davidwort

HAHAHA I spoke to my mechanic last night and was adament that I should repair it and sell it. I am still in 2 minds. I am not sure how much I could get for it now its a CAT D. keep good records of everything that's done to it, just because it's been a write off financially for the insurance company shouldn't put off someone who sees all the history for the car and it's condition in the flesh, the chances are you would sell it on to an enthusiast anyway, not as if it'll go on a garage forecourt and be sold to an 'average' punter as a family transport.

sorry to hear about a terrible day :( surely the payout would be enough to cover you privately fixing this car up, would be such a shame to break it, breaking is mgoing to involve a lot of work anyway.

for the dampers at least: try some searching on the forum, I've posted up the koni data sheets before but a bit of 'Googling' will find them, the koni site should give info on UK distributors, mail order may be the cheapest though. you will need yellow, koni sport Top Adjustable (TA) dampers, these can be safely run with lowering springs, different versions are available for 4cylinder and vr6 cars and some rears are not TA's but adjustable off the car, for early cars you can just purchase inserts for the front VAG legs. I run mine at minimum settings, too bumpy otherwise, although I have Eibach springs instead.

One other point to note, early 16v and G60 gearboxes have some different materials in the synchros I believe, later ones were a slight improvement - this could of course be 'bunkum' The thing I have noticed with mineral oil, is the box can sometimes be hard to get out of reverse after parking up, the new synthetic listed above has cured this on a warm or cold gearbox on my car.

passats from about the same date as the 2.016v Corrado, generally K plate onwards, odd J plate. Fitting the KR tower would require the old style KR cable bracket too (side by side), for setting up the cables, 'cheesewire' has a post somewhere telling you hjow to do it without the VAG setup tool in about a paragraph of text, go search...

bog standard 9A's do have a lovely flat torque curve though (for a valver), even if it does run out of steam at high revs.

from what I understand a home made version is pretty easy to fabricate(small bit of welding) and you can choose the pivot point, i.e. don't make it quite as short as the B&M but shorter than the factory one, there's plenty of breaking passats to get the bits from to bastardise.

got FEBI rods with ends from AVS, less than 20 quid each, seem reasonable quality too, not the easiest job to do but well worth it as my inner tie rod joints had seen better days even though the outer ball joint/end was perfectly serviceable(if a bit siezed). http://www.vwspares.co.uk/ David.

not stictly a direct comparison as the converted 1.8 with the KR cam also has a gas-flowed head, but you get the idea, there's slightly more torque in the standard 9A up to 4,500rpm then the KR cam lets the head breath better and the 2L with a KR keeps going strongly for at least 1000rpm more than the 9A. Rolling road runs on same day. BTW, the converted 2L when properly set up for fuelling now develops 10bhp more at the top end, so matching the fuelling and ignition to the engine/cam is quite important for peak power.

Some of the very subtle changes in the later dash are OK, but you'd be replacing a reliable heater control mechansim for one with a reputation for breaking! One of the magazine articles I've got kicking around from the mid 90's compared the late Corrado dash look and feel to that of the Skoda Felicia :)

If you simply want to weld in a sheet of steel and remove the sunroof mech then you won't need to strengthen anything, as the roof is still the same structure as if it had a sunroof in there, the roof mech frame doesn't add any strngth to the roof from what I can see. The only problem would be flexing of the roof and any filling required after welding having the potential to crack the paint around the original opening area, you'll never completely hide the appearance of it once having a sunroof but that might not matter if you're mainly interested in track days!

didn't know any of them were??? RHD cars have flat drivers side glasses, only LHD have a convex lense on the right hand mirror.

For the fixed corrado steering column, the column itself is the same as a polo one, the outer tube is the Corrado specific part, so if you don't like the new VW price a second hand low mileage polo one is out there somewhere.

adjustable type column I guess? does it behave the same on higher/lower settings or just one position?

at it's simplest, it's one bolt at the bottom and a couple of nuts on the top of the shock at the back each side, then one nut on the top and two bolts at the bottom (to the hub) on each side at the front. Do that and you'll have all four legs out, you'll need a spring compressor for disassembling the fronts as well as a slotted socket tool to remove the top spring cap retaining nut.

