Mk2 Golf 8v GTi to 16v ITB Build Thread (Pic Heavy)

Discussion in 'Members Gallery' started by mk2_benj, May 8, 2020.

  1. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    Not much happened over Christmas on the Mk2, I fitted a set of Alpine speakers in the rear parcel shelf supports which improved the sound quality in the car. Around the same time I decided to sell the Japan Racing wheels, despite them being pretty nice wheels and still in really good nick thanks to being sealed and cleaned often, I wanted a change. These were sold for not much less than I paid which was pretty good, and the trusty BBS RA’s went back on while I set about looking for new wheels.

    I found a used Jetex exhaust for sale that was on my way back to uni, so made a quick detour to pick it up. I paid £100 for it and couldn't really argue for that money. Yes I was that guy that had car parts in my uni bedroom, don't judge me.

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    I brought this home with me and headed over to our local garage to steal their ramp to fit it. It bolted right up and looked nicer than the old system, which we discovered was blowing in a few places. The Jetex exhaust is not the loudest and actually took a lot of the drone out of the car on the motorway, despite it being a larger system.

    One thing to note if you are putting a Jetex system on, is that they use a different hanger for the rear box, this comes with the system and if you're lucky will come with the used system as well.

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    Last edited: Feb 14, 2023
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  2. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    While checking the various wheels for sale pages I found a set of Mim 1900 wheels in the more desirable et25 offset (they also come in a more common et13 offset, which can cause rubbing), only issue was they were in Southampton and I was in Plymouth. Luckily the seller was happy to hold them until I could collect, Mk2 owners are a nice bunch!

    I headed down to collect the wheels from a shady boat yard on the outskirts of Southampton, a story my misses often tells as 'looking like a drug deal'. The wheels were in really good condition having been refurbished and never used since. That afternoon I went to Kwik Fit and had the tyres swapped over. The new wheels made a huge difference to how the car looked and I was really happy with them.

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    The next day was another London Cartel Mk2 Cruise, so I treated the Mk2 to a full cut and polish before heading down to London for another all nighter. Wouldn't have it any other way.

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  3. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    June soon rolled around which meant one thing, it was time to head to Le Mans. I had not been before but my mates had raved about how good a weekend it was, so preparations were made and a date was set. There was not a lot to do on the car as it had been running really well, mechanically all we did a quick service. I wanted to fit some front speakers to improve the sound quality inside the car when on the road. My dad had a spare set of speakers which we fitted behind original speaker grilles. The wiring for the rear speakers from the head unit was spliced and new wires ran to the door speakers. This was soldered and heat shrinked to protect it.

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    The only thing left was to apply the customary stickers and head out for some photos.

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    The car was faultless on the way to Le Mans, eating up the miles and running comfortably at 80-90 the whole way on french motorways, which are staggeringly smooth compared to our ones! We parked the cars up in camp and began a weekend of motor racing, barbecues and cold beverages.

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  4. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    I headed down to Plymouth a month later to move house, due to a mix up with our house contracts at university, I had not moved out of my old house. I took the Mk2 to give it another run out and take it for a blast around Dartmoor. On the way though a lorry hit a bridge and closed the M5, gave me a good opportunity for a photo though.. Doombar anyone?

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    While there it would have been a missed opportunity not to get a photo with my old and new houses

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  5. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    My dad had been noticing some slight vibration from the engine bay and put it down to a past it front engine mount, so a Vibratechnics mount was ordered and fitted. I can't speak highly enough of these mounts, really high quality and super easy to fit. After taking the old mount out, it was clear that it was a bit past it and changing it would make sense.

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    The car was serviced once more and it was time for another London Cartel Mk2 Cruise. I know it seems like this car gets serviced more often than most cars, but as the engine has an unknown history it can't hurt to keep the oil clean and the filters fresh, especially when it costs under 30 quid for a full service.

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  6. Savagesam

    Savagesam Moderator Staff Member Moderator

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    Well... if you ever wish to sell those mims, they’re coming in my direction! Message me when the time comes :)

    looks fantastic, I like it a lot :)
     
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  7. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    Aha I like them a lot, and they really suit old dubs. They're currently on my brothers Mk2 Rocco but if I sell them when I get them back I'll be sure to message you :thumbup:
     
  8. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    After the cruise it was time to put the car away as my final year at uni was starting. While it was away I started looking for parts for it and found a nice set of Ronal LS wheels and a Milltek Manifold. A deposit was paid on both only for the seller of the wheels to message later saying he'd sold them, thanks a lot of that mate.. :thumbup::thumbup: The Milltek on the other hand was perfect, it was up near Nottingham which my dad very helpfully collected on a trip to see my brother, and the seller held until then - he was a Mk2 owner and the other guy owned a corsa, proof Mk2 owners are better! The manifold wasn't the prettiest but for £60 I couldn't argue. I ran the numbers on the plate and it confirmed it was a genuine product.

