corozin

I have friends in Fife who I visit annually (from Bournemouth) and travel the route I recommended each time I go up, and each time I'm on that road around daybreak. There's no way to explain it but to describe that piece of road, empty at 6am, on a summers day - it really is a magical experience. You really need to take your bike up there at 5am sometime in the summer and you'll see what I mean. Absolutely breathtaking and an incredible drive/ride. As a second route I seem to recall there's a route across from the M9 past Knockhill circuit going across to Stirling that was very enjoyable. Would be a good route back towards Glasgow from Pitlochrie?

I'll give you a starter. You can do this on your journey up to Pitlochrie and it's a corker. Assuming you're going up the M6, come off the motorway just north of Carlisle and take the A7 towards Hawick (pronounced "hoyk"). You'll be on the South Borders Tourist route and travelling through just over 90 miles of the most exceptional countryside. The route is mostly open, sweeping roads with fabulous views which change from forest, through open country, through various river vallies, through the industrial town of Galashiels and then finally over the top of the hinterland & down into the bottom of Edinburgh & the Forth Bridge. There are speed cameras littered from around Galashiels onwards but they won't hurt your enjoyment of the route. The real trick with this route is to time your journey through the night and start from Carlisle around daybreak so there is little traffic. It is a magnificent way to start a holiday. Have attached route below. I'm told (but can't vouch personally) that taking similar detours from the M6 further north at Moffatt (A708) and Biggar (A702) are equally good. I'm sure our Scottish friends will enlighten you on good routes around Perthshire, but bear in mind that the Scottish Police do exist and are just as likely to issue you with a ticket if they catch you dicking around on thier beautiful country roads. Cheers John

Sorry to read about this. Drowning is too good for some of these people IMHO. Hope your insurer sorts you out properly and the scroats get what they truly deserve... as stated that would be a fate worse than drowning Regards, john

If current residuals are anything to go by you may not have to wait very long until you can afford one :) Thanks for the messages over the weekend telling me how much fun you were having with the Aston BTW. All you have to wait for now is to find out what your good wife expects in return for her Aston 'present' LOL. John :D

In my view the economics of buying the cheapy brake discs is the same as buying a cheap crash helmet. How much you should pay depends on how much you value your car and your personal well being. It's as simple as that.

I have the Brembo 323mm kit (from a Seat Leon) with Brembo discs and Ferodo DS2500 pads. Produces 1.2g deceleration on track which is enough to bend your neck easily. Even these aren't easy to squeeze under many kinds of wheels, but at least the discs & pads line up correctly which is one less major ball-ache to deal with. The kits were a lot cheaper when I sourced mine from Badger5 than they are now, but IMHO they're still reasonable money for the parts supplied, which are all new parts. The Brembo ungrooved discs are more than up to the job of track work. I wouldn't bother with grooved ones based on my experience, but *would* recommend using the Brembo discs which have proved to be very robust on my own car. I can honestly say (and Chazrad & Vorwend will verify to sore necks!) that I have pushed these brakes as hard as they can go on the track, with disc heat which is still unbearable to be close to even after 10 minutes of cooldown with smouldering & smoking pads but when in use the brakes are fade-free, dependable and powerful. I can't imagine you would want any more from a braking system on a Corrado unless you were actually going to go and race one properly.

Rather than try and persuade you not to break the car I have a few tips on what to do if you *do* decide to break it. - Get the car offroad, SORN it and recover any remaining road tax refund. You can't break the car on a public road legally, and the tax will be your first bit of cash. - Make a list of what you think you can reasonably sell before you start. Try and focus on stripping and selling the "big ticket" items first; engine, wheels, gearbox, interior, bonnet. These are the items which will generate the most cash. - Do a price list before you advertise. The objective is to realise cash so better to price stuff keenly and just move it rather than try to squeeze every pound out of it. If you don't sell the bits, they're worth nothing. Also most enthusiasm comes at the start of a sale - you've more likely to find people after lots of things so consider bulk discounting if someone wants quite a few bits. - There are also a number of small items which are now becoming sellable particularly if yours is an older car. Many interior switches, doorcards, early headlights, front bumpers, early sunroof switches and some of the footwell trim are now all unobtainable from dealers and should be on your list. - Buy a car cover to cover the car whilst you break it. That way if you have to sell a door you can keep the remaining car out of the elements. Cheap ones in Halford for around £40. Medium size. - The various controllers (ABS, windows) may seem to be valuable items but they aren't. Loads of them on eBay already. Ditto steering wheels. - Paypal is ok but direct bank transfer is cheaper and better for you. - Get to the post office and know what things will cost to send out. Parcelforce is actually a very good service. - I found it was easiest to strip things off as people ordered them rather than tear the car down and then sell. For big items the buyers will have to collect anyway and will often offer to help you remove the bits they want. This is particularly useful when it comes to selling the engine, the 'box and the bonnet. - Most councils have arrangements with scrappies for free removal. HTH, john

