coolrado

are you sure its not z-engineering?

i gave the car a good thrashing round some nice twisty local roads and the poly bushes are a huge improvement over the tired old oem ones, i couldnt really say they would be better than brand new oem bushes as i have never driven a car with them on. the car feels so much more stable and sure footed on corners that where previously quite scary and the ride is a lot smoother, even passengers in the back have commented on how smooth the ride is especially driving over speed bumps where before it felt like something was loose. but the biggest improvement i have noticed is during heavy breaking where it used to feel like the rear end went very light and floaty but now feels very sqare and level. i cant really see why the rear axle bushes would make the ride any harder as they are only really acting as a pivot point, i could understand that changing the top mounts or bottom shock absorber bushes to poly could make it a little more harsh but i am going to ghange all of the bushes on the car to poly any way to avoid any weak points. im really not sure on this "passive rear steering" thing any more, as you dont hear mk2 owners going on about it even though they use the same bushes, is there any actual evidence or information that expains exactly how it works?

not much else that could cause it, have you also checked the bushes in the bottom of the rear shock absorbers? have you got any fluid leakage from the shock absorbers? are your spare wheel and tool kit secured? is the parcel shelf secure? unless the bushes have completely collapsed allowing metal on metal contact its unlikely the knocking will be the rear bushes.

yeah i think it will be a case of if i dont like the way it drives i will change back to oem but if it improves things in the same way as my mates golf i will definately stick with them.

even though the bushes had completely seperated and split they didnt make any noises, it just made the car very unpredictable during high speed cornering as the back end broke loose a couple of times, it also made it a bit floaty at high speed on the motorway and very squirmy under braking. have you checked the exhaust hangers? i had a banging on the rear left and it turned out to be the exhaust knocking on the rear beam as the hanger rubbers where worn out, you need to check the clearence ideally on a set of ramps so the weight is still on the wheels, it was a sort of deep clonk that you could feel through the floor.

yeah you do apearently loose the passive rear steer effect (if it really exists) but as i have just got the coilovers (your fault :lol: ) the car would be too low for the passive rear steer to take effect anyway. the original bushes are not solid rubber, they have more rubber on one side than the other, so that as the beam pivots up and down it lets it flex a little, if the cars lowered it will never pivot far enough to reach the point where they allow that flex. i have only taken it for a little test drive and i cant really say it made the ride any more harsh, but i have only done the rear bushes and its still on the oem suspension until next weekend, i didnt really get chance to take it for a proper thrash around any corners either so i cant really comment on that yet but i will make sure i put them through their paces tomorrow :twisted: i did have a look at a pair of oem rear bushes that where removed from a mk2 golf and they had the same part number as the corrado ones, but people dont seem to mention the passive rear steer on the golf, and my friends mk2's handling certainly improved when the poly bushes where fitted. polyurathane has different properties than normal rubber, it has inherent damping qualities and appearantly is better at absorbing fine vibrations so although the poly bushes seem a lot harder it doesnt mean the ride will be a lot harder, but i suppose the only way to find out for sure is try it.

should be able to sometime yeah, you would obviously need to get a pair of bushes and also some brake fluid as the brake lines need to be disconnected to get the beam off. fitting the poly ones was very simple but the original vw ones look like a complete nightmare to fit, its not surprising vw have a special tool to fit them :wink:

i think that is just more for ease of setup, but if the steering wheel is in the correct possition and the car doesnt pull to the side then it will be fine.

"setting the track rod end to the correct length" is the same as setting the tracking, its the same thing. so if its driving straight its allready been done and will be fine.

there arent many products that will actually adhere properly to polished alloy and keep their finish for long, but the stuff that frost sell is meant to be very good, the glisten pc is a 2 part product and needs to mixed before use but gives a much harder durable finish but im not sure it can be used in a spray gun, but it does dry without any brush marks. diamond clear spray laquer glisten pc

Got a set of the powerflex rear beam bushes this morning, and expected to spend all afternoon slicing out the old bushes and hacksawing the old metal out, but once i got the whole beam off (in the pouring rain) the rubber parts of the bushes simply pushed out :shock: and where split and badly perished , that explains the recent odd handling then.

