Leavon

In the end me and a mate spent half an hour unplugging the ABS until we diagnosed a faulty relay (179), it was stuck in the on position. So I took the relay down to the garage and explained that if I had left them to replace the pump/ECU it still wouldn't have fixed the problem and I would've been left with a 2K bill, their response was, "That's one to watch for" and " you never can tell", the mind boggles......

I posted in the general forum about the trials and tribulations of my car but more specifically, I wonder if anybody can enlighten me about the ABS system. The pump is on all the time which means that when you touch the brake pedal it immediatley pushes back (obviously I'm not driving the car). My local garage ran VAGcom and said that they got a communication error from the ABS system and therefore couldn't diagnose the fault, they recommended I replace the system and quoted me 1600 quid. If I were going to do that I'd obviously get a part off Ebay, but I'd like to try and diagnose what's wrong with the thing before I start replacing parts. Has anyone got any ideas? Cheers,

I've got to get her fixed before I can contemplate getting rid, it's either run 2 cars or I put a tow bar on the C....

Yeah, I ran VAGcom last year and it flagged up a sensor fault, which is why I wondered if that could send an errant signal to the pump. I'm going to the garage later and get them to do a breakdown of the costings. Probably going to bring the car home, see if I can do any of the work, brakes, replace ABS sensor that sort of thing. And then get some other quotes for the drivetrain related stuff.

Thanks for the replies folks, I've owned this car for 8 years, it's been my dream car since I was 16 yrs old, I don't wanna part with her let alone break her! A few friends have given me numbers of mechanics who might be able to help me out. I'm gonna get a price break down from the garage and take it to couple of others for second opinions, I'd like somebody to actually have a go at fixing it instead of just wanting to replace the part, like a mechanic instead of a part fitter. Ideally I'd keep her and get a shed to cart gear around for gigs, but it needs to be something reliable (and preferably VAG), unfortunately shed and reliable don't really go together. I'll def keep an eye on ebay for the ABS stuff. Does anyone know if a faulty sensor could spaz the pump into thinking it needed to be on all the time? I'll update this post when I've got some more info. Thanks again, it's a bit of a dark period in C ownership and one can always rely on the forum. Cheers,

I'm in a bit if a quandry here folks, I parked the C up last May after being hit with a huge bill in December when the rear engine mount failed, dropped the engine and destroyed the CV coupling and a bunch of other stuff. Then last May I got an electrical fault that drained the battery every few days, followed by a fuel leak and finally an ABS fault that kept the pump on continually, making it undriveable. I'd had enough and didn't need the car to get to work so I locked it up and decided to try and put some emotional distance between me and it. A year later and I've just been made redundant and am going to try and make a go of gigging for a living so I need to get something to cart my P.A. and guitars around, looking at a Passat or A4 avant. First things first though I need to sell the Corrado to fund a new car. I limped the car to my local VW specialist, gave them a list of the known faults and asked them to tell me what else needed doing. I've just had a call to tell me that it needs bushes all round, it's got a broken drop link and Split CV gator, they can't diagnose the ABS fault so they think it needs a new ABS unit and they can't diagnose the electrical fault until the ABS is sorted. Total cost including servicing would be around £3K, he said this would obviously be halved if I source a cheap ABS unit but to be honest 15/16 hundred quid is still a lot more that I want to spend on it. I knew that parking it up at the time wasn't the best thing to do but I didn't have the funds and it seemed to be my only option at the time. I was prepared to throw my vast £700 redundancy payout at it to put it right and I was a bit worried that it if I drove it for a few weeks that I wouldn't want to part with it, doesn't seem like a such a problem now. I guess I want to field a few opinions from people here in the know regarding my options. I think the garage are being a bit vague about the ABS? Cheers, Leavon.

Okay, thanks Dr_Mat I'll give that a try tonight. The ABS light had been on for a couple of days prior to this happening so I knew that something was up, just wasn't expecting it to be such a catastrophic fail of the system. I've also had a mystery power drain on the battery of late, ie. if you leave the car for more than 3 days it won't start so I'm thinking the permanently switched ABS may be related. I think I'm gonna bite the bullet and get a cheapo lap top and copy of VAG-COM, the way things have been recently it'll get plenty of use.

I don't have access to Vag-com and I don't have a laptop to put it on so it looks like I'm gonna have to limp it to a garage. I thought maybe some sort of switch has gone, hence the pump making a grinding noise even with the ignition off. It only shuts off when I disconnect the battery. Can anyone recommend a decent code reader under £200? I'm keen to try and at least ascertain the nature of the fault myself.

