davidwort

that should be the current revs! I can't remember exactly how to do it, isn't it ignition off, hold mfa button in, ignition on, ignition off, start car, release mfa?

didn't really have time to see what the lorry livery was, traffic too heavy and it all happened so quick. craigowl, I only have my 1.6 mk4 to go by really (6 years worth), I've been in a few others but not long enough to compare much. The smaller engined mk4's were allegedly built in South Africa, if that's true then it might explain some of the less than perfect trim fitting in mine! I've had lots of rattles that have taken a bit of fiddling to sort but generally they feel fairly good quality inside. One problem with the trim is all the soft touch coated plastics, it's rubbish and scratches and comes off easily making the interiors look a bit shabby on the hard used parts, door pulls etc. I've had a series of minor things on mine, leaking Power steering hose at 35K and two coilpacks fail, although they were not the recall ones like the 1.8T's had around 2002. Window mechs on pre 2002 cars fail quite quickly, VW do a repair kit with strengthened parts. The handling on the smaller sized wheel is rubbish, mainly due to the really high sidewalls on the 1.4 and 1.6 cars, make sure you have at least the 15" wheels on them and I have 16's now from a GTI which are loads better but knock fuel consumption a little. Mine now has a bad knocking from the rear beam, seems like the rear beam bushes don't last long on them and the front ARB bushes had some stupid hard coating from the factory which makes them clonk, a redesigned part is now available. what else? - water temp sensors seem to die frequently, had 3 on mine. and the felt coating on the outer door opening rubbers sticks shut in the frost if it's rained before, very annoying! It also nearly wrecked it's own head when one of the timing tensionners started to fail, fortunately I caught it in time, it had only done 50K and sholdn't be replaced until 60, VW have redesigned these bits at least 3 times too! My dad sees them from time to time at his garage and they're had more than one 1.6 16v break cambelts when the tensionners fail, the TDI's need more fequent changes but seem to hold up OK if they're done to schedule. The TDI's are great for torque and fuel economy but potentially parts can cost you a fair bit, you need to do a lot of miles to really justify the extra purchase price and servicing costs I reckon. They're not very characterful cars, but they do feel OK to be in, fairly quiet and feel quite solid, reliability wise though they're not going to beat the likes of toyota, honda etc!

they're great in the winter but those zig-zaggy lies annoy me a bit, must be worse as I'm slightly short sighted and tend to focus on stuff close to. How much were the mk1/2 group buys going for, can't imagine they'd be cheap?

that part number is correct for the water temp senders (049 919 501 0-125 deg 1 pin black), but i think the picture you have is of the oil temperature sender that goes just around the back of the head, that has a female spade connector in the loom that slides on the top of that sender, they are a similar colour and size, only the connection looks different.

If the rubber part of the bushes have started to come away from the metal outer shaped shoulder then it can look bad and I gues one tester might fail them even if the central sleeve and main part of the outer body were still bonded to the rubber, but I'd have thought they would have to have actual significant movement to fail them. I'd ask to speak to the actual tester. Replacing them with the proper hydraulic press is pretty easy as the rear beam can stay on the car, shouldn't be more than an hours labour really. On the 4 cyl cars you wouldn't have to disconnect any brake lines either, although I'm not sure about the VR6 as the rear brake compensator is different. If a garage had to remove the rear beam and replace the compensator and possibly replace brake line sections it could be a time consuming and costly job.

yes, it's in another samco 16v thread, basically you need a 25-19mm reducer bend a coupler and a 19mm hose, possibly 45 degree 19mm bends depending on if you use the heater bypass valves sfs seems good for ordering bits sorry, mis-read your post, the hose to the bottom of the tank could be made from a single length of hose I reckon, same bore as the spare hose that comes in the samco set, probably 19mm again. I was looking at this when I changed my radiator yesterday, but it doesn't feed from the head to expansion tank, it's from the water pipe around the block to the expeansion tank, or the one I mentioned above which goes from the side of the head to the heater matrix inlet.

no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no ! not the GSF one! try and source a FEBI one from somewhere like AVS the GSF ones are so hard they will make the whole car rattle at idle.

apparently VW use a special sealant rather than a gasket so there's a bit of that stuff to use, but yep, hopefully it's just the sump, and a very useful father who works at a garage to do the job for me :notworthy: not that he was over impressed when I rang him at work to tow me to his garage in the pouring rain.

Lovely wet commute down the M1 this morning in bunching traffic then out of the blue something appears on the road in front of me, no time/room to swerve so straddled it and Bang! :shock: like hitting a kerb with both front wheels at 40mph. No idea what it was but I'd imagine the trucker wandering down the hard shoulder looking for something behind his lorry had something to do with it :bad-words: Next thing I know, the car says STOP low oil pressure, so I managed to coast to the services in the hard shoulder and got it towed to the garage, they tell me that it looks like a piece of railway line has been fired at my lovely alloy sump. Fortunately it's only about 50 quid from VW, which is better than the new engine I was half expecting. Mk4 golf BTW. just glad it wasn't the Corrado, it would have done more damage with the less ground clearance on that I reckon.

keep your mind open and go and look at as many as you can, TBH if I was looking for another one I'd be more interested in general condition than which engine, they're all nice cars to have, just not a badly rusted one :)

