dr_mat

Your best bet is to stick a ammeter on the system to check what mA are being drawn when the car is off. Then try locking and setting the alarm. Most often it's the 3rd party alarms that cause these kind of problems...

Did they tell you how much it costs to do the rear axle bushes?? Bit pricey! Rear bump stop replacement requires stripping the struts down too - you may aswell put new shocks in while you're having that done. (120k is not a bad life for a shock, plus they'll only cost about £30 each + VAT, which will be less than the fitting cost..)

I bet that's a major loss to the European Space programme.. ;) :lol: I think the ultimate G-forces experienced by human beings were back when they ran some tests with a rocket powered sled hitting water brakes (I can't recall the reason at the time). I think the "lucky volunteer" experienced something like 30Gs momentarily. It pretty much screwed them up, and made them very very ill for a month or more after a single test.

You wanna take a ride in the space shuttle.. It looks all gentle and calm, but it's pushing 7-8Gs on take off... 0-600mph in a few seconds... :shock:

First things first on stuff like this is to make ABSOLUTELY DOUBLE-CHECKED SURE that it's not just somethin smacking around in the glove box, or the shelves underneath it. The number of times I've been trying to work out what "that strange noise" is and realised it's just the phone/screwdriver/tape/bit of metal I wedged in the glove box two days earlier is just not true... In fact once I had a sound like a stone rolling around on plastic. Funnily enough, I found a stone rolling around on a plastic shelf, but it took three days to find it... :) Assuming you've taken everything out of the car and it still makes the noise, then you're looking for suspension probs by the sounds of it - struts, top mounts, even brake caliper carriers are possibles. The only real way to tell is to get the car jacked up and stand underneath pushing and pulling things! Make sure your ball joints are ok, also checking the steering parts (track rod ends etc), then check the wishbone mounts, and move on to stuff like the steering rack!

I thought some kind soul had shipped their old pulleys over to you PhatVR6? Or did I imagine that? ??

PhatVR6, did you decide on whether you're going to offer this service, btw? I'm pretty sure my tensioner is pretty knacked, so I need to look into replacing it. I'll confirm this weekend.. How much do you want for a refurbed one?

I believe the phrase you're looking for is "put up and shut up", unfortunately... :(

Pleasure. No, they were the first place I saw the practise of inserting *s into words, rather than replacing letters with *s... You can work the rest out for yourself... ;)

dr_mat, I'm curious...please fill the blanks for my benifit :?: You don't read The Rockall Times then? http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk

There's plenty of cars that can leave scoobies for dead too, so the whole argument will very quickly disappear up it's own a***rse.

There's more sheer physical grip in any standard Corrado than any early generation Golf. That extra weight doesn't just work against you in the corners, it works for you too...

Exhaust - ignore it. Replace it when it's blowing. It's a dual-skinned exhaust, so even if the outside is rusted through, it's not necessarily blowing, and it's not gonna fail an MOT for a bit of rust. Cat heatshield - the only reason this was installed was to prevent the cat from setting fire to any grass you park on. Oil cooler seals costs a few pennies and 10 minutes to fit. Ribbed belts - good question I'll be interested to hear the answer. There's only one belt by the way. Think they're about £25 from VW. Fuel pump relay will be a few quid from VW. In other words, you're lucky!

How big is the stock pulley then?? :?:

Yuck. Looks a lot like the Nissan 350Z. Which stands for "ugly". Have car designers forgotten how to design rear-ends or WHAT? And what about that "bigger wheels at the back" look? WTF??

Interesting about the first point - but still, if it's a hand-held laser gun, the guy operating it will have a pretty fair idea how fast you're *really* going, and if they have any suspicions they'll pull you anyway. Not sure if they can "search" the car - probably not, but lets face it, a display on the dash, any display on the dash is going to attract attention, and it doesn't require a search warrant to look through your window, does it? IMHO I feel it's not worth the risk of annoying some guy who can take your license away, regardless of the legality or otherwise of jammers. If I covered significant mileage on roads I don't know, I'd be investing in a GPS based warning system, possibly with a radar/laser detector aswell, but I'd definitely be steering clear of jammers, no matter how sophisticated. My 10p. :)

It's open to debate, Henny, but as the law currently stands they would charge you with impeding the course of justice, or preventing an officer from carrying out his duty. They attempted to make use of the post office act that makes it illegal to intercept a communication where you are not the intended recipient. They claimed that by blocking or jamming the "signal" you were in breach of this law, but that was challenged in court on the basis that it's not an actual "signal" as such, because it doesn't carry any information. The mere presence of a wave form does not form a signal. Hence the current confusion and reliance on the more freely defined "impeding the course..". But on the whole I'd say it's not worth carrying a jammer. A detector, fine, they are in no way illegal, but jammers are dodgy ground.

Yup, but in practice if you get pulled and have one in the car, they will find a way to annoy you, even if it's not plugged in.

That's what I like, subtle, under the skin mods. That's the beauty of the C VR6. The only external clue to the power underneath is the little badge on the front/back and the five-stud wheels. Even the exhaust note just sounds subtlely sporty, not in yer face. That's why *I* haven't traded in for an RX-8 yet...

Thought the aux water pump *was* running all the time the ignition is on? Mine does!

BTW - it's also possible that you've simply got a badly adjusted handbrake cable. If the calipers have been swapped in the past for slightly different designs, the handbrake cable has to be adjusted to compensate. If that's your only evidence that the calipers are sticky, I'd say it wasn't conclusive, and certainly not worth the £120 minimum to replace the rear calipers! I'd investigate some more, if I were you.

Even easier than that - go for a sprint down the motorway. If they're significantly hot when you get back, they're sticking!

So you did that yourself then...? Would you do mine for £150? ;)

My mate's 40k mile Audi A3 has a clattering noise that's the gearbox shafts, so it's not unusual to hear some noise there even on new cars..

Running costs won't be comparable to any MkII Golf, I would add to the excellent info in the buying guide. Insurance group 18, exclusivity, and many parts being dealer-only means they cost a LOT more than the average old VW to run. Plus there's just so much to go wrong on them..