Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Don't live this way

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.

Everything wrong with my GTI

When you buy a used car of a certain age, you expect it to come with some flaws. Cosmetic flaws you can largely live with. Because if they were a deal breaker, you wouldn’t have bought the car. Minor mechanical flaws - again, if the flaws were major, you’d skip the buying, you have to fix rather quickly. Because presumably you want to keep the car for a bit of time, and you have more plans for it than being a static museum piece.

I bought my one-owner 2019 Volkswagen Golf GTI Rabbit Edition, about 56,000 miles, from Carvana back in October of 2025. The nice thing with Carvana is there’s a seven day money back guarantee. No questions asked, so long as you don’t get into an accident with the car. (At which point - it’s yours now!) Should your used car purchase from Carvana proved too flawed to keep, just drive it right back to one of their wondrous vending machine locations.

Obviously the GTI wasn’t too buggered to need returning. However, there were many fixes that needed doing to get the car up to my personal standards. Here’s a comprehensive list of things I’ve done to the Golf to get it to par.

The front sway bar end links were tattered and making a horrible clunking noise with every up/down motion. The pair got replaced with OEM units from FCP Euro.
Engine and cabin air filter were replaced. I cannot trust when they were last done. The parts from FCP Euro were cheap.
On that same vein, all fluids - engine, transmission, differential, brake - and spark plugs were replaced with proper replacements. The folks at ZTF Automotive provided the labor that I paid for.
Windshield wiper blades front and rear replaced. Again, cannot trust when those were last serviced.
During the reconditioning process, Carvana seems to have fit the incorrect front brake pads. They were plenty meaty, but clunked terribly when going over bumps. A fresh set of OEM brake pads went in. No more clunking.
The front windshield moldings on either side were cracked due to sun damage. OEM replacements purchased from FCP Euro and installed.
Equally sun-damaged was the windshield wiper cowl. An application of Solution Finish did the job.
Tires were mismatched front and rear, with the fronts on Bridgestone that were half worn. The back set was seemingly brand new, but unfortunately a no-name Chinese brand. All four were replaced with a fresh set of Vredestein Ultrac Pro tires.
The new tires were wrapped around a brand new factory set of silver Pretoria alloys. The original set on the GTI were expectedly curbed and trashed. One of the wheel even had a visible bend. Not great!
Armed with new wheels and tires, a wheel alignment check was done to protect that investment. Also done at ZTF Automotive.
The Golf has a great greenhouse full of airy glass, excellent for visibility. What it is not excellent for is heat rejection. All windows sans the windshield got 3M tint applied. GraphixLab performed the work.
The hatch area was missing the tonneau cover and the VW CarGo mat that most certainly would have been sold with the Golf when new. Used items of each were purchased on eBay. The tonneau cover is over $700 if I wanted a new one!
Previous owner appears to be an avid hauler of things, which is commendable because I love seeing cars serving their purpose. However, that meant the rear hatch cover on the GTI was in a mangled shaped; some panels didn’t even fit correctly. A used junkyard replacement was bought on eBay.
Still in the hatch area: the drain tube that leads water away from the multi-function VW badge (it doubles as a hatch handle and rear-view camera) was perished. Gone. When it rained, water was getting inside hatch floor. This is apparently a common issue. At least the part is available and cheap.
Speaking of water leaks, my GTI was plagued with the other common defect: rear speaker gasket failure. After a weekend of heavy rain, I noticed the rear driver-side carpet was soaked, and that was a the culprit. A tube of bathroom sealer did the trick, though in the process of removing the door skin, I broke the handle. A junkyard door skin on eBay was surprisingly cheap: $79.
With over 56,000 miles, you expect a good amount of stone chips on the front end and on the lower sides. My favorite touchup paint manufacturer is Dr ColorChip. The Golf’s Pure White is a solid color, non metallic, so the paint match is exceptional.
The steering wheel leather was absolutely slimy and full of scratches. Even after multiple rounds of cleaning with diluted all-purpose-leaner, it was a dreadful sight. For something that I hold the entire time I am driving the car, the $450 spend to buy a fresh OEM replacement from a dealership was worth the expense.
Carvana recondition team did a horrible job cleaning the interior. Of course the previous owner likely never cleaned it at all, but you the selling dealer has got to do a better job than that. It was so filthy that it took two rounds of deep cleaning to get it to my admittedly high cleanliness standards.
The front lower control arms squeaks noticeably when moving slowly on uneven pavement and going over speed bumps. This is apparently a known issue with MK7 GTIs. At least the solution is simple: a blast of silicon grease onto the control arm bushings. Enjoy the silence for six months, then re-do like it is a maintenance item.

