Full Build - 2014 VW Touareg Rear Damage Rebuild

All right, so I picked up another project. This is a little bit of an accidental purchase and fairly good deal. Sadly, it's not a diesel. I'll explain what happened with that in a second. I wanted to get a diesel, but anyways. So, I got this 2014 Touareg all-wheel drive. Let's see, 110,000 miles and this is the damage on the back. So, it was hit on the back and it went down and jacked up this muffler. Hopefully, that is all and I'm sure probably the exhaust bent down there a little bit. We'll see when we lift it up, get the wheels off and we take a look. Also, the tailgate liftgate and seems like the liftgate had some previous work done because it has all this bondo that cracked after the hit. So, a few dents over here on this side, this side, one over here, one over here. So, I don't know. I'll have to see what to do with that. Maybe to try to remove all that bondo, repair it and repaint it or I think I used one. If I can find a used one, same color, I would pay maybe probably five, six hundred bucks for it. I wouldn't want to paint it, but if I was to fix that, maybe a couple hundred bucks to repaint it, fix it and stuff like this can be... Actually, sorry, no, I would need to replace the bumper also. Yeah, because this is all jacked up. This is kind of jacked up and I was thinking to buy just the bottom piece, but honestly, yeah, I'd rather just buy the whole thing and open this up. Yeah, because of all this, I mean, I can maybe buy this shim piece. I mean, it might be usable, but honestly, I'd rather find the same color rear bumper and not worry about painting it because it seems like maybe this one also had some previous bodywork on it done as well. So, yeah, if I can find one for like 300 bucks, 400 bucks, same color, then I don't have to worry about painting it and it will have the bottom trim, the bottom panel and then this plastic piece on the bottom also. So, it's like a three-piece bumper basically and trying to piece that together is going to cost me probably way more in the long run. So, inside it's fairly clean. A few footprints from the guys, but fairly clean. Inside, black leather. I don't really like that. It's too hot in California, but no airbags deployed. Nothing on the seats, nothing on the steering wheel, nothing on the dash. Seat belts did not lock. Everything's good and let's see, 110,000 miles, which is not too horrible. Cool thing is I always wanted to try one of these. I actually always wanted to try one of these, but I wanted to get a diesel one, but the diesel ones go quite a bit. If it's like a fairly low mile to Oregon auction, it goes pretty, pretty high in price. So, I bid on this 2,500 bucks. Insurance seller, they did not want to let it go and then like 30 minutes later, they relisted it for 3,500 bucks, buy it now. So, I'm thinking, oh, diesel, great. That's low miles for diesel. Good deal. Bought it right away and then when I went to pick it up, I realized it's a gas. It says FSI over here and this was on my watch list and I think I might have accidentally added to my watch list, but usually when I search for Touaregs, I select diesel on the filter, add it to my watch list and then when it shows up, it's ready to bid, I already know that it's a diesel. But in this case, I don't know what happened and when it was playing, I actually just woke up from a night shift. So, you know, a little bit sleepy, whatever, who knows. And then I kind of was looking at pictures like, oh, diesel TDI, you know, TDI, looks like almost TDI from far away. And then I bid, I was all excited, but nope, it's not diesel, it's a gas. So, but anyways, for 3,500 bucks, the repair is not going to be that expensive. I didn't have to pay for shipping. I pretty much took a Uber down the street to the auction and drove it home. When the forklift guy brought it out, I had a moving permit, showed them the moving permit and drove it home. Everything drove nicely, no engine, no engine lights, no ABS lights, nothing like that. Everything was good and now we have to deal with basically finding the correct parts and hopefully same color, same color code. All right, so let's go ahead and put it on jacks, take off wheels, remove rear bumper and see what the actual damage is. Probably cut off the muffler. I'm not sure if there's a connection point nearby. All right, let's take this off and see what's going on. What I'm going to do is I'm actually going to go ahead and cut this muffler off. I did pick one up, but I asked them to cut it further down, but they didn't cut it. I asked them to either cut it by the muffler or all the way. There's a, in front of the muffler, there's a way to unbolt it, but they cut it where the, where the differential is right here in this area. So I'm going to go ahead and cut this off right here, take this one off and then I'm going to go ahead and put one, mine in here in place and then