Rpmayne

According to yahoo's page today this tax hike will only cover cars purchased new since last april so hopefully we should be ok.. "Annual duty on the 225,000 least fuel efficient vehicles purchased brand new since last April, including most 4x4s and sports cars, is set to rise from £210 to more than £400 over the next two years, according to newspaper reports." If you can afford a brand new car who is going to care about a few hundred a year anyway? I doubt anyone from Weybridge using 4x4's over the very tricky speed bump terrain.

I had a ring around a few weeks ago and couldn't find any second hand. VAG wanted about £180.00 new, GPC could do it abit cheaper but by the time you've got postage etc it didn't seem worth it to me. The plastic where the cable clips latch it had cracked on mine, luckily managed to drill a few holes to get some cable ties through and so far its all working ok with the original unit. What's broken on the direction dial?

Ok, so I take it it does look like a problem as your hoses don't get under that much pressure? I ran it with the cap off after changing the coolant and squeazed the hoses to get any air out. After the initial run I haven't had any bubbles come up. The oil and coolant aren't contaminated so hoping its not the head gasket.

Just did a service on a mates mk3 Golf VR6 and changed the coolant. Straight after I did the same on my Corrado VR6. Mine has Samcos and his is on standard hoses but mine seem to be under alot of pressure, more than I've ever noticed on any other car. Anyone running the same, do you notice the pressure in the pipes seems high? By this I mean struggling to push the hose in 5mm with the system closed and engine running. Maybe just looking for things now but don't want the matrix going again so just double checking really. Cheers.

Just another thought, I managed to get most if not all the screws out using a stubby phillips (about 2" long) and a normal length one. There were some which I had to use a philips socket and a pair of grips on it as space was really tight. It was the screws in the heater vents, don't think it was the middle ones though so you should be ok.

DEL VR6, the centre console isn't too bad to remove, just abit of time. From memory it involves the following: 1. Remove the stereo (I have to drop the passenger side dash trim in mine to feee the cables). 2. Remove centre heater vents and there are screws fixing the centre console to the dash. 3. Remove speedo surround, disconnect all the centre dash switches and undo the screw going up into the dash (look up from where you took the switches out). 4. Remove ashtray and cigarette lighter, think there was a screw behind the tray. 5. Remove the two screws at the back of the opening behind the gearstick. 6. Remove heater controls top cover, carefully remove screws (broke my original dash undoing these). Now barring any screws I've forgotten about the centre dash should just slide out leaving access to the heater controls and cables. I also took the drivers side dash trim out aswell to get better access.

Be very careful twisting the heater control panel, the plastic is very fragile. I'd take the centre console out just so you have more room to take the metal clips off with the least amount of force.

Yep, complete mess. I had driver side lower trim, speedos and driver side air vent and pipe out to get better access. You should be able to get to the common block for the spoiler bl/wh wire by just tilting it down without dropping it completely. While I was there I found a few dodgy alarm connection I had to repair. And the brake light keeps coming on so think I may have a wire trapped somewhere.

Storm 2, I followed a bl/wh wire back from the stereo connector and it plugs into the top right of the fuse panel. The block it goes into on the fuse panel is just a common block and there were 3 in total; 1 to the stereo connector, 1 to the clocks and the other to the spoiler relay. I think there may have been another but not sure of its function. One of the connectors into this common block had two wires, one of which had a single connector on the end which was attached to the red constant 12v. I disconnected this and it worked again. I couldn't visually follow all the connections so just disconnected all the ends and buzzed them through. Once I found the cable going from the stereo connector to the common block I just disconnected it from the common block to make sure.

I wish mine didn't have a sunroof, one less thing to go wrong.

I had a look under the car this lunchtime and my car (early '94) only has the ABS sensor cable, nothing for brake pad wear. Pads are in pretty good condition aswell. The fuel pump relay does feel hot compared to all the other relays.

If its anything like the lining in a mk2 it was the foam which had fallen apart. I tried the spray adhesive but the foam was like dust and just kept falling apart again. Maybe liberally cover the hard backing with pva to soak through all the dead foam then stick the fabric back on? Sold the car before I sorted mine out so only a guess, started coming away from the windscreen end.

I didn't get much of a chance to have a look last night so will be friday afternoon now, took me longer than I thought to get the heater controls and centre console back in. Have left the drivers side all exposed to check the fusebox / cabling though. I do have ABS but not sure about the brake pad wear cables. Have changed the pads a few times now and have never noticed, will try taking a wheel off and looking before tackling the fuse box again. Thanks.

Thanks, I'll try swapping the relay over and look at the loom going back to the fuel pump tonight.

