5 cylinder max power Asbo oettinger is alive.

[Vince70]

Today I’ve just received my belated Christmas Present of a  Bora that is completely rot free, but it has decided it doesn’t like firing on all 5 cylinders due to it eating ignition amplifiers, which are very costly and impossible to find now on the early AGZ V5 engine,  but at £350 for a rust free low mileage car with a lengthy mot, I thought why not.

I didn’t even have to pick it up as the lovely owner said he could drop it off for me , as what’s the worst that could happen, as scrap isn’t far off that price and I have a spares car anyway which is a early high mileage V5 Golf with full leather and the missing interior trim pieces of the Bora and the much needed new module.

Now I’ve got to find the reason it’s eaten two modules previously, but I’m hoping it’s something simple, as the previous owner didn’t put any heat paste on the back of the previous amplifier.

It seems it’s one of those cars that was very well looked after, but over the last couple of years has had a hard life, as it’s lost its oettinger grill and front and rear bumper spoilers, although it’s managed to keep its rear boot spoiler and sill spoilers.

I’m not worried about those parts anyway, and I will just repaint the standard grill and fit a new V5 &VW badge etc and give it a good polish will suffice for me.

Heres the car in all its glory from its past and what it looks like now and it now means I’ve got the hatch plus cabriolet and the saloon, so I only need the estate now, so my 3 cars come to a total of £600 but that’s not including my spares car.

Apparently the car was an original fully loaded oettinger back in the day.

[Schaefft]

Not sure about the Oettinger Kit but V5 Boras are certainly rare, for the price it's a no brainier. Didn't these have notorious engines issues?

[Vince70]

Just now, Schaefft said:

Not sure about the Oettinger Kit but V5 Boras are certainly rare, for the price it's a no brainier. Didn't these have notorious engines issues?

The early 10v 150bhp V5 engine is a very reliable strong engine, as it doesn’t suffer the timing chain issues of the later 170bhp 20v V5. The main  problem is getting things like coil packs and ignition amps, as they’re nigh impossible to find now.

[Vince70]

I’m not going to have much time to look at the max power Bora this week , but tonight after work I quickly popped out to find out if I could find the horrible rattle that I heard coming from the car  while it was driving down the road.

Within two minutes I sussed out the problem and it was only the backing plate on the OSR disc, so that’s going to be a nice quick free fix.

I might have some spare time on Saturday,  so I might start taking  the interior out and replacing it with my lovely heated leather one out of my spares  car.

Being it’s my max power car, I’m thinking that a VW gamma won’t be going back in and I have lots of old high end Kenwood mask and Alpine stereos knocking about from the late 90’s that  I’ve picked up cheap off facebook over the years that would look great in the dash.

I’ve even got the legendary VW Funk button to go into the car as a couple of the blank plugs are also missing,  but two will be used also for the heated seats.

I’ve also found a silver grill for a tenner with the VW centre badge, so it works out cheaper than buying the rattle cans to paint the black grill.

I also noticed while looking that the car had recently been fitted all round with drilled discs.

[Vince70]

I’ve found my first real problem today, as I took that body kit off the sills for a quick look, as I also wanted to clear out the compost out  from the front wings 

I thought I was  doing okay as the front wings were perfect, but then I came across this on the NSR sill and started digging it out with a screwdriver.

I’ve not had a car with rot in years, and wondered what it should roughly cost in welding, as obviously on a car that cost £348. 99 (I’ve found £1. 01 so far lol)  with a cat marker I don’t want to spend a fortune on it, as realistically it’s a £700 with a ticket with the odds and sods done, so would it be best to cut the end of the outer sill off my spares car for it.

The rest of the car is perfect though.

 

[Vince70]

Let’s see how bad it gets lol, I was hoping that ASBO was rot free, but I knew there’s a reason I hate bodykits.

I’ve got a spares car, which looking at this seems the better car now lol and it’s parked up against the fence and it won’t be moving anywhere soon, but the problem is I can’t get to the side that I want, otherwise I would of cut the rear sill section off that with an angle grinder.

[Shandylegs]

I've always had a bit of a soft spot for a Bora as I thought they were a good looking car. The opportunity to own one never came along though.

In terms of the rot, depends on how far you want to go with the car. Does the body kit cover it ?

 

[Vince70]

54 minutes ago, Shandylegs said:

I've always had a bit of a soft spot for a Bora as I thought they were a good looking car. The opportunity to own one never came along though.

In terms of the rot, depends on how far you want to go with the car. Does the body kit cover it ?

 

The car is absolutely spotless elsewhere, and the body kit covers the rot completely, but  I was talking to a good friend of mine, who is actually a welder (not on cars though) and he’s into his VW’s and he said if it was his car , he would just grind it back and treat it, then put a slither of P40 in it  as the inner seal looks okay etc as  it’s very localised,  then he said  fill the sills with whatever oil comes to hand.

My Mrs is most probably right as she said sort the engine out first before I repair the sill and once I’ve done that, I should get some mileage out of it first before taking it for its MOT and if it fails big time then I know it’s not worth me repairing it with a mig.

I’m keeping my eyes out locally on facebook for a cheap mig welder though, as the big screwdriver has only made two very small holes so two very small patches should do the job. 
The Mrs is telling me to forget about it and have a chill out day today  as it’s too cold to be working on cars lol

If all goes to plan then it’s gaining full leather and a nice old Kenwood plus a new grill and a few odds and sods such as an aerial base etc.