see, I'm actually going to loosen the front of the exhaust there. So I have some play and then I'm going to see what I need to do to make it, to make it fit. Cause I don't even know if this pipe right here, I don't even know if it's bent in or out or whatever. So I'm going to have to see how it sits and kind of figure that out. All right, so I'm going to go ahead and chop this off right here, right there, take this off and we'll go from there. Yeah, just from looking from this angle, I can tell it went, this one went up, this one went down, went to the angle. So this might be a little tricky, but nothing we can't figure out. I'm going to go ahead and actually straighten the pipes out the best that I can. So they're somewhat centered. I'm thinking one should be right here and this one should be right here. So I'm going to go ahead and pull them this way. I'm going to do one at a time. I'm going to pull this to the left and then I might push it up just a little bit. Cause I think it's pretty close to, it should be pretty close to the subframe right about here maybe. I can fine tune and adjust things once they're somewhat centered. I'm going to pull this one. What I did is I reinforced this part right here with a two by six, maybe it's a two by eight. So that way it's not going to go to the left. The whole thing's not going to shift because it's obviously it's on hangers. So I don't want to move the whole thing. I just want to move this pipe over. You can kind of tell how it went. It went to the right just a bit where the, where the bend is right about here. Same thing on this side where the bend is maybe here. One of these, but as long as I have it somewhat centered, it'll be a lot easier to try to fit the new muffler and figure out where to cut it. All right, I'm going to go ahead and let's pull this to the left, maybe up a little bit. Let's see what we get. All right. It's a little better, pretty much, pretty much almost on center. I just got to push this one up. So I'm going to reinforce the back a little bit over there in the back between the frame, subframe and the exhaust. And, uh, and then I'll, I want to see if I can push this up with my hand. It might go, might not. If not, I'll use a jack just to push it up. And then when I'm going to do is I'm going to actually measure, uh, let's straighten it out and then measure and see what the measurement is on the, on the new exhaust. Pretty much dead on center. We've got three fingers barely fitting and we've got three fingers barely fitting. I can still play with it a little bit if I need to, because I did loosen the clamps on the, on the front there, but other than that, better than factory. Am I right? Pretty close. And it's hard to tell with like bends here, no bends there. So it's kind of hard to tell. So I'm trying to look at the straight pipe. I mean, even that's bent, this is straight. So it's kind of hard to judge exactly. So this is like pretty much the, the only way to kind of look at it. I mean, pretty close. So I can still fine tune it, fine adjust it as I'm installing the new, the new muffler. But now what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually going to go ahead, go ahead and measure. Um, I'm thinking I'm going to probably cut it here, cut it here on the straight pipes. So I'll just pick the straight section here and this to kind of match that. So it's somewhat centered, symmetrical and cut here, but I want to make sure that this distance is the same as factory, at least pretty close. Cause I can still fine tune it, but I want to make sure that it's pretty close. So this is the new muffler that I'm going to install. And I'm just going to use pretty much this bend right here. It's not fully straight. It goes from straight to bent another bend right here. And I was thinking to cut it right here somewhere. And then one right here. So it kind of matches each other. So I'm going to go ahead and measure from this bend straight across. And we're looking at exactly 11. Yeah. I want to say 10, 7, 8. So if we're under 11, just under 11, that'll be perfect. So let's take a look underneath and go from the same bend here to there. We are, let's see, we're about, I want to say 10, 10, three quarters. So pretty much it's actually pretty close. So once I'm fine tuning with the muffler, I can actually just expand it just a tiny bit and it'll be, it'll be perfect. Yeah. So now it's going to be way easier to actually cut it and match it and make it, make sure it's straight because underneath the car, obviously it was easier to straighten out because it's hard to straighten out when it's off the car. But now the cutting part is going to be easier. I'll just use a grinder, go around, make sure it's straight, block it off. And then I'm As you can see, it's pretty much spot on. Same thing with this one, bend is spot on where it should be. So I'm going to go ahead and match the tape on the bottom just