dr_mat

.. but note that the short on the MAF could be caused by a wiring glitch, not the MAF itself. Check that out before forking out a small fortune on a replacement MAF. Otherwise, I would agree with everything Mr 'Dards said.. :)

So that's pretty much what we said then .. ;)

Ok, well maybe the 1.8T has a few common faults ... but what engine doesn't .. :) Correct, I haven't owned one, but a mate did 60k miles in a brand new A3 1.8T (180bhp) with nothing other than the bad batch of coil packs being replaced. (On the engine at least .. )

Looks like the passenger door is out of line too ...

Quite - in standard trim they are nothing if not reliable. I know that a lot of people feel they're lacking a bit of soundtrack (particularly compared to the VR snarl), but they *are* reliable.

Couldn't tell you, tbh..

Well .. basically you want to overrate the amp so that if you turn the volume up and hear distortion it will be caused by the speaker not the amp, cos if the amp clips, the speaker will be much more likely to blow up. (I did this once with a PA rig. I knew it was clipping, but couldn't get to slap the DJ fast enough to turn it down.. Had to replace a tweeter.) Of course, if you never turn your 4W per channel valve amp up far enough that it clips, you will never have a problem, obviously .. so you go on your budget - 40 high quality watts is better than 100 bad watts, but you need to be aware that if you clip your amp you'll take out the speakers too ..

1.8T was the first really reliable mainstream turbocharged engine, bringing the turbo to the masses. As stated above, anything with a turbo can be tuned to anywhere within the limits of the turbo's output for just the price of changing the program in the ECU, but until the 1.8T came out, the only turbo engines available were either after-market bodge jobs, or highly strung ultra-powerful beasts in exotic cars (in general). While turbo-diesels have been popular for decades (due to the pathetic power output of a standard diesel engine), petrol engines didn't generally need it. Essentially the trick was that VAG saw that there was a demand for a relatively low tuned, relatively low stressed turbo engine, using the turbo to fill in the torque curve, rather than with the sole aim of pushing silly performance figures. Ok, in 225 bhp form from a 1.8 that's not "low tune", but the 150bhp 1.8T is pretty unstressed and very reliable as a result, but has an extremely flat torque delivery that's just not possible without a turbo. Perhaps VAG just noticed that SAAB had been doing the same thing for years and pushed it to the VAG crowd? So perhaps I should really say "first big-selling mainstream turbocharged petrol engine, bringing the turbo to the masses"..

The VR can run on 5 without you really noticing .. :) If it's running rich, and all the plugs look normal (i.e. one cylinder isn't flooded with petrol), chances are you have a lambda probe problem. If you get VAGCOM hooked up you can see live readings from the lambda. If it's static, or outside the range [0.8, 1.2] then it's hosed.

Points to remember 1) You still own the car till you accept their offer 2) you can buy the car back *unless* it states clearly in your insurance contract that you can't (and you signed it) 3) their offer is exactly that - an offer at the start of a bargaining process, don't be afraid to suck your breath in and scratch your chin a bit .. As for adverts .. just scan autotrader and the forums for similar cars. As long as you can say "this one is £3k and is not in as good condition/has more miles/needs serious work" then it will clearly indicate their offer is too low.

None of them are cheap options! Hmm, 400 bhp for £13K? How about a used Lotus Carlton? That's good for 550bhp with suitable tune ... :)

Late VR will idle with an uplugged MAF, early ones won't. It'll run like a pig though..

You just need an amp that is comfortably *greater* than the rating of the speakers. The most damaging thing you can do is run an amp to distortion, whereas running speakers to distortion (usually) doesn't do any long term damage, and you'll turn it back down pretty sharpish. If you're going to run a two-channel amp for four speakers you'll either wire them in series (giving you 8 ohms load on each channel) or in parallel (giving you only 2 ohms load - which will probably be too low for most amps to handle, that's practically a short circuit). A four channel amp could drive each speaker individually, but you might need to give it four inputs so you might need four outputs from your head unit.. (They should all have that now I suspect). Look for the amp ratings at the right load. Most amps can deliver 100W into 8 ohms, and I would have thought the in-car amps can cope with 4 ohms pretty well, but you'll be paying serious dosh for something that will deliver 100W into 2 ohms ..

