slag
Passed Driver's Ed
- Location
- Lawrence, Kansas
- Car(s)
- 2007 GTI, 2009 GTI
I've always liked the look of the GTI. It's a slick little car with a ton of aftermarket stuff available and gets decent mileage. I found one on IAAI (similar to copart), and won the auction last week for a 2007 white car with black leather interior. It's loaded except for Fahrenheit package. Pulled it home and started seeing what I needed. Driver's fender, front bumper, grills, some misc body work under the door sill, and some other things, but the engine sounds good and I checked the cam follower and its in perfect shape. I started pricing out parts, and while I couldn't get everything in the color I needed for my car, I did buy everything on line except the headlights and they are shipping this week. Then, while at a baseball tournament for my son this weekend, I was browsing the local facebook marketplace and found my car's twin, a 2009 white GTI with engine noise. I immediately recognized this is probably a tensioner/guide issue and the chain has probably jumped timing. My 07 is an FSI, this car, a 2009, is a TSI, so while the body parts are identical, the engines are not. Running the numbers in my head, I messaged the guy and we set up a time to meet. I bought this car yesterday and while its not as loaded as the first one, no sunroof, no NAV, the rest is identical and honestly, no one uses an outdated NAV and I don't care about the sunroof. However, instead of using it for parts, I think I'm going to fix this one also as long as the damage isn't too bad when I dig into it, and figure out which one I want to keep. One question I have is, assuming most of my valves are bent, where is the best place to purchase new valves for the TSI engine? I see them all over the place in price, and I assume you get what you pay for, but if I could get some used valves and do a valve job and lap them well, that would suffice as long as there is no other timing/head damage. I'd of course put a new timing kit on and buy the tool set to do that also as well as a new headgasket kit. Just a little background on me. I'm mechanically inclined and have a great selection of tools and spend most of my spare time wrenching in my garage. I just finished putting a head gasket on an 03 civic and before that, replaced a head on my son's 3.4 liter toyota 4runner engine, so this job should be relatively simple. I also already have triple square sockets from working on an old 2002 Audi A4 I used to own.