I am once again asking for competence

As a car enthusiast, one of the pain points is needing a third party to perform service to your car. Which is entirely unavoidable unless you’ve got a garage with all the tools possible. It is a pain point because competence is difficult to find. I’m not even asking for attention to detail; I just want the job done correctly! I don’t expect another person to treat my own car as nicely as I do.

The sad reality is, you live long enough and you’d no doubt been burned by some automotive repair place. I can remember an auto body shop failed to remove a rubber trim before repainting a damaged panel (denied responsibility.) Then there was a shop that scratched up the interior whilst installing window tint. When I recently got the GTI tinted as well, another tint place had to redo the job three times. At least they gave me a discount in apology, which is why I’m not linking to their website.

Because competence is not often encountered, I do well to remember the ones that perform to par. I recently changed the wheels on the GTI, retaining the same set of tires. The tire shop I chose did the job exactly as prescribed. They even filled the tires correctly to the specified pressure on the door jam. And made sure each rubber stayed at the same corners as before, so as to not mess up the wear rotation. When you find capable shops like this, you make sure to continue patronizing.

Some additional shoutouts: the parts department at Volkswagen of Marin has excellent communication. The America’s Tire location in Milbrae has done over half a dozen set of tires for me over the years and has yet to disappoint. ZTF Automotive is the best indy VW/Audi mechanic in the Bay Area.

Unfortunately, we can’t all be Thanos and do it ourselves.

Say no to black wheels

One of the famous lines from the cult movie The Fast and the Furious is: “…overnight parts from Japan.” As if it were really that easy and quick to get car parts. Perhaps it indeed was back in those days, but in our modern tariff-filled turbulent times, the wait can be excruciating. And you’ll pay more for the product, too.

Unless of course you took advantage of Black Friday deals like I did. On the day after Thanksgiving 2025 I bought a set of wheels for my then new-to-me MK7 VW Golf GTI. It wasn’t anything special, just the same exact wheel as the original set that came with the car, but painted silver. The factory wheels were painted in black. I absolutely detest black-colored wheels, and don't understand why it is the current fashion in automotive-dom.

You look at the wheels of most new cars on sale, and the wheels are likely painted black. Why spend the R&D money at all on intricate wheel design when it all gets lost in a black circle. Worst, after a fresh coat of brake dust, black-colored wheels look like a decaying, rusting piece of iron. No thank you.

That was why I was determined to get different set of wheels. Thankfully Volkswagen sells the same design in silver, so that was the obvious choice. I am too old to be fussing with fitting aftermarket wheels. OEM is the best. They’ve certainly spent the most money developing the parts.

It wasn’t until last week that the wheels I ordered back in November of last year, arrived and ready for pick up. Five freaking months of waiting, because the wheels are made in Germany, and these days importing anything from outside the U.S. seems to be a hilarious crap-shoot. Overnight parts from Japan in 2026? It’ll probably get stuck in customs.

Patience, young Padawan

Ever since I purchased my new-to-me 2019 Volkswagen Golf GTI last October, I’ve been doing small jobs here and there every weekend. The downside of buying a used car is that there’s bound to be existing blemishes and inconsistencies. The upside is obviously you save a bit of money buying second-hand. Though I didn’t really have a choice: if I wanted a seventh generation GTI, used is the only game in town.

I’ve no interest in the LCD-screen festooned eight generation GTI currently on the market. Car interiors should have physical buttons and dials, and I will gladly die on this hill.

