Is this the most modified VW Mk8 GTI in North America? | American Tuned ft. Rob Dahm

This is our 22 Mark VIII Volkswagen GTI that we've done pretty much everything you can do to. I've never had the chance to modify a brand new car. That's a whole new world for me. It's really fun. You should do it at least once. Does this car still have a warranty? No comment. Meet BMP Tuning, Volkswagen tuning shop and aftermarket parts distributor. Why are we here? The Mark VIII GTI. The newest version of a car that for many owners has been their introduction to bolt-on tuning. So this starts its life as the eighth generation of the Golf GTI? Yes, sir. Okay. This is a lot quicker than my build, but from the stock car months ago, how far away from stock are you? Interior wise, not so much, but everything else as far as you can probably get. Pretty much every bolt has been removed at least once at this point near motor removal at one point. Yeah, as you say, I think this is actually the best definition of full bolt-on just short of like you went out of your way not to pull the engine. Yeah, there's absolutely nothing on the market right now that's not on this car or hasn't been on the car. So it's insane. Like I said, running through, we've got a lot of visual beauty. A lot of things have changed to the outside, but there's also a lot of drivetrain and suspension modification. Absolutely. So we have the full Verkline catalog. So front tubular subframe, rear tubular subframe, all of their arms, as well as air lift, a suspension on the car. And then as far as motors concerned, we've done all the charge piping, intercooler, intake, turbo muffler lead, inlet, all of it, right? Down to the coil packs and plugs. Really? Okay. And then visually you've got splitters, side skirts, whatever else. Flow in Australia sent us their splitter kit, and we have that matched with their side strakes and the Golf R side skirts. And then we did the Golf R rear bumper, Golf R rear wing, and then a Aerofab rear diffuser to tie it all together. That's awesome. I'm assuming your very first Volkswagen that you got into, you didn't do all of this. No. It generally starts with an intake downpipe tune, and then you just kind of go from there. Suspension, wheels, that's the general, you know, avenue that people go. It's kind of take a step back mentally to step into a car like this, because it wasn't until 32 years old did I ever touch a welder. In my 20s, I was looking for what parts is somebody else using that I can buy and bolt on. Almost everybody's journey starts the same way, or at least all myself and my friends did, is that you get a car you can barely afford, and you start with the same couple things. You're focused on the air intake, the exhaust, the intercooler, maybe even a tune. But those couple parts are really a gateway drug, including this one right here. So this is the cold air intake for the Mark 8 Golf. And what you see here is it actually matches the design of the car. And it's really impressive because not only is it an air filter inside of here, but it also is bringing in cold air from the front of the car. So getting cold air into the car is only half the equation. If you've got a turbocharger, you're going to need this. This looks like a radiator, but it's an intercooler. And they work in the exact same principle. So in this case, this is hot air coming from the turbocharger, which can be 200-300 degrees if you're really at full tilt. And through here, it cools down to maybe 20 degrees over ambient temperature. Colder air is more dense. More dense air makes more horsepower. That is not a light piece. Stock exhaust systems are very restrictive on almost every car for a lot of reasons. So I remember I googled, like, what downpipe can I buy for my car? And I bought three different ones because the first one didn't sound good. Second one didn't sound good. Thankfully, with the internet and video being so prevalent now, you can, for the most part, get an idea of what you're getting yourself into. Something like this is a downpipe. From the other side of the turbocharger, the exhaust coming out of the turbocharger does not like back pressure. And so you can see this is a pretty nice and clean setup. A little flex tube because your car hits tons of bumps and you don't want your exhaust system to crack. O2 sensor connector, pretty standard for just about every car. Now, if you've done too many modifications or you're thinking ahead, the next step is tapping into the computer. And that's where a cable like this comes into play. This plugs into the OBD2 port and allows you to connect to the stock computer. So when you modify a car, you don't realize that everything comes at a cost. And I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about the change in performance of the vehicle. You're kind of undoing the bureaucracy of a retail car. But then once you get outside that little special zone, you start just messing the car up. This point is the beginning of that waterfall into absolute insanity. So we'll stop there for this section. But that is the beginning of almost every car and starting its tuning process. What's your personal favorite part about this? Still the Saibon hood just because we got pre-release hood from them and they allowed us to paint it, which was really cool because usually they want to display all of the carbon. That looks really good that way. I noticed that the inside of this wheel is a stock wheel. Yeah, so they're factory Pretorias off of a, in this case, Mark 7.5 Rabbit, 18-inch that we had cut and turned into 20-inch three-piece wheels. That's incredible. There's a lot of work that goes involved in that. Oh yeah, I believe. This is certainly a car that I think in the Volkswagen community would inspire others to be like, oh, I want that hood or I want that part. I certainly wish. For me, I just build within my own capacity, right? So the more money I make, the more wild my builds get. Now that I'm into the Euro community or the Euro market, it's really cool to build things that other people appreciate. The community is so much better than any community I've been in. Everyone wants to bring everyone else together, whether it's finding super rare parts for your car from overseas or shipping you something from the dealer because they work in the parts department that's super rare or just come out. Everyone's always got everybody's back and it's super important in this community. It's the reason why I don't think I'll ever leave it. So my world is always just pure performance. My cars look like absolute trash. In this case, you can have your cake and eat it too. You've got a lot of work done to the engine. Oh, absolutely. Between all the bolt-ons