A2 body part compatibility

The steel part behind the grill, radiator support maybe, on the 85-86 golfs is different as they had small US headlights. Since your going to 4 head lights there may be something else different on that piece also.

Jo Bo

2-door Jetta's are Golf's with a trunk. That's the rule that I always stuck with but I never did a headlight conversion. Just my CDN$0.02.

To change to 4-light setup you'll need the rad support and (obviously) grill. Fenders and hood should be same for all 85-92 G & J. If you replace fender, be sure to get the wheel arch plastic flare and bumper mounting tab off the old one before you scrap it, as these are different on small vs. big bumper cars.

HTH, Andreas

In addition to differences in the radiator support to accommodate different headlights, as others have mentioned, there was also a change from small to large bumpers. I believe the large bumpers came in the

1989 model year, and I do not know if brackets etc. stayed the same.

DruG wrote:

Thanks everyone. My golf has the small bumper so that gives a little more leeway. I've also heard that there are two different variations of the 4 light setup, can annyone confirm this and give me any details.

Thanks,

-Andrew

Golfs and Jettas and GTIs are mostly the same with minor exceptions.

The radiator support for the aero lamps is different than for the four light setup so you'll need a support from a 4-lamp car (Wolfsburg Editioin 1990 GTI mid-year and all 1991-1992 GTIs) or just buy one aftermarket.

The fenders are the same except that most German-made Jettas had little badges plugging the holes for the side turn indicators (at the rear edge of the fender but in front of the doors). If you replace one fender and not both you might have a mismatch there.

Also, mid-year 1990 Wolfsburg Editions and all 1991 and 1992 Golfs/Jettas/GTIs got "big"bumpers. These cars have I think slightly different front fenders because of the larger 2-hole side bracket for the "big bumper" bumper cover. Small bumper cars I believe have brackets with just one hole. I'm not sure if you could put your bracket into one of the

2-hole ones, leave a hole unused, and have the bracket still line up right.

The "big bumper" cars also don't have the apron and lower grille that the small bumper cars have because the big-bumper cars' bumper cover covered this area so there was no reason for VW to put on the apron and lower grillework.

-Matt

Awesome thanks very much for the model year detail. One last question how about small bumpers? Are the front and rear small bumpers the same for golf's and Jetta's?

-Andrew

Rear definitely not the same. The Jetta's has a lot more cover on the sides because of the longer body because of the trunk. I checked my ETKA and the rebars are different too.

The ETKA shows the fronts are different as well (different rebars and covers). However I suspect that if you change the entire bumper as a complete unit (brackets, covers, rebar), I suspect it'll bolt up OK. Just a guess though.

It looks like from the ETKA that the Golfs/GTIs/Jettas didn't share exact front bumper rebars until the "big" bumpers. But even on the big-bumper cars the rear rebar still differs between the Jetta and Golf/GTI. Weird.

[Rad-Support]

To my knowledge there are four types of rad supports:

- for the single or dual round headlight setup - only used on golfs in europe

- for the aero lights or euro-spec rectangular jetta headlights - the latter were stock on all jettas for europe

- for the small rectanguler dot headlights on american golfs

- for the rally golfs rectangular dual DE-type headlights

... and of course "real" european fenders lack the cut-outs for the side markers in front of the wheel.

... only europe did get some small bumper golfs 1991 (and butt-ugly A3 golfs in 1992 ;-) )

"New" front fenders have two holes for the bigger bracket, second hole can be drilled in older fenders w/o problem, if you put the small bracket on a fender with 2 holes the small bumper will - at least optically - cover up the second (lower) hole.

yep.

but you can leave the apron on if you convert to big bumpers, no problem.

Ingo

One more thing to brackets on the fenders: On front - always one hole brackets for small bumpers, two hole brackets for big bumpers On the back - golfs use one hole brackets for small bumpers, two hole brackets for big bumpers, jettas always use a two hole type bracket.

That must be a euro/us(mex?) thing - over here golfs and jettas use the same front bumpers, regardless if small or big. IIRC there were both front bumpers w/ and w/o a cavity and a tab for the registration plate?

Ingo

I believe that's the case (US vs. euro). For some reason the small-bumpered US models had slightly different bumpers in front between Golfs/GTIs vs. Jettas. Dunno why.