stemid

thanks for the replys guys, and hello mikkijayne, good to see a local onboard :) i started by taking the conrod bearings out, and they all looked ok, so i then moved onto the mains, and got as far as number 2 which was fooked. havent's taken the rest off. i think i will though because i'll probably take the crank out to give it a polish on the one that failed. is it possible to remove the crank without disturbing the upper chains? don't really want to lose all the timing. can someone tell me what a journal is, is it the groove in the shell which lets the oil pass, or is it the hole in the crank? also where does the oil come from in that hole? i can't see anywhere that oil is pumped into the inside of the crank? it would seem that oil has been starved to that shell, but if the oil pump was nackered, wouldn't the all be trashed? is there any way of testing an oil pump?

I bought a rado vr6 with a seized engine a few months ago. As a quick fix I bought a replacement engine and got it going and it's awesome :D Yesterday I had a spare half hour, so thought I'd have a look at the old engine to see why it seized. Just for the record, I have never delved into an engine block before, so I am a complete noob and some of my terminology may be wrong. But I am trying :wink: As they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's what I found The shell of the second crankshaft bearing was completely scored up. As soon as i took it out the engine would turn over lovely by hand. Now my question, as a noob, is what would cause this? The previous owner told me the oild light/buzzer came on, so he took it to a garage where whilst investigating it, the engine went tight. He told me the car was never driven since this point. And to be honest I believe him, as the crankshaft looks to be in good nick. I don't think it has scored it. Secondly, to fix this, is itjust a case of new shells and away we go? Help appreciated, this is one big learning curve :salute: Steve

i must agree i was slightly underwhelmed once getting my vr. it isn't great below 3k rpm, but like someone else said, as soon as you hit 3k and over it really comes alive and is awesome.

spotted two in bristol on sat afternoon on cheltenham road, one was black N reg, one dark green i think, M reg

yup enzo cups, i bought those wheels off phil k a few years ago, and now my bro has them on his rado :) edit: infact you can see them in my pic! ------>

have you got any more pics showing the mud flaps? i need a solution as i work on a farm, where there's lots of mud! not sure if the mud flaps will look ok though...

does the same on my vr :)

hmmm interesting, my mfa has been working fine, but then on a run up to london a while ago the mpg kept creeping up an up slowly, i thought i was on to a winner, driving really economically! however once i got past 50 mpg i realised something was wrong. kept goig until it reached 99.9 now it's hovering around 14-15 mpg. even if i'm cruising at 40 with low rpms and do the mfa reset, the mpg still returns back to around that mark..... any ideas?

About 7 weeks ago my power steering belt snapped on the motorway. I haven't bothered replacing it as I have a dodgy shoulder and thought that the extra strain would be a good daily work out for me. Now I'm used to driving the car without PAS and I don't feel the need to fix it. However.... will I fail the MOT without a belt? :?:

Crasher you were spot on. I whipped the head off to find that the head gasket had blown between the the two cylinders. It had also started to blow between the other two. So I got the head skimmed and bought a new head gasket set and fitted it all back together. Now I have low compression on all 4 cylinders. 5.5 bar each. Should be more like 12bar / 180psi I believe? My first thought was the valve timing was out. But I have checked and double checked and tripled checked but everything is spot on. Does anyone have any idea why else the compression could be so low on all cylinders. Must be valve related surely? Compression test on the two good cylinders before I took the head off were 175psi

Caning it home from work the other day and suddenly started hearing this awful clattery noise from the engine, pulled over and the engine was idling very ropey then stalled. Towed the car home and fired it up the next day. Only firing on 3 cylinders at idle speed, but pretty sure it's firing on all when I rev it. Now if I rev it slowly up to high revs the noise does not happen, but if I rev the engine quickly the noise returns. Sounds like its coming from the cam area. I'm assuming its the tappets (but doesn't dissapear when warm) I've taken the rocker cover of and looked at the tappets with out removing anything else. Will I be able to test them like this, OR are they gonna need to be fully removed? Or could it be a problem with the oil pump? Think I have 15w40 oil in at the moment. Could it be worth going up to 20w50? The car is a 1.8 16v KR with 180k on it. Any help/advice would be much appreciated. Steve oh i have replaced all 4 plugs and ht leads with spares, checked the dizzy cap and rotor arm, but still missfires.

My passenger footwells are currently under water too. Had a look under the scuttle tray to find the drain plug was choked with leaves and other crap. The water had been flowing in through the air vent for the heater. Gonna be fun trying to dry the carpets out now. Just blown one fan heater trying :(

ok so timing is not the problem here then. racking my brain for what else it could be. are the injectors a possibility? forgot to mention that I have trouble starting it from cold. replaced the ignition barrell and ignition switch

Just wondering what is the best timing position for my valver. My average mpg is cack, getting about 250 miles to a full tank of petrol, and that's driving sensibly. Anyway I read on here that 9 degrees BTDC is ideal for these engines. rather than 6 degrees where it should be set to at the moment. Would or could advancing the timing sort my mpg out, or will it give higher performance and thus lowering it? To be honest I'm not overly bothered about it having loads of power right now, need to save some pennies on fuel. Checked the plugs, but they look reasonable. Could changing the ht leads help? Convinced it's over fueling somehow. No lambda probe, being a 91 model. Can't find and vacuum leaks either. Gonna check if the rear brakes are binding but pretty sure they are not. Advise would be much appreciated.

Thanks for the input guys. I've decided to invest in an air impact gun. Should whip them off no probs. I have an air compressor so it seemed the logical thing. Just have to wait for some time off work, and for the weather to change :mad: before I can change the springs. I would love to change the whole setup, with coilovers or maybe a spring/shock set, but I just don't have the funds at the moment. In the pipeline though. I have some 80mm lowering springs kicking around so thought I may as well use them. Cheers

Need some suggestions how to remove my front shocks. Recently got my corrado, and want to lower it. But I've found that the 7mm allen key hole on one of the front shocks is rounded off. I've considered putting some grips on the shock to try and stop it from turning when I put a socket on the top nut, but I don't want to scratch the shock as I want to put it back on with different springs. Anyone got any ideas? I haven't got access to air tools. Cheers