davidwort

Used to get this fairly frequently on my valver until I changed to fully synthetic (VW) gearbox oil. It's sometimes a little stiff to get out of reverse but much less frequently and not as bad when it does. When it had the mineral oil in I sometimes had to release the clutch again slightly and reverse the car a bit more to get it to release. There's nothing wrong with the box, it's just a little old and worn.

good news Jim, I reckon you should go for the VR, especially as you've already had a G60 and valvers :) I reckon a standard VR will cost you more to run and maintain than a valver but ultimately it's the one to have. What happened to the Fiat then? have a very merry Christmas :x-mas:

the only ones we know that don't 'go off' are the Phillips ones, several people have been running these for a year or two, I've not seen any reports of how well the Halfords ones last but I'd imagine 'as new' the light output is very similar.

that's a fair deal, especially delivered, I checked my receipt from ECP, £17 plus VAT (that was blagged on a trade discount of a few quid).

use the search, lots of posts and info on this and cleaning it.

check the throttle cable is free and returning the butterflys to closed, the cable take a sharp bend and over the years wears quite badly inside. They should be perfectly smooth and easy to operate if in good nick. Could also be a sticky Idle control, valve (ISV)

What is the downside to having these sensors removed? Should there be anything to be careful of, is there any advantages apart form fixing the idle problem? sorry for the newbie questions :confused4: it just makes the ECU run in 'average settings' rather than reading values from the sensors, sort of 'get-you home mode' best not to leave it like this for long though or it could eventually damage the cat. It's just a crude way of narrowing doen what might be causing the problem. If you had a vacuum leak or something mechanical being the problem, then the problems would persist at idle.

there's two sensor on the side of the metering head IIRC, down the left hand side (looking from the front of the car) from what I remember from a few years back at stealth if you unplug both the car will run in average temp etc settings from the ECU. There was a car that wouldn't idle at all (9A 16v) and a pattern lambda was suspect, pulling both these sensor connectors and it idled OK, presumably that was enough for the ECU to give up on the lambda signal too.

wish I had a quid for every valver I've come across with the belt out a tooth, they don't jump, it's just poor checking when the belts are changed usually. I think you need to do a tank to tank fill and work out the MPG yourself, the 1.8's MFA is not the most accurate of things. If you find you are getting close to 30mpg in the winter, average, with a variety of driving then that's not at all bad. A haynes manual (for Passat or mk2 golf) describes how to check the injector spray pattern, but to check the fuel pressures requires a fuel pressure gauge and the right adapters for the K-jet system, kit which is very expensive generally. Far better to take it to a Bosch injection specialist or somewhere like Stealth who have the kit and know how to test and set it up.

mmm, says 21.44 plus VAT on the website, mine were bought by the garage my dad works for (and I did pay the price incl. VAT!) so he probably got about 10-15% off which you should be able to blag from them?

I'm assuming aspherical is a glass with a blind spot/wide angle outer edge to it? Would love one of these, save me running people off the road :) So who supplies them?, I've only seen tinted or convex aftermarket lenses for the Corrado.

H4 for the main dip/main beam bulb (three 'legs' on the bulb base), the spot lamp bulb is a single element H3 I believe, same as the fog bulbs. Oh, and if you have a Euro Car Parts near you, I picked up a pair of Phillps Extremes H4 for 20 quid from them.

yeah, the key thing is that the VW wiring and switches drops a lot of voltage, especially when old, so standard bulbs are generally brighter when run from a relay/loom instead. If you try to put say 80/100W or bigger bulbs in with the standard wiring they will draw more current and run the risk of burning out part of the VW loom. If you fit the Halfords/Phillips etc bulbs, they have more light output but only draw the same current as a standard 55/60W bulb (if you look on them they are actually rated as 55/60W - same as a standard bulb) , so they won't damage the VW loom, but they would also benefit from a relay setup. Wattage is a strange way to rate a lightbulb as it refers to the power consumed and not the amount of light output, which varies hugely from one technology of bulb to another.

I'd get a lot more info on this car first. Throttle bodies can help a normally aspirated 16v develop both more power and torque but to achieve that sort of bhp it'll have to rev to (and be built to rev to) the best part of 8,000 rpm. If you can see the rolling road plots, I'd be more interested in the power at the wheels and the torque plot than a calculated at the crank figure. But you can't take any rolling road printouts as gospel.

from chopping and changing exhausts I've come to the conclusion that a) stainless is harder and always transmits more noise and b) the 'suitcase' mid/rear silencer where the exhaust crosses over from the centre to the backbox is carefully designed by VW to keep the system quiet, the vast majority of aftermarket exhausts just seem to incorporate a basic small silencer in this position, if at all, and that's not really enough. Because this silencer position is under the rear seats you often get a lot of booming, a couple of layers of dynamat or something will help a lot here.

13 years in feb and it's only ever let me down twice, and both times because I ran out of petrol :lol: Up until this winter it's been a daily driver and if it doesn't have anything that needs fixing on it I start looking for things that don't really need doing :)

you could remove the wheel, lay on either side with water around the rim and look for bubbles forming.

vag com isn't of any use on a 1.8 KR, and there's no lambda etc. The main things that affect fuel economy on the 1.8 are poor spray pattern from the injectors and the cold weather! The warm up control tends to run them very rich until warmed up. Check all the basic stuff like plugs leads, rotor arm, dizzy cap, air filter etc and then get the Idle CO checked, should be around 0.5-1.5% some run a little better set to 2% Check the base timing is correct: 6deg BTDC +/- 1 deg Check engine timing, i.e. make sure the timing marks all ine up, so the belt hasn't jumped a tooth or something. Then as long as you haven't got wheel alignment out or a binding caliper or something, next job is to get al lthe fuel system pressures checked and finally get it rolling road tuned. Few things to be going on there with. :)

things don't look good for Vauxhall, GM are in big trouble in the US, along with Chrysler they need something like 14 Billion dollars of cash injected to keep them going through the first quarter of 2009, and GM shares have dropped 84% this year.

another one bites the dust, there's going to be a lot of gaps in motorsport next year, SEAT, Honda... http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsp ... 785299.stm

Just fitted my Phillips Extreme bulbs, it's difficult to see the difference from a camera picture, but I'm pretty pleased with them. They are running on a relay/loom setup so will be getting more power than just using the standard loom, but with a direct comparison to a couple of very old 55/60 and 80/100W bulbs I'd say they are on a par or slightly brighter than the 80W dip and give a whiter light. They are much better than the 55W dip needless to say. They also seem to run considerably cooler than the 80W dip which is good news for the reflectors. Abcd0009_800.jpg[/attachment:3bnhd3e9]

it's not just the understeer thing, new tyres need a while to harden up, and by putting them on the rear of a FWD car they'll last longer than if put straight on the driving wheels.

not on a KR, you mean 9A :) Buy some FEBI ones, mine from GSF have lasted 10 years and are still within spec, lasted as long as the OEM ones. Other 'performance' ones are a waste of cash IMO, no performance improvement, they just look prettier.

I guess this is what you get when you have a proper manual to follow :) I knew nothing about this when I did mine and it's new to me from this thread, I guess the idea is to prevent the axle moving from side to side a little when it 'loads up' one way or the other under cornering, I'll have to take another look at mine and see if it needs adjusting. I didn't fancy meddling with the mounting brackets in case I buggered up the alignment somehow.

very funny episode, that guy in the audience with the pug with the 6 disk CD player, was he for real? :lol: