dr_mat

Does your dash show any other weirdness? Speedo needle jumping? Fuel gauge unreliable? Does the light come on/go off relating to engine revs? Is it effected by having the headlights on, or the rear screen heaters or something? Do the headlights dim significantly when the engine cooling fans come on? See, it may well be that under light load the alternator is ok, providing 13.8v, but under heavy current load it's struggling. But if the battery holds charge (as you say, you leave the car for a few days and it still fires the car up ok - be worth checking the volts it produces first mind) then I don't think the battery is at fault.

Is the light that smart? AFAIK the light only tells you if the available volts from the alternator drops - it's a warning that the alternator can't provide enough volts/current to run the car (and therefore charge the battery), not an indication of the battery condition. Ok, reading back through this thread, it looks like: 1) your battery is holding charge and providing 12+ volts - battery is ok 2) your alternator is providing around 13+ volts (even with the warning light on) - alternator is ok .. but the light still comes on. Looks more like a problem with the warning light's circuit! Perhaps there's a voltage regulator problem on the dash? Anyone seen this before?

Nope, cos the alternator is fine...

Mine didn't pink for some time either, but then it started doing so and it wouldn't go away...

You may find that the standard ECU can handle it, up to a point. Ultimately you'll really need a remap though, otherwise the car will probably pink.

Hehe my dead battery was reading 11v just after a charge. 30 minutes later it was down to 7v .. :lol:

Yeah, can't remember exactly what mine's putting out, tbh. All I was saying was not to write it off just because it's shy of 13v. If it pushes out 12.4v all day long, then you're on a winner, just as much as if it pushes out 13v. Last time I checked my alternator it was reading about 14.2v too.

On the contrary - the missus added me to her insurance this year, and the price went down by £40 ... But then, she's 27 with one accident in the last 2 years and I'm 31 with none.. (Almost impossible to have accidents in a Corrado, they break down before you get there. ;) )

Agreed, but I'd say 13 volts with the engine off is optimistic - ISTR my brand new, fully charged Bosch Silver put out about 12.4v on it's own. In other words, don't worry about it unless it's below 12v, or if it shows any signs of decaying while you're monitoring it. (If it's creeping down 0.01v every 20 seconds or so, it's not going to last very long!) BTW Costco often sell Bosch Silver batteries, at prices even lower than GSF... (Sorry Stevemac .. ;) )

Adrian Flux are a broker, you're probably insured with Highway at the back of it all...

Sell it to me for £4k! ;)

Check your gearbox mount. Maybe it's collapsed and the noise is being transmitted to the chassis unchecked.

Aren't you gonna seriously upset the handling balance by having wider tyres at the rear? More understeer?

When my battery went, I found that I could charge it overnight and it'd manage 12v in the morning. After a single startup of the car, and then a drive to work, and being parked all day, I found it was down to 7 volts... But it was still managing to turn the engine over, albeit slowly!! On closer inspection I found all but two cells were pretty much dry, and decided to get a new one.. No problems since.

True enough - no recall, but every car that went for service had them all replaced FOC if they'd not been done before.

Hey, M777CUSGTI, I understand totally your meaning :wink:, I'll be sending the lads round to "liberate" your C in the morning. I'm sure your insurance company will furnish the £5k lump sum before too long. ;)

I think you're right there, I sincerely doubt that even a very new laser barcode reader could scan the code through a mucky windscreen at an angle of up to 45 degrees (fighting partial beam reflection) on a moving car from over 20 yards... Think how often they fail to read the bar code from 3 inches away off that tin of baked beans in the supermarket... ;)

The new ones are fine, but pretty much EVERY coil pack that was fitted to a VAG car during 2000/2001 timeframe has been recalled and replaced. Maybe yours missed that recall? They ALL die, and if you're unlucky and you get sold stock from the bad batch, yours will die again! New ones from the dealer supply network should last much longer though. At one point this problem was costing Audi UK around £100,000 a DAY just in hire cars for people waiting for replacement coil packs. It's crazy!!

No Kev, for once we are in complete agreement! :)

Hehe quite possibly... :) More likely it's because kit cars on average get kept in garages, trailered to race tracks, then trailered home again. People who spend upwards of 300 hours building a car are more likely to take care of it. (Ironically the average person has to work for between 500 and 1000 hours to actually PAY for their normal car, yet they still don't take as much care of them!!) Note that these are all sweeping generalisations, and therefore any exceptions to the rule only serve to *support* my argument!! :-P

Vince has a point. A standard VR6 gains almost nothing from a rechip (I frankly don't believe AMD's +10bhp). Part throttle response is governed by the MAF and lambda in a closed loop, the idle is governed by the idle program, and if the WOT map was so far out, you would have pinking or a dead catalyst... If you've modified the engine, sure, a rechip can help. For example, those of us with VSR/VGI often find a bit of pinking from 3k->4k rpm where the ECU simply can't believe how much air the MAF tells it is coming into the engine, so it starts adjusting the MAF adaptation, and starts leaning down the mixture. And then you get pinking ... And yeah, he wants to sell you a 3.1l rebore and supercharger kit first... ;)

Yeah and the reason's simple! You are less likely to make a claim in your kit car!!

You can expect a lighter wallet, and slightly smoother performance across the range, maybe an extra few hp here or there.

I thought agreed value policies were underwritten by an external company - your primary insurer pays you their going rate, and the agreed-value part of the policy (usually underwritten by someone else) pays the difference, up to your agreed value.

Perhaps I overstate, but you'd have to admit, the steering feel *is* down to the vibration that comes up from the wheels, through the chassis and up the firewall into the steering column. If you bush the car with bushes soft enough to not make it crash on bad roads, you lose that feel. Anyway, it wasn't my point to belittle the corrado's suspension, just to point out that it's minor shortcomings are what provides that touch of magic that you can't get with modern cars.