At that drop on a 16v your wishbones are above the horizontal point, the bushes and geometry weren't designed for that and a standard car will have better handling.

if you haven't already, then check here: http://the-corrado.net/wiki/index.php/16v_Tuning_Guide In my experience, a VAG camshaft doesn't need a vernier to get the optimum from it, they're bang on with the basic pulley, the main use would be for a highly tuned 16v that revs to 7,500 or above where you could use a vernier on really high lift aftermarket cams to adjust the torque peak for the best overall delivery. Once you get into these realms than you'll be spending a lot on rolling road time to extract the last odd hp here and there from an engine and a vernier might just help you get things spot on. My fav order has always been: capacity head (possibly with inlet and exhaust manifold flowing) - cams (KR or ABF on a 2L, maybe aftermarket afterwards) engine balancing/blueprinting, lightened flywheel full ECU injection/throttle bodies

Stealth would be a good point to start, what setup are you using that needs vernier adjustment?

yes they are a fiddle, but spring clips don't seem to corrode badly, they apply very even pressure around a hose (and the correct pressure if used in the right sizes) and I've never seen them damage a hose like a 'screw-up' jubilee can.

The rear wheel arches have a narrower lip around the top 2/3 of the arch, whereas the earlier cars have a consistent width lip, not sure if the fronts are similarly shaped?

To really benefit from high lift cams you need gasflowing of the cylinderhead and ultimately a bottom end built to cope with higher revs, Schrick have a good reputation for quality but high lift cams will always be a compromise for low end torque, you're effectively pushing the torque curve up the rev range. As the corrado is fairly heavy, certainly compared to a mk2 golf, so losing low end can make them unpleasant to drive in regular traffic and in town. If you don't already have the headwork done, I'd say the money is better spent there.

it's only the motor/trim cover and loom that are different, the mechanism itself is the same part for all Corrados, early ones have the switch in the trim cover, late ones in the light unit.

The VW 2L 8v engine is pretty strong and although the head limits the power it's mid range is good and it's also an economical engine, more so than the 16v, partly due to the fully electronic injection system. Obviously it depends how you drive but the 8v should average at least 35mpg and will do far better than that on longer cruises. Compared to any of the other corrados expect several mpg more on average given the same driving conditions. High lift cams, big valves and headwork can raise the power to 150bhp ish on an 8v, but it's costly for the results bhp/£ and ultimately the head design isn't great for performance. The same basic engine is found in many VAG cars of the era, audi 80's, passats and golf GTIs are just a few and it's reliable and pretty cheap to maintain and easy to work on.

They must be different to the Samcos then as two of the Samcos in the 7 definitely don't fit a 1.8 or 2.0 16v Corrado, they are just totally different to any hose on the Corrado.

track rod ends are just the ball joint that attaches the track rods to the hub on each wheel, these can (if they're not siezed solid) be replaced separately from the entire track rod. On a high mileage car though, the track rod inner joint can wear and clonk with play, a garage can check this for you or you can check yourself by putting the steering on full lock each way and rocking the steering wheel back and forth slightly on full lock (engine off), if one of you does the steering rocking and the other holds onto the track rod you can feel and hear a clock from the inner track rod joint if it is badly worn. The new track rods come with both inner and outer joint (i.e. complete with track rod end). I'd only suggest replacing if it is obviously worn as they aren't the easiest things to get at on the inner joint where they attach to the rack. Lower ball joint, again only needs replacing if actually worn and has play, undetectable play on a grage ramp/MOT may be evident with the car on the road although won't really affect the steering much, rear mounting in the wishbones are prone to ear the front mounting not, arb mountings also wear and are worth replacing, two inner rubbers and outer drop links with rubbers. top mounts never seem to last long, especially pattern ones and are worth checking and replacing if they have much more than a mm of play. Rear bearings are inserted into the rear disc, so might as well replace the discs at the same time.