a_riot

Price: 159 € + shipping. Is that for one or two? I have this going on with the driver's side and like to get it replaced with something similar.

I've had my high mileage 1993 beater for 12 years, and the lower mileage garage queen for 5. Hopefully will be able to keep them both. They are identical except one has the winter package and the other has a CEL light, and are about 700 serial numbers apart. I can afford a new car, but today's cars remind me of a microwave oven. The bloody things beep at you all the time like your dinner is ready, at least the cars here in the USA. These things beep when locking, unlocking, seatbelts off, headlights on, rear view sensor, lane drift sensor, etc. Maybe on some cars you can turn that crap off, but I don't want my car to sound like a microwave oven gone berserk. The Corrado is utterly silent (door open chime removed) except for the mechanical sounds of the engine, fans, window, sunroof, wiper/washers and door lock motors, which is how I like it. I can leave the lights on, drive without seatbelts, back in to something, run out of gas, all without "beep beep beep" from the nanny. Everything works on both cars except the beater's HVAC foam has deteriorated away from the blend door, so heat/cool isn't great, but I'll have to remove the dash to fix that. A 25 year old car with 200k miles and everything works? Think if I buy a new VW or Audi it will all work come 2043? I highly doubt it, so I'll keep my authentic German made cars, made by hand by actual Germans at the Karmann factory for a while yet.

The shop up the street cleans all the BMWs and Minis with direct injection using walnut shells. I think its what BMW recommends. Seems overly arduous and cumbersome to me. Happy my car doesn't need that every 30k. But they recapture them with a vacuum. I don't think I would use it unless you can guarantee you don't get tiny walnut shell particles everywhere. That'd be a mess! For what you are doing, I think I'd soak it with Simple Green and let it sit, and use elbow grease or a pressure washer if you want the factory look. Walnut shells might not be the tool for that job, but I'm sure it could be made to work if that's all you had to use, and had a lot of time, and enjoyed breathing in dust and tiny walnut particles, vacuuming, cleaning up messes, etc.

You could with a hammer and appropriately sized socket or cup. Some people freeze the bearing to make it a bit easier to install. I'd rather press them in though, as hammering on round things tends to make them less round.

My theory is that large, heavy wheels with incorrect offsets, combined with low suspension and excess camber can cause an issue with the wheel bearing housings where a tiny bit of play can develop between the bearing and the housing. My first Corrado had a very strange issue when I bought it where backing up and turning would cause a loud "crack" sound from both sides of the front of the car, almost like a gun shot. I could feel the vibration in my feet, and it had a slight springy sound as well, so I figured it was a loose suspension component, vibrating the spring. But replacing all that made no difference. It was a difficult problem to diagnose, since it was such a weird, unnatural problem that you likely would never see but for lowered vehicles with oversized wheels, which mine had when I got it. I got rid of those wheels, and put a normal suspension in the car, and swapped the housings for a pair of used Passat housings I found, and this instantly cured the problem. I think a lot of people make dumb modifications that result in bizarre failures you won't ever see otherwise, and these can be very difficult to diagnose, like worn/warped wheel bearing housing bores.

I'm pretty sure Passat VR6 knuckles are the same as well.

I never tried a clay bar on it, but I can't really see it doing anything, given the things I did try were much more abrasive but didn't work. You're trying to overcome a covalent bond between the silicone and the glass, so its not trivial to completely remove some of these coatings. I think Rain-X changed the formula many times as well so its difficult to compare even when two people are using the same product. In my case, I don't know what the PO used, so it may have been a different product, but after that experience I'll stick with wipers.

I agree, I hate the stuff. Another case of "if it sounds too good to be true"... The PO of my first Corrado put it or similar silicone product on the windscreen, and after a while not only did it stop working, but created a weird film that I could not get off for the life of me, and it had a blurring effect, so oncoming lights at night caused a light storm for the driver. Once it started to wear off, the wipers started to make a lot of noise and judder, but the product had stopped working so you had to have the wipers on anyway. I eventually had the windshield replaced when thankfully a rock hit the screen resulting in an insurance repair and now can see clearly and never applied anything to it. My wipers work just fine even in the rainy pacific northwest of the USA. Rain-X got sued a while ago for their washer fluid that apparently wrecked washer fluid sensors, so I doubt they do any long term testing of the product, since they would have noticed that.

Good info above, and I'd be surprised if the problem was the sensor itself, since its just a piezo pickup. More likely a connection issue. I saw the one on the front of my VR6 when I had the oil cooler and oil filter housing off. It'd be difficult to replace without some disassembly, so hopefully they are fine. The knock sensors don't really have any effect on the engine unless they sense a ping in the combustion chamber, so even unplugging them shouldn't cause a change in running, outside of the error code, I wouldn't think. I'll see if I can disconnect mine if it makes any difference to the engine smoothness. But without any engine knock, they don't sense anything, and thus won't sent a signal to the ECU.

