Ever since I bought a used 2019 Golf GTI back in October 2025, I've been having a grand ole time spending weekends fixing it up. Performed some much needed maintenance and general cleaning. Bought quite a few replacement parts to get the Golf up to my personal standards of correctness.
But my compulsive obsessiveness is indeed a double-edged sword. I’ve come to completely understand the enthusiasts who keep cars stored in climate-controlled bunkers, never to be driven. Because that is the only way to preserve perfection. Anytime a car is driven or gets worked on, it opens up opportunity for blemishes to get introduced. And that is chaos to our psyche.
Yesterday I had to loosen up the front seat of the GTI to add back in a storage drawer. (Long story short, Volkswagen did quite a few cost-cutting to later model years of the MK7 Golf. Because the company had to pay a historically massive fine for dieselgate.) The rear outside bolt came out terribly, with quite a few rings of mangled thread. I cleaned the bolt up best I could, and thankfully it threaded back in - not completely smoothly - and tightened to the correct specification.
Job done, right? Not if you’re an obsessive psychopath like me. All I could concentrate on afterwards was the offending bolt, and the potentially cross-threaded hole. I should buy a replacement bolt! But what if I take it out a second time, I won’t be able to thread the new bolt back in? Oh man, does that mean I can’t ever take the driver seat out in this Golf again? Is it really safe, even though the problem bolt torqued properly?
See, a normal person would recognize the bolt tightens just fine and moved the heck on with life. For whatever reason, my brand of car enthusiasm involves a fervent want to keep things perfect. Flaws are a personal challenge. I greatly do not recommend living this way.
And sadly, I don’t have climate-controlled bunker money. Because I totally would, purely for mental health reasons.
Re-contenting.