In the process of fixing up a car, you kind of realize things about yourself. I found out that I tend to dive in without a care. Rambo-ing it. Leroy Jenkins. The consequence of this is that I’ve broken a few parts that I wouldn’t have otherwise. No big deal in the grand scheme of things because thankfully the Golf platform has parts a plenty - VW has sold millions of them. Nevertheless, I’ve learned that I got to be a lot more patient.

The enthusiasm stems from me wanting to get the job done as quickly as possible. Because I am chasing that sense of accomplishment after the work is finished. There’s nothing more grating to me than leaving in the middle of a project to tend to the human stuff. Like going to bathroom, eating, or going to bed. My personality is such that open-ended loops are crushingly stressful for me.

Owning the GTI have slowly weened me off that affliction. Because there’s nothing I can do about waiting for a replacement part to arrive. It’s already bad enough that I broke it in the first place, but then I get to stew in my incompetence and impatience. I’m not rich at all to pay for overnight shipping. Ever so slowly I am learning to tolerate - hopefully reach peace someday - open-ended loops.

Owning brand new cars is way less stressful for sure. But then I wouldn’t have learned a lesson about myself.

I'm once again asking for competence

When you trade you hard-earned money for a service or item, you expect to be treated correctly. No need overly slobber over my knob, no: I’m just asking for mere competence. Do the job properly! Return emails and phone calls in a timely manner. You know, basic customer service stuff.

In the never-ending journey of fixing my used 2019 Volkswagen Golf GTI back up to my standards of acceptable quality, I’ve been buying quite a few parts. In order to save as much as possible, certain items I’m okay with buying used on eBay. It’s already a used car: there’s no point to making it perfect.

The previous owner of the Golf must have frequently hauled large items in the hatch. Which is great, because I love seeing cars being used for its intention. However, that means the inner hatch cover of the GTI is a bit too beat up for my liking. One side doesn’t even fit flush anymore.

I bought a replacement panel on eBay off a wrecked car. However, the seller failed to cover the entire piece in cardboard. When the shipping company - doesn’t matter who, really; they all don’t give a crap - inevitably drags the part on the ground, the exposed corners got marred. Not the end of the world, but annoying nevertheless. You’d think a seller of used car parts would know how to package them properly for transit.

From a different seller I purchased a used rear door skin. This seller actually covered the entire thing in cardboard. It’s a sad state of affairs that I have to be impressed at mere competence, but here we are. At least I’ve now found a known quality seller, should I need additional replacements parts for the VW.

If you’re looking for car parts off of wrecked cars, look first at Enthusiast Car Parts.

The waiting game

Before you buy anything on Amazon, it’s smart to check camelcamelcamel on an item’s historical pricing. Has it been cheaper in recent weeks? Is the discount really a discount, or did the vendor simply raise the price then handed out coupons? If you’re able to wait, it’s good strategy to ensure you’re getting the best price. All the randomized savings here and there can add up bigly.

Amazon, not content to let a third party service get all the ad revenue, have rolled out historical pricing check right in the item description. The “Rufus AI” doesn’t go as far back as camelcamelcamel - the past 90 days versus for as long as an item has been listed, but I reckon three months is sufficient data to see if you’re getting ripped off. Who cares if a thing is $20 cheaper back in 2021. Inflation comes for everything and everyone.

I however am incapable for waiting. The worst part of online shopping is the lag time between ordering and the package arriving at the door. Especially if the item is part of a bigger project I am working on.

I bought a used VW Golf GTI back in October, and I’ve been slowly fixing the flaws left behind by the previous owner. The goal isn’t to make it perfect again - as much as I want to. The goal is to refresh the car to a level where it would be as if I had owned it the entire time. A portion of that is buying new parts to replaced worn out ones. And the worst thing that can happen to me is seeing that an item is backordered.

It seems I don’t get satisfaction until something is done. This in between process stuff is merely an annoyance. Good things come to those who wait? Forget that! I want a project done as quickly as possible so I can move on to other things. In the meantime I’ve got to look at an unfinished - to me - car, and it bugs me every time.

That backordered set of wheels cannot come soon enough.