Alright all, still having problems with this brake warning LED and the following is confusing me even more now: Recently it hadn't beem coming on. I have already ruled out the level switch and handbrake switches by disconnecting, linking out etc. Yesterday I booted it and the LED starting coming on, intermittently at first but by the end of the trip constant. However, when the brake pedal is pushed the LED goes out. I sat on the drive with the engine stopped but ignition on. With the LED on, whenever I pressed the brake pedal the LED went out, a relay clicked, a wirring noise could be heard and the main lights dipped very slightly. By trial and error I've found the fuel pump relay (12) was being switched. With the fuel pump relay removed the LED stays off and everything seems normal. Plug it back in and the above symptoms reoccur. I've been trying to follow the wiring diagrams and can't get my head around how these things can be linked. Can only assume there must be something shorting behind the fuseboard, or the board itself is faulty. Any thoughts??

Well done mate, haven't quite got all mine together yet (got to lift the carpets again because I forgot those sand-filled mats) but the dash is already sounding alot more solid.

I did it without taking the dash board out and have been driving the car while the heater box, centre dash etc has been removed. Just needed to plug the switches back in and leave the speedo working. Once I got the heater box back in I still left the carpet etc out for abit to make sure everything was really dry. Sound deadening took ages (days). Been two weeks in total including getting the foam, broken bits of trim etc. Was nice to have the time to do it properly without rushing to get the transport back.

The spoiler now works!! I was thinking about that constant 12v signal and thought I better check it was comming from the clocks. With the clocks removed there was still 12v.. Followed the wires back and there was a blue/wh wire with a single connector fitted into a single connector with a red wire. Removed this and the red wire was the source of the 12v. Put everything back together and it works.. Can only think I must have connected them together but god knows when and why. Anyway all sorted so cheers. Just incase anyone else checks this signal, you can read with a multimeter with a dc frequency function. Red probe into pin 8 of the spoiler relay or the common block on the top of the fuse board, black gnd somewhere. 0-60mph is very roughly 0-100 Hz, 12v p-p. Abit tricky reading the meter without crashing.

The diodes turned up so I have just taken the speedos to bits to change it. Looking at the solder on that component I thought I had done a good job.. Looks like I changed the wrong component anyway, shown on the attachment. Any ideas what that component should be and what's it for? Everything works other than the suspect spoiler square wave so if its nothing to do with that I'll leave it alone.

Hi Laurence, will keep taking pictures and posting. Got a few answers to your questions that will hopefully help: Separating motor arm from box I separated the motor arm from the box before removing the box as you say. I think there were 6 clips, two front, two back, and ones at the top and bottom. After taking the passenger seat out I layed on my back looking up behind the arm / box join and used a long flat screwdriver to get under the clips and flicked them off. Nuts in engine bay The nuts you should have removed in the engine bay are 10mm on big washers (rubber backed). Two in line with the heater box (middle of bulk head) and one behind the coolant tank holding the middle of the motor arm. The lower in-line spun on me aswell. I dremelled flats on the unthreaded part and used that to stop it spinning while undoing the nut. As it turned out the spinning (nut locked to thread) just unwinds the other side from the heater box. You could just spin it until the heater box goes loose, remove the box then get someone to hold the other side which has a hex to hold onto. Loads of WD40 used obviously. From there I can't remember exactly but from there you should be able to see what else needs to be removed. There is a tricky screw holding the windscreen air duct on the right. I've just found long screwdrivers have got to everything. Didn't have to remove the driver side air duct or the speedo, just the speedo surround. Let me know if you get stuck on anything else, I'm hopefully going to be at the stage of putting it back in at the weekend after getting fixings from VW, new cables (unbelievable difference) and foam for the heater flaps from Maplin. Plus a few bits of trim that have been broken over the years. Cheers, Richard.

I've almost got all the bits now to put the matrix back in. When I picked up the box this morning a foam-like washer fell out of somewhere. I faguely remember someone mentioning these but I can't find the post. Any idea how many there should be, or what their purpose is?

Thanks for that mate, will get some on order and see what happens.

Is that right superglue was originally intended to stick wounds together during the world war(s)? Thought I had heard that somewhere... Have been driving without a rear view mirror for about 2 years now and have passed the MOT's without it. Must get round to sorting that.

Just looked back through my orders and I changed the original part for a BCW66H which is a Lower Power LF NPN SMD Transistor (Maplin part no: N78AC).

That sounds exactly like what I've got, I did change that component to a transistor as per the earlier emails, and I have got a constant 12v coming from the clocks. At the time it didn't rectify the fault so I just left the transistor in and didn't realise it should have been a diode. Funny a diode is in a 3-pin package isn' it? Any ideas what I need to revert it back to how it was, the original diode is long gone. Cheers.