dr_mat

If you get VAGCOM on it you'll see if there's any faulty sensors. Most likely is a temp sensor so the engine is running on in cold-start mode beyond when it needs to. You can read off the values live so it should be pretty obvious. So the other related symptoms would be overfuelling and bad economy.

You can buy spark testers.

TBH replacement ABS rotors are very cheap, but you have to have the damn hubs off to do it, pita..

It's normal to get a bit of mayo in the cold weather if you're only doing short journeys a lot. You need to get all the oil over ~100 degrees C for a while to boil out the dissolved water - which forms naturally as condensation because it's so cold. But it's also true to say that you shouldn't normally lose coolant. That doesn't mean it's going out the head gasket though..

More likely because you have an air leak post-MAF and pre-cylinders. This may well have occured at the same time, but won't be directly related..

I meant *an* engine sensor, this sort of thing could be caused by a few of them. Scan the error codes before randomly changing parts.

Engine sensor most likely. During the first while from cold start it's on the cold start map, and pretty much ignoring the lambda/maf. Check the error codes on the ECU first.

You surprise me. I never saw a "mother" WITH her "child" in the mother+child spaces at our local supermarkets.

They all do that.. :roll: Check your engine mounts.

Even if it's still live but turned off it shouldn't be pulling nearly an amp of current! Not a healthy setup..

I've had the same ABS symptoms courtesy of a borderline wheel sensor. The grinding noise .. could be grit stuck in the splash guard, but might also indicate that you have a dodgy wheel bearing allowing the brake disk to move around inside the calipers.. If the brake grind changes significantly after going round corners, look at the bearings.

Or just drive the car and stop worrying about every little thing that might cause expense in the future... !! :)

It's something to do with having the side vent blowing hot air towards the open window. Mine has done it for 5 years.

Because you changed the oil? It's not even the same side of the engine as the exhaust, so that seems unlikely to me. More likely you knocked one of the engine's temperature sensors when you were down there, I'd say.

Further, there's a reason the manual says to not just idle the engine until it warms up from cold - which is the best way to take years off the engine's life. It recommends you pull off and drive normally (though not using the full rev range and avoiding full throttle). This is more because the engine essentially doesn't FIT together when everything's cold so you need a good amount of oil pressure (not to mention sheer physical inertia) to stop the pistons slopping around in the bores and the valves slopping around in their guides. Annoyingly, in this god-forsaken traffic mad country it's almost impossible to pull off and "drive normally" if you live anywhere near a town ...

What sort of oil did you put in .. ?

If the ECU hookup works, you should get the error codes read, that's the quickest way to get an answer. Also check the obvious - got new spark plugs recently? £45 is a small tank of fuel.. And fwiw I make that ~25 mpg, which isn't so bad.

Yep, think so, 1 == stoichiometric a/f mix.

Yup, sounds like it!

Yeah I think 3 weeks is about the norm for a Corrado ...

They only really work in the summer. You need quite bright light falling on it before it actually provides ANY current at all. Better than nothing, but still..

Look for air leaks, anywhere between the MAF and the lambda will cause mixture problems.

Yes, but the VAGCOM value isn't volts, it's lambda.. The fact that the error is "intermittent" confirms to me that while you're reading it it's fine - 0.95-1.05 is right. I guess you either have to replace it anyway, or keep reading the values until you see something that's genuinely bogus.

I can see both sides of this coin tbh. The cars are becoming more complex, true, and it takes away some of the "skill", true, and it takes away some of the fun, true, but it makes them safer and more reliable in the medium term. I also disagree that it will get away from us completely. The car industry is regulated to some degree by a requirement to have open engine management interfaces for third party tool interactions, and there are laws in place that require a car company to have spare parts available for at least 10 years from the end of final production. Those are the same laws that have been in place for the last 20-30 years. The fact VW will still sell you OE beetle bits is purely a courtesy and they could stop at any time. The whole idea of built-in obsolescence is not really right either, these days. Cars are SO much more heavily engineered now, that 10 year old cars are rarely rusty at all, unless seriously abused. I'm not OLD old and I can remember when 10 year old cars were routinely having sills welded up or wings replaced. The fact that you "still see old Mk1s about" is more a testament to the owners than the reliability of the cars - the vast majority of mk1s and mk2s have been written off or scrapped. You also see lots and lots of mk3s about, and they were shit cars. They're 10+ years old. The car industry is somewhat doing itself out of a future. They've pushed the engineering to the point where anytime there's a credit squeeze or the petrol prices go up a smidge, their customers will simply stop coming - they'll just keep what they have for another couple of years. It won't get any less reliable, it'll just mean they start having to get MOTs done.. They did this to themselves.. Now, home electronics (VCRs, TVs, microwaves, etc etc) they HAVE got seriously lightweight and basically just a bit shite in the past decade or two. And that's the consumer's fault - we kept buying their shit because it was cheap, and ignored the fact that it wouldn't last more than five minutes after the warranty ran out... Anyway, my 2p.

The lambda cycling between 0.95 and 1.04 is about right actually. What's the fault code?