KipVR

Cheers kev, I've had to do a fair bit to the Mk2 to keep on top of it, but it's all prettey much standard and now it's all sorted it makes a great daily. Still a few more details to tie down in the engine bay, bit of wiring to wrap and washer bottle to mount properly along with a few other bits, but mostly there now. Still haven't finished them, so I sold my mint black leather interior for an electric recaro grey leather interior, which initially just cost me the petrol money up to Birmingham. However it's also cost me a retrim on the drivers bolster and the dye kit, so another £200. I'll finish the other seats over the Christmas holidays and then probably use both sets, one as a daily set, and the other to keep pristine, not sure which way round yet. :D Hey Pete how's it going? We've moved now and I'm really enjoying having a garage to work in at home rather than the tiny shed! Would have been nice if it was a garage you can open the car doors in though :( Yeah, it'll be done by the time you get back pal! Not long at all now, It's quite easy to re-dye the seats, but it is time consuming if you are doing a colour change on a complete interior. It also makes the leather like new again, as when it goes hard it's just the paint cracking, when you scrub off the old paint it goes back to the soft leather underneath. Can't wait to see the shiny M5, have to see it in the flesh when you come back. :D

Cheers pal, wait until you see the finished pictures, I've got some nice but restrained touches that will really finish the interior off properly. Thank you for your kind words :D When I took the interior over in my golf, I thought it looked even better against silver :grin: I thought about both ways for ages before settling on dying them. 2 reasons- it's a lot cheaper, and guaranteed a quality oem finish to the stitching etc. My drivers seat has got the traditional wear to it though, so I'm having a new bolster and seat base put on it, then i'll dye it. Chees pal, I'm still doing the other seats, the electric recaros are only a temporary measure, but they are more oem so I'll end up keeping both and switching between the two. :D

If my full braid setup is too spongey then I'll be doing hard lines underneath the car. You know you can still get the OE coated brake pipe from VW still, just not the bent up lines. Cheers for the paint 8)

Decided to get on with the seats and start getting them in. Dark red suits the car well, although something tells me I should not have changed the interior, it visually makes it very different from a standard Storm, and moves away from the OEM theme I've been keeping to...... But hey I like it and it's not like I can't change it back... The colour goes really well with the mystic blue, and really sets the car off. I'm just having a new drivers bolster put in and then it'll be all in and I'll take some decent photos, but here's the colour for now, looks a bit different in life to either of the pics, kind of half way between the two... 2.8l 24v Climatronic system.pdf012.jpg[/attachment:301x15ln] New seatbelts in too, although not VAG, I didn't have £187 per side spare!!! Is it just me or does anyone else these days just ring up VW to either choke on the price of a Corrado part or find out it's not available any more? I wish they were more like BMW and took a bit more pride in the decent cars their history is based on rather than just obsoleting the old cars as fast as possible.... Electric seat loom is now in too, and a flip key from Rclick, but I've also bought a transponder immobilizer and put the transponder inside the flip key. The Rclick flick key remote is cool but it's not the most secure Alarm, so I decided to add on the immobilizer.

What's that construction site in the background? :D Wheels look great, did you spray them yourself? If so could you point me in the direction of the paint you used?

An autoclave is effectively a big oven, this is a good explanation. http://www.sterilizers.com/articles/Aut ... l-role.asp but they are quite common, lots of people are now using carbon fibre for boats, cars, planes, bikes military etc etc. so finding a company willing to let you use theirs shouldn't be a problem, they might want to operate it though! I'm a self confessed CAD geek too, it's just opened up so many doors to manufacture products fast and accurately it's brilliant. It's basically a 'virtual' creation world of it's own. :D

Glad to help pal :) Are you planning to do carbon tooling and use an autoclave for it? or are you just doing a hand lay up? If it's hand lay up you are right the kevlar won't be much heavier as most of the weight will be in the resin. It's only when you use pre-preg (pre-impregnated resin) carbon matting that you really see benefits of carbon, it gives a much better finish too. I've been there before with cold lay up of car panels, and for parts like wings where they are just a single skin, you'd be hard pushed to make any decent weight saving, if not heavier! Solidworks is a great package, I've used it for 10 years now, and it's going from strength to strength, to the point where it's big brother Catia isn't really any better, but Catia is the automotive industry standard so it's worth learning.

Hi pal, good to see your enthuiasm for such things :D :D I'm not so sure on using kevlar for car panels though. I used to use carbon and kevlar on a fairly regular basis on vehicles, you can laminate the kevlar in with the carbon, and this is regularly done for wheelarch liners and other areas that get hit by stones etc. The trouble is though is that kevlar is much heavier than carbon, and so negates any weight saving over thin steel panels like the front wings. However a carbon kevlar laminate would be good for a chin spoiler, but the resin would probably still chip if a stone hit it, as you'd want the carbon at the front on show I should think. Also to consider is the resin properties, those that want the bare carbon fibre look will want a different impregnated resin to those that want their parts painted. It's been a while since I've worked somewhere that wants the bits painted but seeing the weave pattern thought the paint used to be a major headache for oem's etc. We used to scan parts in with a handyscan, edit them in Catia, and then send the file straight out to be machined from a foam block. A carbon mould is then made from this. Got great results every time. Now I'm working for an armouring company, seeing them press 10mm think panels that look identical from the outside to the 'original' panel is seriously impressive. It's all a bit heavier though :D :D I'm looking forward to seeing your finished parts!!

With all this wet weather we've been having down south, the Uniroyal Rainsports I've got on my daily have been absolutely brilliant. There wern't great on dry days in the summer but wet weather performance is outstanding. Looking at the tread I shouldn't think they'll be that great in the snow though.

