dr_mat

If it's that loud it's more likely to be the belt tensioner for the aux belt. That doesn't like cold starts in winter .. £60+VAT from the dealer.. But that's pretty obviously on the other end of the engine from the timing chains ..

"turn up in person" ...? Dead right mate, if you don't turn up, they'll very much have a tendency to throw the book at you.

(We had a pug main dealer write off the ECU on the missus' 206 once. They offered to replace it at a bargain price of only £800+VAT. Dealers are very quick to claim it's the ECU... Turned out the transponder reader coil was dodgy, so the ECU wasn't unlocking. £35 fix. They assumed that since they couldn't get any diags off the ECU it must be faulty... The same guy who diagnosed this for us now works on my VR when weird stuff is happening. He knows his auto electrics! I spoke to him about my crank sensor^w^wunichip probs just recently, which is why I am so wise in the ways of failing crank sensors ...)

It does sound like a crank sensor to me, too.. Thing is, it's very difficult to find a crank sensor fault, and they might be saying it's the ECU just because they can't say for sure it's anything else.. Take the car to an automotive electrician and ask him to check the output from the crank sensor. It's pretty obvious if it's fecked. (They tend to lose resolution when they get hot ... and then can work fine after the block cools down a bit..)

Sounds very much like the lambda buggered to me!

CDs have infinite low frequency bandwidth, but you're right - none contain any 1Hz sounds because microphones won't pick it up ... Every subjective review of this gizmo has been positive, it's certainly capable of producing some serious air movement at extremely low frequencies. As for being any USE, that I seriously doubt. Nice little science project, but that's about all.

I like my OE Sony tape player in the VR, thanks .. :) This one was geared more towards home cinema use, but they are talking of doing a smaller version for ICE use..

Well, it's a cunning trick, but it's ineffectual for anything you can realistically hear. It's role is really to fill in that really deep stuff that gives you visceral impact for e.g. explosions and so on. It's a sub-sub-woofer, really. You'd still need a decent standard sub to fill in the 30-100Hz range that's weak on normal speakers.

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2005/10/31/world ... subwoofer/ Note that we've already figured out it's NOT the worlds-most-powerful-sub. But it's certainly the one that goes the deepest ... >110 dB @ 1-30 Hz

What engine you got?

Any old motor electrician should be able to put an oscilloscope on the crank sensor and be able to tell you if the signal looks good or not. I could be mistaken, but I would expect the ECU to fire a spark even if the fuel pump fuse was removed. But it might be the immobiliser's key reader coil too. All will become clear with a decent sparky and/or a copy of VAGCOM!

Might be talking rubbish (for a change), but I'm sure I heard that some distributor cars can suffer wear in the bearings the rotor arm spins on, resulting in problems like this .. Might be time to change the entire distributor unit (which includes the hall sender).

Putting the shuttle into space is just as easy, it's just following procedures you've done hundreds of times before.. But you'll see even fewer people doing that than building their own engines.. I mean, even painting the wall is pretty easy too, but there's a right way and a wrong way .. Lots more ways to screw it up means lots more people won't bother trying! :)

Adjustable column was a £91 option on some cars ... Funny how that translates into a £537+VAT spare part ten years later, huh?

There were Corrados with fixed columns, too. (Lucky buggers!)

The crank sensor is a git to diagnose on the Corrado VR6. If the crank sensor shows as a "implausible signal - intermittent" while the engine is running, then chances are it's faulty. But if it's faulty, generally the engine will stall immediately, so you'll just go back to getting "no signal" reported for it, so it's hard to say ... If it says "open circuit" or "short to ground" or something like that, it's definitely fubar, but the engine will NOT RUN AT ALL if the sensor is that badly gone. I think you have a lambda sensor problem.

Can you just weld the fecker shut? Who needs tilt anyway? I'd rather have the steering feel I have now, thankyouverymuch..

Thought so! Pesky punctuation, eh? :)

Sounds like a "buffer" tank to keep the line pressure up during sudden peaks of fuel demand. It would be better to have a fuel pump that worked ok...

That's not what I said ... read it again! :-P

..

Ouch. Crank sensor is £132 + VAT, but you do know that always shows up if the engine isn't running, right? Lambda probe is about £60 I think? Not sure on that one. You can get them from GSF, but there's been some discussion about the quality of them..? It may have been a temporary glitch though - reset the error codes and see what happens ..

Check operation of the throttle position sensor (easiest done using VAGCOM, but I guess you can probably also check it with a multimeter). Definitely worth checking for engine error codes while you're there. Also get the basic settings re-done to calibrate the throttle sensor.

Do you have to turn the water off if you change a washer on your taps?

So, come on then, given that you now have had the opportunity to use my hard earned cash as a test base for your own benefit, please give the rest of us the knowledge!