... lol

In reply to Slippery (Forum Supporter) :

Yeah, it just started to snow here.  They're saying we may get 8" now, so a far cry from the 41" they were calling for earlier in the week. 

I also just don't see how snow is going to get sucked in the grill, through the vent, up into the airbox and then through the air filter to get into the engine. 

In reply to docwyte :

I think that it's mostly to keep the filter from freezing up and blocking airflow.  Snow itself won't hurt the engine any.

In reply to sobe_death :

Can't say that I'm all that concerned with the air filter freezing.  It's just not that cold here

Last bit I needed for the intake showed up today.  AFE Dry flow air filter. 

Much smaller vs stock!

Easy install, undo a bunch of captive T25 torx, pull out the old, pop in the new, retighten torx.

Intake noise is increased a bit, car seems to like it.

Bought your car's cousin today. 19 R with just under 10K miles on it in the blue color. 

It was a trade at the local porsche dealer. They down sized the rims from 19" to 17" Oz wheels and I have to say I like it. First time I've gotten 3 set of wheels while buying at a dealership. The factory wheels, Set of sparcos with blizzaks, and the OZ on the car.

Nice!  I test drove a blue one, I really like the color.  Was considering it but I'd had a string of blue cars and wanted something different.  I went down to 18" wheels from the 19's, there's really no advantage to the 19's and I don't think they look all that great on the car

Well, I finally think it's safe to remove the snow tires.  So I went ahead and did that.  Also since I put the factory airbox back in the car has been pretty tame sound wise.  Decided to toss the exhaust center resonator delete pipe back in since it's quick and easy and I already have it.  Sounds good with the muffler valves closed and maybe a little too racy for me with them open.  Guess I'll see.

I still need to wash the car tomorrow but it's basically good to go now...

So I was out loading folding chairs into the R to take my son to soccer practice when I noticed that the left outer and inner tail lights are cracked.  Again! 

Only thing I can think of is someone is vandalizing my car.  This will make two sets of left tail lights that've cracked and then someone keyed the glass on the car. 

I'm trying to find another set of used, stock tail lights. New ones are $400!  At that point I'd rather get the european dynamic tail lights but those are $800 and if someone broke them I'd be super pissed...

That sucks, do you have a dash cam? Time for one with standby mode if you don't... 

Get a Nest cam and stop pissing people off!

newold_m and Slippery, no dash cam yet but looks like I need to get one.  Will one show someone damaging the left rear corner of the car tho?

In good news I found the set of tail lights I bought from my friend when this happened the first time.  I'd only used the left inner tail light previously, so I popped in that new to me left outer tail light.  My current inner tail light is still in better shape than my original cracked inner light, so I have to find another one of those...

No idea if a dash cam will show anything. 

If this is happening at your house I would just put a nest/whatever brand cam outside your house. 

In reply to Slippery :

Definitely not happening at the house.  The car is garaged at home 100% of the time.  If I had to guess I'd say it's happening at my office.  I have to street park there and usually park right in front of my office building.

eBay has yielded me a left inner tail light for the grand sum of $42 shipped.  Purportedly off a '19 GTI so it should be the LED tail light like my R.  Looks like it has one small white mark on it, hopefully not cracked...

Left inner tail light showed up from eBay.  Same part number as mine, no damage, cracks, etc.  Popped the hatch, pulled off the cover panel, removed two 8mm nuts, unplugged the tail light and removed it.  Installation was the opposite as the Bentley manual says.

So far so good, car hasn't thrown any hissy fits about it's new to it tail light.  Glad I found one for $42 shipped, hopefully whoever is screwing with my car stops.

Have you considered an alarm system with better deterrents?

In reply to JoeTR6 :

LOL! 

Car threw a CEL the other day.  Scanned it with my Cobb AP since it was in my glovebox, rear O2 sensor, low boost and two other codes that the Cobb couldn't decipher.  Cleared them.  Friend told me I should have the rear O2 sensor unplugged with my tune anyways, apparently it can make the tune go rich, which would explain why my mpg's have gone down.

Ok, I unplugged it and reflashed the tune.  So far no CEL, we'll see how it goes from here...

Ever since I put my summer wheels on the handling of the car has just felt unsettled.  I'm running 10mm spacers all around with longer lug bolts.  A few weeks ago I took everything apart and checked it all, cleaned up the hubs and made sure everything was seated properly.  Didn't help.

This morning I drove up to Evergreen and took the canyons there and back.  Handling still feels off.

Brought the car home, took the wheels and spacers off, everything looks fine.  Decided to not run the spacers, put everything back together with the stock lug bolts.  In looking at the longer lug bolts it seems like they weren't threading into the hubs enough, even though they're 10mm longer than stock..

I drove the car to lunch and it seems to be back to normal.  Weird...

So the CEL has stayed off.  Yesterday a friend sent me a link off Facebook marketplace.  Hmm, one of the local to me Euro marketplaces.  So, yeah, this happened last night

What you're looking at there is a set of Bilstein PSS Damptronic coilovers.  Complete plug n play assemblies, I don't even have to take apart my stock stuff to reuse the top hats.  Apparently 10k miles and I paid less than half of new, plus they were local. 

I wasn't really all that interested in doing suspension on the car, I actually like the stock stuff quite a bit.  However this is a perfect OEM+ upgrade, still uses the controls inside the car to control the dampening and I'll lower the car just a little bit.

I seem to remember reading that o2 sensors have to always be heated or they go bad. Might be a good idea to just remove that rear o2 sensor and replace with some sort of plug. 

In reply to Slippery :

Gotta keep it there, fills a hole in the exhaust, tune seems happy enough with it unplugged.

In reply to docwyte :

That's why I mentioned finding a plug for the hole