the only problem with making it harder to steal is they will probably end up damaging the roof trying to get it off or just snap it out of spite, especially if its one of the alloy ones with the grub screws.

well it is, it makes a big impact without being over the top. it certainly stood out at ultimate imo. well done on the feature in pvw as well :thumbleft: oh yeah Darren i completely forgot you stocked them otherwise i would have ordered some with the coilies :roll: i will probably end up getting them from demon tweeks as its basically down the road from me and i should be able to get them tomorrow.

that would be quite handy, cheers. can't usually rely on demon tweeks to get it right. :lol: .

After going to ultimate dubs and seeing furkan's corrado, my mates have been constantly going on at me to lower mine, and i had got a bit sick of the 4x4 ride height (came in handy at all types this weekend as it turned into a bit of a mudbath :lol: ) so i finally took the plunge and got myself some weitec hicon GT's and next month i should be ordering some BBM boost hoses and a badgeless grill and eyebrow :cool: great service from g-werks as usual :thumbleft: :thumbleft: thanks lads I do need to get some poly bushes though and i wouldnt mind getting them tomorrow ready for fitting, i am pretty close to demon tweeks but does anyone know anywhere else in the area that sells poly bushes? also are the g60 rear bushes the same as the mk2 golf ones?

use g3 to get the worst off and then g10 to smooth it out.

is your radiator fan kicking in before it overheats? i forgot to re-connect my rad fan switch a while ago and wasnt paying attention to the temp guage while sitting in traffic and the temp went up and boiled the header tank, have you changed the rad fan switch?

the things that went wrong on the vans i had where down to poor maintainace rather than manufacturing faults really, as the citroen had done 137k miles and the peugeot had done nearly 200k miles, the master cylinder on the citroen had been leaking for a while but the previous driver who was on holiday when i used it didnt bother to report it :mad:. and the peugeot bonnet catch was mostly caused by salt deposits from the roads in the winter building up and corroding the mech. apart from that the only other problem's where glow plugs and the odd injector which you have to expect after that many miles, they where both pretty reliable but horrible to drive and gave me a very bad back after driving them for a couple of weeks due to a complete lack of lumbar support. the vw caddy van is a better bet imo if thats an option.

i have also had a sh!tron berlingo and a peugeot partner for my previous 2 jobs, i wrote the berlingo off after the master cylinder burst, but it also wrote off a rover in the process so it wasnt all bad. both of the bonnet catches on the peugeot seized open so when i went over a small bump in the road at about 60mph the bonnet lifted and turned inside out, which is a proper brown trouser moment :lol: , i called the AA out after trying to flatten the bonnet enough to close it and the AA guy said it was quite a common fault and wasnt the first he had seen. :shock:

its a bit like the citroen berlingo van being the same as the peugeot partner van the vw caddy is the same as the SEAT inca the citroen saxo is mostly the same as the peugeot 106 and isnt the new renault clio the same as the new nissan micra? it seems like more and more companies are doing this to save cash, didnt ford and vw swap technical knowledge on the suspension design of the new focus and golf mkV?

all the mods you have mentioned are reversible and will help the car last longer, so it shouldnt be an issue, its not like your rolling the arches or bolting on a body kit. its only a couple of badges at the end of the day and shouldnt mean its treated any differently to a "normal" model.

i may be going to the scrappy on the weekend at some point as there are a couple of bits of trim i am after, i will ask them how much they want for it.

it would probably be better to find a corrado in a scrappy and cut the rear section you need out as that is quite a strong panel and would require quite a bit of straightening and filling to get just right, there are a couple of corrado's in a local scrappy to me which are both straight at the back.

be carefull doing this as sometimes the guage can go over range and the mechanism inside the guage becomes disconnected, which means having to dismantle the clocks to sort out, best thing to do is run a cable from the sensor wire into the car and ground it out while you look at the guage, but make sure you disconnect it before the guage does go over maximum.

thanks for the info, it looks like i might be getting free lodgings with some old friends of my parents in evesham so that should mean less travelling 8)