davidwort

I bought a pattern fan from GSF years ago (about 10 years I think!) and it's been perfect, wouldn't go to the dealers for one unless they price one reasonably competetively.

I'm running a mk3 one on mine (it may even be off an audi), makes no difference to idling and it fixed the old problems I had with my proper KR one.

do you not have the connector blocks that plug into the back of the factory door switches? I have a passat and corrado loom at home and a bunch of switches and connector plugs hacked off passat looms, it was easy enough to get the whole lot working with a spare car battery the control box and two spare doors I have in the garage, just to test everything would work when installed. I can take some pics of the loom and connector/switch wires if you like, but can't remember how to wire off the top of my head. The passat haynes manual had pretty much all the info I needed in the wiring diagrams. The important thing for me was that the control box system has one fewer wire to each window switch compared to a direct wired system as you are jsut sending a signal to the box, not directly powering the window motors through the switches.

just wondering what anyone recommends? need some cover for the trip to the ring in september.

I think the answer is yes, but you'll need the corrado panel, and lining as you say, or a passat estate glass, it is possible some of the bolt holes of the main frmae don't line up to the roof, but I've seen the mk3 roofs side by side and they are basically the same.

you're not going to get great fuel economy out of any of them, only the 2L 8v will really better 32/33mpg in combined driving and only by a few mpg. either get one with a TDI conversion or expect to spend anything up to another 100 quid a month on petrol :pale:

the old copy of ETKA I checked actually lists two other numbers, see my updated post on page 1, but it's handy to know the current number VW themselves list.

If you do a search on engine mounts you should find posts covering VW and pattern mounts. In summary, on a 4 cylinder car the rear mount needs to be genuine VW or FEBI (try AVS for FEBI - £27.95), many of the pattern items from GSF etc. are solid rubber instead of hydraulic damped and transmit too much vibration, this isn't generally a problem with front mounts as the front cross member also has rubber bushes further damping vibrations.

Isn't that more to do with simple supply and demand, only so much diesel can be refined from a barrel of oil and the refining capacity hasn't kept up with the increase in demand for diesel (co. cars in particular).

I drove their 2L conversion (from a KR 1.8) years back, first rado I ever sat in, basically all the conversions were as the mk2 16v golf, so there was a long stroke 1.9 and a bored and stroked 2L, all with flowed heads and a variety of cams. Nothing unique about them really, the later conversions all used VW cranks and pistons pretty much, once VW bought out the 2L block in the passat. I was lucky for a few years when I started driving as my dad was the service manager at GTI Engineering, so I got to drive a few of their cars, my favourite was a tweaked mk2 G60, converted to right hand drive.

how on earth did you manage to bend the drop links? :confused4: they sit in two rubber doughnuts and have a rubber bush where they slot onto the arb, I can't for the life of me see how you could bend the shaft of the link, they're so short, I've seen a few snapped ones where the corrode through in the shaft. When fitting new ones to mine I had more trouble keeping them still to tighten the lock nuts so with all that fexing rubber you'd just never get enough force to bend the metal. I would imagine all the forces in cornering simply pull or compress the link, you just wouldn't get the right forces on them to bend them, unles your wishbones were floating about wildly in the subframe, even then i reckon the droplink bushes would take up all the movement. One thing I have noticed is the original g60/16v ones last years but the pattern ones are pretty flimsy in comparison and look like they'll snap far more easily. BTW, they are there to transfer the force the arb transmits on cornering to the other side of the car/wishbone, they allow clearance of the constantly moving (up/down) wishbone as the arb would foul them if it fitted straight into one side of the wishbone.

the current proposal for pre 2001 cars is about 10 quid a year for the next 3 years, not too bad really, but if you've got something like a post March 2001 petrol automatic mondeo, you're in trouble.

I was trying my hardest not to get provoked into a major rant, looks like it's been done for me :lol: while I was bumping over the speed humps this morning I remembered this: the-twat-o-tron you might need to click on the link to the tw@t o tron on the top right saves me typing a fair bit :lol:

yeah, and don't forget his recent top tips on how to stock your fridge, what next Gordon?, wear our pants for a week and use both sides of the bog roll? He now actually makes me angry when I just see his face on TV :censored: We're rapidly heading for a nasty recession and the twonk is still in denial, sad thing is, a couple of years from now when (if) he finally realises what a mess his actions over the last 12 years have done to the country we will all be much worse off, facing years of recovery and he'll just be facing a fat pension.

why would you need to know? road tax isn't affected by it anyway? I doubt whether VW ever produced the data to the current standards, closest you could get to would be the original quoted mpg in the handbook probably, which isn't really real world driving anyway, I don't think they ever published anything like a 'combined cycle' figure either.

we just went to a branch and got them to match the old one from the parts bins, first time they tried to do it via a description they returned with a 2 pin golf switch :roll: it may not be listed for a 16v engine by GSF, but they definitely stock the right part.

