dr_mat

I'm not convinced you've dealt with the coolant temps tbh. You shouldn't see over 100 degrees on the coolant, ever. The fans should come on at about 90 and slow down the climb rate, even stuck in traffic on a hot summers day you really shouldn't see much over 100 deg. As for the oil, it'll lag quite a lot behind temp changes on the coolant as stated, but fix the coolant system first.

Mine haven't arrived yet either ...

You can also connect it to the battery (after all, the earthed car chassis is connected to the .. battery!). It shouldn't hurt if you're only using it for top-up charging.

I guess you never know what level of service you'll get from these people until you need to chase up a problem. Sending stuff and things never going wrong doesn't test anything out.. It really is amazing just how unreliable couriers are though. I mean, how hard is it, really, to pick up an item at point a and drive it via your national network of agents to point b, without kicking it, standing on it, throwing it against a wall, or generally abusing it? Call me communist if you like, but it's the kind of task that it strikes me should be provided by one national shipping agent, then every van on the street would be YOUR shipper, and there would be no duplication of effort (or duplication of journeys). I think I would call it the "Royal Mail". I wonder if it would catch on?

P2G are just an agent. If a shipper loses your stuff, it's the shipper's fault, though it's up to P2G to chase the parcel on your behalf.

I've used parcels2go several times with no issues, so I had no need to lean on their customer support. They do state on their website that they're a small outfit that pass on their bulk buying prices to the consumer, and no doubt there's parcels going missing all the time that's just how it is out there, and maybe your case slipped through an (automated) gap that's now being rectified. Again, these things happen. I never got the impression from people like P2G that they're in it to scam your money (well that would be a short-lived business model, right?), so give them time and I'm sure they'll do what's necessary. And if you're a big man when they DO sort it out you'll write a glowing reference on this here thread and change the title to give them fair dues! :)

Actually appearing overnight is probably exactly what it did! Given the scale of it it sounds rather likely to be subsidence rather than frost damage.

It's true that the councils should be smarter about using the whole of their resources to monitor the roads. Good idea, why don't you send it in?

The councils aren't stupid, and it's not their fault that there's a hole in the road any more than it's yours for not seeing it, at least not until someone reports it at which point they should repair it. Road users also have a responsibility to let the council know if there's holes in the road. Once it's reported the onus is on the council to repair it in a "reasonable time". They generally won't pay up about holes they weren't aware of before the incident, as is true for trips and falls on pavements with loose/dangerous flagstones.

Then you make the choice to drive - I would. But I'd try bloody hard to either find something closer or figure out a way of moving nearer if the finances of driving to/from work were crippling me. That would be my choice, what's yours?

When my company moved, they offered compensation (salary increases) to those who would travel further as a result of the move. That didn't include me, but the company moved a lot closer to me so I wasn't complaining. Obviously choices have to be made and everyone has different priorities, but on average I think people are choosing to live nearer to work, and that trend is going to continue. Without wishing to be rude, you always have a choice of taking a different job that leaves you relying less on your car, if one becomes available. Maybe there's no "good" jobs readily available at the moment and you've already tried looking, but you always have a choice.

I think a valid point has been raised here .. cheap petrol has allowed everyone to make the choice to live a long way from where they work, when in reality this is just not necessary. If nothing else the traffic makes commuting by car ridiculously unpleasant, and parking when you get there is also difficult these days. Regardless of public transport or no public transport, people should think twice before taking the leap of accepting a job that's so far away you have to put petrol in your car to get to it.

I hate commuting with a vengeance. I've not bought a tank of fuel since October...

Watch how much you're committing to carrying through customs .. or be prepared to deal with the duty when you arrive! :) About time we got some more 263s in the country though .. :)

They will adapt quickly given the right type of driving, but the values you had pre-reset are bonkers..! I assume you ran through the full reset sequence with the high-rev acceleration/deceleration cycle?

It kinda depends what's broken. I think there's a heater control repair doc in the wiki that might give you some enlightenment. Usually the cables don't break, it's usually the plastic cogs/levers on the back of the controls. FWIW when I bought my car I found the feet/face controls didn't move (dial turned, but air direction didn't change). I was lucky though - nothing was broken - I just had to replace a clip on one of the cable attachments at the air box end and lo it all works fine. It doesn't feel solid though, so I'm deliberately very careful with it ..

I think they're actually the same as a Passat, but they're also rarer than rocking horse poo in an unbroken state. I think you can still buy them from VW, but they're predictably ludicrously priced.

Worse: no water pump! Just make sure the belt is turning everything when the engine is running. If so chances are it's just slipping on the PAS pump pulley or it's the pump internals squealing and it's unlikely to cause any other problems. Just keep an eye on it. At this time of year you're probably driving in the dark a lot so you'll know if the belt snaps/stops - one is the noise stops and the steering gets VERY heavy, but also the lights will go dimmer (yes, that's actually possible .. !). Another possible culprit is the tensioner itself - they squeal when the bearings are going - but obviously it's less likely that would coincide with you loading the steering up.

There is not *supposed* to be a bolt there. You insert a bolt in order to take the tension off the belt so you can remove it. RW1 must have taken the picture in the middle of working on it ...

Lol, well there you go! Problem solved! :) Just like Schrodinger's cat, you simply had to LOOK at the problem and it would resolve itself .. :)

There is no excuse for not having one of these for this kind of money: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Digital-Multimete ... 0620214836 Stick it on the 20V DC range, stick the contacts on the battery posts and read ..

As you say, this is very odd. I might want to check the battery output voltage when cold/hot. Perhaps there's a circuit that's dragging the voltage down when the engine is still hot?

You could also just disconnect a front wheel ABS sensor and take out the whole system that way. Same caveats apply wrt having the light on the dash, MOT fail, etc etc. ABS is a liability in snow anyway.

I think the earlier quoted figures of £600 for doing the chains are desperately optimistic .. though that depends on where you live and what the labour rates are like. In the south east you'll be lucky to see change from a grand doing the timing chains on a VR. That said, I agree with the points being made here. Despite VW confusing their arse with their elbow this is just another service item that they missed. It's a big one, but it's not uncommon for timing belts to cost many hundreds of quid and hey .. this is an old car with a very rare pedigree so don't get hung up on it. Just get it checked from time to time and stump the cash when you need to. Just try buying an OE exhaust complete. It'll make the timing chains seem like a walk in the park.

I had a set fitted by Stealth. IIRC Vince knows that the standard goodrich kit is wrong for Corrados and either winds up ordering two different kits and sending whatever bits back he doesn't use, or just knows the right *foo* to ask the right people the right questions. Either way it's a bit of a mystery, and is probably VWs fault for switching caliper design part way through a production run ...