dr_mat

But if a vehicle has no tax/MOT/insurance, Mr Duck has already ignored a pocket full of letters ...

Heh, yes. I'll dig the pic out later if I get time ..

Earthing problems? Serious vibration causing contact problems on the sensor? Weird symptoms ..

No, it's pretty easy to swap from what I hear. I wouldn't swap it unless it's bust though, no point. You'll know - it's full of dirty old oil and will leave sticky black crap all over your subframe below it if it's gone ... :) A lot of people suggest you use solid ones/uprated ones/golf diesel ones (i.e. a bit stiffer); which is fine - if that's what you want. But if you're looking to keep the car standard you'd be better off sticking with VW part, cos otherwise you'll hear a little bit more gearbox whine inside the cabin.

8 - Ship it in parts. It's not a "car" then..?

Trouble is, the no-insurance, no-MOT brigade are unlikely to get caught by this. There's going to be lots of "you don't have insurance" fines going to a Mr D Duck when this system goes live .. The worst off under this system will be the careless (or on-holiday!), but generally law abiding Joe Blogs who forgets to do his tax/insurance/MOT renewal.. Yet another thin wedge into our civil liberties that means you more and more have to justify your existence at every turn, rather than the police having to prove you did something wrong ... As for the lack of calibration - I agree, it would be hard to prove it in court if challenged, but it doesn't take much for them to change the law and make this feasible. Calibrated positioning lines on the road a-la near current gatsos would be all they require to make accurate position and therefore average speed statements.

RAC/AA will insist on doing the "long" inspection at around the £3-400 mark because the car is a bit older. Steep, if you ask me. :roll:

.. and don't forget to try the same test in reverse. The gearbox mount seems to be the first to go, and you can only tell that that's gone by using the reverse gear test.

I got Stealth to change mine .. ;) (In fact, they only changed it cos it had to come off to do the timing chains ..)

Don't think early cars had ABS, no.

Save your money. Starting April '06 the NPR number plate recognition computer goes national, and they have the right to track every number off every car and save the data for up to TWO YEARS, without a court order or even any legal justification required. They *claim* this is to help them find uninsured/untaxed cars on the road, but hey, we all know it's easily and quickly extendable into the "average speed calculation" automagic speeding ticket realm... And let's face it, the crims don't provide their correct details so all the uninsured, untaxed problem cars on the road won't receive any comeback anyway. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/15 ... _database/

I'd get it fixed. The engine is designed to be run with water temp > 80 deg. That's what the thermostat CLOSES in the first place for!

Had exactly the same symptoms on an old cavalier once - it was the thermostat stuck open. And let's face it, why would the blue temp sensor read correctly while sitting in traffic and wrong while moving at speed?

Sounds like the thermostat is stuck open to me ...

No! Just the coil in the steering column. Unfortunately that comes from VW as part of the "immobiliser kit", which includes the control box... The coil itself should cost no more than £10, but since they won't sell it on it's own ... It may not be broken anyway, it may just have slipped out of place and need re-fixing.

That sounds like the ECU immobiliser to me ... relies on the sensor coil in the steering column picking up the signal from the chip in the key. Try a different key first... Note this is distinct from the VAG/Scorpion 5000 alarm/immobiliser, and is built in to the ECU.

Another satisfied customer .. ?

Do you know who did the conversion? Maybe they relocated the diags port? Maybe they wired up the standard G60 ports (under the gear gator - the 2x2 plugs)?

It would help if you defined "no power" a bit better. It could be cam sensor, but you'd only lose a portion of power output, so it'd just feel a bit flat. It wouldn't be a 1.1 though, so "slow" is subjective ... Does it smoke? Use oil? Does it stutter or just pull smoothly through the revs but without real shove? What MPG are you getting? VAG-COM/VW diags kit will help you just by telling you if all your engine sensors work as they should..

Re: testing MAFs - neither could I .. :) I remembered some comments from Kev's posts about his recent adventures in OBD2 land, but not much more than that ... :)

Where'd you get 6000rpm from? It's proportional to air mass, not revs but the output should be around 1V at idle, which equates to an air mass 'learned value' of 9 - 10 g/s usually. Red wire on 6pin MAFs and the blue/red wire on 4 pin jobs are your output signal wires. I made it all up, to prove a point. It's not *that* easy to test the MAF as you well know kev, so I didn't want anyone thinking they should expect to be able to diagnose a faulty MAF using a multimeter and seeing "some volts". Chris's comment was "I think it should be 4.5v" which is (no offence to chris) about as useful as a chocolate teapot... :) My comments aren't much more helpful, (I don't have your first hand experience with faulty MAF sensors, kevHotwire ), but I think serve to explain a little more about what to expect from a MAF sensor. (Of course it's proportional to air mass, but it's going to peak at full throttle and high RPM isn't it?) Chris said the MAF can cause stalling, he didn't suggest it is the problem. People are sharing their experiences. It's up to the thread starter if he wants to spend £300 on a MAF or not...... That paragraph wasn't aimed at Chris.. Sure, if Johnny_L wants to spend £x00 based on the word of the previous owner of his car, go for it, it's not my money. (But I think he doesn't want to do that, otherwise he wouldn't have asked the all-knowing Corrado Forum would he?) Anyway, I would wager that the previous owner didn't know what was causing the fault either, Johnny_L, so I'd be inclined to start diagnosing from scratch IIWY. NOW you see my point? Only trying to help, as usual .. Got jumped on, as usual .. I always think a VAG-COM scan is a good idea ... never disagreed with anyone there...

Don't forget the ECU basic settings procedure .. which some cars don't seem to need, but it was done for a reason ..

Watching 5th gear last night the lingering memory (apart from the Vauxhall barge and the "boring TT" comments), was how impressive it is that Tiff can do his piece to camera without stalls, stutters or without even looking like he's trying, WHILE throwing a car round a corner and applying opposite lock ...

Since it's a surcharge, you get it BACK when you take your old part in .. ;)

Errr.. the VR is also setup to run 98 octane by default, obviously.. ;) It has knock sensors to protect itself from rubbish petrol..