corozin

Well I've got a few suggestions : SCOTLAND The A7 between Carlisle and Edinburgh, taking in Hawick & Selkirk. 92 miles of open sweeping roads, passing between beautiful mountains. A spectacular way to enter Scotland and a fabulous drive. Best enjoyed early in the morning (as I do when I drive overnight from Bournemouth to see friends in Leven). WALES A470 from Merthyr Tydfil to Brecon. Similarly spectacular scenery and a lot of fun at night. DORSET We're spoiled for choice in my locality. Particular favorites are: B3351 (Studland to Corfe Castle) - twisted, lots of elevation, blind bends, beautiful views over Poole Harbour. Scary to drive quickly, but satisfying too. B3081 (Wimborne St Giles to Shaftesbury) - a cracking way to cross Dorset North-South. a few slow bits, but opens up over the top of some of Dorsets most beautiful scenery and ending with the famous Zig-zag hill, officially the twistiest section of road in the UK. B3157 (Weymouth to Burton Bradstock) A scenic coastal road with the sea visible for large sections, but you won't have time to look at it if you're moving! A demanding but rewarding drive with a few opportunities to get airborne if you're feeling stupid enough. Lots of accidents on this road, mostly by Subaru owners pretending to be Petta Solberg. A350 (Blandford to Shaftesbury via Membury Abbas). The secret's out now and often there is too much traffic these days to really have some fun, but easily (theoretically) possible to hit 130mph on open A-road on this one. Starts stwisty at the Blandford end, but slowly opens up with each mile. A delight (and a regular pathway for me travelling to Castle Combe race circuit) A338 Bournemouth to Ashley Heath. Dorset's drag strip. 8 miles of dual carriageway coming north out of Bournemouth. Easy to v-max here late at night if you want to. Not that I'd do anything like that (honest officer) -Enjoy-

Apologies for the slight cross-post, but this little item on Scirroco racing has popped up on Pistonheads this morning : http://www.pistonheads.com/motorsport/d ... ryId=17999

I wonder if VW will display new Scirocco at any of the imminent shows? Stanford Hall perhaps?

I have to say I think your point about the New Scirocco is a very relevant one. When that car finally hits the car magazines, I'd expect to see a wedge of articles coming out where the new car gets driven next to the Corrado under the auspices of "Coupe reborn" etc etc. I'm sure one of the effects of that will be to remind people what the Corrado looked like, and I'm sure a number of those will quickly realise how cheap they are these days. For people that want a fun and fast coupe to bat around, some may well consider a £4k Corrado an interesting alternative to a £20k Scirocco, regardless of the difference in age. Think about the difference in road taxes too... So time to get the Autoglym out folks - your car will sell better in the Autotrader next year if it's shiny ho ho. John

Well it's hard to believe that anyone would think differently of a man who spent 10 years as Chancellor, but in my view that is clearly proving to be a questionable conclusion. Anyone who's listened to either Brown (or his useless puppet Darling) interviewed on the radio will quickly realise that these men's knowledge of financial management of even basic economics are shallow streams indeed. There was a story floating around the City institutions 3-4 months ago during the height of the Northern Rock debacle to the effect that Lloyds Bank had actually asked for Alistair Darling to be excluded from thier negotiating meetings because he understood so little of the conversation. Apparently some of the things he's come out with caused open sniggering in the room. But don't take my word for it, have a read of David Craig's book Squandered http://www.amazon.co.uk/Squandered-David-Craig/dp/1845298322/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209641624&sr=8-1 for a damning catalogue of Brown's record as a prudent Chancellor. You just won't believe what you read and despite Craig's rather Thatcherite commentary, the facts and numbers in there are mostly true. Without aiming to spread the depression too far, the Country's finances are now so screwed, that it may well take between 10-20 years to undo the damage, assuming a future Government even wanted to unpick it all. No future Government is going to be able sack 700,000 extra civil servants quickly, or remove thier gold-plated pensions. No future Government is going to be able to undo ten years of well above-inflation pay increases to the public sector easily. We're going to be paying for Blair/Brown's decisions for years and years to come, trust me on this. As a parting thought consider this. The Government could (should) have cut 9p/litre from petrol taxation in the past 5 months to offset the increases in tax receipts from the spiralling cost of fuel and and it would have still been tax neutral to the Treasury, but it isn't doing that. As a result the Treasury is going to rake in £750million extra this year in industry and VAT taxes simply due to the increase in the underlying costs. Think about that when you fill up next time... John

Well Kevin & I already have each other booked on long term entertainment contract. Queensbury rules, no fisting . But don't let that stop you finding yourself a playmate... might be a little harder than it used to be now that my chum PhatVR6 isn't on this forum anymore. He was (still is) the king of strongly held opinion! :wave:

