Now the new year came, I managed to get a better part time job alongside my school work (6th form) so the cash coming in, the saving for the restoration began..

In the meantime I thought about doing something to keep me busy, I had seen in many posts people asking how to get rid of the nasty plastic induction piping that comes on the MK5, finally I found someone who (a mr "Twinkle" on FEOC) who had the answer. He showed me that the RS Turbo Crossover Pipe could be used, with some rather nice increases in torque...but it did need either a lot of money, or a lot of work.

Being short as I was saving for the full restoration, I decided to get hold of a Crossover pipe and do it myself, it cost me around £25 on ebay and came in a right state.

So first job was to cut off the now un-needed flanges on either side, with the only hacksaw in the house being blunt...it took me 7 hours to do it, my arm hurt for days on end...and it took me a week to do it lol.













After that, I ponder on what to do with the protruding cylinder used for the RST's charge sensor (I think lol )...and a mate of mine came up with a great idea, it was taking me hours to sand the ridges left by the flanges flat - so use the machines in the tech department of school!

So I did, it sanded them pretty darn flat, and got rid of that protruding cylinder, problem was it left a very rough surface...

So it was Wet and Flat, Wet and Flat, Wet and Flat...without any exaggeration it took me over 2 months of flatting this every evening to get it smooth and polished with Autosol, I wish I had known about drill assisted buffers before I spent another month using Autosol but it was worth it, and added about another inch to my Biceps

So heres some pics of the progress I had made:




(Can someone say this RST has a fecking oily charge pipe pmsl)


















Not bad eh? Onto the next part of the restoration...(well the main part soon pmsl)