dukest

Kev, I was only questioning his suggestion not to buy a VR because the engine gets f*cked if the chain set up fails - every engine is f*cked if its belt/chain setup goes! This just doesnt support the argument because everyone knows belts and chains can go, but if you observe belt change intervals or make preventative maintenance checks as you (Kev) described earlier in the thread then it is to all intents and purposes avoided. Personally I wasnt saying the engine is any better than another, just that there is no reason to avoid it just because it has the same ability to fail that any engine does if you dont maintain it properly.

That is what I mean. Doesn't matter how robust the engine is, if the timing chain goes then you have problems. The problem here has been wear to the timing chain assy. And so, despite the robustness of the engine as a whole, the weak point, in this instance, was the timing chain. so why is it putting you off buying a VR6 when it is the same for every engine in the world..??

I wondered if anyone else would question that, the VR6 is in my experiences, one of the toughest, robustly designed engines around. But not when the timing chain goes. Which seems to be the case. i dont follow you. which engine are you saying is robustly designed after the timing belt or chain goes? if the timing belt or chain goes on any car then the engine is scrap. given that this is possibly the 2nd occurence of this that I've seen in 5 years of being on this forum I think its safe to say its very rare and also avoidable. no-one complains about timing-belt engines going bang at 80k miles if the change interval is every 50k and someone just hasnt bothered to do it.. these engines regularly do twice that without changing the chains/guides/tensioner but if you go beyond 80-100k without checking them then you run a risk.

i think sometimes you can get away with it but there's no guarantee you wont get a crack even if you're careful. proper arch flaring obviously does yes.

yup

I didnt mean to imply they'd only want the VR Yan, i would say the G60 too, but what i meant was that with a car that is increasingly expensive in time and money to run vs its actual value then it needs more of a draw to make that "commitment" in the first place. With regard to the MK2 comparison, I think perhaps there is also a halo effect for old cars that needs to be considered - the GTi and G60 Mk2s you list above were all the top of their range and dramatically quicker than the models below them. I think that a similar effect applies to some extent to Corrado valvers vs G60s & VRs, ie. given the performance difference to new cars, if you want an older car, you might as well stay as close to the top of the range of that car as you can. Its not a perfect argument, and I know that a well specced up valver can perform very capbably, I'm just saying that for such a low purchase price in the first place, people will normally buy the most capable for the sake of an extra £500-£1000. People buying other lesser models as show-cars that wont get driven is not really material to general price discussisons i dont think.

i'm pretty surprised they're not sticking out more on his golf than the pictures show tbh. put it this way - 8in wheels stick out 18mm more than standard 6.5s do, and then on top of that you've got ET1 instead of ET43 so an extra 42mm. 18+42 = 60mm or nearly 2.5inches more poke than your speedlines. I hope you like ridiculous tyre-stretch :)

maybe i didnt say it right, but yes i was saying that they are worth more in parts too, especially modified ones.

they definitely do get very hot down the centre tunnel which obviously you notice in summer more than ever

yours is obviously not standard and sounds close to concours though. there cant be a comment valid for every car and so I was only talking about loosely standard cars. that said, people do often fall into the trap of thinking their car is worth what it cost to build which is certainly not the case, nor are they worth as a car what they are in parts, as Billcor's car showed.

I've thought that there's been a LOT of cars for sale this year, especially the first few months, and supply has outstripped demand in hard times. I think as you say there are a lot of other cars out there for less money than a decent VR6 which arent stupid to insure, arent crap on fuel consumption and dont have bits going obsolete every other day. Yes the Corrado is a better drive than some of them, but not all, and its not a daily driver in any normal motorist's eyes anymore. For non-VW enthusiasts its just another interesting car from the past that they'd never consider owning for a second. For those of us that are, people dont want cars that are showing their age, they want one that looks good. Anything with rust or things not working is a "project" and projects start life as sub-£1k cars. Plenty of people say that we should talk up the values of the Cars for Sale but anyone that owns their daily driver as a long term investment is kidding themselves. Concours cars will be worth a bit more in 10 years, anything else will need to be in very good condition and definitely sub-150k to make anything more than £2-3k ever again. And that definitely doesnt include anything but the youngest of valver's which just arent going to be interesting to anyone unless they actually want to drive old cars just for the sake of it. You just have to look at the people selling valvers to buy VRs to see that people want some character in their driving experience if they're going to be paying dearly in running costs and effort for the privilege.

no, you're right, thats the important bit to worry about. you need to measure from the outside of your caliper to the face of your disc and then compare that to the diagrams earlier in the thread. it should be ok but thats the important bit - as you say, the disc size isnt an issue with 17s

good call, hope it turns up and it hasn't been "stolen" from his garage when he comes to send it as happened to my last ebay bargain!

The unfortunate lesson learned is that of the list of preventative things that can be done to see how the engine's looking, some are more involved than others - eg. what Kev outlines above. So, if doing major work on any part of the car, you should take the opportunity to look at anything else that is easier to look at while you're doing that other work than it normally is. That this has happened to a VR is something anyone who even considers buying one would make themselves aware of as a possiblity beforehand. Its the single most well known thing about buying a VR, even for people that have never bought them. What it isnt by any stretch is a reason to not buy one, its a reason to ask, as 98% of people do, "have the chains been done?". On a separate note, just because this is so unfortunate, if it had happened to me there would be something in the back of my mind questioning whether everything went back together alright after the gearbox had been off.. But I dont know anything about who did the work and am not casting aspersions anywhere without knowing any of the background.

15in wheels = 205/50/15 - normally 6.5 or 7in wide 16in wheels = 205/45/16 - normally 7 or 7.5in wide 17in wheels = 205/40/17 - normally 7 or 7.5 or 8 in wide those tyres will fit on each of those widths and will fit under any slightly lowered car as long as the offset is sensible. offset (eg. ET35) depends on whether your car is a VR6 or not but will start at 43 for a VR on standard wheels (less for a valver) and go down by about 4 for each half inch wider the wheel is. dont go below 30 or so if you want to keep it simple.

yeah, about the 3rd in as many days?! is the search function bringing things up in reverse order these days?! :)

If it hasn't been sold already I would go for this engine for long-term peace of mind - viewtopic.php?f=13&t=94276

just to clarify above on the OBD2 2.8 though, the block is the same but if you want to run the obd2 ecu as well then that is a similar level wiring job as installing the 24v as its different engine management.

£4k if you paid someone to do everything - depends if you've got any ability to do some yourself.

ah well, stay positive, sounds like the world is your oyster in terms of next steps now :)

no good for a VR :)

do they not have sunroofs? I had no idea! there was me thinking i needed to convert a very early, cheap-spec car to be a competition-ready track car if i didnt want to weld over the hole in the roof! :)

I'd get some Wilwoods :D Ozowen got his specifically to go under his BBS LMs which aren't great for clearance either.

or look out for some standard 17" RX's - they obviously dont come up that often or it seems you could still get them new? or these http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/BBS-CV003-7-5x17- ... 4837ca8cdd or are they the ones you think are too modern? Philmo has them on his car but I cant find a pic - heres one of another car though: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=77863&p=904035&hilit=bbs+cv%2A#p903942 The dotz look too much like the fast and the furious imo - the cut face on the black spokes just says japanese to me.

Might write to my MP to see if they want to raise it as an issue in this day and age of environmental obsession..