One of mine has the original suspension on it, and I love it. It sits a bit lower than the other which has a newer (probably MKIII) OE suspension, and has a very smooth ride. I think the original shocks were hydraulic, not gas charged, so you don't feel every little bump, and the large bumps don't shake the car, it takes it in stride. There aren't many cars new or old that I've ridden in with that nice mix of smoothness while still being a little bit firmer than average. I'm hoping it stays in good shape because I have a feeling that whatever I replace it with won't ride nearly as nice.

I daily my two VR6s so you could say I daily them AND have one as a second car that doesn't need to be relied on at the same time. If one needs work I drive the other. If you are ultra vigilant about maintenance as I am to prevent problems rather than fix them, then I would say yes, they are reliable daily drivers. Then you are just replacing wear parts as needed, that aren't too difficult to find. If you have to have it serviced at a shop, then I'd think twice about it, since shops can't seem to service these cars without breaking three things while fixing one. I think our cars are older than most of the techs working in shops these days, so they just don't have the know-how regarding older cars without an OBD2 port to tell them what's going on, plus Corrados are so rare they just never work on them, using yours as a guinea pig. Techs these days don't seem to really fix cars anymore, they just replace parts, so if your ABS accumulator fails, they want to replace the entire ABS system rather than replace the accumulator, or if the fuel lines on your fuel pump start to leak, they'll replace the entire fuel pump assembly rather than the lines that costs a few quid. If you have tools, are handy, and have the Bentley manual, and can find a Corrado that has been well taken care of then I'd not worry, as I find them much more reliable than BMWs are. I drove mine all over Colorado for years when I lived there, at very high altitudes, in crazy snowstorms, dirt mountain roads, and it never stranded me. Even when the alternator finally failed at 140k miles, I still got home those last 8 miles on battery power. I bought a new MKIV alternator for cheap, changed the square connector to the round style so it could be connected up, and was back on the road in a couple of days for minimal cost.

Are you going to install a new rear proportioning valve too? I think they do go bad eventually, but is not an easy job with the rusty lines and such. Would be easier with the beam out of the car though I would think.

Might be your fuel check valve at the fuel pump. Its supposed to keep the fuel from going back into the tank when the fuel pump isn't running, and so if leaking, typically cold starts are long, warm starts are short.

I don't think you can calculate it that way. In theory, the bolts start to stretch once the first 2 stages are complete. So if they were tightened up to 70nm after stage 2, they've already started to stretch some. Typically you don't reuse a TTY bolt once its been stretched, which you would be doing if you now do a ~180 rotation. Its not the torque value you need to worry about, its the stretching of the bolts, which is why the 180 turn is preferred to 2 x 90. If it made no difference, instead of one 180 turn like Mr Bentley says, you could do 4x45 degree turns, or 8x22.5 degree turns. But that isn't recommended with stretch bolts. You can likely get away with it if the bolts didn't stretch at all when tightened to 70nm but I can't think of a way to tell after the fact.

Hmmm...what a bummer. Hard to really say since there is no torque spec for the TTY head bolts, only a procedure. Hard to believe someone would just come along and do that, considering how critical it is to get those head bolts tightened correctly. VR6 heads have issues with gaskets leaking through the cooling jackets at #1 as it is, leading to an over pressurization of the cooling system, so I'd be nervous not knowing where things are at. I think if it were me, I'd redo it all with a new gasket and new head bolts, since getting this wrong means major pain and misery. It might be fine, but knowing Murphy's Law, I don't think I'd chance it personally, especially since you just had the head rebuilt. PS I think one 180 turn is the preferred method as opposed to 2 90 turns, but likely not a huge deal.

If the ECU was dead, I don't think the ABS light would come on at all as I think the ECU is what triggers it, but if I recall correctly, some ABS codes are persistent, so even after a repair is made, the code needs to be cleared with VAGCOM to get the ABS light to shut off, but I don't recall which ones are...

I took a look at my ABS issue over the weekend, and the right front ring has rust on it in some areas, while the left is perfectly clean. Looks like the sensor is scraping against the ring in places causing the ring to rust where it makes contact, which then causes the ABS to kick in when its not needed. I used a screwdriver to try and slightly bend the ring out of the way of the sensor. But as I looked at it, I wondered how could it be that one ring is touching in places and the other isn't all things being equal. It occurred to me that maybe the axle nut on the right side wasn't torqued up, allowing things to shift ever so slightly when the wheel steers, so I got a socket on it and it spun 1/8 of a turn with a quick impact burst. So I think it might not have been fully torqued down. Now that that's been done, no more ABS sensor scraping noises and no more ABS kicking in after making a sharp turn, especially in reverse. Car feels more solid on the road as well. Got to make sure those axle nuts are properly torqued. I usually put a black felt marker line across the nut and end of axle after torqueing them to be able to easily see if they are backing out, but I forgot to do it to this one. On to the next issue...

