coolrado

get some plastic primer spray as normal primer and paint dont seem to stick directly to plastic very well, you should be able to get latex mask from a model shop, just paint it on with a fine brush to all the bits you dont want to be coloured and once you have painted them peel it off before the paint has fully set to avoid flaking the paint off. the other way to do it is to soak some reasonably dense sponge in the paint you are going to use and gently press the front face of the badge onto the sponge, if it doesnt leave enough paint on it just wait for it to dry and do it again.

so far its been the most reliable car i have owned (apart from blowing the head gasket a couple of weeks ago). charger is meant to last around 60k between rebuilds but may be better to get it done a little more often, also a growing number of people are swapping the g-lader charger for a more modern charger like a BBM, Lysholm or Eaton charger as A: it seems you can get them a lot cheaper B: they can give more power without going pop and C: some prefer the noise they produce although the initial conversion costs for fitting a different charger can be a bit expensive if buying all the kit off the shelf the running costs should be lower in the long run. as long as they are serviced regularly and well looked after they are a very relliable engine and quite easy to work on. some members have clocked up over 250k on the original engine with few problems. it also seems that the problem with blown headgaskets was known by VW as the replacement head gaskets they supply are now all metal rather than fibre with metal inserts. there is quite a bit of info in the knowledge base that you may find usefull

has to be the armored ford expedition and explorers i drove in saudi, some clever individual decided that the allready top heavy sluggish yank peices of cr@p would be even better if they added 2 tonns of ballistic steel and kevlar to the sides, roof and floor, add to that the awful quality fuel they have over there and the air con system needed in that climate and the bullet proof tyres and it makes the slowest, worst handling dangerous car i have ever driven, i had to double the braking distance due to their weight and they where doing about 4 mpg but at least they will take a bullet from a high velocity rifle :snipersmile: and still keep going :lol:

i have one of the glass mount amplified ones from halfrauds on mine and the signal is much better than the standard aerial (even a new standard one), i only fitted it as i now have a gps shark fin where the standard one used to be.

you can get an amplified self adhesive aerial in halfords that you can stick to the windscreen behind your interior mirror, £12.99 i think.

it seems like it could be relay number 12 in the internal fuse box, bottom row far right. the fuse seems to be a 50A strip type fuse which will be in the engine bay fuse box and will be a larger type of fuse probably held in by a couple of small nuts.

ok, so we did this last night and (assuming that we were using multimeter correctly) there is no power going to glow plugs. SO the other half has the day off work today so he's going to check the relay. I don't really understand how the electrics etc work but is there anything else that could stop power getting to the glow plugs?? not sure what sort of relay or modulr it uses but it could either be a blown fuse(probably marked as a spiral glow plug symbol on the fuse box lid) or a dead relay or control module, what year and model is the car and i will look up a wiring diagram for you.

ok if you are getting smoke out of the exhaust, it sounds like the fuel is getting to the cylinders, if the fuel is getting to the cylinders but not being heated by the glow plugs it will just end up getting compressed and then blown out of the exhaust as smoke/diesel vapour, even when there is an air leak in the fuel line you would still expect the engine to fire but only for a few seconds or run very badly. the glow plugs could be fine but if they dont get any power from the control module/relay they wont do anything, you really need to check they are getting power before anything else. the bubbles in the fuel line could just be from when you drained the fuel filter, and as far as i know they are a self priming system as when my caddy ran out of fuel the lines where empty and it still started fine after a few seconds. easy way to describe the combustion cycle of a diesel and petrol engine petrol= suck & squirt, squeeze, spark, bang, blow diesel= suck & squirt, heat & squeeze, bang, blow :lol: :lol:

they werent actually missing on mine they had been snapped off just below the surface of the head. if you need to get any new exhaust studs and nuts for your head get them from ECP as the VW ones are just crimped copper nuts, the ecp ones are copper k-nuts which are a much better design for an exhaust as they wont shake loose, VW also wanted 15 quid for 8 copper nuts :cuckoo: they dont supply the original style ones either according to the parts desk.

as far as i know it is Five Stones/Toddington La, Wick, Littlehampton, BN17 7PP

they should still be able to cancel the order and give you a refund though, if the there is a constant stream of bubbles in the clear fuel lines there is probably a leak in one of the fuel lines, this happened on my caddy when one of the fuel lines was rubbing on a metal clip which wore a tiny hole in it, just enough to stop it from starting for more than a few seconds or revving over half way. is there an in tank pump on it? or is it just a set of pick up pipes and the sender in the tank?

