corozin

That's pretty damn shocking, but IMHO the all-time award for Corrado bad taste still goes to that Spanish car about 3-4 years ago which had Mk4 headlights, jap front end and Harley Davidson wing mirrors. That was an absolute minger !

But surely one of the main reasons you don't see mega-rear disc brakes on Corrados is because the rear discs and stub axles are an integrated part? The complexity and cost of getting some suitable stub axles machined onto which you could hang bigger discs certainly put me off. People have already highlighted the minimal braking effort going to the rear, but for track use it would be nice to be able to run larger discs to improve the cooling if nothing else. When you start to run bigger fronts, the brake bias is automatically pushed rearwards slightly and this does seem to result in the rears cooking the pads under hard use. Big rears have been done though... I certainly recall that Jeroen Dik had fitted big rear discs to his G60 about 2-3 years ago when I last saw a picture of it on show at Essen. It can be done... just a question of time & money (and a CNC machine!) John

I've also worked in insurance before. Sorry to say this but I'd be very surprised if you get anywhere with this. Reasons : a) From what you've said you didn't actually see the damage occur. You found the damage having seen the truck squeeze down your road. b) You didn't get the reg of the vehicle. Have a go by all means, but don't get too upset if you just get brushed off. You can't actually prove the truck did it. Sorry, John

It's a nice wheel alright, but I think that if I were ATS I would give consideration to calling my lawyers out !

I personally think adapters is the way to go, but no doubt you'll need to hunt down and engineering shop somewhere, explain what you need to get made, and have them done in steel (not alloy- the threads strip). On a seperate issue I have to say that while BBS LM's are very nice, in no waay are they the daddies - that honour IMHO goes to the classic RS001's :)

£97 each - that's the price they quoted me. Fortunately for me there are lots of people about now with supercharged VR6's, who all magically seem to have spare sets of injectors available :D

Thats a good idea. New injectors are £97+VAT each from Volkswagen so trying to clean them before having to replace them is a good idea. Also take care of the little o-rings that the injectors fit into - those are £2.35 each from Volkswagen and you need two per injector... I should know as I've just paid almost £30 for a full set of 12 of them :(

Not forgetting the 22mm deep socket required to undo/tighten the front top mount bolts. A normal 22mm won't reach it.

Not wishing to seem unhelpful but if you need the whole procedure for this writing up in detail then it may be a little bit past your ability to do the swap even if someone does write it up. Suggestions: a) Have a go at doing one of the rears first, as they are less complicated to change than the fronts. If you get as far as dismantling the top mounts, make sure that you lay the top mount componants out in the correct order so that you refit them in the same order and don't bugger it all up. Do the job piece by piece (documenting it as you go as that may help you) and if you think it's getting out of hand just stop - and start reassembling it before you have a 3 wheeled catastrophe on your hands. b) Lay your hands on a Bentley manual (or even ETKA diagrams) as these show you where the bolts etc are. Bentley is better as it advised the torque settings where those are critical. c) A decent garage will be able to do this job in about 2-3 hours. Consider just paying them to do it. It might be worth the £200 just to save yourself the worry and hassle? Will save you buying a spring compressor just for one job. HTH - really, John p.s. Don't forget to get your alignment reset afterwards (another reason to choose step 3 above)

That's a very unfortunate problem for a show the size of GTI international to have. Does anyone know if Neil Birkitt (at Autometrix) has been told about this ? It might be worth an email if no-one knows, to ensure it doesn't happen next year. Just my 2p. (Apparently the campsite "rivers" at Le Mans were also pretty toxic from posts I've seen on Pistonheads) but then again all the cars got so mucky that I'm sure they were all washed when we got back) John

I have to say it would be interesting to see that car on track, what with a practically rigid rear end and no strengthening up front. I wonder if it would break in half at the bulkhead ? LOL

You need to order the pre-1995 kit. I believe it's the same kit as for the Mk3 Golf VR6. The fittings are not the Banjo type fittings - those are for Mk4 Golf and are the later (post 1995) kit If you speak to Jim at Awesome GTI he'll make sure you get the correct kit. I think it's about £72 (well it was the last time I bought some in 2001) HTH John

That's absolutely ridiculous, but I have to admit total respect for whoever managed to weld it all in there as it looks an absolute nightmare !