I'd be a bit surprised if it was the ECU. They are pretty robust. I've heard of owners getting them submerged in water and they still work once dried out. It can happen though. My guess is that a wheel sensor is touching a speed ring somewhere. I think I have this going on as well at my right front wheel. The ABS will kick in, the brake pedal stays down briefly and I hear clicking. My ABS light doesn't go on and no codes are thrown, but I took a look when this was happening a few weeks ago and the ABS sensor was being ground down from making contact with the ring. I replaced the sensor and bent the ring a bit to avoid contact, and it stopped for a while, but now has started again. I think I might have an issue with that wheel hub or bearing, as I'm not sure why that would occur, but if you can spin the wheel and watch with a flashlight to see if its making contact that might be a good place to start. I think there are two different wheel sensor codes, one is the sensor has failed, likely getting an out of range voltage, and there is a mechanical failure code, which I think is the one that occurs when the sensor makes contact. If you can scan your system you might see one of those codes.

No worries, hope it helps. The last time I changed the fuel filter, I was surprised at how black the crap that came out of it was. I can't be sure but I suspect its from the black goop that eventually melts off the hoses that was the culprit. I'm going to do the same thing to my other Corrado this weekend so both will get clean gas.

Could be a fuel pump or a crank sensor issue from your description of it. The crank sensor can get moody when hot, and without it working correctly the car will crank but won't start. But then a few minutes later it will run just fine. It's typically an inexpensive part and easy to replace. It could also be a failing fuel pump, bad fuel pump relay or fuel delivery issue. I had an issue with the wiring from the fuel pump to the pump connector and had to resolder those connections due to a bad solder joint. Pierburg pumps, which I assume your is, usually don't have intermittent problems though, they either work or they don't from my experience. Some diagnostics you can do is listen to the pump and make sure its always running at the same speed, not cutting out at times or slowing down, check the fuel screen at the bottom of the pump and the fuel filter to see if you have some kind of gunk in there blocking things up. If you have a Power Probe, you can send 12v directly to the pump connector and listen to the pump run to see how it sounds. Some say you can check the resistance across the +/- and see what you get, although I'm not totally confident that is always that useful. Normally resistance is low, under 10 ohms iirc, but I've seen different values on pumps that work fine. I'm currently pulling my pumps to swap the old rubber hoses to new nylon hoses from the pump to the top hat. Many Corrados have the factory hoses replaced with standard fuel hose, which is not rated for submersion in fuel, and so deteriorate and leak over time. Here's what mine looked like. End of hose delaminating... Rubber hose turning into black goop... Imprint of clamp on hose... Completed with nylon hoses...

Hard to say not knowing what you plan to do with it. If you are daily driving it, I'd just get it running well and leave it alone. Modifying Corrados can be tricky because they were good cars from the factory, so they are hard to improve upon. Many owners end up making them perform worse with modifications. A KN filter and aftermarket intake often reduces power due to sucking hot engine air, an aftermarket exhaust will also likely reduce power, especially low in the range, etc. Its difficult to get more power out of the engine with bolt ons, so many end up with turbos/chargers, which come with their set of issues. But if you can be more specific on how you plan to use the car it would be easier to make recommendations.

Go buy a couple liters of diesel and wipe it on. Best parts washer out there.

I pulled my K&N filter a few months after buying it. I noticed no increase in anything but noise after I installed it. After 6 months of use, my car seemed to be slow, so I pulled it out thinking it might need cleaning already, and put my old, dirty OE air filter back in during the ridiculous 24 hours it takes to dry the thing. Immediately noticed more power with the dirty OE filter than with the only 6 month old K&N. I threw the K&N in the garbage and never looked back. Paul

You can also use an Audi 100 cable that sells for peanuts as compared to the Corrado cable and is essentially identical except in length. You'll have to trim a bit of the cover but that's about it.

I ran into some weirdness like this when I had a shop swap the rear calipers a few years ago. The tech couldn't figure out how to bleed the rears, and then got confused and frustrated when after bleeding, the ebrake didn't hold. You could spin the wheel and pull the ebrake and it had no effect. You could also still turn the rear wheel while standing on the brake with some effort. He had pushed the valve open by hand to bleed them and couldn't get a drop out of either. I can't say what went wrong, but I took it home and bled them like I always do and it worked fine. I always bleed the rears with the rear beam on jack stands. I don't mess with the valve at all as I think it can get locked closed in some instances and confuse the heck out of you. But as long as the valve is plumbed correctly, I would put the beam on stands, and bleed the normal way with a helper at the pedal. Some use the ABS pump, but I prefer to do it manually. Every time I do it this way, it works fine, but any other way, and I get weirdness so I don't argue with success.