dr_mat

S'funny, when someone has droning disk brakes, I expected them to mention that the disks are *grooved* as one of the very first things!! :lol:

I think the mileometer itself will be more accurate, because it's linear. Clearly the inaccuracy on the speedo (at least in this case) in non-linear. Also because when they are designing the instruments, the milometer is designed to be correct, whereas the speedo is designed to read +5%, to make sure that it's NEVER reading low. (There's a law that says they can't read low, but no such law effects mileometers.)

Weird. You have got plenty of pad left, haven't you?

Question 1: what car is it? 2: how low is low?

I'll be interested to hear how you get on, and what you do to fix it if it *is* the steering column. (£75 sounds too cheap for a complex casting like that for a VW though!!)

Sounds a lot like I'm suffering from, and the current thinking is steering column bearings, and more specifically the adjustable steering column parts. It seems to be helped by jacking the wheel up a notch (i.e. make sure the top UJ is at an angle), probably because it's been set in the "straight through" position all it's life, and that's the position that's worn the most.. No doubt it's expensive... Oh, by the way, I had *really* scary handling for a while, and that was found out to be very slightly loose wheel nuts, plus a completely unbalanced wheel, and a tyre at 45psi (I didn't put it like that!). The tracking being out didn't help either...

Would it be dependant on how bumpy the surface is?

I'd say it's most likely due to something else. I'm not really aware of any actual speed-sensitivity to the steering at all. AFAIK there's no physical or electrical link from anything that knows the road speed to the steering mechanism.

Two reasons, or two 8vs? Never mind, it's not important..

Hey, that sounds like a good reason to buy an 8v! Someone found one, at last! ;) ;)

Try kicking the steering wheel angle up a notch, you might find it's the adjustable steering column...

IMHO, if an alloy wheel is so badly protected that leaving brake dust on it for a week or two (hell, or even a couple of months) can permanently damage the surface, then frankly that's a bit crap and the company that didn't put enough laquer on your wheels in the first place should pay for it. Back in the real world, where you have to remove the wheels from the car to clean the inner rims, we don't all have time to do that every 4 weeks... Hell, sometimes I'm not even parked in my own street, so there's no way I'm carrying my bucket and sponge for miles just to protect the wheels I bought for a hundred quid. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe that it's clever to drive around for months and months with a filthy car, but lets be practical here. Not everyone has the time and space to feed their obsession in this way. My 2p.

Suppose it all depends on what you use, doesn't it!! And is it really any of our business how much damage there is? Is anyone on this list personally being accused here? If it IS, perhaps they'd better open their mouth now and talk to the guy with the damaged wheels and sort it out before this all gets out of hand.. Is my 2p. ;)

Define "warm up" - do you mean reach normal water temp or reach normal oil temp. Reaching 60-70 degrees on the water should take 3-4 minutes at the most (except on VERY cold days), but reaching 85 degrees on the oil can take a lot longer than that.

I think it depends which car you have. The early ones had a different limit to laters. But there's not much power left above 6200 anyway, so it's no advantage...

The bad (?) thing about the VR is it's sooo smoooth you don't really notice if you're approaching the redline... I've bounced off the rev limiter a coupla times myself cos the engine wasn't making any noticeable complaint-type noises. My old Vauxhall would have had me jumping outa my skin by 5000rpm, let alone 6,700...!

erm, the wheel that has a greater castor angle is the side the steering will pull to. As for what might change it over time, the most likely culprits are the lower suspension parts, not the upper ones. But like I say, the system is a complete git to measure accurately, so be very careful to make sure they know what they're saying when you start thinking something's wrong.

(btw - the castor angle on the front suspension is what induces the self-centreing. Without castor, the wheels would just sit where you left them. Torque steer would rule the system. The castor angle on each wheel induces a wheel-turning force of tangent (theta) * weight on wheel. So you can see that if you alter the value of theta from one side to the other, you get a different force, and your self-centreing doesn't any more.)

if the castor is out on one side but not the other, that wheel will sit at a different physical height from the other one (albeit only very slightly) relative to the rest of the car. As the car's weight settles, it pushes down equally on both wheels, but the one with more castor will be pushed *back* towards the rear of the car with more force than the one the other side. That will of course be transmitted across to the other wheel, resulting in the steering turning slightly - at rest. Of course, it may all turn out to be more or less irrelevant compared to the other forces on the system, I couldn't say for sure, but the physics says it pulls to one side.

.. weeellll ... mechanically speaking, if the castor is different from one side to the other, the steering will pull to one side. But other than that there should be no ill effects, no.

Yep, kev. The VR6's high castor angle is what keeps the delights of torque steer at bay.. Sorry, I'd misunderstood the question, due to reading Phat's post and assuming we're talking about camber! My statement was correct tho - you can adjust camber (bottom of the wheel moves in/out relative to the car), but cannot adjust castor (bottom of the wheel moves fore/aft relative to the car). If it's too far out, there's likely a reason for this - probably wishbone or bushes. But then, how accurate are the gauges they used? It's a bitch to measure accurately.

Yep, agreed. The only adjustment you *can* do to the camber angle is on the ball joint mounts. There's three screws in slots that can be moved in and out relative to the wishbone. You don't get much adjustment though, I couldn't tell you how much. IIRC it's the castor angle that can't be adjusted at all. How much do you mean when you say it's "out"?

And people think I make it up, all my moaning about VW build quality!

Sorry, it's 280Nm torque for the 1.9 PD, and 115bhp, so if you've got close to 200bhp I'd expect to see close to 400Nm torque.. Which is um 285 lbft! :)

Thought it was more like 280 lbft torque? Even the current 150bhp TDi Golf produces torque in the high 200 lbft range.