Ok, lets put all this 16v rubbish to bed, if they're properly set up and generally healthy then they give great mpg, bear in mind that most of the quoted mpgs for 1.8 16v's are for 18 yr old engines. I'm going for some kind of :dorky: :dorky: award here, but below is the last 7 years of running my K-jet 16v, with a 2L block, it's worth noting it gave about 2mpg better as a 1.8. These are tank to tank measurements and the journeys are all much the same, commuting with mixture of M-way, part back road and part town driving in rush hour. Despite the 16v's having the shortest legged gearboxes it'll show 42-45mpg if you sit at a steady 70mph on the motorway. and as a benchmark, if I use my 1.6 mk4 golf for the same journeys it only manages about 40 miles more out of the same sized fuel tank, struggling to better it by a few mpg.

the water temperature sensors (there are 3 the same) are all on the right hand end of the head around the water outlet, they're much smaller than that, 13mm hex around them (IIRC) and are black with a single male spade connector sticking out. that sender looks like an 8v one to me, the type that sits in a plastic water flange with a circlip holding it in place, definately not 16v. the other sensors on the 16v include another small sensor just around the back of the head from the water ones,but this one is oil temp. and then a 3 pin (2 speed) fan switch on the radiator and a fan run on switch on the front leftmost cam cover nut, just under the fuel lines. the two senors on top of the oil filter housing are in fact oil pressure sensors, white and black and sometimes one blue if it's been relpaced by a more recent VW part. two of the 3 water temp sensors are arrowed in the picture, one is underneath the hose out of sight

I'd do a search on the forum for peoples experiences, but in general there's not a huge amount in it over all the Corrados, although the rare 8v 2L cars will get several mpg better than any of the others. In town a 1.8 16v is particularly bad as they tend to run rich and have the lowest ratio gearbox and the worst torque at low revs. But at 2.9 litres and weighing in the heaviest I wouldn't bet on a VR6 winning the Shell economy run :)

you'll need a few hundred miles on new tyres for them to settle down though, especially if you didn't have alignment done after fitting them.

ah, the NASA space programme by-product that is VW sound proofing adhesive, you'll never shift that :mad2: there's a long list of chemicals listed in varoius threads for this stuff, I'f have a go with petrol, white spirit, basically anything solvent like stuff you can get your hands on and do a lot of scraping with a plastic spatula :bad-words: Avoid, Nitro-mors, brake fluid etc though and anything else that likes to eat paintwork.

there's 3 ways you'll get PAS related noise AFAIK 1 pump pressure valve stuck - you'll hear a constant pumping whine from the pump (even with no steering input) and the fluid will bubble round like mad in the reservoir, eventually the PS pressure hose from pump into rack will leak 2 belt slipping 3 air in the rack, which should simply work it's way out with use

you need to keep working it lock to lock to get all the air out, it can take quite a few turns, I did it with the wheels off the ground to save chewing the tyres.

just rules out a problem with the level sensor in the tank that's all.

does it flash if you bridge the pins on the coolant level sensor connector for the expansion tank?

Thing about undertaking in the US is that the roads are wider straighter, there's less traffic, the speed limit is lower and people sit on 'cruise', in that situation it works well. In the UK the above is rarely true and we all have to regularly swap lanes to pass traffic of different speeds, it just makes undertaking more dangerous. I do own up to doing it though, especially in heavy traffic on the M1 on my way home, the inside lane sits at a steady 55-60 in heavy traffic but the other lanes bunch and slow down as individuals accelerate and then have to brake sharply, in that situation you often make better (and safer) progress and undertake just by sitting at a steady speed in lane 1.

I'm sure your VW parts dept could find them for you... on a good day.

check the level with the engine cold, it can rise when hot (it is an expansion tank after all :) ) if it's too full when cold take the cap off an siphon a bit out with a short length of hose I've tried G12+ in several cars instead of G11/generic blue coolant and it makes zilch difference to temps unless you massively over concentrate with either, the main advantage is G12+ has more stable corrosion inhibitors and is less harmfull to the environment. with the fan speeds, you can always bridge the terminals to see what the two speeds sound like, 1 is a gentle hum/spin, 2 is much louder and faster, at idle speed warmed up from cold it should just click onto speed 1, 2 should only be reached if you've been on a long hard run and suddendly slow down/stop and lots of heat in the block needs dissipating Pattern radiators don't help as they are less efficient at cooling so the fans have to work harder.

well the 4cyl corrados definitely have a different part number for the rear beam, and correspondingly have a different (mk2 golf) rear axle bush, the VR6 has a mk3 rear beam which is definitely used on the GTI, GTI 16v and VR6 mk3's and from ETKA it looks like the same part is used on any mk3 with rear disks, I'm not sure if that corresponds to 5 stud rather than 4 stud mk4's though, it's possible some of the GL type trims had rear discs but 4 stud wheels? Anyway a basic mk3 GTI 8v should have the beam you need :)

a mild schrick cam, helps the 8v breathe better at the top end and being an 8v you won't suffer from making the low end torque weak. I've done this on numerous otherwise standard 8v engines and it's always livened them up nicely.

Screwfix also do that towbar, might be nearer to you than a machine mart branch? I've been towed about 10 miles in the Corrado, heavy and it's quite stressfull with a rope! so I'd definately get a bar.