That's fine Kev. We had everyone else going there for a bit didn't we, haha. [To all spectators] Peace & unity has broken out. We're both looking for new targets now :wink: Cheers, John

Well I have to apologise for falling for the bait again. I just detest having my (hopefully helpful) suggestions & experience dissected and argued for apparently no reason other than a difference of opinion. I found his (unprovoked) post aggressive, bullying and unnecessary and I am no more prepared to accept that kind of behaviour on a forum than I would face to face. As I said earlier the best groups benefit from a range of ideas, viewpoints and experience. I do not accept that my views are the only ones worth considering, but I hope people will find them helpful or informative, in the same way that Kevin's information frequently is. For clarification I didn[t actually say the idea of an R32 sump was weak and crappy, I actually said I thought that I thought the R32 sump itself was weak and crappy and that is an important distinction, because I wasn't attacking a person, merely opining (fairly) that the R32 one isn't anything like as robust for those of us who clang them on the ground occasionally. I have no personal axe to grind with Cheesewire or anyone else on here, but at the same time I will not sit here quietly and not respond if I am attacked and argued with for nothing more than (what I thought was) a helpful contribution to the topic. @Cheesewire - I think we should just agree not to respond to each others posts in future. It will be quieter that way. Love to everyone, John

Hi Tom, collected it back from it's rebuild this week since you mention. Booked for final tuning/mapping on May 8th. Notwithstanding the petrol crisis we're possibly about to have, I will be at Stanford Hall next weekend.

Well clearly you know f**king everything Kev and so there really is no point in anyone else contributing to a thread is there? Why is it that you just cannot bring yourself to appreciate that someone - anyone - has a different experience or view point to you? You hardly bloody know me, and yet here you go YET AGAIN the bloody keyboard warrior. For your reference I have "banged" a few sumps in my time, which is probably a consequence of running cars that were low enough to actually bang them. The VR6 steel sump is as tough as bloody nails, and anyone who saw the clangs in the sump of M100 VRG when I had it would testify to that (not that you would know about that would you). At the same time I also personally know two 4Motion owners and also the owner of an R32 who will testify to the weakness of the sumps on those cars, in each case the sump was ripped off in grounding incidents. That was the basis for my experience and hence my comments. You should just accept that I have a different opinion to you. In addition I didn't Just endorse my own baffled sump because I've some track tyres. I've been doing track days for almost ten years now, and in a situation where my whole engine was in bits already it seemed a good preventative measure for the money. In fact I've never suffered oil starvation on a VR6 at any trackday I've done (which was a point I made) and as such it's also fair comment (are you reading this Kevin - FAIR COMMENT) to say based on my experience that there is limited point in baffling this type of car for track use. I'm not even going to dignify the other crap you've written with a response pal. I'd be here all fuggin night. Just accept that one of the points of a forum is for people to share opinions, experiences and recommendations other than your own. This is not the first time you've baited me on this forum and I'm fed up with you doing it. As a moderator you should know even better and set an example Don't respond to this - just read it, absorb it, and accept it. John

I've had a baffled sump made for my VR6 and it was relatively easy and cheap to do. Schrick used to sell a 'drop in' baffle kit years ago but it's long gone out of production. The reason I mention it is that you may come across one if you are very very lucky. Anyway onto the 'DIY build' First of all a replacement ABV sump is dirt cheap; they're like £15 or something from the dealer. That solves the problems of sourcing it cheaply, the problem of cleaning it up so you can weld baffles into it, and since it's steel and not crappy (and weak) alloy makes the issue of actually welding with it much easier. Into that we welded two simple north/south baffle plates with a 2-3 inch gap at opposite ends on each one to allow the oil to flow (in a kind of Z-pattern route if you can imagine that). Obviously a little bit of measuring was required to ensure no contact with the spinning crank. Job done - total cost was less than £50. That said on a VR6 there really isn't a lot of point in baffling the sump unless you are planning to do lots and lots of track work. Even then the VR6 sump is frankly deep enough that you shouldn't need to baffle it provided you don't allow the oil level to drop too far during the day (as most trackday organisers recommend you keep it topped up). The only reason I've had it done is because my own car is set up for track work on R888's and so the lateral g-forces generated are a fair bit more than any normal or modified VR6 will attain. Personally I wouldn't bother if I were you. HTH, John

If I was trying to sell that box/diff I'd hope to get at least £1500 for it, but your problem will probably be getting someone interested in buying what is a fairly exotic item for what is now a pretty old car. If you can find a potential buyer, you should get good money. I would consider putting it up on VW Vortex, although obviously that involves shipping hassle & costs. If it's in a car it doesn't in my view add substantially to the car's value. Certainly not £1500+ worth anyway. HTH, John

The stock ones are only spot welded. They're not unsafe at all, but the rigidity is less that it is when it's seam welded. I got the advice from a guy who's built cars for the VW Cup, had mine done last year and it does make a difference to the feel. Obviously the rest of the car has to be sorted to go this far. You won't notice a lot of difference if you're on stock suspension.