that we've done on the car, which is all of them, and then all of the beta testing that we've done for all these companies that are launching software for the car. This car has been on the dyno since 150 miles and it hasn't stopped. With some new ECU upgrade software to beta test, we're taking the GTI to a local dyno shop to see what kind of power and torque improvements we can get. This is like the final boss of tuning. You avoid going to the dyno for as long as possible. You're trying to street tune it, but I will tell you something that is absolutely mind-blowing. It is so much easier to dyno tune than it is to street tune. So a couple intimidating things about the dyno. One, do not ever use your own brakes to slow the thing down. This drum is massive. It's got a lot of weight, a lot of mass to it. And so you use your own brakes, you're going to absolutely annihilate your brakes on here. So you always let the drum, there's a little button that'll have a brake, slow the drum down, you put the car neutral. But the other thing is, you always have to calibrate the car to the dyno computer. This computer has no idea what speed your car is at. It knows the wheel speed, but it doesn't know your engine speed. So typically you get the car up to about 3,000 RPM in like a fourth gear, and then they synchronize that to the machine. And now they know, hey, 3,000 RPM is this fast on these wheels. So now you're ready to take your first pull. That's not bad. So this is the Unitronic Stage 2 file. 93 octane. So this is a beta file. Yeah. Normally speaking, this car on 93 would make about 420 torque. Given this file's new, they're just making changes and- Trying new things. Just trying new things. Yeah. But it's still new. It's still way above stock. Oh yeah. Stock on this car, I think we put down like 270 torque, 265 torque, something like that. And 240 horsepower or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's way, way beyond that now. We're going to do another pull almost immediately back to back just to see what happens. Is it consistent? Nice and hot. They just did three back to back and you can see the effects. Nonetheless, these numbers are consistent. It's just that this is the effect of heat soak. Solid. My car wouldn't have been able to do that. It would have been nose dive. So yeah, it does make torque and power very, very low in the power band, which is super peppy, super fun. Even stock. But once you add power with Unitronic or any other software that's available, you just flash the car, bring it to the dyno or don't and enjoy. From a drivability standpoint, though, I could still have this as like my daily driver. You could. It would be pretty annoying. We have BFI stage three mounts, solid dog bone and then all the tubular suspension. Like it's pretty annoying, but it's fun. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is that if that's what you wanted, you could do it. You could theoretically drive it every day. Yes. And be annoyed every day. You're saying that you have spherical bearings in the suspension. So it should be like firm, like a race car. Exactly. Every single component from end links to rear trailing arms is all spherical. Wow. So yeah, it's annoying and amazing. Spherical bearings are often used on suspension links, replacing rubber bushings that automakers use. You get more direct handling, but the tradeoff is a rougher ride. And you are not lying about feeling every bit of that good or bad. Yeah, you can feel it all. Yeah, it's fun. It's funny because the suspension is good. It likes to communicate. It tells you everything. I've only had spherical bearings on the four rotor and like, you know, some aftermarket parts, but not full blown, you know, new car. Yeah. And a new car, I mean, you pretty much ruin it a hundred percent, but you know. It looks good doing it. Yeah. This one's hit the dyno so much that I think if Vito Corporate actually plugged it in, they'd be pretty upset with the flash counts and everything. None of this stuff is for the faint of heart, you know. There's a sweet spot around like 3,500 RPMs that it just loves to pop. Yeah, I have a love-hate with like factory burble tunes. I have a love-hate with burble tunes in general. Yeah, I was being subtle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like for something like this for me, where I get in the car and drive it a couple times a month, and I'm super aggressive with it, it's a lot of fun. I've had it on a daily and it's not fun. But these companies make the crackle and pops or whatever they want to call it. And then they get upset because the kids say, oh, you know, I need more, more, more, you know. And it's like that Star Wars meme, you know, where Kylo's like more. It is. Right there is what I love about the torque curve that we saw earlier in the dyno, is that this car has got power to daily drive without a problem. It definitely shows you how good bags and air suspension has gotten over the years that I wouldn't even notice. And other than the squeakies and the air pressure popping and dropping, I wouldn't have known that this was on air. I guess other than the fact that it is a Volkswagen by default, it's probably on air. Oh yeah, that is another thing. That was I think my third modification was a blow-off valve. Unfortunately, it's Tesla that I'm passing right now. Can't do that. But on this car, a blow-off valve, not too obnoxious. Just that nice little whistle reminds you of a nice working turbocharger. That's, for me, icing on the cake. I think that this type of driving is actually the best for a car like this. This thing looks badass. This thing looks cool. And it's not my cup of tea. It's not the car I would have bought. But you can't deny that, I mean, this is a pretty sharp car. If I needed to be well-rounded with the car, I've got all of this space. I've got all this power to jump on it. I've got so many things all in one vehicle. And especially as technology improves, you can do so many things with one car. And I think that's something that I've always had a chip on my shoulder about, is you don't just make a car like this a drag car. You don't make an RX-7 a drag car. You don't make a Corvette a drag car. You can make it a car that's capable of going to the drag strip. You can make cars capable of doing all these things. But it's more fun when you make it well-rounded. No doubt, the Volkswagen GTI is a car that sent many a VW nerd down the tuning rabbit hole. But for a tuning shop, every new model generation means a bunch of new products to bolt on, try out, and beta test. Imagine being the one testing all those gateway drugs. And all the drugs that come after that. And so on. Metaphorically speaking, of course.