My MK4 R32 restoration project

Once I had the rear of the car dismantled, I moved to the front.

I proceeded to strip the rear brake system and remove the rear arms off the car.

Since owning the R32, I knew there were a few things that needed doing. The handbrake no longer held the car and the rear brakes barely worked. The handling when pushing the car hard didn’t fill me with confidence.

I left the car for almost two months to let the new paint gas off.

The car had a little amount of rust forming on the roof sill, so I wanted to get this sorted out as soon as possible.

Picked up a Seat Leon Cupra-R front splitter for the R32. Fitting was straight forward.

I didn’t like how quiet the resonated Miltek was on the MK4 compared to the MK5 - the MK5 R32 was loud and the MK4 is too silent.

One of the first things I wanted to do was replace the old faded grills.

I traded my MK5 R32 with 102k miles in for a MK4 R32. Why? My first car was a MK4 1.8T GTI and I had always wanted to purchase a MK4 R32. At the time, the MK4 R32’s were just way out of my budget, so I settled for a MK5 R32. The car was very refined, but a little too refined. I could push the car as hard as I wanted, and it wouldn’t blink an eye.