Last night as I was driving the car suddenly made a really loud grinding/whirring noise and kicked my foot off the brake pedal, I wasn't far from home so I had a short but scary drive back (made more worrying by the fact that the last grinding noise was my rear engine mount failing and destroying the Drive shaft coupling :pale: ).The noise persisted and there was no "feel" to the pedal, it was either off or on and each time it was depressed it would kick your foot off again. The weirdest thing was that even with the ignition off the ABS pump continued to grind away until I disconnected the battery. I did a searchy but couldn't find any other incidence of this, has anyone got any ideas what it might be? Also is it poss to disconnect the ABS and drive the car normally? Hope someone can shed some light.

Just fitted the kit and it works a treat, MOT tomorrow so thanks very much Dave. I had the problem with removing the pin that others seemed to have, just couldn't get the screws to purchase so I thought I'd share my solution. I got a thin pointy bradawl type implement and manged to get sufficent angle to tap the pin out from the inside of the handle, 2 taps and it was out, compared to an hour of screwing (and not in a fun way). It's worth a try if you're struggling with the normal method.

Daveangel, I made the wooden gear surround thinner than the original plastic unit so the ring sits lower and therefore doesn't interfere with the travel of the gear lever. Double 6's, the fan doesn't clear the firewall, it gets stuck after it drops down a few inches, bloody frustrating, I think it was a shonky install, the numpty who owned the car before me paid Mercedes(?) 2 grand to do it! Craziscot, it definitely isn't turning on the other settings at all. So the fan may not have a thermal resistor? Ah balls, I'm just gonna have to pay someone a load of money to have a new fan fitted, and no doubt the Diavia fan will cost bags more than a standard one :( Might as well call this the knackered ventilation forum, it's such a shoddy system.

yet again I'm trying to fix my blower, for a while it's only worked on 4 so I bought the thermal fuse to try the usual fix but fell at the first hurdle when the fan unit didn't look anything like the ones in the DIY guide and there was no external evidence of a resistor pack. So I put the job off until yesterday when I put the fan on to clear the screen and it made a horrible loud clunking noise, clearly not well. So I've just tried to get the fan unit out but the plactic housing but it doesn't seem to clear the bulkhead, never mind the mass of cables that seem intent on preventing it's removal. I did see enough of the fan blades to see that one was broken :( Does anyone know if it's possible to remove the fan from the housing in situ or is it a dash out job to remove the whole thing? Also does anyone know where the thermal resistor pack is on the diavia fan? Hope someone can help.

Sounds like surprise but, whatever :roll:

Well you seemed surprised that the police didn't pull you despite having the hooner/joint/zoot/spliff/doobie in your mouth so one assumes there was something illegal in it, otherwise why mention it?

Sorry, must have misunderstood the use of the word "joint", perhaps you were using it in a Westwood stylee ie. I had a car in my mouth?

Probably not the best idea to announce driving under the under influence of drugs on a public forum....

I used to have a price list knocking around seems to have gone astray, it varies greatly on the amount of parts you can supply, chassis, engine etc. I'm afraid I'm not very techie so my plan was always to buy a built up car from them, 17-20K depending on spec so I never paid a great deal of notice to the self build prices. They'll send you a nice information pack with everything you need to know. The basics are probably quite cheap, I think it's the accessorising that can really add up.

I can vouch that the Stoneleigh show is a really good one. Chesil have a good stand there, their 356 speedster is my dream car. If I'm ever in a postition to run a 2nd car the Chesil will be it.

Very mysterious Dinkus....

Yeah, it's just a shame that I've got a thing for black and white! Is there not a calendar this year?

Cheers Kev. Alas, I think the gulf between our two cars widens every day :(

At long last I had a chance to go out and take some rural pics of the car this evening, it was a really strange light tonight the haze almost made it look wintery in some pics, made for some interesting images anyway. Nothings really changed with the car since I last updated this thread, just a few more rattles and squeaks here and there :? but I still get a kick out of it everytime I start it up :twisted:

I would never trust my car with a spotty 17 yr old trainee at a stealership(they're called that for a reason) whose never laid eyes on a c, 'specially when I have a vw specialist across the road, run by a german ex-vw head mechanic :wink: Dealership stamps just aren't worth the money.

I find that pretty offensive to compare belief in the grey science of climate change with the factual historic record of the deaths of millions of jews. Just because some of us haven't succumbed to the global warming brainwashing don't confuse us with fascist right wing holocaust deniers. Maybe you ought to add arrogance to the sarcasm and irony listed in your signature.

I dunno, I had a look around on the web and found the data about co2 following temperature rise in a few different places. So all that stuff about animals being the biggest producers of co2 was bs? Awe shucks! You selling up then Dr_Mat?