Don't know anything about car audio, but if you put 100W into a speaker rated at 100W and it blows up, I'd take it straight back and get my money back. Of course, you'd have to have calibrated meter readings to prove it .. Anyway, even "very loud" for most music programs is only about 5-10W on average, giving 90+ dbA at 1M from the speaker with an average speaker. And from a hifi point of view, it's clear that the key to good sound from speakers is a good enclosure. The speaker cone itself is *almost* irrelevant. Put a high quality driver in a poor enclosure and it will boom, resonate, and sound awful. It is also true to say that the "peak power" ratings on some speakers can be truly comedic. 220 / 100 is quite a ratio, but perhaps it *can* sustain it for short periods of time. The limits of a speaker come from two things: the physical range of movement of the cone and the ability to dissipate heat. It may well be that the speaker can handle 220W's worth of physical cone displacement, but it can only handle 100W of heat energy. I'll bet the cone goes seriously non-linear in those circumstances because the heat build up will be *very* fast, but perhaps that's how they get the rating together. Does it mean anything in the real world? Not really. Take the RMS figure, and stay 20% lower than that and you'll be safe (and most importantly it'll probably sound ok).

You have nothing connected to the breather outlet? You mean there's a gaping hole in the inlet ducting post-MAF sensor? That'll be a good reason to have crap running - amazing it runs at all with unmetered air coming in if I understand your comment correctly!

Well yeah, people don't post up saying "nothing bad happened to my Corrado today", do they! Plus, you're talking about a bunch of cars that are at *least* eleven years old now.

Park in the living room and list to your hifi. With the windows down.

To be fair to the VR6, it's an engine that gets driven hard, particularly in the Corrado (more so than the Golf), and they last pretty well, considering. But really, it's just maintenance stuff. The only reason people talk about the timing chains with hushed tones is because they're expensive to replace. You wouldn't bat an eyelid if someone said their 50k miler 16V had to have a new cam belt would you. Due to a slight design cock-up it's a gearbox-off job with the VR6 engine.. As for bore wear and head work, well, those are not the norm, thankfully. A mate's 140k mile 1.8 Golf Mk3 is literally pouring oil through it's valve stem seals (around 1 litre every few hundred miles), whereas most VRs don't start using serious oil till well into their mid 150k's.. So, don't worry so much..

We don't know what the VR6's emissions are, and we don't really care. If you're that interested, look at the output of an early 2000s Golf V6 4 Motion as approximately representative. As for Boris Johnson, pah. The most carbon-efficient way of driving is to use an old car. The carbon footprint of a brand new T Prius is VAST compared to keeping an old car on the road for another few years. If everyone kept their old car on the road for an extra 2 years (paying for a few more repairs on the way), not only would the dealerships see a steadier flow of new car buying, but the overall carbon footprint of personal transport in the country would drop quite a long way. (See, I resisted the temptation to make up any statistics then!) It's everyone's obsession with "new" that causes all the problems, much more than their choice of cars in reality.

Not exactly "cheap" tho, eh?

It shouldn't vary too much. You could of course fill it up, then there's no slopping around at all ..

GSF website says £10.70 plus vat for 5L of FUCHS 10w40 semi synth. I wasn't clear really, but I was wondering if it might be made by the same people .. or at least made to the same standards .. ?

Anyone know how much the VW dealership charges for a 5L tub of 10W40 semi synth? And what about the FUCHS branded stuff that GSF are selling? Is it approx the same?

Sorry .. :)

Did it warm up fully? it's going to steam like mad from cold, there's going to be lots of condensation inside the engine. The tapping is probably just a sticky tappet. You're going to need to get the revs up once the oil has thinned down a bit to quieten that down properly. I believe the book says "maintain 3000 rpm for five minutes" .. after the oil has reached 85 deg C.