Surely it's more sensible to buy componants that fit each other in the first place than end up grinding back so many parts? What's the point of buying exotic brakes and then grinding each set of replacement pads just so they fit? Sure quite a bit of money has been saved on the calipers but then you're grinding mileage from every set of £120 pads before you even use them! It's bonkers.

I was going to say the same thing - looks like you're managing budget Corrado ownership compared with what I've been spending these past 2-3 years! You must have one of those rumoured 'working' Corrados :)

Not to mention that MkIV GTi which they so lovingly ruined by having the roof vinyled with a confederate flag. Funny how that bangin' trend never caught on amongst the lovers of euro-look styling :nuts:

I know we've kind of agreed that the PVW editorial isn't of consequence now (yes - I've calmed down!) but it's kinda ironic that the last Corrado the PVW staff owned was driven around stock for a while and then extensively modified to incorporate... lowered suspension & Audi TT rims... Makes you laugh really... well ok it makes me laugh and then only because I'm a little bored today. Oh the irony of it all... I'll get my coat.

I have to say I agree and empathise with everything you said there Jim. It's reassuring to know that I'm not the only person who's received the warm shrug of indifference from them over the years. :roll:

Personally I'd be a bit concerned looking at a 13-16 year old car with only 35,000 miles on it. What's that - less than 3,000 miles a year on average? And that's not to say the car still won't have issues mechanically - parts like hoses and wiring perish with age not use so you may not be saving yourself lots cost wise. On the positive side a car that has done that few miles is unlikely to have been thrashed I suspect. Better to have a bashed, dented, hard-driven, rebuilt, 150,000 miler if you ask me - but then I would say that wouldn't I, LOL

And what little technical content there is, is usually wrong anyway! Absolutely not :D Elliot who? At risk of putting the forum on red alert I agree with your comments completely. I shouldn't fall victim for PVW's troll-editorials, and as you say it's not like anyone reads PVW anyway is it? I've calmed down a bit now, haha.

Er yes. The photo of the brown one on P71is appalling. The bad lighting exposes some... well let's say the paint finish is done a great disservice by that photo. They didn't even bother to clean it up in photoshop (and don't tell me that PVW don't photoshop pictures...)

Although the two cars get the headlines in PVW this month for me the interesting item was Elliot Roberts' editorial piece. In it he bemoans the fact it's been 9 months since they featured a Corrado, and three years since James Renshaw's car was on the cover. He then then launches into one of his little uninformed missives along the lines that there are no decent Corrados out there, and most owners are boring and just fit wheels and that's not what they're after in PVW - cute eh? So for the benefit of the PVW team, who I'm sure will be reading this at some point, I'd like to rebut Mr Robert's claims. There are quite a lot of really interesting and fabulously turned out Corrados, but PVW don't know where they are, and frankly can't be arsed to even look for them at shows. I've around the VW show scene for over ten years now and not once in that time have I ever met Elliott, or seen him looking around a Corrado display I've been on. It's a funny way for a journalist to cultivate thier involvement in "the scene" if you ask me. I will admit to having become cynical over the years about PVW (was probably all those endless Westside & E38 Golfs) but at the same time there can be no doubt that the magazine has been gradually dumbed down. Presumably I'm not in PVW's target demographic as I have an education and enjoy reading some words as well as just looking at the pretty pictures. There is almost no technical content in any of the articles, and the show coverage frequently contains so many photos of lay-dees instead of VW's that I wonder if I'm reading a car mag at all. Perhaps I'm just getting the wrong idea about what a magazine should be about. Now I'm sure that the PVW "crew" would point to thier circulation figures to prove me wrong and maybe they have a point about that. But it's disingenuous of Elliott Roberts to write 'troll' editorials slagging off UK Corrados (perhaps in an attempt to unearth a few cars from pissed off owners) when he clearly hasn't got a clue because he can't be bothered to walk any further than the Westside stand at a show and do basic research. And am I slightly annoyed with this forum? Well perhaps, How come I'm the first person to comment on the editorial in the magazine? How come this thread got to the third page before anyone seemed to notice this? Or were you all too busy looking at the pretty pictures to notice? Do any of the rest of you even care what this guy is writing about you? [/rantover]

