Volkswagen parts reviews

I just completed this on my '13 a few weeks back at 68,000. Belt was still in good condition but as others noted, thats not the only point of failure and my roller bearings had some excessive play so I am glad I did it given the risk of letting it go.

If you still have the factory non-adjustable tie rod on one side, just replace it - that thing is old AF. All the new ones are adjustable, that was just for their assembly line.

I'm using StopTech's 1-piece drilled and cryo-treated rotors and EBC Redstuff pads and have been extremely impressed with their performance on the street.Very good braking and fairly low dust and/or noise.

The approach to go with 10W40 is absolutely right - from my experience the best oil for that kind of engines! Take an expensive Castrol Magnatec Oil and it runs well.

I use conventional oil (10w-40) and personally change it every 2,000 with a new Mann or Mahle filter.

On my daily R I just replaced the timing belt and water pump at 80,000 miles. It is my daily so I just did it to have piece of mind. The belt looked great as well as the water pump.

For pads I'm having pretty good success with the new Hawk Ceramic 5.0. I run those on my GLI(with Golf R calipers/brakes) and on the .:R. I was surprised for light track duty they were ok on both cars. Not a full on track pad to be clear. They are also a high torque pad so they have really good bite.

I used Corrado G60 hubs (still retaining 4x100 lug pattern) Corrado 4-wheel ABS system paired to adapters to run 11.8" 4piston Mercedes Benz front brakes with Yellowstuff EBC race compound pads and 10.2" rear discs with Hawk HPS pads. This brake configuration to mass ratio was already an upgrade on the 4800# donor car, here they are absolutely insane on a sub 3000# Mk1 Cabriolet.

I installed them with the ECS 23mm bar. In retrospect I can't justify the additional price over say a Bilstein B6 (I installed those on my previous Jetta). I thought they would be smoother/more expensive riding than the Bilsteins, but you can still pick up every little expansion joint and imperfection in the road....unless that's what you are going for.

So it looks like VW has stripped away a lot from their 2017 models, mainly the Beetle and Jetta. The GLI is down to one trim and no options again. They even removed the Bi-Xenon headlights.