Gti Plastic Arches Etc.

[ross1905 1]

Hi, recently one of the front plastic arches fell off my car whilst driving (weird, I know).

Even weirder, this is not a GTI. It's a D Turbo, which never came with the GTI arch kit as far as I know.

 

When I purchased the car I never thought about it, thought it looked right and that was that until one fell off.

If I remember correctly, GTIs have holes in the arches for the fixings of these plastics - which this car doesn't.

It appears they were/are fitted with some form of sticky fixer, hence why one has come off.

 

I'd just like to clear up my assumption that in the car's life, these have been retro-fitted and are not standard. I always thought that the plastics wouldn't fit the lower models for various reasons, can anyone shed some light? You can see the stripes on the doors which you don't get on on GTIs.

 

[scbond 15 1 Cars]

They've been added on by a previous owner. You can see where the side trims are sat slightly lower so the top fits into the indented groove in the doors which the GTI doesn't have. They were probably held one with some sort of sealant. I'd say one like Sikaflex or Tiger Seal but then the arch wouldn't have fallen off.

 

Also, the wheels are from a 1.6 GTI if you didn't know already.

Edited May 6, 2015 by scbond

[ross1905 1]

Thanks for clearing that up for me.

Now although I like the look of the GTI kit, I don't like the fact it isn't fitted right and doesn't quite fit the car 100% - I don't want to fanny about drilling my wings for them either. I'd like to opt for removing them to keep the car standard. However, as you can see the paint where the trim was is less faded than the rest which looks rubbish. I know red is a bad one for this, would any amount of machine polishing blend this out if you know what I mean?

[welshpug 1,657]

its a dealer fit kit from the accessories range they used to do for them, not a factory fit kit, afaik its all stick/clip on stuff without any holes required.