That's basically spot on. Not just a problem Range Rovers (& Corrado), but also happened to me with a Xenon'd Mitsubishi 4x4 last autumn. I ended up driving with my hand across the door mirror to prevent blinding myself. The best (and only) thing you can do is to pull over and let them pass. It's not a problem with most cars because the height isn't an issue, but with 4x4's the height difference creates a big problem for other cars. I'm sure it's just something the safety bods at VOSA forgot to consider when the type approval for Xenons on 4x4s was defined. Can I risk saying that Xenon upgrades for a Corrado are one of those mods you'll never regret doing? Absolutely fabulous IMHO, although I'm sure that stuff that my car towers over (including church mice, hedgehogs & small rabbits) will find the glare of my new Xenons quite painful, :)

I have to agree with the sentiments on here. After 11 years I should be getting bored with the car and yet... when I return to the car in a car park I find myself glancing at the car thinking "you know what that still looks alright that does". Modern cars are just so big - the roofline on my car is at about the same height from the ground as the window ledge on a Ford Focus CMax. It looks lean, sleek, aerodynamic and very quick just when it's parked up. It makes a MkV Golf or Ford Focus look like a builder's van in comparison. Frankly I can't think of many affordable modern cars that ring my bell in the same way. I'm sure we're not alone in seeing our elderly cars with these rose-tints though. I'm willing to bet that most owners of MkII's, Beetles and RS Escorts feel exactly the same about modern stuff as we do about our cars.

12 Deg Ben is right about this. If you remove the ABS you are likely to hit trouble when you try and MOT it as the new systems indicate where ABS should be fitted to a car, and so it's not as simple as 'if it's not fitted, they can't fail me'. You may find a friendly MOT station who will let the car through, but I'm pretty sure the changes to the test brought in 12-18 months ago will make this pretty challenging. In any event I don't understand why would you want to ditch the ABS? Why would you want to have the car lock up when you hit the brakes in an emergency? Rather you than me !

I'll clean your wheels at the next rolling road day or something :lol: What was the 'or something' ?? :lol: :lol: Surely at least a full body wash and polish !! :lol: I presume you're talking about the car are you ???

I'll clean your wheels at the next rolling road day or something :lol: Haha Kev is now officially 'owned' by Wendy. He has no idea what he's letting himself in for. Where can I buy tickets for this wheel cleaning event when it happens? :lol:

[Question : What keeps your enthusiasm for corrado going?] My psychosis...

I'm not saying you won't get a response but I can't lie to you - what you're contemplating is pretty specific and was way beyond my personal knowledge base. I suspect your total lack of responses on this one may indicate that I am not alone! You might want to take a punt by cross-posting your question onto VW Vortex if you havn't already. If you do get to make the changes you'll get applause for carrying it out. Good luck - John

1) Correct offset for a VR6 is ET35 but you can go to ET43. 2) If you are using 16" wheels then 305's should be ok but (depending on wheel design) 312's are likely to be a step too far. 3) With aftermarket brakes a lot depends on how broad the caliper is when fitted. Brembo and StopTec calipers are quite a bit wider than Wilwood or Tarox kits for example, and regardless of the offset you use the wheel design will be a factor in what you can fit (you can probably forget deep dish designs with almost any of them for example) 4) If you are "having your wheels made" (which I take to mean being machined to your supplied dimensions) you might want to select the brake kit you want to fit first and measure the clearances you'll be needing before ordering the actual wheels. Some wheels companies (like most Compomotives) are basically motorsport designs anyway and so you're far less likely to have a fouling problem with something like that, although nothing is guaranteed with this kinda stuff.

Jason Plato used a VR6 as his daily driver back in his Formula 3 days.