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    This would be fitted along with a straight pipe to replace the first box of the exhaust, to give it a little more noise and better flow.

    Remember that green Mk4 I bought as a cheap daily driver? Well that car met a fateful end on the M25 one cold December evening when myself, dad and sister were rear ended in traffic. This wrote the car off (despite it driving fine- Mk4 build quality right there) but made much more of a mess of the other drivers nearly new Seat.

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    I had to quickly tax the Mk2 and rescue it from the barn. Still, it meant I could get some festive photos of the Mk2 - every cloud and all that.

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    It also snowed pretty heavily that winter and I would not recommend Toyo Proxes as snow tyres!

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    Around this time I also decided to part company with the Rover Recaro's I still had in the car. While I liked them they were a little tired and the bases did not match. I popped them on eBay and a couple of days later they were gone. I knew it wouldn't be for long though as a mate of mine was breaking his Mk2 and I was buying his Mk3 Recaro's.

    I like the look of the Mk3 Recaro seats in a Mk2, they're supportive enough and modern enough to look different but not too large like Mk4 Recaro's. Annoyingly I didn't take any photos of these as they wen't right in, but I'll update this bit when I next get the car out.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2020
  9. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    Not much happened on the car in 2018, partly as I was in my final year of uni and partly because it was a daily driver, so I couldn't play around with it too much. I gave it another service as I did every time I got the car out over the summer as well as a wash and polish ready for another London Cartel Mk2 Cruise.

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    I also attended Retro Rides at Goodwood in the blistering heat, it was an okay show but we got shouted at by the organisers for where the cars on our stand were, despite that being where we were told to go.. Anyway, I interviewed for a job the day after this show and ended up with serious sunburn - still got the job.

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    Fast forward a few weeks and I was due to start my new job. This would involve a move from Essex down to Hampshire to live with my girlfriend and her family while we worked and saved for a house. I packed the car with what I could and headed off, only for the car to develop and issue on the M25. Whenever I take the car any distance I like to have the oil temp up on the MFA, just to keep an eye on it and as I know it works having compared the temp it reads and the temp of the oil. As I was heading down the motorway I was watching the oil temp increase and getting more and more worried. As I pulled off at South Mimms it was reading 120°C! I quickly joined the AA and got towed home.

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    As I was at work we had our friends at the garage look over it, they found that the oil cooler was almost totally blocked and not letting any of the coolant into it. A new one was fitted and now the oil runs at normal temp again.

    This tow also caused the rear arches to eat into the rear tyres a little. Always insist on a flatbed for your cars rather than a towing dolly.
     
    Last edited: Jun 7, 2020
  10. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    I'd bought myself a cheap Mk5 to daily drive to work so I didn't have to use the Mk2 every day. When the weather was nice I was taking it to work and began noticing that the exhaust was hanging a little low and wonky. It turned out the weight of the Jetex was too much for the rubber hangers. A cable tie was a temporary solution (again) and I bought a set of poly mounts. These were a pain to fit as they're pretty tough but heating them up in some hot water made it a little easier.

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    This reduced the movement in the exhaust to almost none and I would 100% recommend them.

    With that done I packed the car and headed down to the South of England Showground where we were holding the first ever London Cartel Show.

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  11. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    I'd started to get bored of the Mims that I had on the car and wanted to change it up a little. I was ideally looking for a nice set of wheels that wouldn't need much work and I could put right on, but I came across this set of BBS RM's on Facebook one morning. They had just had a respray and had not been put back together. I hadn't had any experience with splits so this was a good opportunity to learn, plus they were cheap at £600 with the original lips and centre caps. We drove down to Brighton to pick them up and was relieved to find them to be in good condition.

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    Once home I set about giving the lips a flat and polish. They were in pretty good condition bar a couple of marks but were not polished up, so I ordered a chunk of wet and dry paper, some polishing wheels and some mothers mag polish from Amazon, cued the music and got to polishing the lips.

