dr_mat

Try replacing the PAS pump. It has a variable output pressure feature which may well be screwed at this age. Also remember that even a slightly imbalanced tyre is going to make the steering feel a bit light at speed and so on ..

The VR6 matrix had a bypass valve built-in hence no recall. But the valve is only there to prevent scalding hot coolant from flooding out into the cabin, it doesn't prevent a small loss of hot coolant which is all that's required to steam up the windows and make it impossible to see. Dangerous yes, but impossible to prevent, really.

Sounds like a reasonable time scale. Depends on mileage really, I do very few miles in the C so I don't check it so often. Also sounds like you have corroded wheel rims. My old set of wheels were a bit rough and the tyres just didn't seal well, they'd lose a few PSI within a few days of topping up. My new(er) wheels will go months between top ups though..

Dig out the car's history. The insurance company would have KNOWN when you took out the policy that the previous write-off took place, and the outcome of it, it's all on their big-arse database. So if they had their suspicions they should have refused to cover you then, not now. The only reason they may have just cause to not pay out is if there's something dodgy about the previous write-off and someone massaged the facts to get the car back on the road.

You pays your money, you takes your choice really. If VEGE cut a corner here and there .. well it's still an engine with a warranty that's going to cost less than a brand new bare block would from VW. If you must have it absolutely new and perfect you either pay someone to fully rebuild it for you, or you buy the brand new bits and put it together yourself. For the rest of us mere mortals something like the VEGE rebuild is probably sufficient for the next 50k miles.

On the upside, if you're becoming an expert at reconditioning VR6 heads, you can do mine .. :)

9.5 v is so bad you probably had some cells dry. You can boil the battery by excessive cranking time too - the heat generated in the battery when it pushes the 180 amps required to turn the starter is huge... It's not unusual to hear *slight* fizzing noises if a battery is on fast charge. But check the voltage after 30 minutes "rest time" once the battery is no longer being charged. If you've checked all the cells are topped up with distilled water then your best bet is to get a battery conditioner to cycle it and VERY SLOW CHARGE it. If that doesn't work, it's toast, take it to the dump for recycling into new Bosch Silver batteries.

Yeah, it's a big metal thing sticking out the engine... ;) Someone had to say it.. I drove an old van that was pinking to death under load once (blew the HG on the way home aswell.. :) ). It's surprising how much it sounded like a small bolt or washer bouncing around in a tin can. But it's much less regular than a tappet would sound.

(I think it's only VW engine components that carry 2 yr warranty actually.)

Good. We're trying to help, but it's just not worth trying to diagnose a possible other fault when you have one known great big fat-ass fault staring you in the face. Kinda like looking for a needle when you don't have a haystack .. ;)

Depends. Check yours. A non-sealed unit can be made to last much longer than a sealed one, but of course you have to maintain it yourself. Chances are that if you had acid boiling out it's not sealed, too.

IF it's gone, then you don't want to drive it any more than is absolutely necessary. You don't really wanna warp the head or crack the block because a hotspot builds up..

You're sure it's not pinking?

Bummer.. The only explanation can be that the tensioner bolt isn't getting any oil fed to it while the engine is running. That means either your oil pressure is too low or you have a blockage somewhere.

Correct, it won't help! You should make sure each individual cell is topped up with distilled water. You should also check the acidity in each cell, but you're not likely to have the tools to do that..

Sorry, call me off topic if you will, but I think they're a bit over fussy for the Corrado. Personal pref, I guess..

They call it gassing. It's not good, usually a sign of overcharging, so possibly a regulator problem on the alternator. Too much volts is anything over 14.3 v.

Right, so you don't know if there's enough fuel to maintain line pressure (that won't help!) and you havea gaping hole in the exhaust manifold pre-lambda probe. No big surprise it runs like a dog! I think you found your starting points!

But was the temp CORRECT? I mean, was the engine stone cold when you took these snapshots? 600rpm idle is very low for a stone cold engine. I do notice that your lambda value is fixed at 1.000 aswell - this also implies that this was a cold start, OR that the lambda is not working at all. You need to run it up to temperature and check the measuring blocks again to get realistic idea of what's going on. All kinds of weird shit can happen during cold start enrichment (12ms injector timing for example!) and it doesn't mean anything. Coolant temp should be reasonable, O2 Active value should fluctuate between 0.7 and 1.3 every second or two, injector timings at idle shouldn't be more than about 4-5 ms. (That's an indication of how rich it runs when cold - 2-3 times the fuel is going in.)

Yep, the plates in the cells get coated in sulphates, which prevents them from conducting electricity. The much reduced surface area available to conduct electricity means that you still see 12V output, but the battery can't pass the 100+ AMPS required to turn the start over. Indeed - it's when the battery is low on charge that sulphates start to build up. They can test this at the tyre/battery places. They have a big-arse wire with a meter on it that puts a short across the battery and measure how much current it can dump through the wire. If it's pushing lots of current, you have a healthy battery that just needs a recharge.

"Coolant temperature: 9.8 deg C" doesn't look right to me, unless this was a cold start. Injector timing is quite long, and it's idling at 960, which is quite high though, so it might be correct.

The cold fuelly smell is normal (it's overfuelling like a bastard to warm the catalyst up), and the white "smoke" is steam, and it's normal too. You don't notice it so much in the summer but on these cold mornings it will be really obvious. The high idle isn't too bad (it's been pretty cold these mornings), but the low idle is .. it's MUCH more likely to be a sensor than the ISV, and I'd suspect it's another temperature sensor (there's about 4) causing it to misjudge the cold start cycle slightly.

If you unplug the cam sensor, nothing happens, you just lose a few bhp. The crank sensor, on the other hand, prevents the engine running full stop (of course). I still think your loom must be causing the problem. With no working MAF the fuelling will be finger-in-the-air guesswork, and particularly if it keeps dropping out intermittently .. ! The late VR6 doesn't notice the MAF sensor being unplugged either, till you try to rev it up.

The cam sensor would be detected by the ECU if it was faulty. I think you either have a duff loom to the MAF or a duff ECU. More likely the loom to the MAF is causing the intermittent short somewhere, so it's time to trace those wires through.. Running without the MAF relies on the throttle position sensor and the engine can only do approximate fuelling, it's bound to be a bit rough.

You got that off an Audi S2 page, expect the sensors to be different! Did you: - replace the MAF - clear the error codes .. THEN run the engine?