dr_mat

Winter mayo is a common problem. You need to get the oil temp over 100 degrees for a good 10-15 minutes to clear that out of the oil. It's very easy to get paranoid..

Personally I just want a completely predictable 250-300 lbft available from 1200 rpm to 6200 rpm. Is that too much to ask? :)

(Just an aside, but all the 300 bhp fwd hot hatches coming out the factories around this world have functional traction control or limited slip diffs..) I saw the Stealth turbo VR on monday (sadly not yet running). Vince hopes that the big VR will provide enough air flow to get the (also big) turbo spinning from only about 3k rpm onwards. The aim is to have something quite progressive and controllable. It's gonna be an interesting motor..

Or the ISV is stuck.

I've heard that the cam sensor being faulty can cause a serious drop in performance above ~4k rpm.. (The engine stops doing sequential injection and retards the ignition a lot, too.) Otherwise it would seem that the Schrick's valve flap is not connected to the vacuum actuator, as hinted at above.

Just an aside, but someone mentioned a fuel leak and I thought I should point out that the MFA reports mpg based on injector timings, not amount of fuel leaving the tank - i.e. a leak would not show up on the mile per gallon readout. It'll certainly be a sensor that's gone bad.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm........

Interesting stuff, nice write up. I doubt I'll ever delve that far myself, but it doesn't look like rocket science, hey? :)

Yes, the above magazine quoted a figure (164) obtained on the Millbrook straight - the car was still accelerating when they bottled it.. A later attempt netted nearer 183 or so, which involved coming round the access road onto the start of the runway at Bruntingthorpe at ~95mph ..

I always had a soft spot for the lotus carlton myself. Never had the pleasure of driving one, but everything you read about it is literally peppered with superlatives. It's a monster, no question. Faster than a turbo VR? That somewhat depends on the turbo VR you're talking about, but most will struggle to get their power down in a FWD chassis no matter how much power they *can* generate. At lower speeds the Carlton will walk it just cos of sheer grip. So the Corrado VR6 is about 1200 kg, and has 200bhp. With a big turbo, maybe 300? The Lotus Carlton is 1655 kg, and comes with 377 bhp out of the box. If this were a game of top trumps the VR6 would lose on every statistic.. http://www.autocar.co.uk/CarReviews/Roa ... us/204158/ How fast * 0-30mph 2.4 sec * 0-60mph 5.1 sec * 0-100mph 11.1 sec * 30-70mph 3.8 sec * 0-400m 13.5 s / 111 mph (standing quarter mile) * 0-1000m 24 sec / 140 mph (standing kilometer) * 30-50mph in 3rd/4th 3.2 / 5.5 * 40-60mph in 4th/5th 4.1 / 8.5 sec * 50-70mph in 5th 7.7 sec * Top speed 164 mph

As said earlier it's normal that it runs on, but only for a short period of time, up to about 10 or 15 minutes and no longer. So it's either the after-run control circuit has a bad timer, or perhaps you have a faulty ignition switch? I don't know about the G60, but the VR6 has a completely separate control and fuse box for the after-run circuit. It sits in the engine bay.

Funny isn't it, the missus' 9 year old peugeot just finished off its original factory-fitted battery, which has never been charged off the car, ever, in 9 years. These bleedin VWs eat batteries though.. My VR6 has been through two in five years, and it's constantly going flat. To answer the original question though: there's no reason your bike charger won't be capable of keeping your Corrado's battery "topped up". But don't attempt to use it for deep recharges, it'll probably cook itself!

(Actually I've never seen the injectors shut off completely, but you certainly get much shorter injector timings on overrun than when idling, so the point is still valid.)

That is, of course, assuming that you have a VR6. The other cars don't have an electric water pump, afaicr. And I'd be checking that your amps are going off properly, too. If they're sitting in idle drawing 10 watts or so that'll kill your battery in two to three days.

There is a run-on circuit that should operate for up to ten minutes after the ignition was switched off. This will periodically switch on/off the electric water pump, the radiator fans, and the fuel pump. This is normal. It should stop happening after about ten minutes though, or when the engine has cooled enough.

The engine will consume more fuel by idling than when coasting in top gear in those circumstances. On the basis that doing it EITHER way makes no difference whatsoever to the life of the engine (you won't make it any better by idling it instead), I simply wouldn't change your behaviour.

It'll never hit that number, but yes that is the *maximum possible* number that your sound system can draw. So if you have a 50Ah battery it *could* be flat in an hour. And don't forget you'll need at least 30% remaining charge to actually start the car - so knock a healthy margin off. In practice you'll draw nowhere near the limit, because otherwise they would be blowing fuses all the time. As said before the sub amp will draw the most current out of the lot. If it's a 150W amp you can expect it to draw up to about 13 amps. (150 W / 12 volts = 13 amps.) Almost all the time it will be drawing much less than that. My 140w home hifi amp rarely pulls more than about 35 watts even when it's playing "loud" at a party. That said, if you're serious about leaving the sound system on without running the car, you should really buy another battery, or at least a heavyweight battery booster that can start the car on its own. (More technically, "amps" is a measure of the *rate* of consumption, not an absolute quantity, so when you multiply this rate by the amount of time that rate applies for, you get the *quantity* of charge that has been drained from the battery, measured in Ah - "amp hours". This is why batteries charge capacity is printed in amp hours - to make it easier to figure out how long it will last under a given load.)

Cold weather ... !??

I'm not sure, no. I know they set eye-watering prices on parts, so I guess £150 wouldn't surprise me, and I also know that they tend to sell individual parts in large assemblies, so you might wind up having to buy a whole load of other stuff at the same time, so who knows?

To answer the question which hasn't so far been answered, the part itself will be at least £120-140, so add an hour labour for fitting it and you'll soon see £260 on the invoice without too much trouble. You asked them to buy it in, so they're unlikely to let you off now.

The definitive solution is to not have red indicators.. ;) Everything else is a bad hack that may or may not allow you to get through the MOT each year depending on the mood of the tester..! In reality, green bulbs through red filters produces hardly any light at all. It might be vaguely orangey but it's about a third the brightness that is required. LEDs can overcome this a bit just by being very bright but they don't tend to spread the light very wide (amongst other issues) so they're still illegal for road use except where designed by the car manufacturer. That said I had red rears for a few years and it was fine. Ish. Apart from the constant paranoia of being pulled over cos they flash a bit too red.. :)

Should be able to drill them, but it's not easy.

It will have carried along for a while wondering if the lambda was going to start working, then it will have gone into limp-home mode, which means running monster rich, all the time. It'll be seriously down on power and cost you a fortune in fuel. Lucky you no longer have a catalyst, cos if you did it would be coated in unburnt petrol by now and you'd fail the mot on emissions..

Depends on the car, mate. The VR6 mpg read-out comes direct from the engine computer so if it's that bad something is seriously up (or you're doing 4 mph all day in first gear). Is it just that the other digits don't work? :)

And you're surprised? It's only going up. Not really a shocker, is it?