dr_mat

They are refurbed (exchange) parts that you're supplied with, but they've been cleaned and refitted with new piston seal kits. I'm assuming the pistons would have been replaced too, if they were worn. You can't tell the difference to look at them (other than the "X" in the part number), they look brand new.

Stealth were trying to get them for me, but their suppliers have been failing to deliver them for months... Thanks for the info.

Ok, having driven the VR for a week or more with the unichip bypassed it's running great, so I spoke to Vince and we agreed it's got to be the unichip that's faulty. He's going to replace it when I'm up next time. Now all I need is a set of Corrado VR6 goodridge bloody hoses. Apparently the factory are all on holiday or something ... ?!

Front calipers aren't too pricey. Mine is binding too, since putting new discs+pads on, and the guides have been cleaned and greased a plenty. Refurbed front VR6 calipers are £45 ish from the dealers. Weird thing is mine are fine when cold ... Problem is with the worn disks and pads, the caliper never fully retracts so it's easy for the last bit of travel to become sticky.

Kinda worrying that he thinks 5% of the people on the road are engaged in criminal activity. Next time you sit in a traffic jam, think about that statistic... Is it you?

That's cos of the tyres .. there's a few sets on ebay with tyres around that price, but you could always sell the tyres on. Steel wheels on their own seem to be fetching peanuts.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/VW-Golf-Mk4-Steel ... dZViewItem Might be a little high-profile tyres for a C, but hey.. :) There's a few sets on ebay.

That was a crap 'chop. Sorry, it was ... Blindingly obvious. And I'm not even any good at it. :-P

This is true. The fast circuits, in some respects, give a slight advantage to the FWD crowd. But for slow, tight circuits you've really gotta drive the back wheels.

Oh yeah, and it occurs that if the ECU has no power the rev counter won't twitch when you're turning the starter over .. It should move a little when on the starter if the ECU is active and trying to start the car. (The dials are all electronic, iirc.)

109 is the ECU relay, iirc. The starter will still turn, even if the ECU is dead.

Not many people choose Corrados for track cars. Too heavy and front wheel drive ... (He has a point there..)

Exactly - they record it, no reason you shouldn't aswell. It's even worse if you're doing stuff on the web. They will deny all knowledge unless you "printed it out". Which is a laugh.. Anyone with half a braincell can fake a screenfull of whatever it is you want to prove ...

I didn't say that's what you'll pay if they're in a good mood, just that that's what some nebulous "market rate" says is about right for the car... I'm paying a lot less than that, too, and I was quoted £395 without modifications this year ..!!

The insurance "market rate" for old gits with full no claims in medium risk areas on Corrado VR6s is about £800/yr, so unless you've got that full no claims I'd be expecting around a grand plus for insurance, particularly given your age. Though the low miles might help if you can keep the car securely garaged.

I'm sure if we had a "bad insurance company thread" pretty much all companies would show up sooner or later. You ask enough people and you'll find bad stories about every insurance company. A little more context might allow folks to decide for themselves if the insurance company behaved fraudulently or stupidly?

First of all you need to check if you're getting fuel/spark. Is you're not, it's likely to be the immobiliser, ignition switch or crank sensor. If you have fuel but no spark, it's the coil, if you have spark but no fuel it's the pump (or it's relay!). If you have neither it could well be relay 109 - if you have a grey one, it's known to "rot" with age, so get a new one asap. The later black ones are supposed to be ok. HTH.

Yep, didn't think it looked right. Copy+paste from das internet .. :)

BTW: One SAE/British Horsepower is 746 watts/0.746 kilowatts. One DIN/JIS HP/PS (euro/japan horsepower) is 735.5 watts. SAE = Society of Automotive Engineers. DIN = Deutsches Institut fuer Normung. ISO = International Standards Organisation. PS = Abbreviation for German term for horsepower. (~ Pferdestarke) JIS = Japanese Standards Institute. 1 DIN/JIS/PS hp = 0.986 SAE/British hp So 223 SAE hp (UK/US measure) is 226 PS/DIN @ wheel (euro/japan measure) In other words there's pretty much feck all difference between DIN and SAE. eg: Bugatti Veyron: 1001 PS, 986 bhp.

Congratulations. (To him/her!) So he has a 7k rpm rev limiter, and some "interesting" cams and valve springs..? Consider the Honda VTEC - 6500rpm rev limiter gives you a healthy 150bhp. 8000rpm limiter and the same block and head (ok but with variable valve lift/timing) gives you 200+bhp.. Funnily enough I have heard tell of a bvh 2.9 VR6 with Schrick cams and standard ECU (rechipped) achieving around the 245bhp @crank figure in the UK. Bearing in mind this is with a standard 6500rpm rev limit ..

FWIW I'm 100% that it's NOT the crank sensor (in my case). Two reasons: - motor electrician says crank sensor signal is clean, clear and sharp, at the sensor - VAG-COM is clean + error free when chip is bypassed

225bhp at the wheels implies something like 260bhp at the crank. Which is easy if you push the redline out to 7-8k rpm. You need 200lbft at ~7000 rpm to make 260bhp. Not many standard VRs will make power at those revs though....

The early VR6 ECUs had an output wire that could be used to trigger the VSR flap, but you needed the VSR EPROM to make that work. The rare combination of VSR, VSR EPROM and early VR6 ECU was a factory-quality job, and would be a joy to live with, compared to the Unichip.. The unichip is quite slow to react. If you're running with the schrick and you have pinking issues, you'll have to be careful. Progressive onto the throttle if you're in the Schrick zone, otherwise it'll pink for .5 secs until the unichip gets it's act together. I wish I'd gone the custom EPROM route now, no question. The Schrick control unit works with any ECU, because it taps directly into the RPM wire that comes out of the ECU, and it therefore does it's own switching.

Stealth were kind enough to post me a bypass plug for the unichip a few days back, and it's fixed my problems.. so it seems the unichip is failing. Reconnect it and the car is hiccuping again like mad, and I'm getting crank sensor errors in the ECU. Very weird!! But nice to know there's nothing wrong with my crank sensor, anyway. Glad I didn't fork out for one of those then!!

Yes it does - green ones are less exclusive - there were plenty of standard VRs that were identical. The blue was a Storm-only colour.