dr_mat

It's an old car.. You will always get stuff needs doing.

An aside, but yes it's all true.. VW added extra castor on the VR6 to counter any increases in torque steer due to the extra power relative to the earlier cars.

You don't replace the engine speed sensor for fun unless you know it's dead. It is hard to diagnose, however, and you really have to scan the ECU for faults BEFORE turning the ignition off whenever something "bad" happens. As soon as you turn the ignition off any "intermittent" engine speed sensor faults are overwritten.

Scanned the ECU? I'd also wonder about fuel supply...

The Schrick manifold is a resonator, any well tuned inlet system uses air flow resonance to improve torque at some rev range or another. The best use variable inlet tracts (like the Schrick) to provide resonance assistance at multiple different RPMs, or even better smoothly over a wide range of RPMs (a la BMW vanos).

If you're handy with a multimeter then there's some basic checks you can do even without resorting to VAGCOM.

Good news is VW dropped the price of replacements to a slightly less ridiculous £60 ish..

Ah yes, serves me right for not properly reading it, eh? :) Anyway, undertaking has always been illegal in this country, and continues to be so because it's a habit. People are used to the concept that no-one is going to drive past them on their left and therefore it would be unsafe to change the law to allow that. Of course, reality is we all know plenty of times when people have undertaken and it's becoming more common and therefore you're more likely to *look* before you move to the left than you used to be... Imagine someone release a gun that fired out the handle end? There'd be loads of people who shot themselves until the "cultural memory" of how to use a gun became modified to include the "check which end the bullet comes out of" bit ... Ok, extreme example.. but you see my point? :)

It's deemed illegal because it says so in the highway code. As for whether it *should* be illegal that's a different question, but that's not what you asked ... Anyway, it's the same old story; two wrongs make a right?

Back on-topic though (pain or not). £900 is a very good price for a schrick and chip.

I did put the K&N on, true. Then I took it off again.. At least now I can say I did that and got bored .. Apparently I'm the kind of person for whom a simple unichip for a Schrick inlet gives me grief, so frankly I dread to think what kind of pain a s/c would give me ..

.. but the person who just advised you to keep searching for a charger was ecstatic about his Schrick for a good few months or so .. ;) Though I can see the point - £ for lbft, it's not so good a deal as a charger in that sense. But if you ain't got the £2k plus the hours and hours of tweaking time, it's the best thing you can do to your N/A VR6 ...

It's not a fuse if the spoiler works at ALL. Probably a short, or a cable has become disconnected in the shunt.

Errrrm, no... The clutch doesn't remove the slop, it simply damps the shunt that occurs when you apply drive.

I think he means rotating on the driveshafts, not that the wheel hub is moving at all. And yes, it's pretty normal for a high-ish miles car to show some (significant) slop in the drivetrain. That's what the sagittal clutch plate springs are for - to damp the action when the clutch takes up the slop. The noises are another thing. Most likely wheel bearings.

Yep.

How much are the 'bones and so on then?

I think on a forum devoted to car enthusiasts the vast majority will overtake. People's opinion of what's safe and what isn't will be the only dividing line. I agree wholly - it's frustrating getting stuck behind a queue of people who aren't even trying to overtake a slower vehicle, and admit to making some questionable decisions about when to try it.. Fortunately I've never (so far) got that decision as wrong as your Mr 911 above ..

I can see some stories about bears forestry habits coming up ..

You know, only 5 years ago official advice was still to never attempt to turn the steering without rolling the car slightly forwards/backwards at the same time. With modern heavy cars and wide tyres this puts an immense amount of pressure on the steering components (try doing it without the engine running and you'll see!). PAS fluid level should be checked at the service, so shout at your mechanic!

I'm reminded of an Alfa ...

Car bras look stupid. You might consider getting some of that transparent plastic armour plating stuff that sticks on though, wish more cars were fitted with that by default.

Too expensive probably..

Even the big bikes don't use such long conrods and such eccentric cranks as car engines because there's simply no need for big torque.

Best bet with ABS faults as always is to scan the ECU for error codes, that's going to tell you exactly what the problem is straight away, without any faffing about.