Mk. 4 Volkswagen Jetta Trunk Swap – Part 2
Hey everyone, the 2002 Volkswagen Jetta TDI project continues (also known as the Volkswagen Bora for our viewers outside of North America), we now continue with the installation of the new trunk lid.
For the most part this process is pretty straightforward, essentially following the trunk disassembly procedure but in reverse. There are still however, a couple points that should be highlighted.
The first is related to the latch. If your original trunk had an emergency release cable and you’re wanting to keep this mechanism it’s important that you transfer the latch over to the new trunk. Apparently, as we found out, not all of the latch mechanisms have the extra brass linkage arm allowing you to attach the emergency release cable to the latch. We found this out the long way by having to change the latch towards the end of the swap when we realized we couldn’t install the emergency release cable, this information is likely in the Bentley Service Manual but it may be very difficult to find such information.
The second thing is talking about body lines and seams when changing body parts and panels. It’s aesthetically pleasing but not strictly necessary to have the body panels line up. As seen in the video, you can easily spend a lot of time, more than it’s really worth, trying to get panels to line up perfectly. As long as they are relatively close, and the latch isn’t binding when you’re opening the trunk, you’re good to go! Functionality over fitment as we like to say. As long as it works properly, all else is secondary. If we were building a show car we would have spent way more time and effort getting the alignment right.
Installing the interior panel for the trunk lid is a bit of a challenge when it comes to getting the emergency release handle cable connected properly and then getting the formed grab handle seated in the trunk lid. Always keep in mind we are dealing with 20 year old plastic so it won’t take much abuse at all.
With a bit of luck and with the help of our video below you will have a nice new trunk lid installed in no time at all!