Here's the upper right bracket as installed from the instructions.
Here's the lower right mount point, as per the instructions.
And here's where it goes to hell. The marks show the overlap between
the bracket and the frame of the car. It's a full quarter inch. There's no
place to make up that space. With the overlap, the bracket sticks out
between 1/2 and 3/4 of an inch. Follup: Turns out this is the way it is supposed to be. The confusion
is cause by the fact that there's more than a 1/2" gap here, and VW Sport
says to drill a hole the same diameter as stock, but then supplies
a 3/4" metal screw that is, is too short, too small of threads, and the head
falls through the hole in the headlight assembly bracket. A 1 1/4" #10
self tapping metal screw solves all these problems.
And this is what it looks like from the front. Note the huge gap at
the bottom. Some of that would go away if the left side bracket could
be mounted.
Note also that the curve of the surround does not match the curve
of the grill opening to the left. Folloup: Ok the secret here is the tucking in of the surround under
the fender. That allows the left side to drop a bit. The bottom gap
becomes even, and it follows the curve for a short time. It loses the
curve middle of the grill but you don't really notice it with everything
installed.
However the biggest problem is that
the right side of the surround is at least 1/2 inch too long. Followup: See above. After looking at half a dozen pictures of
other people's installs, I concluded that this is just the way it is.
Confirmed by others. The end of the surround is tucked under the fender.
Making sure the bottom is far enough forward will make the end follow
the inside of the fender better. Expect some "cramming". You cram
the outside in, then the inside end, and so on.
One last thing. The upper outter brackets on the assembly frame are
attached to the frame with a punch joint (or whatever you call it)
where a small hole punch pushes a cylinder of metal from one piece of
metal half way into the other piece. That's all that's holding it together.
One of mine broke off. I drilled a small hole in the bracket. A bigger
hole in the frame, and attached it with a small metal screw. I then
cut out a depression in the underside of the surround where it slides
over the screw head. Hard to describe, instantly obvious when you
try to attach the surround.