the fuel level sender will not effect the running its just for the fuel guage on the dash so you wont need a new sender to make it run. check that you are getting power to the glow plugs, there should be a wire linking all the glow plugs together, set your meter to dc voltage and if it is a manual range type usually set it to 20 volts dc, put the black probe on an exposed metal part of the engine and put the red probe on the connection on top of the glow plug, make sure you are not dangling the leads near any moving parts of the engine and then get someone to turn the ignition to the click before the starter kicks in, the meter should read somewhere near 12v for a second or two, if it doesnt you know the problem is with the glow plug control module/relay. are there any clear fuel lines in the engine bay? and do they appear to have fuel in them? fuel filters are pretty cheap anyway and if it hasnt been changed for a while it is definately worth changing.

you have a PM not sure if it answers your question though.

its usually worth getting it skimmed anyway, the head on mine wasnt warped as the temperature didnt really get very high when it went but where it had been leaking a bit of water to one of the bores it had erroded the head a very small amount, the guy who is doing the skim said it was about a thou out and it would probably be fine without a skim but for 20 quid its worth it just to clean the mating face up properly. i will post some close ups tomorrow of the bores and valves to show their condition.

i ended up having to get a hacksaw blade to the last stud through one of the holes in the manifold which took ages but i couldnt get it off any other way. its quite clear where the head gasket had gone, but what really suprised me was the condition of the bores and valves, this is the first time the engine has been apart and the bores are spotless with no scoring and even have the original honeing marks on them, the inlet valves look like new and the exhaust valves only have a very fine layer of carbon on them we couldnt even find any evidence of wear on the valve stems with the micrometer. i can only put the condition of the engine down to good oil (Shell Helix plus) being used in it since it was new, my mr2 had done half that mileage but the bores where glazed and the valves badly worn but i didnt know the history of the engine on that and didnt really use quality oil in it either. anyway the head is costing 20 quid for a skim and 20 quid to extract the 2 broken exhaust studs as they have broken off below the surface.

It definately doesnt contain PTFE, as we had to use the same product a couple of times in the industry i used to work in and we could not use anything containing PTFE or silicone, i think it just says PTFE on the G-Werks site as it has similar properties to PTFE spray.

porsche GT supercar?

the orage instant gasket sealant from halfrauds will be fine for sealing the blanking plate, just let it set fully before driving it. dont use gt85 on the charger as it contains ptfe, any lube containing ptfe or silicone can cause running problems as any lube that makes its way to the engine and gets burned off can leave a layer on the lambda sensor which screws up the way it reads. darren at g-werks does the proper lube spray which seems to last ages and doesnt contain ptfe or silicone. its also edible.

i agree that removing the valves is very dangerous with a standard matrix, a similar thing happened to me in the bond bug when the rad blew, the pressure relief valve used to vent into the passenger footwell as the small piece of pipe that should have vented it to the ground was missing and even though i had both doors off the car when it blew it was still near impossible to see where i was going. fitting a newer mk3 matrix should eliminate the risk of the matrix exploding as they can take more pressure than other parts of the cooling system, the header tank cap includes a pressure relief valve doesnt it? newer vw's with the later matrix dont have the bypass valves so they shouldt really be required if you fit a new style matrix. as the bypass valves where a retro fit and the pipes had to be cut to fit them, can you still buy the complete un-cut pipes, or are they the usual vw hose prices £££££££

yeah i stripped the engine down last night and two of my exhaust studs on the left hand side where also missing, one of which has snapped off in the head. the only thing that stopped me takeing the head off completely was one exhaust stud, the lower second one in from the right as you look at the car from the front it looks like i will have to get the nut splitter on it tonight.

cheers, nice to know. i have had one sitting around for ages just hadnt had chance to fit it, now looks like a good time i suppose.

the powerflex bushes are also that stiff that they will hold the wheels up when you jack the car up and will stop the top mounts being loose in the strut top, if you do go for standard top mounts and bushes it really is worth getting proper vw ones, i am sick of changing the crappy febi ones from ECP they only lasted about 6 months before the front top mounts collapsed.

did the temp guage go over about half way while it was running? if not, its possible the thermostat is stuck open or missing, if thats the case it will take ages to heat up. either that or the weather was just too cold for it to reach the temp that the fan kicks in, my mates golf has had a new engine fitted and in this weather the fan doesnt come on at all.

just leave it running until the fan kicks in a couple of times, that should be enough to get rid of any moisture.

has it been doing a lot of short journeys where it doesnt get chance to heat up fully? its not unusual especially in this weather to get a bit of condensation in the oil from time to time, take the car for a good long drive and give it a bit of stick so it gets up to temperature and then re-check.