Kevin Bacon

There's a big thread on Piston Heads about it. Most of it is VAG bashing (PH is famous for it) but there is speculation it will cost around the £50K mark. Personally I think VW will want to try and undercut Merc's A45 AMG (same engine & haldex as the Golf, but 'only' 360hp) which currently costs £45K, so I reckon the R400 will be around £42K. It's getting harder to choose a German car now. VW, Audi, Mercedes all using the same basic engine and platform in their hatchbacks, and I hear Porsche are joining the high power 4 cyl club soon as well. What I don't understand is the pricing. How can a generic super factory like VAG, who spits out 1000s the same products with different badges on, charge so much? I thought mass production drove prices down? £40K+ for a Golf is just ridiculous. I know it's spurred on by all the orange faced "I must have that now" Essex boys and girls buying them on 3x24 finance deals, but an E39 M5 was 'only' £50K not that long ago. Kudos to the 500hp MK6, but I'd rather have the one VW built personally. I know it won't go bang and if it does, it's covered by warranty.

Yeah should be fine so long as the lambda probe is in good condition, which you can't tell until you wire it all up and test it unfortunately. Replacement bosch probes for most kits can be had for about £50, so not mega pricey. You'll have a source a weld-on lambda boss separately if you buy one s/hand though, but again, cheap and easy to get.

I would use the heat shield if you can mate. I was able to modify mine to fit over a similar manifold. It's actually the air gap between the hot parts and the bits you're protecting that shields them. Wrapping stuff in that foil doesn't really do much in my experience. I had so many plastic and rubber parts melt back there mate. It's defo one area that needs over engineering!

I would strongly recommend a heat shield between the exhaust manifold and throttle. You should be able to modify the original heat shield to fit.

Both pedals are a faff to install, but I prefer the bulkhead mounted one as well. I made a bracket and kind of fudged it in there, but as said already, it's very tight getting the correct brake pedal > throttle spacing and also clearing the back of the fusebox. The floor mounted one is a lot easier to install but needs some irreversible trimming of carpet and plastic trims. MK5 ECUs (BDB & BUB) need a floor mounted pedal but MK4 (BFH) can use either pedal. You can save a tonne of money by not using R pedals. They are just standard pedals with metal covers. Be careful to keep the pedal loom well away from the brake and clutch pedals. If you sever or chafe through any of those wires, you'll be stranded!

I don't like the Innovate LC-1. It was very inaccurate on my VR6 turbo and the whole having to manually calibrate it was a nonsense. Maybe things have changed in recent years but I had good results with PLX Devices. You just want a simple 0-5V linear wideband, 0V = 10 AFR, 5V = 20AFR. It's all you need :) Narrowband ones just bounce up and down constantly and tell you anything meaningful. Wideband tells you the actual AFR under part throttle and full throttle.

MK3 one any different?

/\ Yep. Changing the motor is band aiding the problem. The motor is struggling because the plastic feet of the 'water plate guides' (VW terminology) are binding in the cassette channels. A more permanent cure is strip it right down, replace the water plate guides and reassemble with silicon sliding mechanism grease......or stick a MK3 one in. All Passat and & Corrado roofs go the same way. The Golf doesn't do it as much for some reason.

I think the prices have gone up a lot since then. They're £532 from America before VAT, import duty and shipping. £900 ish in the UK before any GB discounts. I'm interested in tacking an O2M wavetrac onto this GB, but it'll have to be a very keen price indeed :)

You want a Wideband one. Cheap narrowband ones with just a row of 10 leds are utterly pointless.

It's just a design weakness. Same thing happens on 24Vs with correctly torqued bolts. The design of that pad has never changed. As it's the longest pad, it might just be chain lash beating the hell out of it.

Really? What ever next, a blind person doing the weather?

That Techtonics dual Borla is the best exhaust I ever heard on a Corrado. Really good quality and fit as well.

You're lucky as mine had worn through the rivets at 73K. Yours won't last another 75K. Once the upper layer has worn through, it doesn't take long to wear down to the metal from there. That's probably why the revised the newer parts to be made from the same material all the way through. Like the bottom tensioner is, which begs the question...... As Roger says, VW and their madness.

That is exactly what my R32's MFA 2 average is for the past 1370 miles. Possibly something up with yours if a 1500kg 3.2 lard bucket is returning the same mpg! Have you got any numbers in your long term fuel trim measuring blocks? I think it's block 32 in VCDS iirc. Mine are ~ 2%, so I know the MAF is good.

Yeah it is a shame. I've had dealings with Matt from UM UK and he's a nice bloke, helped me out and is an ace tig welder, but as you say, he's hard to get hold of. I don't think it's as simple as that. The MFA module in the clocks count the number of pulses the from the injector signal, so larger injectors will give you faster pulses causing a wildly optimistic mpg, and smaller injectors will give you larger pulses, and worse mpg! I can't remember what Stealth did. Maybe they tweaked something in the ECU. I'll ask them next time I'm there.

I've never been taken by the 4 pot Porkers but tbh, I felt pretty much the same way after driving a 993. I think the problem with coveted cars is 95% of us aren't fortunate enough to own (let alone drive) them from new, so by the time we can finally afford to buy one, they feel incredibly dated! The rate at which cars improve is incredible now and even a humble 2005 MK5 GTI can make an old 993 feel incredibly numb and fat hipped.

IIRC, the VR6 clocks are calibrated to the injector pulse size of the original 12V injectors. The 24Vs use different injectors (obviously), so the mpg will be reasonably close on the 2.8, but miles off for the R32. We had the same problem with the Supercharger kits back in the day, with the red top injectors. Much smaller injector on-times meant we were seeing 44mpg on the cruise at 70 mph.....yeah right! :D Now I think of it, I think Stealth racing found a fix for that. The 24V is just a more efficient, better designed engine! Much more rewarding to drive at low to medium revs than the 12V. A few options:- 1) Just fudge on some rubber fuel hose (which is what I did). 2) Cut the lines off a salvage R32 / A3 and splice them into your car. 3) Contact United Motorsport for some bundy fittings, but as ever, their website is shyte and they're hard to get hold of. Loads of MK4 & 5 platform cars use the same bundy fittings.

Aha, I always suspected as much about that kit! I'm so glad to read that. It was on my to-do list before I sold my Corrado. Bilstein B6 upwards, they're all very good dampers indeed.

Compressions are OK then, so that's good. My old 9N3 Polo GTI never had even a hint of oil on it's plugs, hence why I was a little concerned by that post. Trouble is though, if you've moved the coil and injector from cylinder 4 to a different one and the problem didn't follow it, it's either a bad injector / coil driver in the ECU, or a mechanical fault I that cylinder.

20VTs aren't known for lunching HGs (unless they run into mega det). I hope it isn't a bore / ring issue. Good excuse to upgrade to a BAM if it is though :D

Sounds about right for the 2.8. With the R32 you're better off leaving it at 99.9 :lol:

The wet grip is there, but the dry grip isn't because of the silly soft sidewalls. That's more like it. Something with a firm sidewall, which you need with balloon 205/50 tyres.

That is never a good sign. Had the same symptom on my first VR6 Turbo engine on cyl 6. The bore was scratched allowing oil into the combustion chamber and fouling the plug.

I stumbled onto loads of "Men & Motors" clips on Youtube the other day, featuring a very young Richard Hammond. I'll have a dig through and see if there are any Corrado related clips.