so I have some reference and I'm going to start cutting. But now I'm actually really, really curious what it's going to sound like pretty much straight piped. We got muffler. We got, I don't know if it's a muffler resonator, maybe both resonators, but now it's pretty much a straight pipe after the cat. So I'm really curious what it's going to sound like right now. Yeah. I don't know about you guys, but I think race car, race car. All right. Anyways, enough messing around. Let's get back to work. Here's what I got. It's almost perfect. I might, when I will put the front piece on the car, I'm going to actually go ahead and try to flatten it a little bit more. So it's more, more flush, but it's pretty close. I mean, I might have to angle a tiny bit to make it a little better. So that's good. And I'm going to, I went to a VW dealership and I picked up these two clamps, which is the same ones they use on the front, uh, from factory. And I was actually surprised on the front. They are, they're not, they don't go into each other, uh, like on some cars or they don't have like a, uh, and it doesn't have like a curved or bowed end where it's so like, so it seals better. Instead they use these, uh, clamps and there seem to be doubled, double layered. So when they, when they actually clamp down, they seal it pretty good. So, I mean, if it works, it works for them. So I figured they might as well do the same thing on the back instead of trying to weld it and, you know, lining it all up perfectly. This way I'll have some adjustment with, uh, this clamp. And another thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to throw, um, one layer of aluminum tape just around, just to make sure there's no, no leaks a hundred percent. And then I'm going to put the clamp over that. So I'm going to go ahead and install the front piece on. And then, uh, I'm going to go ahead and line up the back a little bit and then see if I need to fine tune anything over here to make it fairly flush. All right. So on the back part, I'm pretty much going to do the same thing. Uh, put some, uh, I jacked up the exhaust a little bit so I can get a little more leveled. I put the clamps on already. Uh, and I put some two by fours under the muffler. So it's pretty much as level as possible. So I'm going to go ahead and put these clamps on. See if this one needs to go a little bit lower like that. Okay. So let's see where the center is right here. So right about right there. Same thing with this one, right about here. And then we're going to tighten this one up. I was going to get a little bit of movement and then I'm going to go ahead and strap some more of the straps in. Okay. That's good. And we're going to put the strap a little more. There we go. Wiggle a little hammer. So it's nice and snug. That's good. Clamps are sideways. So they're not down. So they're not hitting anything. I think we're ready to go. That's good enough. All right. Now let's release the strap, drop the jack. There we go. All right. Nice and sturdy. Not going anywhere. Tighten there, tighten here, tighten the back hangers. All right. Exhaust is done. All right. The last step before we can test fit the bumper is we're going to put the tips on because I'm not sure if we can actually put those on when the bumpler, when the bumper, bumper, bumper, because I'm not sure if we can put those on if the bumper is on. So the bumpler, the bumper is on. I'm going to put these on, kind of guesstimate where. Guestimate. Well, yeah, that's a word. I'm guesstimating and I'm guessing. This side, same thing. All right. For now we're good. All right. Now we're going to put the bumper on. Just kind of test fit it and see how things sit with the exhaust. All right. So actually, yeah, I could have put the tips on with the bumper on. So actually let me get, let me. All right. So for now, I think for now it's good. For now, pretty much that's kind of how the tips should sit. So that's good. Fairly centered. That's fairly centered. The gaps from the top look, look to be the same. For now that's, that's good because I do have a tow and hitch that installs behind here. I just need to order the bolts because the bolts for here are a lot longer than what I have on there right now. And this bumper is from a different Touareg, but same color code, same everything. So it matches perfectly. Nothing is standing out. We'll get some scuff right here that we can polish that out. It's not a big deal. Yeah, that's going to come out for sure. All right. Since I picked up the bumper for this car, it was already cut out for the hitch. So I asked them if they do have the tow hitch also for sale. So they sold me the tow hitch for a hundred bucks and they threw in the harness, the seven pin harness with the hitch. However, on this car it needs a module. So I did order the module and I'm going to show you that in a minute. So first what I had to do is actually order some bolts. I got some tow hitch bolts for this car. Right now it's sitting on just one bolt that I had just laying around that kind of fit, but it has four on each side. So I had to order those to pretty much install this properly. So I'm going to go ahead and throw those in real quick and we're going to look at the module. And now before I run the wiring and now I'm going to go ahead and connect the seven pin over here like so, and then we're going to figure out the wiring and look at the module. All right, let's take a look at the module now. This is the module that I got on eBay after doing some digging, researching. This is the model for the 11215 Touareg. 