pat

I built this floor drawer system as a way to keep lots of smaller items in the van at all times while still having an open bed to put larger items in. It's made up of a 16ga 1"x1" metal frame. The drawers are 3/4" laminated core w/ melamine veneer plywood mounted on 500lbs full extension slides. Then I covered the top with said melamine and some stick on grip tape to cover seems and counter sunk fasteners and too add a bit of slide resistance. The melamine is easy to clean. The whole assembly might weigh about 300lbs, so there is some loss in carrying capacity, but I find it well worth it. Check out my album for photos.

I'm in the process of building my own lumber rack. I wanted something suited to transporting dimensional lumber and sheet goods. These are the mounts that bolt up to the stock roof locations. I cut a piece of rubber sheet that goes between the roof and the mount, and added a bit of silicon to each side as I bolted them down. The rack slipps over these mounts and then will be pined together by a bolt through the two pieces. I'll add more pictures once I finish painting it and get it onto the van. There are a few additional photos in my gallery if anyone is interested.

I have now gotten a chance to drive in snowy and icy conditions and everything works as expected. The car is much more capable of powering through slippery uphill conditions with the traction control off, though for around town having the traction control is nice.

Also, if anyone needs more information about this just let me know.

I regularly have to drive in a steep and snowy drive way. Even with excellent winter tires the traction control made it impossible. I found this unacceptable, so today I installed an off switch. I located the stability control module, which is under and in front of the gear selector (it has a 4 pin connector that is black and blue and faces the passenger foot well)(on the module on the passenger side is a sticker that reads something like: ``vital for vehicle safety'') To access the connector you have to take apart - though not completely remove - the three floor console panels to get some access to it -- I was able to get to the connector and wire around the side of the front panel section once it was unclipped and slid rearward a few inches, which was possible without removing the electrical connectors. I did remove the heater core cables at the heater core (which is easy) but this was probably not necessary. I also did completely remove the center trip piece containing the a/c and power outlets - but this was primarily to allow installation of the switch. Once I had that apart I snipped the power wire leading to the module (the red and yellow wire) and spliced in 20ga wire on each end which I routed to a switch that I installed next to the shift lever. When you start the car with the switch on, the traction control light does not illuminate and everything appears to work as intended. When I move the switch to the off position the traction control light illuminates and I presume is disabled (along with ABS and the anti roll feature) -- though I haven't had a chance to test this. If I turn the switch back on at this point the light remains lit. (Not sure if the features return or not at this point... probably not. If I turn the car off and then back on the light does not come on. This way I can now disable the feature on the rare occasions it is critical to do so. Though to restart the feature I will have to restart the car. No check engine light appeared and I don't believe there would be any trouble codes present. I meant to take pictures of the process, but got caught up in it. This was a fairly simple operation (took me about 1.5 hours or less) I recommend that anyone who has to get up slippery hills do this. I will report back on how much better the van performs up a steep hill without traction control.

Has anyone considered or looked into swapping a diesel into their US TC? I went form a Golf TDI to a TC and the only thing I miss is the diesel. I don't know how friendly a VW TDI conversion would be, but I imagine it could be done. Another option might be to import either a TC or Focus diesel from europe and then get it to pass emissions. I know that importing and swapping diesel Toyota engines is fairly common and these folks don't seem to have to much trouble getting those registered despite the differences in emission standard between Japan and the US. I figure I have to put a lot more miles on my current TC engine before I can justify pulling it out, but when the threshold is crossed I will have to seriously consider spending the time and energy to swap a diesel into it.

I just picked mine up tonight. It's a 2010 with 21K. I'm very excited, though I've had an amazing amount of bad luck this summer with windows breaking. In less then three months I've had two windows stop working in two separate cars, one power one manual. Then on the way home with my shiny new car the passenger window just quit. It rolled down, but only after a short delay, rolled up fine, then rolled down only part way, again rolled up fine and then would no longer roll down. Any thoughts? This happen to anyone else. I'm thinking it might be the switch. -Patrick