dr_mat

I'm telling you it's a ringer! You should go and see your doctor and tell him you need an oil change. Then when he asks if you're welsh, you have to say "I know where you live", and he'll give you the keys to the glove box. In which you'll find the weld marks. Or did I dream all that?

Aye, it was all about the money. The VR would have cost another 500-1000 notes with the VSR fitted, and bearing in mind that at the time it was already treading on the toes of a nicely specced BMW 325i, price wise, and they simply didn't think it would sell. They were right - it's all very well for us lot spending £4-6k ten+ years later, but the Corrado VR6's new price in 1993 was equivalent to about £35k now... Another 1k at the time would have made that £37k now ... That's a whole lot of cash for an uglified Golf missing it's rear headroom.

Step away from the vehicle. That's the first sign of a ringer. Try and corner on more left handers to see if the left hand door rattles more than the right (they should both rattle the same amount). Or something.

The MPG change could just be because of the unseasonably clement weather ... But yes, the leads could have helped. I don't know how much extra drag the spoiler costs you. But it's probably not as much as having the windows down or the roof open ..

The book says 15w40. And most people round here recommend VW synta silver (hint hint use the hinting search hint hint .. ;) )

I would say: get it scanned, get the error codes checked and deleted, check the readings of the temperature sensors... If it's only rough while it's cold it's probably not doing cold start enrichment properly.. BTW, take a look at the basic settings procedures. When you reset the ECU it goes into "quick learn" mode, which is why you're supposed to immediately get out there on the open road and teach it about the air flow characteristics of your engine (hoping at this point that your lambda is working well)..

Sounds like expansion under pressure to me. One hour cooling after a good thrash in this climate isn't enough to drop the coolant to it's "cold" state, you need at least 8 hours resting before it goes completely cold.

If you disconnect the ECU's power, that's just the same as disconnecting the battery - the ECU loses it's settings. It should readjust automatically though. Most likely your ECU has marked the MAF as dead and is now refusing to reenable it. Even with the basic VAG-COM you should be able to delete the error code for that and it will then come up ok (or it should).

Get a refurbed caliper from VW. They're only about £30-40 a side and they're very often brand new stock.

Offset should be calculated on handling/balance requirements, not how they look! Technically, you need the offset such that the wheel bearing is in the centre of the wheel's tread, so that the bearing doesn't have to continually support off-centre loading. You can calculate if you need spacers for a particular car or not.

On a 7.5" rim? Might need to go a shade wider than 205 width on those? I think the standard wheels are only 6.5J.

LOL here we go again .. :)

Tell 'em to look at the diagrams for the Golf/Sharan VR6 - the engine block is about the same ...

How long is a piece of string? There's very few terminally dead VWs, they "just" need a rebuild.

Take a look in ETKA, or go down your local dealer and ask them to take a look in ETKA..

Basic tests with a voltmeter (I've typed this out about 20 times now!): engine off, volts across battery terminals, battery "rested" for 30 minutes: voltage % charged 11.5 20 11.7 40 12.0 60 12.3 80 12.6 100 If you have less than ~40% charge, it likely won't have the capacity to crank the car. engine on, volts across battery terminals (test alternator): no electrical load: 13.8-14.2 lots of electrical load: 12.5-13.5 volts Any less than these means your alternator is probably iffy, or you have such an extreme load that it can't cope. Note that the ECU will shut down if the voltage drops below I think 8V during cranking. But I'll state again - 10 days without use will render your car unable to start, even if your battery is at 100% capacity at the start of those 10 days. And bear in mind that if it's at 40% capacity because you've only done short journeys it'll only take two-three days before it's unable to start the car. And this is all if you've *only* got the 0.2-0.3 amps drain that seems to be normal for Corrados.

Hmm. 1.2 Corsa vs. Skoda Fabia VRs. Yeah that's a fair comparison!! Try something from the same company at least! (The 1.4 Golf GT would be a nice example.) Everyone knows Vauxhalls are stodgier than an exceptionally stodgy thing made stodgier by adding more stodge after winning the stodgiest thing award at a stodge festival. And then you'd have to compare a small FI petrol engine to the TDi, because as we all know the non-turbo diesels have all the excitement of a rain cloud above Manchester (not to mention all the same performance). Think Smart Roadster in Brabus tune. Think the Golf 1.4 twin charger. Think the BMW Mini Cooper S .. etc ..

Boot light is what 10 watts? P= VI so that's nearly one amp. It's not that - he's only losing 0.2 amps ..

0.2 or 0.3 amps is normal, agreed. Get a trickle charger.

Ah, didn't get your comment about keeping parts separate from labour .. thought you meant you'd be doing it yourself .. FWIW I think Stealth quote ~ 3 hours for labour to *just* do the tappets on a VR. I don't know if the 16v is any harder or easier ..

What's the offer? Or would you rather we all went and got an access code .. ?

0.2 amps will completely drain a perfectly functional 64Ah car battery in 13 days. Utterly flat. And the battery only needs to drop to about 30% charged before it will no longer be able to start the car. It's not the battery, it's the car ... As said above, either get and use a trickle charger or disconnect the battery when you're leaving the car standing for any length of time.

You need to do a leak down test to figure out if the rings are good or not. Sounds pretty ill though. 1ltr oil per 1k miles is a lot, despite what the book says .. I might be starting to save up for a rebuild in your shoes. :(

It's working mostly, yep. Mine does the same, and I'm pretty confident my MAF is ok.

As Cheesy Haywain Wire (whatever he's called this week) said earlier I think - the tappets cost about £8 each all inc. So that's *12 for a VR6, *16 for a 16v .. (obviously!). Genuine VW tappets are about twice that. What does our good friend the oilman think about this ATF lark?