Practically Classics Forum

Does anyone on here have one of these things / has anyone worked on the interior of one?
At some point in the near future, i'm going to need to completely strip the interior of a 56 plate golf TDi (long story, don't ask) but that means that I need to remove it and find and fit a complete replacement.
I have never turned spanners on a VW before so if anyone can help with how simple it is to remove everything from the interior, seats, carpet, dashboard, console, door cards, pillar trim, headliner, maybe the air bags assuming they are in 700 places like most other modern-ish cars, possibly the loom (it may be fixable but i won't know until its here).
I'm a glutton for punishment.

Terry,

The nuts and bolts turn counter clockwise to loosen and clockwise to tighten. Everything should come apart pretty easily on a new car.

Terry - As stated above - they are quite simple - however the thing to be careful with is any trim that is retained on clips - if you are too heavy handed with the clips they break and some of the trim can be a little flimsy and breaks easily - the manufactures have it all worked out in their favour - quite a lot of the clips are not available as OE without purchasing the complete trim section which tend to be expensive - but you can normally hunt them down on line - an hour or so on YouTube will probably yield good results in any unknown areas - good luck

If you're an "experienced technician" in a VW franchised dealership then you just rive all of the trim off with a selection of the filthiest and most brutal implements you can find whereas, if you're as competent as you, Terry, clearly are, you'll push down on the centre of each of the hundreds of fir tree clips that hold the recent VWs together, then withdraw the clips for reuse after the job has been done and you'll probably not have broken anything.
I could have loved my 1.6TDI if it had been reliable after the end of its second year, but the woeful absence of common sense in all bar one of the mechanics across the three branches of the dealer that sold the damnable sack of crap to me? That was truly shocking and even BL in the depth of the seventies would have been able to dismantle any modern car's interior by the power of common sense and without previous knowledge of fir tree clips, which are - like all of the cleverest things - incredibly simple.

If I ever own another water cooled VW, it'll be no more recent than from the era of a K70 or early Audi 80, that way you won't have to spend so much time lying on your back in a puddle, trying to find out why your new car won't let you unlock its doors in order to release the hostages it's made of your passengers! Sorry, that didn't help did it..

The current interior is completely ruined but i'd imagine all the clips are salvable so i'll remove it carefully (and burn it after saving any clips that I can and removing the air bags).
Not that I was expecting someone to say "this bit is a sod to remove unless you...." but as nobody has jumped in with warnings of doom, i'll just grab a socket set and my interior trim removing plastic tool things and get to it.
breakersyard.com is damn handy in sourcing reasonable priced trim

I'll post some pics of the interior when I get it back. this car is a barn "find" of sorts, I knew it was there so not really a find but it has been in a barn for 2 years after its fuel pump failed and it has become home to some furry things.

TerryG wrote:....it has been in a barn for 2 years after its fuel pump failed...

I wish that I could afford to throw cars away for such trivial reasons.

The only tool needed to remove fir tree clips is a cocktail stick or something similarly small and stick-like. Just push the centre pin inwards and use fingernails to lift the complete clip out of its hole, most folk assume that the whole clip has to be pulled out by the rim, understandable since pushing something to remove it isn't exactly intuitive, which is why sales of replacement clips of this type are keeping the Chinese economy afloat. Possibly.

TerryG wrote:burn it..

Yes, that's an even better solution but there's still no excuse for throwing away a car when some of the world's poorest people have no cars at all.

The weirdest part is this was put in a barn and a 2003 corsa purchased to replace it.

Yet more proof, if any were needed, that the world is in the grip of a severe collective logic deficit.

I said something along those lines when the event occurred but being slightly less polite about the person responsible.

Before disconnecting any airbags Terry, don't forget to disconnect the battery and leave the hazards on for 15 mins to discharge any energy in the systems. I'm sure you already knew this but better to say just in case