Its got the Walnut looking inserts in the dash, but I think they would suit my old boy V5 more, so ASBO is going to get black inserts in the dash plus black leather and it’s got carbon door handles etc so it will be keeping those.

I just don’t like seeing decent motors broken up for scrap.

 

[FakeConcern]

I love a five cylinder!

I never really understood the flip flop between the names Vento/Bora and can never remember which is which.

This does look pretty good now it's not on the original wheels and without the German style number plates in your original pics. I'd like to see it saved from being scrapped really even though I much prefer a hatch to a saloon. Despite the rust hole it seems good for the money.

[riek]

7 minutes ago, FakeConcern said:

I love a five cylinder!

I never really understood the flip flop between the names Vento/Bora and can never remember which is which.

This does look pretty good now it's not on the original wheels and without the German style number plates in your original pics. I'd like to see it saved from being scrapped really even though I much prefer a hatch to a saloon. Despite the rust hole it seems good for the money.

Don't forget Jetta as well.

[FakeConcern]

12 minutes ago, riek said:

Don't forget Jetta as well.

Quite.

[Vince70]

Another one of the of the previous owners has now contacted me and told me it never had the walnut dash and it had  heated leather Recaro’s and he regretted selling it back then  and luckily I’ve got all the parts to put the interior back as it was.

Hopefully whoever had replaced the seats with the  cloth interior has  left the wiring loom in place for the heated leather, as that way I won’t have to rewire them in and maybe just reinstall the switches and fuses  from my parts car.

It’s been around the country, as so far it’s lived in Hull, Wakefield and around Kent, 

 

[Matty]

11 hours ago, Shandylegs said:

I've always had a bit of a soft spot for a Bora as I thought they were a good looking car. The opportunity to own one never came along though.

In terms of the rot, depends on how far you want to go with the car. Does the body kit cover it ?

 

Mk4 golfs were nice cars. My Dad had  115 and 130 pd boras when i was early 20s and i borrowed them both and they were lovely. After that i had a MK3 GTI and a Mk4 GTi 20V turbo. Much ad i loved my (much modified) MK3, i feel folk forget how much the MK4 moved the game on. They were concieved as a genuine premium car alternative and at the time, and in fairness  at banger level many years later, it showed.

[Vince70]

ASBO IS ALIVE… Today I thought I would make a start on my cheap 10v V5 Bora, that I bought it a few weeks back from a lovely guy, who had been having troubles with it, as it only fired on 4 cylinders and he had tried an ignition amp, plus a coil pack and plugs etc etc but it still wouldn’t run on five.

Luckily I bought a spares car a few years back to keep my nice V5 on the road, so tried another amp and sanded the back down then treated it to some decent heat paste and made a set of leads up out of 3 old sets I had knocking about and I took off the Chinese Coil pack and replaced it with a 28 year old genuine unit.

I took the plugs out and noticed Number one hadn’t been firing, so gave them a clean up and it’s running as good as new now and I also gave a few of the earths a sand down and stuck another secondhand battery on it, that came off my E36.
It’s now running as good as new, and this is it starting from cold after it had been sitting, since I bought it.

I felt bad using an old high mileage hero with issues as scrap, but it’s now saved two AKZ V5’s and I still have the car for when I decide to do a manual conversion on my Automatic Green Golf.

[Dick Cheeseburger]

On 29/12/2025 at 22:27, Vince70 said:

I’m not going to have much time to look at the max power Bora this week , but tonight after work I quickly popped out to find out if I could find the horrible rattle that I heard coming from the car  while it was driving down the road.

Within two minutes I sussed out the problem and it was only the backing plate on the OSR disc, so that’s going to be a nice quick free fix.

I might have some spare time on Saturday,  so I might start taking  the interior out and replacing it with my lovely heated leather one out of my spares  car.

Being it’s my max power car, I’m thinking that a VW gamma won’t be going back in and I have lots of old high end Kenwood mask and Alpine stereos knocking about from the late 90’s that  I’ve picked up cheap off facebook over the years that would look great in the dash.

I’ve even got the legendary VW Funk button to go into the car as a couple of the blank plugs are also missing,  but two will be used also for the heated seats.

I’ve also found a silver grill for a tenner with the VW centre badge, so it works out cheaper than buying the rattle cans to paint the black grill.

I also noticed while looking that the car had recently been fitted all round with drilled discs.

Nice - Borats have aged really damn well. I can't get my head around the fact they're so thin on the ground now and the V5 even more so. I guess I can't quite appreciate they're 25 years old either. Flipping barg, either way. 

If you're ever considering moving on one of your mask stereos and have a CDX M800 to shift, I'd be very interested. I still regret selling mine a couple of years back. 

[IronStar]

On 04/01/2026 at 00:10, Matty said:

They were concieved as a genuine premium car alternative and at the time, and in fairness  at banger level many years later, it showed.

Any pretense of premium ambitions was quickly stripped by the beancounters, as you could order them in some shockingly poverty trim levels, straight out of mk1 Golf. Here, new car folk in the early years, and VW commands a premium used car importers in the later almost exclusively bought these, so seeing even basics such as power windows was a challenge. 
1.8T made for some spectacularly fast mk1s and mk2s though. An itch I still didn’t scratch.