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    I ordered 120 stainless bolts from SRR Hardware to put the wheels together, along with a tube of silicone to seal them. I had test fitted the bolts into the holes to check the threads and found all but one was okay. I packed the car and headed up to my parents house where my dad had a tap and dye set and we rethreated the hole, luckily it was just a build up of paint and crap from poor masking.

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    Once bolted together, sealed and torqued down I got them out for a photo in the sun and a test fit

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    Pleased with how they looked I headed to get some rubber on the wheels before a (very wet) trip to Ace Cafe that evening.

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    I had some 195/50 Toyo Proxes fitted as I intended to widen the wheels so I could use the same tyres. Although this did give a balloon type look to the car I was still happy to have some splits and to have rebuilt them myself.
     
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  12. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    That was pretty much it for 2018 and the car went back into winter storage. I kept the wheels in the garage though as I planned to widen them with the new lips. I did some rough measurements and through talking to people found that running staggered 8 and 8.5 wide wheels would work pretty well. I started off by ordering the new rear lips through FelgenFuchs, 2.5 inch Radinox lips direct from Schmidt. I cannot recommend FelgenFuchs enough as the quality of these lips is second to none. Nice and weighty and produced a nice snug fit.

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    First job was to remove the stock 0.5 roll back lips. I packed these full of silicone (way way too much) and they were a right pain to remove, but I eventually got them off. I also treated myself to a new impact as I couldn't be arsed removing every bolt by hand (I loosened them all by hand first don't worry!)

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    I cleaned the surface with a wire wheel and gave it a nice coat of sealant before placing the new lip on and bolting it down. I ran another bead around the lip and wheel and smoothed it down with a wet finger.

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    They do look very good if I say so myself

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    I popped round to the local garage so they could pop the tyres on for me, much wider compared to the OE wheels.

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  13. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    I repeated this for the front wheels, not taking any photos as the process was the same. I widened these to 15x8's with a 2 inch Radinox lip. the final specs of the wheels are as follows:
    • Front 15 x 8 et 14
    • Rear 15 x 8.5 et 7.6
    If you need to work out any changes to your split rim offset use this site - http://stu.taylor-net.co.uk/tools/offset. I got the car out of storage a few days before the London Cartel Mk1/Mk2 cruise and had a list of jobs to do:
    • Fit new wheels
    • Repair splitter
    • Full service
    • Roll arches
    • Trim Plastic arch kit
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    I fixed the splitter by plastic welding it back together using some offcuts of arch trim I had laying around

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    I sanded it down and gave it a couple of coats of black. It wasn't perfect but it was good enough for now.

    I'd bought an arch roller for 20 quid off Facebook and set about giving the arches some gentle massaging using a heat gun and varied pressure on the arches. As they are only Heritage ones I didn't feel too bad about it. The front and rears got the same treatment and prevented any rubbing (a good thing as the coils were totally seized so I couldn't adjust them anyway!)

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    It was once this was all done and after a quick test drive, I heard this weird sound from the fuel pump
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    Turns out this is the sound that the lift pump/under body pump makes when its on its way out. Time was short so a quick message Brendon Moss at Dubstock saw me heading up there to collect a replacement lift pump. Luckily this solved the problem and its for reasons like this I can't recommend him enough.

    With the car all ready to go, I headed up to London for another all nighter. I really like these events as you get to mix with a lot of people who you probably wouldn't talk to at normal shows as the owners are always in and out of their cars.

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  14. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    I was using the Mk2 as a daily when the weather was nice, making those early morning drives to work that bit nicer. I had noticed the car become slightly louder but put it down to a leak in the exhaust which I could look at at the weekend. Wrong. As I was coming home one afternoon, the car got a bit louder and suddenly, it was deafeningly loud. The exhaust manifold had cracked at the weld and broken off entirely. I drove the rest of the way home trying to be as gentle as possible driving an open manifold through the centre of town at rush hour, I did get a few looks..

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    I called recovery and got it taken to the garage to be welded up, the recovery guy certainly liked it, thats something I suppose.

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    It was at the garage for a week or so, where they ground back the old welds and put a nice bead all the way around, how it should have been done the first time.
     
