dr_mat

Got the 17-40L myself, but I find it depressingly soft in the corners (worse than kit lens @ f8 ). I've sent it off to Canon to get them to take a look at it, but I think I'm not the only one with this. Centre frame it's gob-smackingly sharp though... And just the way things look is nice, it's really classy. It doesn't flare, which all the cheap zooms do in spades - you can point this thing *at* the sun and it just takes a nice picture.. You went for the f2.8 50mm Macro lens? Interesting choice. I went for the f1.8 for the extra low light performance, and a +4 dioptre filter for those silly macro moments.. (but frankly I think the kit lens is better for mid-macro work - it'll go to 0.35x on it's own). I still use the kit lens, cos it doesn't shade the pop-up flash. But for daytime work, it's 17-40L all the way ... I'm looking forward to the 17-55 f2.8, I think that holds some promise for an uber kit lens replacement..! [by the way, I am liking the extra gallery2 features ... must upgrade my server sometime ... ]

Agreed, tatty speedlines without tyres are worth maybe £25-50 and no more, depending on how tatty they are .. Mint speedlines without tyres are worth about £100-150 so there's no way you're going to get your money back for the refurb...

Service as usual from VW then...

Fecked? Yes! Cos the brand new rear pair I got from a nice man at VW definitely sprang back up. .. Then I sold them and got a set of Sachs branded ones, which were absolutely 100% identical, except they were black.

Yep, oil-filled,but with gas pressure over the oil. (You can tell because they stay extended when you release the weight on them!) And yes, they're a bit soft compared to most modern car dampers!

Yep, and the original question came without a specification of which model they were referring to (as far as I could see), hence me pointing this out.. :)

Sachs Advantage dampers ARE VW OE. So "the same as" would be absolutely true. BOGE Turbogas dampers are the same as the SACHS ones, they're all made on the same factory line. The non-VRs came with SACHS standard dampers (i.e. non-gas-filled), but they're otherwise identical.

Just to upset the apple cart (once again), if I disconnect my MAF at idle with the engine warm, the engine carries on as if nothing happened. .. until you try to rev it, at which point it gulps at the air like a goldfish trying to fly and fails to get anywhere.. But the fundamental point here is that you cannot trust the "disconnect the MAF" test. Clearly my MAF works, because the car becomes undriveable without it, but clearly the idle program is not perturbed by it being unplugged. Also it's worth noting that resetting the ECU without doing the whole basic settings procedure *can* potentially leave the ECU's adaptation way off kilter. In most cases it appears to adapt pretty quickly and get on with life, but that isn't a fix-all... Anything can happen with a self-calibration system. It could get it very very wrong. I'm sure Bosch worked very hard to make that unlikely, but it's just statistics.

Hah, makes sense! :)

You may benefit from a rebuild if it's drinking oil, yes. Pressure and leak-down tests should isolate whether it's rings or valves though.

It has to be the control itself, surely .. ! Dismantle it!

Depends what you mean by rebuild... A full rebore, piston rings, valve guides, valve seals, timing chains job will cost you near £3k, no matter how you slice the cookies. A top end rebuild, however, is likely to be more palatable ...

Perhaps someone can explain what BAM is? Big Assed Motor?

It occurs to me the graph will be reading in Nm not lbft then. So 210 Nm is about 150 lbft, which is around 30 lbft down on a healthy VR! Good call on the earthing, I think a lot of people are replacing temperature sensors without checking this out first. The VR uses an 80 deg thermostat usually, so you should get a proper one before you put it all back together!

Your ECU might have been swapped at some point maybe? What's the part number on your ECU? Anyway, if you definitely don't have it, probably not worth worrying about. Might be the fuel pump btw .. You're building just enough pressure to start the car but then it's dropping when it tries to keep it fuelled? Does that fit with the symptoms? Does the engine stop dead as if the key was removed or cough splutter to death?

There's an immobiliser in the ECU ... (I note you have a late - M reg - VR6). There's a reader coil in the steering column that talks to the key. Try the spare key. If that doesn't work you might be lucky and find the reader coil has come dislodged and slid down the column - re-fix it in place. If that fails try the connection between the reader coil and the immobiliser control box (apparently this can corrode). If that fails you'll have to replace it all ... An ECU measuring block scan will reveal that "Engine authorised to start: 0" if the immobiliser doesn't get the right info back from the key.

I'm guessing that your Optima is somewhat higher capacity than the 64Ah bosch then Kev..? If I get three years from the 64Ah Bosch I should be ecstatic then, considering they're only £40 in Costco! I think the thing is, you should buy the right battery for the right purpose. The Bosch silver is a starter battery, it's not designed to be discharged, at all. It's designed to deliver a big dose of current and start the car, then it should be immediately and completely recharged again. Running big ICE and stuff where you know you're going to drain a lot of current without running the engine, you really need a deep cycle battery - which is specifically designed to be discharged then recharged then discharged ... and so on. As for the current drain, I've heard many many people say that their car draws a constant 150-300 mA even when everything is turned off. That's only 3-5 watts or something, but over three weeks it's more than enough to flatten any battery. As for Northstar's stunt, I'm not sure that shooting at a battery means anything at all in terms of how long it's going to last ...

Optima: They're well known in ICE circles I take it? My Bosch was a fit and forget for the first three years too, but now that I regularly leave the car standing for a week at a time (just because I can walk to work), it goes flat in this cold weather. I really have to find out which electrical circuit is draining the power ..

I found 17.9 bhp under the rear armrest, where the medical kit was supposed to sit ... :)

They get paid more as a subcontractor if they fix it... :)

I think they all do that when the top end is getting a bit tired. Mine does it too. It'll probably quieten down after a good long motorway cruise (I mean an hour or more). Get used to it or get a refurbed cylinder head...

Now I think I like black wheels on a "black" C (ok it's not black, but it looks black in the pics..).

Did you swap the rear light clusters at some point? There's a whole bunch of pins in there which can short to the wrong wires if you refit them anything less than incredibly carefully ..

Old age?

True indeed.. Probably preferable to toast the engine with redline revs till you can stop. But then, the question is really: how clearly would you think about that if it happened to you?