dr_mat

Hmm, I think I really need to do both door panels, not too bad I suppose..

Where/how did you get the dents pulled Nick? What was the approximate cost (for how many)? There's a few on mine too, and one day I'm sure I'll get around to fixing them..

You won't get 200bhp from a Schrick manifold, unless your VR is already pushing 200 bhp.. It's an inlet manifold, which drastically improves mid-rev torque on the (slightly lazy) VR engine. Top end power is unchanged, to any measurable degree. Schrick manifold is expensive - £1500 new plus about 2-3 hours fitting! Which VR6 do you have? The 2.9 Corrado one tends to push 200bhp without tweakage (mine did!), but the 2.8 Golf one requires a bit more coaxing .. Apparently the later 12v Highline Golfs are more powerful though, and obviously the 24v VR6 is more powerful still.

You're right, it's probably not going to ruin anything, but it's not very professional..! Vince is a good guy, but on my past experiences I feel like I need to double check everything they've done all the time, which is not good.

Well they'll have MORE sidewall, so are likely to be less direct and more squishy .. Might be better to go for 195/50/15s if you can get them.

I've not had chance to speak to anyone at all about it yet.. "put 5.5 litres in rather than 6" - too right, cos 5.5 litres is the book capacity of the VR! If you have an oil cooler it may be different.

The book for the VR says 5.5 litres..

Funnily enough I checked my oil today, first time after a stealth service ... hey presto, overfilled! I was suspicious when they charged my for 6 litres of oil and didn't find any half-empty cans in the car, but assumed they were more professional than that. No I don't have an oil cooler... Time to drive carefully I think. What's the most *reliable* way of draining some oil off? Sump plug? Don't wanna dump it all on the floor in the road outside my house...

I would say it should be levelled at politicians as a whole, unpleasant, reactionary, vote-grabbing people all of 'em!

I don't think it's fair to single out Labour for criticism here Jim, you know very well the others would be exactly the same .. This petrol taxation escalator has been in place since the 70s (if not before), and it's always worked the same, no matter who was in power..

This is the issue: the petrol suppliers actually have a lot of competition amongst themselves, and their profit margins (on the fuel) are relatively slim. The people making the most out of this are the government. I never understood why fuel tax wasn't a fixed levy of e.g. 40p/litre, instead of this current system where they get a %age so every time the oil goes up, so does taxation... Of course, fuel in this world is too cheap on the whole, otherwise people wouldn't drive so many heinously inefficient cars (ahem). Well ok, but I do 6k miles/yr in my VR at 24mpg. What about the company BMW X5s doing 25k miles/yr at 18mpg?

One thing to note about remaps is they very rarely alter the idling and part-throttle running characteristics. On the VR engines, the ECU totally controls fuelling and ignition during part-throttle running based on the lambda and MAF readings ONLY. If someone remaps your car all they will likely do is modify the fixed "full throttle" program. Don't believe all the "smoother running" business unless they spend rather more time on the chip than they initially suggest! A rechip on a N/A engine only really becomes a good idea where you have significantly altered the air-flow characteristics of the engine. And I mean significantly. filter and exhaust is not significant, and is well within the parameters of the original chip. On many cars the original chip can even cope ok with the Schrick manifold, which gives you 40 lbft torque!! Do lots of research before you decide to go down the rechip route...

Shocks can clunk when they're worn, particularly when they're cold.

Variable compression ratio never caught on, for some reason. Probably too expensive. But Saab got 250 reliable bhp out of a light-pressure turbo-ed 1.6 block! Can you imagine remapping a tri-fuel car?!?

Radweld is what you put in cars to get them through the next 2 months when you're trying to sell the car. Ahem .. if you happen to be an east end car trader that is. It's no more a long term solution than sticking plasters. Why do a bodge job when it sounds like you're serious about the car? As a side note, it appears someone radwelded my radiator up about 4 years ago (the radiator was then replaced by the car's next owner), and despite numerous coolant flushes, the coolant still goes nasty brown colour within two days of fitting. Not good.

You talking about the push from the brake vacuum assist coming in when you start the engine? Or an ABS pump pulse? Afaik (and I didn't design it mind), the ABS doesn't operate any valves at all until the 10kph self test.

There's no ABS pulse through the pedal until you drive away and hit 10kph, when it runs through the valve self-tests. Anything else that happens is a figment of your imagination...

Also make sure that the rear light clusters are cabled correctly - no bent pins. I was doing my nut in for about a week with indicators that sometimes worked .. until I found that they worked fine as long as I didn't have my foot on the brakes ...!

Check all the manifold hoses around the ISV. It seems unlikely that the ISV has suddenly failed completely, but .. who knows? Might be worth pulling the ISV off and testing it yourself.

Well .. tappets are kept quiet by oil pressure, so if you'd not even run the car up there's little or no hope of them coming up to pressure... We were all assuming you'd run them normally for a few hundred miles!

Surely it's a "weather system" of storms?

Some GSF tappets are the same as VW ones, yes. But not all.. (GSF switch suppliers any time they like, depending on what's available and cheap.) I am sure I have one noisy one too. This is the second set.. There is always the probability that it's some slightly blocked oil line inside the head that's causing all these people to report problems. These cars are pretty old now!

Many many people complain of noisy tappets both before AND after replacing them on VR6s. A lot of it comes down to duff tappets from GSF, but I'm sure it can't *all* be related to that.

Yes, they closed down for the week. Back on Monday.

Ok I see, yeah, I can imagine you're a bit knacked .. :) But I guess it's all worth it, hey? I like the idea of the throttle body swap myself, having gone the VGI route I see it as a "free" (as in speech) performance boost, and anything that improves driveability can only be good on the VR ..