You don't have to buy coilovers just because you want the car to run "mega low". They work much better than stock suspension at normal heights as well. This is partly because they have dual rate springs (try and avoid the kits with a separate "helper" spring on top) and also because the dampers are adjustable. The main point is that although you may want to run the car at standard height, you do have the option of adjusting the height a bit if you want so that you can get the car to sit absolutely perfectly the way you want it to look, and with a bit of damper adjustment you can dial the suspension response to suit as well. Again you may be right- you may not actually need coilovers given what you've said but you will find the handling will be better than if you just go for lowered springs. Coilovers are expensive, but that's because they're really good. Don't worry about the scare stories of seizing threads, that hasn't been my experience at all. HTH, John

That's a lot of money for paint! IIRC you can pick up a decent enough RS2000 for about £2k-£3k nowadays, and even top end, fully prepared MkI/MkII RS escorts are mostly under £15k. That still leaves you £20k for the black paint job! 'TIs lovely though.

Personally I reckon if your car is swerving under hard braking you should consider getting your suspension alignment checked. That would be my first thought before blaming the brakes anyway.

@Cheesewire: The Ferodo pads I bought were £110 delivered if that's any guide. They may be a more race-based pad. What I can say is that they don't suffer from brake dust as badly as the old (Brembo) pads did, but then again I'm not a "shiny wheels" type person anymore so I'm not really that bothered by that side of it - hence black Compomotives these days ) John

Well to be fair that's because (a) they don't need to carry the weight of the paint and (b) because F1 calipers can't really be seen inside those piddly little wheels they fit to an F1 car and © because the calipers are removed and stripped after every race weekend anyway, so they don't exactly stay mucky for long !

I'm kinda with Blue_Joe on this one. The R8 is a great looking car and it's getting wow reviews... but £100k for one with a few essential options is a helluva lot of money compared to a (say) a 911 GT3 or an Ultima... or a 2 year old Gallardo...

@Alex303, the clearance you have on those looks about the same as I had on my first VR6 when I ran the 328mm Brembo kit under some 8x17 Mim Amalfi wheels (see pic) . There was barely enough clearance to get a feeler gauge into the gap. And therein lies the problem with fitting the 323mm Brembos - clearance. Even with an 8x17 wheel there are a lot of wheel designs that won't clear, and you can forget putting anything like 7½x17 BBS rims over them. I'm sure the calipers on the 323mm & 328mm kits are wider than the 305mm & 312mm ones, as I know that G60Renshaw ran 305 Brembos under 7x17 BBS RCs. @Therapor - if you think clearance is a problem, then the Tarox 6 pots are nice and slim -see attached picture. Wheels are 7½x17 BBS RK2. A bit more expensive than the Brembos but still effective (I have driven the car concerned and they were fine) Hope this helps in some way! John

Not sure of the exact index number, but I called Bill Brockbank and asked for a fast road/trackday pad for Brembo and he recommended the Ferodo ones. I have to say they are bloody excellent; much better feel and more powerful than the (stock) pads they replaced, and they maintained thier performance really well at Combe last month, even when they were red hot. I would certainly recommend the Ferodo upgrade. If you go on track you'll find they're great and if you only use them on the road you'll find they're more than good enough without the "hardness" that some pads (e.g. red stuff) are known for. HTH John

So now you've finished slapping my chum Toad, do you want to know about Brembo brakes or the sheetty standard VAG items they put on a Golf 4Motion ?

Yeah? Someone call my name? What do you want to know? I have the 323mm setup under 7x17 Compomotive MO's. Loadsa clearance. Use Ferodo pads if you get the option. Buy the kits from "Badger5" Bill Brockbank if you want a good price.

Let's see... SELECT Count(VEHICLE_MODELS.Model) AS CountOfModel FROM VEHICLE_MODELS HAVING (((Count(VEHICLE_MODELS.Model))="Corrado")); Now how hard can that be? Oh.. I forgot it's the IT Department at the DVLA we're dealing with here... Seriously though, there is no reason at all why the number of registered vehicles of a particular make/model should be refused under a FOI enquiry as no personal or commerical information is involved in that. You could always complain to the FOI Commissioner

I agree with that Dom. In my case the potential effect was even more pronounced as my R888's were only 5 weeks old (only about 600 miles on them) when I went to Combe in April. That all said, if you do find yourself in the situation where you are running fairly new road tyres at a trackday and can't avoid using them, then dropping 2-4lb off the pressure and following the guidance on driving I've posted above will make a huge difference to your rate of tyre wear. The first year I went to Combe, I tore the sidewalls of my T1-S tyres to shreds, but as my knowledge grew the tyre wear lessened and I wasn't destroying them anymore. Going out for a whole day on track rubber requires another level of control if you want to preserve them I've found, but the additional performance is worth it IMHO. The other thing which I havn't mentioned but which helps the wear rate a lot is the fitment of strut braces to the car, particularly at the front. This stops the geometry moving too much under hard cornering, and keeps the face of the tyre flatter. I didn't have mine fitted in April but it will be on soon, along with some nice coilovers care of Mr Brookes :)