Henny

erm, is this a quote for just doing the headgasket, or for also taking out the dash, fitting a new heater matrix and then putting back the dash? If it includes the dash out and back in again part, then it's not too over the top a price for a dealer to be honest... You're looking at a good 5 hours labour to change the heater matrix if they know what they're doing, 8 if not...

guy in garage = talking b011ocks... as Mat says, find another garage...

any idea where (roughly) the noise was from (front/rear, left/right?) Deffo sounds like a dead/dying wheel bearing from your description... Good news is that rears are VERY cheap and easy to do. Fronts are also cheap, but are a bit more in-depth to change....

If the ignition switch is faulty, then the ABS brain won't be getting power at the times it expects power during the self diagnostics at engine start. The ABS brain is VERY sensitive to odd power problems, and if the ignition switch IS faulty, then this simple problem could well be the cause of your ABS fault. The ABS pump DOES have a fuse, but I have no idea which one. Have a look on the bottom of the fuse box cover to find out which fuse it is on your car.... The gear selection problem sounds like either your clutch is dragging (ie. it never fully disengages) which is causing it to crunch into reverse or you have a linkage alignment problem where the gear linkage/cables aren't in the correct position meaning that aiming at reverse with the gear lever isn't quite hitting the right place when the movement gets to the gear selector inside the gearbox. You may find that simply getting the clutch hydraulic system bled through with some nice fresh brake fluid will stop the crunching into reverse... Good luck!

locked this one... please use the other thread linked in the post above... :roll:

yeah, and it'll get to the stage where some nice man who has some point to make will wait until there's hundreds of these cars running on every motorway and simply set off a LARGE (or worse, lots of smaller more localised) electro-magnetic pulse generator to cause the worlds biggest multi-motorway pile-up... :| /paranoia

Garret? Tell more Paul... 8)

transporter wing vent with some clever pipe work to get past the battery? Remove the headlamp? ;) Different front cross member to drop the radiator down a bit and put an airbox across behind the grille? Loads of different options, just depends how silly you want to go or how original you want it to look... ;)

info like what? Get some serious gauge red and black cables and an earth strap, get a plate and a captive bolt welded onto the boot floor, run red and black cables from boot to front of car and connect to original wiring to battery, add earth strap from battery in new location to boot floor to add a better earth back there too, bolt battery to new plate using original battery clamp onto new captive bolt. Job done.... The only key things you MUST do are to make sure you run an earth back to the front of the car AND an earth strap at the back too else you could have problems with the electrics not earthing properly and you MUST make sure that the battery is VERY securely held down in the boot and preferably has a cover over it to stop things dropping on it and shorting across the terminals... DubWhizz has just done this on his Goof G60 and it IS actually as simple as it sounds... 8)

do what Corrados were built for - drive it! Sod the fact it's a bit tatty, now you've got it running right and have (hopefully) sorted the brakes out, get some usage out of it safe in the knowledge that Em's in a safer car than most first cars are, that it's a bit more stylish than most first cars and that you can always tart it up at some point in the future or sell it on once you've had some usage out of it or run it completely into the ground... 8)

relocate the battery into the boot and put a factory airbox where the battery was... That's the way I was going to do the conversion I was looking at on J-DUB... It's suprisingly simple to shift the battery... 8)

if it's simply a run in the laquer, you can get a paint file (kinda like a cheese grater) to take the main bit of the run out and then use wet and dry and buffing to get rid of it completely.... Done this to H-YYU in a couple of places with good effect... paint file available from most good car paint suppliers... 8)

on the american cars they don't have a brake servo to assist with braking, instead they use the ABS pump to act as a servo. If your ABS light is on, that normally means that the pump is de-activated so you'll loose all braking assistance - hence the heavy and high pedal. The clutch being soft and making weird noises could just be that it needs the cables adjusting to make sure they're properly in line, or it could be that the gearbox oil could do with a change, or it could be that your clutch hydraulic system needs bleeding through, or simply that your clutch is on its way out... Difficult to tell without hearing the noise... To properly diagnose your brakes problem, you REALLY need to hook the car up to VAG-COM and get the error codes read so you know why it's not happy... you may find, however, that simply changing the ignition switch will solve your ABS fault as they are VERY sensitive to power problems... ;)

'lo and welcome to THE forum... 8)

it's all as one mate... On J-DUB I cut the edge off and it looked fine, but I decided to change 'em anyway as I got 'em for a stonkingly good price... ;)

yup, the GPC ones are genuine... That's what I've fitted to both my Cs... 8)

you can undo the downpipe from the manifold from below and inside the engine bay. Then undo the 3 bolts from the cat/downpipe joint and you should be able to wiggle the old downpipe out.... I've had to do this several times due to using crap copper nuts to hold the downpipe on which melted... :roll: :oops: If you find it REALLY doesn't want to play, then you can just drop the rear subframe down slightly on a trolley jack to give you enough clearance... that's how you install 4 branch manifold/downpipes, so that'll DEFINATELY give you enough room! :lol:

ah, so that also applies to all NON RHD corrados then as well as the Golf G60s which have the same brake system...

was8v, in that case, the timing of the closure pulse isn't long enough to trigger the sunroof closure...

8)

Give Wayne Schofield up at Chipwizards a ring... What he doesn't know about ECUs isn't worth knowing... ;) He'll tell you which car to go and find in a scrap yard to go and nick the engine loom and ECU off, which injectors to get and how to link the whole lot up and then map it for you to get the best out of your car and engine... ;) Having chatted to him about a few things ECU wise, it's amazing some of the things you learn about the standard ECUs fitted to seemingly normal, run of the mill, family cars and how easy and cheap it can be to get one hell of an engine management system for VERY cheap money... ;)

8)

VR6s have EDL which is an Electronic Differential lock. This basically uses the ABS sensors to detect wheelspin and then pumps the brakes on the side which is wheelspinning to stop the power from being lost through a spinning wheel and be fed through the wheel which isn't spinning... This only works below 10mph IIRC and wasn't fitted to all VR6s... Could be that which is causing oddities while it's jacked up?

with ABS you need to have the ignition switched on and pray a lot that you don't get any air bubbles into the pump else it's an utter utter utter utter utter utter utter utter utter utter utter utter utter utter utter utter utter utter utter pig to bleed through... I forgot to add in that the brake master cylinder should be bled at the very end after the clutch is done... :oops:

you sure? I could have sworn that there were 50 in total... :| Meh.... think I'm just loosing it with age... :roll: :oops: