I’ve been meaning to do this for a bit, but haven't had the time or have been too lazy, lol, this will be my little build thread of sorts even though I don't plan on going so far with this one.
Some of you may know my old Mk4 R32-
that was such an epic build for me, tackled everything from body work to air-ride, several wheel builds, and my first full vinyl wrap color change, only thing I really didn't mess with was the motor. For my next car though, I wanted something different, I knew I wanted a JSW, there aren't really many modded JSW's in my area and as soon as I saw the Mk6 platform I knew the potential of what a cleanly modded example could be, along with trolling the forums to see what people were already doing with them.
So, I bought the car on 05/02/2012 with only 10 miles on the odometer, and before leaving the dealership already had an Airlift slam kit on order, I knew this car had to be bagged, after doing my Mk4 R32 I just couldn't live without air-ride, stance is a huge thing for me and my cars have to be slammed, but static slammed (note: slammed and lowered are 2 completely different things IMO) is just not functional or practical, the debate will go on forever but I have had 6 VW's previously from Mk1's through Mk4's and all of them maxed out on coilovers, I will never, ever daily drive a static slammed car ever again.
Now, fast forward to 05/05/2012, with only 140 miles on the odometer and 3 days after purchasing the JSW, I was already in my good friend Simon's (oscar_block) garage ready to get the air-ride installed-
The goods-
We got the car up into the air and ripped out the stock suspension in no time, Tim Tomas of the famed Tomas Sport Tuning even came through to help drop the front sub-frame so we didn't have to cut out the front sway bar-
After the front sway was out, we got the front air struts in and the sub-frame bolted back up (no worries, I did get it re-aligned after the fact), Tim started to run the air lines from the front to the rear where everything was going to be mounted and we also prepped the bulkhead fittings so we knew where all of the lines needed to end up-
Then it was time to move onto the rears, and even after doing a "custom" rear set up in the Mk4, was more of a pain in the ass than I was expecting. First off my kit for the rears were missing the much needed rear air bag bolt brackets, so we ended up having to fab our own until I could get some from Airlift, just needed sheet metal a whole saw kit and a welder-
There was also way more cutting and grinding for the rears then I would have preferred, but at this point it was too late to turn back, keep in mind the car was still only 3 days old.
Simon getting rid of the rear spring nipples
Notching the body for the rear air bag top bracket clearance
Done, coated for rust proofing
Rear bag test fit
At this point we finished up running and tucking all of the airlines, kept it clean, minus some zipties you can't even tell which ones are the air lines
We called it a night and ended with all 4 corners installed and all of the air lines ran, the next morning we started laying out the truck set up and mounting the Autopilot V2 controller. being that this was a weekend installation, I didn't really have the time or materials to do a super baller trunk set up, my goal was to get the kit in and running and I could always re-do the tank set up down the line, so we ripped out all of the rear interior and the driver side panels, got the tank, compressor, and digital control unit mounted in the spare tire recess, and we ran the actual V2 controller to the ashtray above the shifter so I could hide it and tuck it away.
Got everything hooked up to the fuse box for power
and the truck set up when we were done-
So roughly a day and a half and we had the entire kit installed tuned and running, tested everything for air leaks and re check all of the connections and I was good to go, this is how it sat when we were done, no frame notch-
About a week later I got the car back over to Berkeley, CA where Tim would knock out the frame notch, I think from beginning to end it took him about 2 hours-
And finally on the ground at full drop with no axle binding-
So by 05/11/2012 the car was bagged and the frame notch was done, that's 9 days after the original date of purchase, I was pretty stoked that everything came together, but I still wasn't done yet, while getting the frame notched (also did the fender tab mod and roller my fenders), Tim Tomas told me had been sitting on a set of wheels that he thought I might be interested in-
A freshly refinished set of Phaeton Challange wheels, they were already done up with the green, so I ordered a new set of tires and the following weekend we got them mounted and bolted them up-
I loved how they looked and the fitment was spot on, and they added that OEM plus steez I'm always down with while switching it up from the stock 17's. That pretty much covers the first 3 weeks of my JSW, I'll post up more of the progress since and what I'm planning to do next, thanks for checking this out yo! :wave: :beer:
Some of you may know my old Mk4 R32-
that was such an epic build for me, tackled everything from body work to air-ride, several wheel builds, and my first full vinyl wrap color change, only thing I really didn't mess with was the motor. For my next car though, I wanted something different, I knew I wanted a JSW, there aren't really many modded JSW's in my area and as soon as I saw the Mk6 platform I knew the potential of what a cleanly modded example could be, along with trolling the forums to see what people were already doing with them.