  15. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    I was planning on doing a few trips in the Mk2 in 2019, going to Le Mans again and to both Goodwood Fos and Revival. On that basis, I decided to spend on some nicer coilovers as the ebay cheapies were not only hard as rock but had also seized, so were no good to anyone. I searched around and found some AP's for around £400 which was pretty reasonable. I went with AP as we had recently put a set on my brothers Scirocco and they transformed the ride (much nicer than the shock and spring setup he had before) and were of a brilliant quality for the price.

    Out came the old coils (see the evidence of WD40 and GT85 in an attempt to get them to move)

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    Much nicer

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    A good helping of copper grease to stop them from seizing never hurts

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    Look how much nicer they look

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    May have set them a little low to start with (was sitting on the arch liners and rear arches) but soon got them near where I wanted them, I would continue to play with the height to find the sweet spot

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    While the wheels were off I tried a spot of tyre writing on one of them, and I really like the way it looked, just wish it wasn't so fiddly to do.

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    Last edited: Jun 7, 2020
  16. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    Le Mans was just a few days away so I put the customary stickers on, I always liked the look of Mk2's with some decals/livery on the side. I make sure to put a layer of wax under them as I want them to come off cleanly and they will only be on there for a few weeks.

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    That afternoon I went to get the car tracked as I hadn't had a chance yet. While I was sitting in the waiting area, I was looking at the screen and could see the reading on the offside front wheel changing dramatically. I went through to have a look at it and my worst fear was realised, the captive nut inside the shell for the subframe had broken loose so the subframe was moving slightly. This is a common problem on Mk2's and I was really hoping it wasn't this as I would have no time to sort it.

    As it couldn't be aligned properly, I took my jack and tools to our local Aldi car park and did my best to eyeball the alignment using my phone spirit level, don't hate I did what I had to do. I had read multiple posts long into the night that reassured me it wasn't going to go anywhere and had likely been like that for a while.

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    With that, the car was packed and we woke up early on Thursday morning for another trip to France.
     
  17. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    Le Mans was a blast as always, a proper lads weekend of beer, bbq and race cars. I got some nice pics of the Mk2 on the road and was spotted/did some spotting of people coming back from VW Days (which annoyingly always ends up being the same weekend as Le Mans).

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    Obligatory road trip video:
     
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  18. Malibu_convertible New Member

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    Very nice
     
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  19. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    Second time writing this as it didn't post first time round [xxx]

    Released I hadn't touched this thread since June 2020 when I went back to work after furlough, so felt like it was time for an update given how things are progressing with the car, as I will (hopefully) detail..

    Post Le Mans
    - sent the Mk2 off to the old boy at the garage to get the subframe fixed.
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    London Cartel Summer Show
    -packed the car and went off to sussex to run our annual summer show. A busy and very long weekend but really good fun and always good to look back on. Got the car on stage as well which was nice
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    New steering wheel
    - Mrs bought me a new Nardi wheel for my birthday, much nicer than the Mk2 wheel.
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    Retro Cruise
    - fitted a 7 slat single light grille to the car to change the look, wasn't sure on it in all honesty. Fitted a Nando's chicken as well for scene points.
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    -Wheels still looking really nice
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  20. mk2_benj Forum Member

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    So early 2020 now, how young and carefree we were.. anyway.

    I was looking for something to tidy up the front of the car, I felt that it looked a bit buck toothed withthe small bumper and little splitter. I smashed my deep gti splitter and despite fixing it and trying it for a bit, it was rubbing on the ground and being annoying, despite looking nice. I'll probably put one on again because I never learn. Anyway, I got looking at retro 80's tat and eventually found a NOS Kamei X1 splitter on german eBay, for a good price as well. Buying was a no brainer despite saving for a house, it's an investment, right?

    Well it arrived, and it was trashed. I was going to run it in it's plastic black as I thought it would look good, kind of like the Auto Finesse Mk2 Kamei. But when it turned up and I had a look at it, it was covered in stains like it had some sort of fluid spilled over it, so it would need painting. The below photos show what I got vs the eBay listing.

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    I got some bits and went to start painting it, got it in primer, but then my mate said he would paint it for me so it got the finish it deserved, and my god, he was right. It's one of the best bits I've bought for the car and I can't see myself selling it.

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    Overall a massive improvement, but as the car was in storage, I would have to wait to get it on. But as it was now some kind of pandemic(?), that would have to wait

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    Oh, elsewhere, I got my late christmas present, a Grafshed banner for my soon to be garage of my car from my brother, its awesome

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