dr_mat

Nope. I like it how it is .. I look at it like this: yes it would handle "better" lowered, yes it would look "better", but a) it handles well enough, b) I'm sitting inside it when I'm enjoying it so I don't really care what it looks like and c) I don't have to worry about the damn roads and speed bumps! And meanwhile, 36.3 mpg, whilst it's true that I was driving carefully to get that figure, I wasn't travelling slowly (averaged 60mph over the whole journey), and even with the odd squirt of full throttle the figure didn't drop too much. It's a classic example of an understressed engine working well inside it's abilities. :)

It's normal for the engine note to change - the brakes are, after all, vacuum assisted. Got ABS? Do you need to bleed the ABS line? Did you adjust the rear brake balance valve so that you could bleed the rear lines? You might just have a faulty master cylinder ..

You're using the pedal in *middle* right? ;)

Holy thread rejuvenation batman! Just thought I'd share this one with y'all. This was greeting me at the end of a 122 mile journey yesterday, cumulative average over the whole 2 hours. :)

Yes it's true, back in 1896 they had the site ready, they were just waiting for the invention of the computer, the internet, the web browser and the mouse ...

Mine did this once, but all I had to do was disconnect the switch from it's cables, found nothing wrong then reconnected it all .. and everything started working again. I am guessing there's a faulty relay in the control box, but haven't had the problem since.

My 2p: I wouldn't drink a £100 bottle of wine in plastic glasses. Nor would I insult a great VR6 engine with an auto gearbox.

Maybe, but I think you'd be better off getting another subframe.. Or I think you can unweld the seams on the subframe and weld a new bolt back in. Or maybe there's room to drill the old bolt, tap it and insert a helicoil? I'd be inclined to get another one though, since due to a certain amount of design stupidity, that's about the only thing really holding the wheel in place. They're not that hard to come by due to low demand and reasonable supply. Question I have to ask though is are all these 2nd hand ones *straight*?

Front calipers are less than that. VW will sell you refurbed parts for about £35+VAT per side.

Bit late for that. Why did they break the subframe mount point when swapping the engine? That's just sloppy. Might be worth having a strop if the *next* engine dies too and insist that you will take the car to *your* chosen repairer and *they* will pay for it. (They might be pleasantly surprised at the price if you go to somewhere like Stealth! :) )

I found a wikipedia article that explains a lot ... A narrow band sensor has a steep, non-linear output curve, centred around stoichiometric ratio, so its output flips quickly from "lean" to "rich" (as you said) plus it needs correction for temperature so this, and for all kinds of other reasons, it is hard to use the output from one for fine tuning. Narrow band is fine for the ECU - it just minutely adjusts fuelling till the reading flips lean-to-rich, then adjusts it back the other way till it flips back .. keep cycling and it'll stay within a few % of stoichiometric this way. The wide band sensor has a linear voltage output covering a wider range of a/f ratios, so it's easy to see that e.g. yes, you're lean, but also by exactly how much... It all makes sense now ... :)

Well I can see the point (I guess) if you're writing your own maps, or if you have a carb (!!) and you want to tweak the mix, but for everyone else? Even for the ECU remappers - why do you need to know *wide* band figures (and how wide is wide?), when you're aiming for ~stoichiometric, just like everyone else is?

What's the benefit of a wideband AFR then? I've never known the answer, just curious ..

Someone is selling a 2.9 VR engine for £300 on this very forum ...

Boy, that would do it!!! ?!?!

First wet spell after a period of dry weather .. no grip is to be expected. You have to take it easy out there boys and girls .. I was finding the VR spinning the wheels in 2nd this morning, without even really trying. Nasty accident though, you were exceptionally lucky to get out of a rolled 1990's VW alive! On the upside, I reckon that'll polish out! ;)

Can't get away with no tax though, automatic fines are issued now.

For sure, it would have to be a new casting, definitely. The cylinder surface area is wider, and lets face it you can't just shoe-horn a fuel injector in where a valve is supposed to be, but what I'm wondering is if they actually started from scratch, or if they (more likely, imho) just modified the 20v design to accept the new 2.0 block and the fuel injector. No company can afford to design major engine components from scratch every time they feel like it. Clever stuff. When they roll that onto the 'V6's, they should see a nice economy boost too. Apparently it's already in the R36! Amazingly, the air/fuel mix in lean-burn mode goes from 14.7:1 (stoich) right up to 65:1 - with no det!! And btw, when I said "packet" I clearly meant "stratified charge" ... ;)

FSi - how it works. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_Stratified_Injection

I would have thought the 2.0 FSi was based on the 20v head, actually, since it loses one valve and replaces it with the fuel injector, yet still has four valves per cyl. Further to the discussions of engine longevity, do VW still ship the 12v VR6? Didn't think they did, thought it died out in the late 90s. It's all 24v now, innit? The FSi is a drive for emissions, economy *and* power. They get much more control over fuelling. They can actually run the engine overall well below stochiometric without pinking by putting a tiny "packet" of fuel/air mix into the cylinder right next to the spark plug - the rest of the cylinder contains only plain old air. The tiny packet burns cleanly because it is at stochiometric fuel/air ratio, the rest of the air in the cylinder is just heated and expands slightly.

So fix the wires at the MAF end then! Too often, in my experience, is it found that the jiggling of the wires is a complete coincidence. :) Until you or your electrician friend actually locate the fault, it could be anywhere between the MAF and the parts of the ECU that connect out to the wiring loom.

Could be wiring internal to the ECU .. but if the ECU claims it's shorted, it's probably shorted.

Hmm, just found an old thread .. looks like opieoils' sale finished yesterday .. ! :( You're right, £38 for an oilchange is *much* more reasonable, particularly, as you say, for decent oil. But bulk buying isn't something I fancy .. (small house; and low annual mileage means I won't use it for years). Unless anyone else in the Reading area wants to do a group buy?

"The two companies who combined to form Fuchs UK in 1996 - SILKOLENE Lubricants Plc and CENTURY Oils Ltd - have a history and pedigree going back more than 100 years" The Silkolene Pro-S 10w50 works out pricey .. you'll need 5.5L for a VR, and that means 1x5L + 1x1L = ~ £52 for one refill. I'd happily go to VW and buy Synta if my dealer wasn't unable to hand out discounts due to a bad case of tight-waddery. If I'm going to be asked to pay £20+VAT per 5 litres, I'll be going straight to GSF for the Fuchs 10w40 (which appears to be certified to the same standards ..).

Um, no .. http://www.sensorland.com/HowPage060.html .. they rely on the heating and sensing components in the assembly being perfectly clean and intact. It's usually oil contamination that kills a MAF.