7PO907383F and then I was trying to use Chad's GPT to figure it out and apparently the F is the most common one. So that's the one I got. Obviously this car doesn't have any tow hitch or modules or anything. So we're going to plug this in and see if this works. Two plugs, 11 to 16, maybe 11 to 15. But anyways, we'll go ahead and see how this goes in. The module sits right about in this area. So what I'm going to go ahead and have to do is remove this whole panel. First, we're going to remove this, which I already unbolted. Little hooks that are on this side and then this panel right here kind of pops out. So that comes out and this panel kind of pops out on the back here and then it has a screw right here, which I already took out. Then you gotta remove that panel, pop that out because this sits kind of behind that and then it slides into behind this one right here. So it's kind of a puzzle piece. It's really annoying. They could have made it a little easier, but of course, German over engineering. So this one already popped out and it goes kind of down and there's like a plastic rivet in here that I kind of broke. So I'm going to have to install a new one and then that pretty much pops out this way. There's some two wires that I unplugged for the light and the cigarette lighter right here. Let's see what I'm touching up. Should be good. So I got that. So there's a plug, so there's a plug one right here and one, one right here for the cigarette lighter. Here's the module. Here's already a factory plug that's in here that connects into here like so. So we're going to leave that for a second and then a second connector will connect in here. So before I run this, this is actually from the, from the harness, from the seven pin harness. This one is going to connect right into the module. It's going to connect right there into the module and this green one is going to connect right here and the actual plug is going to come through here. So I've got to pull that plastic plug off right there and run my harness through here and the harness already has a rubber plug that goes in there. So it's going to be sealed up and we're going to plug it in, close it up. Let me run that in there real quick and the factory plug connects right in here. This goes in here, that goes in there. We're going to tidy that up in a minute. So we got that. I'm going to go and connect it to the, to the module. I'm going to run this behind here and then it has a little rail plug which can pretty much go over here somewhere. But let's plug in the module real quick. So the module goes, slides right into this bracket, which is perfect, right where it should be. And then, is that correct? What if it's upside down? Let's see. It shouldn't be. No. Okay, that seems like the correct way. All right, so we get that. Now we're going to plug it in here. Am I right? Snap, snap. This little bracket will probably connect to this here somewhere, like that. That should be good. We got that connected there. That's good. And the last one is the green plug right here. It should be, let's see, we got brown, brown, red, blue, brown, brown, black, blue. Pretty much the same thing, I think. All right, like that. Perfect. Good, good. Now I'm going to go ahead and put the panels back on, connect the plugs for the lights for the cigarette lighter, reinstall everything. I'm going to tidy up the harness right here, zip tie it, whatever, so it's not touching the exhaust, so it's nice and clean. And then I'm going to go ahead and put the bumper on. Well, that was the most annoying thing ever. These panels, just like a little puzzle, you got to put one together, then the other one slides under the other one, then clips in, then the clips in under this one. It's like, I don't know. Now my cup of tea. I just like a simple panel, take it off, put it on. I don't care if there's screws that are showing or not. But anyways, that's done, complete. So now, and the wires, let's see. We got the wires all tidied up, running under where they should be, not touching exhaust, right above, go into the little rubber grommet right there. And now we can go ahead and actually put the bumper on, close up the tailgate, install the taillights, drop it on wheels, put it on the ground, and she's done.