Golf R

I had ice on the windscreen of the Fiesta this morning. All the other windows were totally clear, no condensation or mist.

Just come back from my lunchtime walk, I didn't need to take my jacket. The weather app on the phone says it's 16C outside, and there is a cloudless sky to go with it. Glorious !

The test car has the pack, 19” wheels and the bits of plastic stuck on.  Maybe the strokes were a bit too far even for Mercedes?

I had my reservations about them on a more performance oriented car but I now think they are excellent. My issue this morning was traction from FWD on the cold, greasy surfaces. I rather missed AWD at times!

Not quite as bad as mixing summer/winters but I wouldn’t mix summer/all season tyres

So, is it quicker than the A35.....?

Drag Race

Probably a little bit of a horsepower lottery going on. I doubt all these cars have exactly what it says on the tin out of the factory. Some cars, especially VAG ones can dyno higher outputs than their standard figures. Also one's a dry race and one's wet, so could just be down to tyres hooking up better in thos respective conditions.

I doubt that silly wing on the Merc helps much either!

Much cleaner than mine. It could have done with a wash after last weeks trip to Prescott but I’ve goes Autoglass coming to repair the bumper tomorrow so I thought I’d leave it until next weekend.

Looks great Martin.
Good work.

I gather confession is good for you and I don’t mind admitting it when I break my own rules. So today I broke my OEM only rule and did a ‘mod’.

One thing that does annoy me when driving the Golf is the small plastic paddles.  The closest to an OEM replacements is VWR (Volkswagen Racing) who will sell you some aluminium paddles for £190.  I found out that you can get ones that are very similar from Aliexpress, but the quality is very variable, however I spotted a link to some that were supposed to be good for around £20.  When I opened the link, they were £8.85 delivered (£8.94 in the end), so there wasn’t anything to lose in giving them a try.  Delivery was 4-6 weeks, but I ordered them on the 27th May and they arrived today.

They are spot on, fit nice and tight without and flex or wobble and work perfectly.  Only driven it around the block to check all was well, but I can tell straight away that they are going to be so much better than the standard paddles.  Only took me a couple of minutes to change over as well.

I can promise you it won’t!  That’s the start and end of my modding journey 

Not sure how concerned to be, really, but you could always blank off the satnav screen in the first pic so your location isn't visible.

So how do they fit on? Are they attached to the old paddles or do you remove those first?

Perhaps they realise from focus studies, user groups and surveys that in actual fact it is the LEAST touched object in a car that changes gear itself so spend money on it accordingly 

You can get stick on ones, but they look awful and can ruin the original paddles.   The paddles clip in then the hinge is secured by a plastic pin, so as long as you've got some narrow nose pliers they're quick/easy to change.

They’re fairly simple, but is easy to get the hinge position and hole diameter wrong and some are poorly finished as well.