321 959 481 D GSF do them pretty cheaply and they work fine, although the GSF ones (and possibly the new VAG ones) come with a metal washer on them and I prefer the fibre mk2 golf washer you can buy from VW for about a quid. The GSF ones may have very slightly different opening temps stamped on them to the genuine VW part (VW one in my pic) but it's not important as the values are approximate anyway. update: despite the fact the above part was the original genuine VW one, ETKA actually lists different numbers to this: 191 959 481C 95-84 deg C/102-91 deg C 3 pin up to chassis 50-P-020 000 1H0 959 481C 95-84 deg C/102-91 deg C 3 pin from chassis 50-R-000 001 (must be very late cars, 1995? - this is the point at which the wiring connector block changes)

I can't remember exactly but when Fosters sponsored it in the late 80's early 90's it was several million quid, and all they got were a few banners and a big fosters logo painted on the grass :lol: @ukshadow06 I used to live in a little village called Slapton, nr Wappenham/Abthorpe/Silverstone village, now I'm a bit further up the road on the edge of Northampton in Wootton Fields. Dad used to work at GTI Engineering/BBR in Brackley :)

I've lived nr silverstone for years and since they finally dualled the A43 past silverstone village there's now dual carriageway access from both M1 and M40 right to the circuit, they basically have 8 lanes in and 8 lanes out again in the evening which is excellent for getting 250K people in and out over the weekend. The circuit has invested loads over the years too, so as mentioned, I think this has more to do with Ecclestone's feud with the BRDC than any pratical reasons, shame for Silverstone though, when I used to work for the circuit in the summer the managers told me the sponsorship for the F1 grand prix paid for the entire running of the circuit for a year, all staff costs etc. I'm sure they're going to struggle without it. Silverstone was always crap for viewing the track though.

HTH

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsp ... 489662.stm

try removing the matrix from the system alltogether and connecting the inlet and outlet hose together with some copper pipe or something, also removing the by-pass valves, it could be that the matrix is partially blocked and the valves are releasing enough pressure but not allowing a good flow of water in the system somehow, the sytem is designed to have a free flow of hot water through the matrix at all times, regardless of if your controls are set to hot or cold in the cabin, not sure if this possibly restricts the flow in the whole system if totally blocked though. You need to check your fluid level is right, that your hoses all have water in (i.e. no air locks) and the thermostat and fan switch are operating correctly, usually it takes about 10 minutes from cold with the car idling for the stat to open and the bottom rad hose to get hot, probably another 5 minutes for the fan to then come on on speed 1 as the water in the bottom of the rad gets to about 95 degrees with no air flow from being stationary.

I take it you didn't remove the shift tower from the box and just unclipped/unbolted the shift and selector cables, did you remember the thick round washer under the cable end on the counterweight/shift cable fixing bolt?

it's just a pressure relief valve from matrix inlet pipe to the matrix outlet pipe, to prevent the matrix bursting if it gets blocked, nothing to do with temperature. I'm not sure exactly why the header tank caps changed, I don't think it's anything to do with how they screw in place, more to do with the reliability of the pressure relief they are supposed to give, although I see plenty of old VW's running on the old black caps with no problems. from playing with a couple of valvers recently the radiator mounted switch for the two fan speeds and the thermostat itself seem the most common problem areas, if fan speed 1 is never switched on then it will get up to near 110 onj the gauge before speed 2 finally comes on and brigs the temps down.

GSF leads seem fine, the Beru ones I got from them are still fine after about 10 years I've always used Bosch F6DTC triple electrode plugs on mine GSF FUCHS Titan XTR 10/40 semi synthetic seems to work fine + a genuine filter (from GSF again but VAG are about the same price) Gearbox oil really needs a 17mm allen socket and a breaker bar to undo the fill and drain holes if they've never been undone before, VW's own fully synthetic oil has worked very well in mine IRO 25 quid for 2 Litres (2x1L bottles) or redline MT90 gets good reviews in the 02A box, and ideally you'll need about a metre of tubing to fill the new oil or it's a real PITA dizzy cap and rotor arm?