Scruffythefirst

I reckon that must have got in through the inlet valve becuase you'd hear that the instant it got into the engine so it must have got sucked in whist driving. Its feasable that it made it through the valve because if it got there as the valve was closing, it'd be ready to drop straight in as it opened next time. Must have come from somewhere upstream of the valve - so inlet manifold, pipework, charger etc. It could have started out as a stray bolt - not part of the engine - dropped by accident or it could be part of the engine thats taken a while to work loose / makle its way through the inlet piepwork. What air filter have you got?

Why cant you just use the front subframe or isn't it strong enough?

Dont think the AA will tow you home from a track, the RAC definately will. I'm with the RAC on a family thing

I didn't :( Ho hum... Tis ok, I had a quick peek at them and they were fine. You should see the brand new cars imported into soton being ragged round the docks by the deckhands. I'm surprised most new cars dont need a full engine re-build and new disks / pads and suspension.

Probably not on a VR but if it was my cossie, by the time i heard it i'd probably have a scrap engine.

Plus improving your ecu will give little performance gain anyway. It might give slightly better fuel economy or response but it's unlikely. A standard ecu with the right map in it is good enough for nearly all situations. The only time you want a better ecu is if you need more load points - ie you want to rev to 10k or you need extra software - ie to run anti lag, air injectors etc.

No offence, but bollocks. To improve an ecu you need more load points or faster acesss to those load points. Changing a resistor for a higher grade one will do little, as nearly all of the resistors in an ecu will have little to do with the effectiveness becuase they will already be within the tollerances designed into it at the start. Changing a resistor or capacitor for a bigger one will just make the ecu not work.

There are some other aftermarket ecu's available, some are very expensive and some arent. I dunno if you've heard of megasquirt? its about £100 as far as i can tell and is a fully programable ecu even if you do have to solder it together yourself.

TBH I dont like the sound of either of those. Although its not forced induction and still fairly low specific output so either should do the job. What you really want is a fully mappable ecu like autronic or dta and a nice wideband lambda sensor and someone who knows what they are doing and map it live on a real road and not a rolling one. Although that will be expensive. I'd get an eprom made specificaly for your car, mapped in a simmilar way to a full aftermarket ecu, this will give the best results without having to buy and ecu for £800+. However, if you did more mods, you'd have to start again. There was a great technical essay on what goes into live mapping a car (be it on a aftermarket ecu or eprom) on passionford.com but you have to be a gold member to read it and I'm too tight.

Plugs wont make a difference to pinking becuase the fuel has started to ignite before the plug fires. This causes the combustion process to try and force a piston down that wants to come up which is what you hear. Common with turbo'd or s'charged cars with high intake temperatures which often leads to melted pistons (especialy if its in conjunction with running lean) or a rod or crank letting go in extreeme situations. The thing with a schrick, or any other sort of tuning that increases the cylinder fill efficency you really need to increase the fueling perfectly, especialy on turbo'd cars, otherwise there's no power gain and more chance of damage, teh ecu and maf will compensate to a point, but its much better having a better map in there in the first place.. Altering the ignition map when pinking is caused by increased cylinder pressures (cos of the schrick) which the knock sensors do won't help much, becuase the det is occuring before the plug fires. You need more fuel to reduce the pinking rather than retarding the ignition. People that live map cossies on the road use det cans, which are specialist microphones that you can hear det begining to occur with. Once you can hear it from the drives seat unaided, you've usualy got a toasted engine. The vr6 will probably be ok, cos its not running such high cylinder pressures and temps, but your not doing it any good. Higher ron fuel will help reduce the chance of det, but is no substitute for enough fuel.

Yay for kit kar insurance..... 330bhp (the engine as standard comes from a group 20 car and now its got an extra 110bhp), 650kgs (1/3rd the weight of the original group 20 car) and £500ish per year fully comp :shock: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

Rubbish. Its just an eletrical connector, just try not to get all that solidified break pad dust gunk in it when you disconnect it, even if you do a quick blow with some compressed air or eletrical contact cleaner will solve the problem. Anybody can do it for a lot less thant £70ph or whatever the stealer charges in labour.

Lightening a cast iron flywheel is a recipie for disaster and has killed people. That place sound like a bunch of muppets and I wouldnt trust them as far as i could throw a standard flywheel, balancing a flywheel is pretty much a necesity as if its unbalanced you'll wear no 5 main bearing and the gearbox input shaft main bearing pretty quickly. If you really want a light one, get a proper lightweight steel one and always fit new bolts.....

What torque is the diff rated too? That rear beam looks very sierra like....

If you fit new piston rings then make sure you have to bores honed first. If you take the pistons out, take the rings off the pistons and measure the gaps in their bore and they are within tolerance, you can put them back in. Its not ideal, but it's ok to do. If the bore wear isn't excessive the best option in the long run would be to have the cylinders re-bored a tiny ammount so they are still within spec of your existing pistons and fit new rings. That should then last you another 100,000 miles +.

Yeah, sorry about that. Cav probably needs new front shocks to pass the mot and so i might have to borrow your garage for a bit, while you've got nothing in it.....

So how does the back bolt up. Bear in mind i know nothing about vw's. Live axel or IRS? Combination? How much space is there for a transmission tunnel? What is a sycro rear axel?

C's not really suited to a mid engine conversion, however i reckon the weight distribution is crying out for a longditudinal front engine rwd conversion. Shame i cant persuade dinkus.....

Threaded bush (theres a dirty pun in there somewhere) ??? Erm, the big rubber bit just pushes on, so clamp it in a vice and pull like buggery. Or cut it off with a hacksaw if your feeling like a girl If you mean the nut that holds the spring onto the damper body you need an allen key and 21mm ring spanner and take the big rubber top mount off first. But use spring compressors and clamp it in a vice first. Clutching at straws here but if your trying to get the strut off the car, you need a 21mm swan neck spanner, which you'll never need again for anything else. :) No special tools required for doing anything to a C front suspension except to re-build the shocks, which you cant.

Not much point with fwd is there? :shock:

Phone him up and ask why it was written off, may just have been several panels and nothing structural. May be bent though :(

Well what did you want me to use? My extra special large hammer,. which if you could bring back at lunch would be good :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :shock:

Highbury hoses have a brilliant reputation and about a third the price of samco.

Smells good too :D

You might be picking up noise from the bunch of cables under the dash - try coiling them in a figure of 8.