dr_mat

All the turbo engines go failsafe when any key component is offline, which means zero boost. I watched Vince rolling road a Leon Cupra R and produce a stunning 105 bhp .. until he realised there was a sensor disconnected. Reconnect it and it produced a genuinely stunning 275 bhp ..

The Ah ratings aren't actually bull, but they don't necessarily translate into what you need for a Corrado (which seems to be the ability to discharge and not take it badly). Dry cells should be better for that.

Sounds like it's gone into failsafe - no boost. Doubt it's the MAF, but without scanning the ECU you're not going to find it by trial and error.

Why can't people just admit when they're wrong? All he had to do was look at the signage and he'd realise HE was in the wrong lane. I mean, anyone can make a mistake. Only a true Nobber could then turn round and blame someone else and turn a minor embarrassment into a case of road rage...

Heh, there's always room for the mass market.. :) What I dislike is when the mass market dictates the *maximum* quality that everyone is allowed. Such as when mp3-playback hardware won't play VBR, or won't use a bitrate > 160k, or when home digital TV came along .. yuck! "Good enough" for some does not mean good enough for all!

Ah, I see your point. I assumed that it would be able to momentarily increase the bitrate over 320. That's silly then. And I guess that's why I use OGG...

I would disagree. A VBR 320kb mp3 will surely sound better than a CBR 320kb. ;) And yes, of course encoder quality comes into it too.

I think variable bitrate has a bigger impact on the perceived quality of a file than the bitrate itself. IMHO a 128kb VBR file sounds better than 160kb fixed-bitrate ones. Ogg files are *all* VBR, so the encoder can choose when to use up the bits it has to make the best overall sound, and when to save them for later.

At least with FLAC you get around 2:1 compression, so around 10 full-quality CD images on a single DVD. But for in-car use, I agree, I don't personally see the point. A reasonable bitrate mp3/ogg is adequate for the noisy environment in a car, IMHO.

Nice idea. I'd like to see them include USB sockets on the things, so you can attach a USB hard drive, and it'll read the files off that. Also I'd like to see them support ALL bitrates and all variants of music file format (sick of digging through the instructions to find out if they support xKb VBR ogg or not - I mean it's the only playback format that has ZERO licensing cost, they should do it by default).

If you want a battery for powering the sound system when the car isn't running you should really look for something listed as a "deep cycle" battery. Standard car batteries (even big ones) are not designed to EVER be discharged to very low levels. Deep cycle batteries are designed for exactly this - and will last much longer as a result (in terms of number of discharge/recharge cycles).

"Lambda Probe G39 Short Circuit To Earth" This looks like a wiring glitch to me. Follow the wires up from the lambda, see if they're unbroken. Check for continuity (if you have a multimeter) along the wiring loom. Look for a bust up bit of wiring somewhere, perhaps some wire has been clamped hard against the car's metalwork - this can cause a short to earth.

Ok, yes, then the codes must have been generated SINCE you last reset the ECU. Therefore this does indeed mean the current lambda probe is not correctly connected or faulty.

Are you certain that these errors were generated *since* swapping your Lambda? They will stay in the ECU until they are cleared, so even swapping the lambda itself won't make the car run right till you clear the codes. As far as number of wires goes, I think that there's a different number required for early vs late cars. Have a dig around the search, I don't remember the details. It's quite possible that someone messing around with the downpipe might have damaged the lambda at the same time, yes, but it's unlikely.

Oil burning on overrun is usually oil pulled up past the piston seals (i.e. bore problems or piston rings). The cylinder experiences a drop in pressure during these times and any weakness in the piston ring tolerances to the bore will show up here. In addition, a weak head gasket will suffer the same fate. Usually under +ve cylinder pressure the gases are forced into the water.. But on the overrun it'll work the other way - pull the water from the galleries into the cylinder == white smoke. Simple checks for combustion gases in the water and/or oil are available. Head problems usually manifest as blue smoke on the first big throttle opening after a time of overrun (i.e. oil seeps into the cylinder but doesn't get burned till you light the fires under the engine and give it lots of fuel and air. If in doubt, walk away. It's not like these rare cars are hard to find on the 2nd hand market!

Just fuck off. The story: Some people know just how to piss you off. If anyone knows the M4 Junction 11 mess, there's a nice three-lane queue from the A33 (Reading side) to join the motorway. We were in the missus' car (she was driving), going straight over to carry on down the A33, we were queueing in the left hand lane. Boyo in the A4 in the MIDDLE lane (to our right). We pull off from the first set of lights. Now there's four lanes. We're in the one that has arrows on the road saying "left (m4) or straight on" (i.e. the RIGHT ONE). Boyo is on our right (road markings say "right only"). Apparently he was going left onto the M4, after all. Once he'd decided he was going to actually brake, NOT hit the side of our car, swerve across another two lanes of pissed off traffic, he stopped ON THE SLIP ROAD to gesticulate out his window (at the people who were in the right??). Thus pissing off the people BEHIND him ASWELL..!?! What a nobber. And his car was crap. He's lucky. The missus is French. If he'd been within earshot she'd have given him so much verbal (in french) that he'd have been poring over a dictionary for weeks... And if, by any chance, that person happens to read this. You know you were in the wrong lane. So I won't apologise for calling you an idiot.

VAG-COM is the answer.. most likely you have an iffy engine sensor.

230k miles? Had a new head gasket yet?

Apparently he doesn't care... ;)

The only concern with the pile-em-high retailers is you don't really know if the rebadged big name products are being sold by Lidl because Lidl are canny businessmen, or because the big name company decided this product failed it's own QC process and decided to dump it on the market cheap rather than disposing of or reprocessing it...

200k miles is 8 times around the world. At the equator. (If that were possible..) Dunno mate, when a car gets over 100k the mileage becomes irrelevant and the wad of receipts and the car's general condition takes over. 150k or 500k isn't important - it's what's been replaced, and what condition the bodywork/chassis is in that matters.

Replace the TPS, reset the ECU and try it again. If the ECU doesn't have reliable signals from the TPS OR the MAF, it won't run predictably at all, since they are both used as proxies for the other in the event of a failure...

You mean MAF not MFA? The ISV wasn't fitted on OBD2 VR6 engines, it was all done in the fly-by-wire throttle housing. The damper makes a loud sucking noise, that's normal. You've reset the faults on the ECU? It may be that your faults *have* now been cleared but you need to reset the ECU to get it to re-adapt to the fixed sensors. Do you still get sucky MPG after changing the lambda (again)?

.. but it won't run very well. It makes perfect sense that if the engine isn't seeing your small throttle increments smoothly then it won't fuel correctly or do ignition timing correctly. Replace the TPS - you KNOW it's faulty.

A touch more blue smoke indeed. Though your cylinder head has been reconditioned so shouldn't drop too much oil in the cylinders, you might just find that 5w causes a big problem. Don't forget this is 10 less than the book recommends for use in temperate climates. I'm no expert, but I know these old engines don't like ultra-thin modern oils. You just won't get sufficient oil pressure when the engine is cold with a 5w, and if you do it'll likely piss out all over the place because the seal tolerances are just not up to it. Try it out by all means, but keep a tin of the real stuff in the boot too ...