Thanks for the compliments guys :D ,I don't think it'll stay looking like that for long though after a few miles. I've still got to fit the undertray and other protective plastics which should help though. I received my ECU back from DG Autotech last week (thanks for the fast turnaround Dave, excellent service as always :thumb right: ) and it fired up straight away. However taking the sunroof liner out and leaving it out wasn't such a good idea, I came back to the car flooded with water inside after this weeks heavy rain. After closer inspection the panel has grooves on the top side of it to channel the water from the back of the sunroof section to the side gutters. So all the carpets and sound deadening are now out drying off. At least the carpets have now been washed thoroughly though (and how much blacker they look for it). I'm also using the opportunity to put in the Recaro electric seat loom....

At the moment I plug my phone into a headphones jack which goes to the line in on my head unit. This enables me to listen to any music on the phone, make hands free calls etc. I also run a satnav on the phone so it speaks over the music and any calls. Would the bluetooth bit do all that just without the wires or would it just transmit the music and calls?

I once sold an item on ebay that I reckon the highest bidder set up another account to outbid himself and get out of the buy. His 'original' bid was on a Saturday night at midnight...

Tidy Mk1 Golf's are starting to make good money, so there is hope!

:D :D I think we all start out like that don't we ?

If you ever need a hand with stuff like that, I'm always happy to scurry over and help out. Cheers Tom! It was supposed to be one of those sunday afternoon jobs, how wrong I was....be good to catch up soon though :) Hey monkey you want me to measure my big end? :D :D :roll:

Cheers Matt! Nice brakes eh :D

Thanks Pal! Decided to go with the VW logo etc on the engine and a black grille.....

Hey Pete! How's everything out there? Putting the headliner in was a lot easier than getting it out as the extra material gave it a fair bit of strength, and I reinforced it in most of the delicate areas anyway. No pics as of yet, I'll take one once I've put the sunroof panel back in :D In all honesty I prefer it to how it used to look. As far as getting the subframe out on my own goes, well it was ok on the Sunday getting it out, but I didn't finish it, so I ended up doing it in the evenings after i got back from work, it was cold, raining, dark and windy so as you can imagine I had great fun :D The best bit was spending an hour and a half looking for the spline bolt for the rack, only to discover it on my pocket. :help: Well the rado as usual hasn't had much done on it, mainly because I've just been moving house and getting everything sorted, but the good news is I now have a garage!!!. I went over today for the first time since my last post to do a bit more on it. I got my ABS light working, and had the guy from dent devils come over and take all of the small dents out from around the car, a truly brilliant job on every one. He also did a couple on the Mk2 for good measure. I then tried to start it with my ECU which has come back from DG from having the rear lambda's defeated. But I think the immobilizer is now working on it again, as the car would fire up and then cut out two seconds later, I'll have a word with Dave on Monday to see where it's at. I've now sold my black leather interior in favour of one with electric Recaros, and without even spending a penny! They are in grey though so tonight I spent a while with some cellulose thinners taking all of the grey colour off the leather, so now they are in a patchy brown natural leather colour. It's amazing how much softer the leather is once you take off the paint coat. Anyway I'm sending a colour sample off (which you've seen I think) to get some paint made up to apply. These will do until I eventually get round to finishing my own seats!!

Tilt the sunroof, and then poke this bit up through the gap as hown. You'll then see 3 screws, undo them and you'll be able to take one half straight out. The other half you can then turn though 90 degrees and take out from inside the car..

Can you feel any sort of ridge with your fingernail? If you can't then I'd say they are ok, I've tried to find the pics I took but can't find them... You could also put a micrometer on them just to check it all for a constant diameter. :D Nice pumpkin skills!!

Before you do that just have a look to see if there is a slight ridge on the top side of the shaft Dave, like you already figured you won't get play unless the shaft is no longer round. If there is a ridge (like a polished ring that runs around the top 3rd of the shaft where the bearing seats onto it), it needs replacing anyway. If that makes sence :D What do later VW's use? Could they be adapted to fit?

I ditched both of mine for new ones. The best way to check is to put them in a lathe holding them by the shaft. Then run a clock over the back face as you rotate them. Both mine were bent slightly and both had slight ridging on the shaft, so it seems if the shaft has a slight ridge in it, chances are it's bent too. Can't comment on VAG or pattern parts, but personally i'd play it safe and use VAG bits.

No worries Kev! Yes they just bolt straight on to the bits next to the towing eye bit as you said. I found out the hard way that they didn't fit VR's, by cutting out the mouldings in my arch liner (If you look at the back of the VR liner there is a moulded return flange as if they were going to do it but didn't) and then offered up said ducts to find out they don't meet up with the widetracked VR's. So I'm going to run round duct all the way to the back of brake disc using the holes to pass the ducting through. Hope you can make sence of all that. Here is a pic of my VR arch liner with the duct hole blanked over. The early 16V's etc weren't blanked over. P220109_13.46.JPG[/attachment:13yi3xxs] IIRC the inner arch liners on a vr had mouldings for these but no actual holes. This is a very good point Kip, I think we had our wires crossed, for some reason I thought you meant attaching these scoops into the fog light hole :cuckoo: No problem fella :D Too right it's not ideal, if it were a direct feed that low down and you went through a puddle, you can kiss goodbye to your engine!

Sorry Andy missed you posts! Glad it worked out though, get some pics up!!

I'm not talking about running cool air to the brakes though pal which would involve doing what you mention due to the wider track. If Kev wanted to get cold air to his airbox he would just have to buy a G60/16v air duct and mount it as VW do to the bumper, cut it short and and jubilee some air duct onto it that goes up to the airbox via the cc hole and job done. You also get to keep your fog lights and use existing fixing points to mount the duct.