Ok here's a thought if it's all coming off the car. While the front subframe is out, get it seam welded and powdercoated. You'd be surprised how much difference this makes to the rigidity of the subframe, and it helps tighten the handling at the front end of the car quite noticeably. Shouldn't be too expensive to have it done either. HTH John

I'm not trying to be sarky but it's probably fair to say that Stealth will tell you what you need to replace. That's why you pay them to engineer your car. - Isn't it?

Did you read the first page of this thread Dom? :multi: :multi: :multi:

To be honest with you Gav I would have believed that maybe 5 or 6 years ago but nowadays there are just so many trackdays in the UK (let alone Europe) that insurers could never get to all of them. That said, the truth is that if you do bash your car up at the Ring you need to be prepared to have the car towed 20 or 30 miles away from the circuit as Insurers are not that stupid anymore. In fact it's often the case that a quick search of t'interweb for your numberplate will show if you've been on an event with Bookatrack for example. They don't even need to take a picture anymore. Congratulations on the engagement to you both BTW. John

I've done a lot of trackdays in the past 8 years but I have it on very good authority that nothing, nothing will prepare you for the Ring. It really is like no other circuit on earth. The surface changes, changes in materials, lumps, potholes, concrete, massive elevation across the lap, weather which changes within the confines of the circuit all combines together in a narrower-than-normal track which is over 13 miles long, and which except in a few places has almost no run off. The grip from the tarmac is inconsistant, sometimes between adjacent bends, and even in summer there are areas where the overhanging trees not only drop foliage onto the track, but also serve to prevent the track drying out until well into the day, meaning sudden unexpected damp patches occur - sometimes in the middle of bends. As if that isn't enough to think about you also have a huge mix of traffic pounding around the place, from novices to wannabes to veterans to Ring-nutters, with everything from coaches to motorbikes to road legal GT2 racecars going around the place, most of which will be left hand drive (so you'll be looking in the wrong mirror most of the time) I would almost advise that doing a track day before going to the Ring is probably a bad thing, because it could very easily give you a false sense of confidence which could caused a mishap in Germany. It's probably better just to arrive with a healthy fear of the place and just trundle around slowly. Anyone here who is considering driving the Nordschleife should also check Ben Lovejoy's Nurburgring Site which contains pretty much all the essential knowledge you must read before you go. Make sure you have all the correct insurance, full european recovery, and enough money available to get yourself recovered should the worst happen on the circuit. Understand you will be charged fees if you hit the barriers or require recovery, and that the German Police may well investigate and charge you if you cause another car to have accident as a result of your own actions (the Ring is a Public highway and as such is covered by normal traffic laws). There is a lot to understand and read up about before you go. Hope this helps, John

We did manage one back in 2001 which had (I think) sixteen cars on track together but it's been tried many times since and to be frank with you it's not worth the effort of trying to set it up. What happens is that loads of people (perhaps 30 or more) show interest, but when it to the moment where actual money has to replace mouth interest suddenly disappears and you're lucky of you're not standing on your own. The best advice I can give any budding VW trackday nut wanting to play amongst friends is to book into one of the Autometrix VW track days which are usually in April at Mallory Park (Leics) and in July at Castle Combe (Wilts). These are professionally organised events at proper circuits, with top quality organisation, marshalling and instruction available. The "manners" of other drivers at these particular events is also very good in my experience. Personally I'd try for Castle Combe if possible as the weather is (generally) more dependable and the circuit is less hard on tyres than Mallory (whose first bend is a long n/side tyre shredding fast right hander) and is a more open and fast circuit, which sounds terrifying but in practice means the faster cars can actually pass you a lot more safely. Good luck. I'm hoping to be a Combe myself this summer again. John

Have you got any Tricky to play on the stereo perchance? I hope you checked how many miles to the gallon you get out of one of those before you shook on the deal. Clue : It ain't many...

The strength, colour and direction of light can have a strange impact on the way the colour of a car comes out. It could be twilight violet, but it could easily be metallic Blackberry or even a respray in Mystic Blue to be frank with you. It's nice and shiny anyway. Nice looking car.

Donks were clearly the inspiration. "What's a Donk?" I hear you cry ! A donk is one of these things below, although it still doesn't explain why he tried it. I mean FFS 24" wheels look stupid even on a Range Rover, let alone a MkIII "Donks"

Please...

I'm not the biggest fan of the MkIII Golf in the world but the tit who thought that was a good idea for a project should be lobotomised and never let near a car again. What an absolute plonker.

What I do know from past conversations with the big man is that he's always given the nod to the Corrado as the better car overall. The interior of the 944 is pretty austere even by the standards that the Corrado sets. But I'll let him tell you himself when he sees the thread. You out there Roddy?