So, I bought the car on 05/02/2012 with only 10 miles on the odometer, and before leaving the dealership already had an Airlift slam kit on order, I knew this car had to be bagged, after doing my Mk4 R32 I just couldn't live without air-ride, stance is a huge thing for me and my cars have to be slammed, but static slammed (note: slammed and lowered are 2 completely different things IMO) is just not functional or practical, the debate will go on forever but I have had 6 VW's previously from Mk1's through Mk4's and all of them maxed out on coilovers, I will never, ever daily drive a static slammed car ever again.
Now, fast forward to 05/05/2012, with only 140 miles on the odometer and 3 days after purchasing the JSW, I was already in my good friend Simon's (oscar_block) garage ready to get the air-ride installed-
The goods-
We got the car up into the air and ripped out the stock suspension in no time, Tim Tomas of the famed Tomas Sport Tuning even came through to help drop the front sub-frame so we didn't have to cut out the front sway bar-
After the front sway was out, we got the front air struts in and the sub-frame bolted back up (no worries, I did get it re-aligned after the fact), Tim started to run the air lines from the front to the rear where everything was going to be mounted and we also prepped the bulkhead fittings so we knew where all of the lines needed to end up-
Then it was time to move onto the rears, and even after doing a "custom" rear set up in the Mk4, was more of a pain in the ass than I was expecting. First off my kit for the rears were missing the much needed rear air bag bolt brackets, so we ended up having to fab our own until I could get some from Airlift, just needed sheet metal a whole saw kit and a welder-
There was also way more cutting and grinding for the rears then I would have preferred, but at this point it was too late to turn back, keep in mind the car was still only 3 days old.
Simon getting rid of the rear spring nipples
Notching the body for the rear air bag top bracket clearance
Done, coated for rust proofing
Rear bag test fit
At this point we finished up running and tucking all of the airlines, kept it clean, minus some zipties you can't even tell which ones are the air lines
We called it a night and ended with all 4 corners installed and all of the air lines ran, the next morning we started laying out the truck set up and mounting the Autopilot V2 controller. being that this was a weekend installation, I didn't really have the time or materials to do a super baller trunk set up, my goal was to get the kit in and running and I could always re-do the tank set up down the line, so we ripped out all of the rear interior and the driver side panels, got the tank, compressor, and digital control unit mounted in the spare tire recess, and we ran the actual V2 controller to the ashtray above the shifter so I could hide it and tuck it away.
Got everything hooked up to the fuse box for power
and the truck set up when we were done-
So roughly a day and a half and we had the entire kit installed tuned and running, tested everything for air leaks and re check all of the connections and I was good to go, this is how it sat when we were done, no frame notch-
About a week later I got the car back over to Berkeley, CA where Tim would knock out the frame notch, I think from beginning to end it took him about 2 hours-
And finally on the ground at full drop with no axle binding-
So by 05/11/2012 the car was bagged and the frame notch was done, that's 9 days after the original date of purchase, I was pretty stoked that everything came together, but I still wasn't done yet, while getting the frame notched (also did the fender tab mod and roller my fenders), Tim Tomas told me had been sitting on a set of wheels that he thought I might be interested in-
A freshly refinished set of Phaeton Challange wheels, they were already done up with the green, so I ordered a new set of tires and the following weekend we got them mounted and bolted them up-
I loved how they looked and the fitment was spot on, and they added that OEM plus steez I'm always down with while switching it up from the stock 17's. That pretty much covers the first 3 weeks of my JSW, I'll post up more of the progress since and what I'm planning to do next, thanks for checking this out yo! :wave: :beer: