boost monkey

Yeah me too mate! I'll order a new stat and check out my spare pump to see if it's usable just in case. Drove the G tonight, teh boost is addictive! :nuts:

Yeah I did drop the thermodynamics ball on that one! My lecturer will be most displeased :brickwall: ok cool. I don't need the car this week so i'm thinking a coolant system out jobby, or at least the stat and possibly rad too. Maybe the water pump if I think it's suspect. ALternator belt has always been tight so the pump must be spinning. Whether it's actually pumping is something I will have to ask Mr. Impeller :nuts:

ring road I know, or weaving through traffic and streets that I don't! Your call. Emailed you a PDF of my certificate to the mac attack.

Cheers for that matey, I really should know that pressure stuff being a thermodynamics geek huh! :nuts: Cheers for the clarification on pressure relief valve. I tested the stat before I put it in and it opened further, quicker and earlier than the current one which is why I chose to put it in. I had to choose cos they're both 2nd hand. Old one was Prod's original VAG one from before he went 70deg style. will do with the hose too, cooling system understandingment still eludes me sometimes, but not for long :grin:

This help diagnosis?

ditto! I think aluminiums are the best normal budgetted people can muster.

ah yeah, not petrol. That probably would do something else at 100deg :nuts: I will do. I don't wanna go through town, so i'll creep round the ring road in the G60 :clap:

apart from that it's good stuff. makes good tea. My mum said yesterday I should have dunked a teabag in the header tank when it was whistling! :lol:

Yeah, shocking! Are those Keihin carbs? been a while since I saw some. The long inlet tracts on that manifold should aid torque. 38mm is about right for a standard 16v head too, heavily ported ones can take 45s i think but they're normally choked down a little. bike carbs work much better than normal carbs. the opening is a slider mechanism so when at WOT, there is no venturi plate or anything blocking flow! very clever :)

yeah, it had crossed my mind! Perhaps I didn't drain it properly when I washed out the mudwater a few weeks ago, I know Jim had some concerns (seem well-based at the mo!) I will start with the stat and go from there. I'm gonna check the water pump belt (or whatever drives it) cos I was poking round that end recently trying to get the PAS belt off as mine is redundant now, so may well have loosened something I shouldn't. Is it run off the aux shaft or did someone slip me some peyote? The main problem I had for using just water in the coolant system was obviously it likes to turn to gas above 100... :nuts: Hi mate, kinda hard to see what water is returning. From what I could tell (and toad too?) the water was bubbling up the bottom tank hose instead of being returned from the snaking hose which comes from the top of the rad. The rad was cold all the time I'm pretty sure, only water in the system seemed to be heater hoses, top rad hose and head flange (and pipes off that) and the metal water pipe that wraps round the front of the block. OMG@145! That's impressive. Did the oil cake up or was it synth? I'm thinking I might need (another) oil change now, but I'll go check the oil quality in a bit.

Get a cup of tea / coffee and get comfy... Background So, I had a wedding yesterday down in Southampton. Took about 90mins with some ox roadworks holding me up which was a little annoying, but it was ok. Got to within about 2 miles of the church and the coolant warning light came on. Odd, that's never happened before :scratch: so I flick through the MFA to see oil temp at 122 degrees and rising. :help: Event #1 - Alresford Steam Clean Couldn't really pull over where I was, so kept on until the nearest layby. Oil hit 128. Steam was coming out from under the bonnet too, so I opened her up and the expansion tank is doing a really REALLY good kettle impression! :nuts: From the following few minutes, I determined that all the coolant hoses were very hot except the lower rad hose. Oh right, the other end of that goes to the thermostat: my favouritest piece of car ever :cuckoo: I guessed that for whatever reason the stat wasn't opening so I refilled the expansion tank after letting it settled back down to 80ish degrees and set off again (not really much else I could do 10 mins before a wedding). Oil temp returned to around 108, which is still high, but obviously a lot better. Got to the wedding seconds before the bride walked down the isle, and all was well for now. After the vows and drinks, I drove to the reception a mile away and parked up for the evening. :shrug: Event #2 - Leaving Wedding Left the wedding around 10pm ish after refilling my header tank with another 2-4litres of petrol (spare G12+ was all used up by now). So, obviously I'm running a much diluted coolant mix than is required and I had an inkling the temps would start spiking and physics dictated that the water might do something like boil off above 100 degrees. It did. :pale: Event #3 - Meeting Toad at 11:00pm :norty: As I was a reasonable distance from Winch I gave Mr. Toad a call and after whining like a Stage 4 'Lader, he agreed to come and meet me at the park and ride I had managed to crawl into. We got chatting and I let him work his magic (and on the car :lol: ). After getting a fair amount of air out and running it up to temp a few times, he decided just to let me run it a bit more, so I headed off again (cheers dude, you are a legend :grin: :notworthy: :luvlove: :clap: ) Event #4 - Tot Hill Services, A34 Northbound I got another 10 miles up the road before the car gave up again. This time I got to services which meant free water from the petrol station. After letting it cool, running some more air out of it and putting another 4 litres of plain water in (yes I know, you're cringing but what else did I have? :shrug: ) I had diluted the coolant mix even further but headed off again. Event #5 - The Layby / Concrete Coffin I decided to stop crawling home at 50 and decided to sit around 90, just figuring that I might get a little further before the temp spiked again. I got about 12 miles. Luckily, I had refilled my 4 litre bottles before I left the services (not just a pretty face :wink: ) so I let the car cool and put them in. This was around 1am now. I was really tired and even more hungry. I did some calculations in my head: a 40degree temp rise got me 12 miles, to get the last 19 miles home I would need a bigger "buffer". I let the car cool as long as I could, it didn't seem to dip below 56deg on the oil temp (i guess residual heat from iron engine) so I decided just to beans it back and do my best. This was 2am when I left. Event #6 - The RETURN So, the outside temp is about 11-12 degrees, I was cold tired and hungry and had enough. I used my new redline quite well in upping my velocity with respect to Oxford and sat at a comfortable 90-95 on the last leg (last leg regardless as I had no more water now!). On the bends, I slew between lanes trying to hit the apex and cut just a few hundred yards off my trip. Very bad form, and if the roads weren't deserted I wouldn't have done it at all; normal driving returned for passing traffic :salute:. I got to Hinksey Hill Interchange and sailed up to the roundabout. All 3 sets of lights were green so I took the racing line through the roundabout, keeping speed low and revs unharassed and up the long slip road. Those lights turned green so I took the lovely left-right line up to the last roundabout. Those turned green as I approached ( :clap: ) and I was back within a mile of home. Coolant light had been a solid red for at least 5 miles and the oil temp was 120....122.... and I'm back on the drive next to the G60 :pale: Symptoms Water doesn't seem to be circulating. Radiator and lower hose stay cold, upper hose gets really hot and then seems to empty itself, but no obvious leaks from any parts of the system (all obvious hoses, THE hose that always blows, the stat, etc etc etc) as there was no coolant on the floor other than that which boiled and overflowed from header tank...aha... Diagnosis Stat not working properly, TENUOUS - After ignition system testing to redline, parts of water pump impeller breaking off and getting stuck behind the thermostat, causing a coolant flow blockage, Any others? I have NEVER been so happy to be home! I was borderline :cry: on the way back, it was just a HORRID situation to be in. I knew full well the head could have warped at any minute and I would have been fu...stuck proper. ProdigalSon was (is) away on business, Sis in law was in chester, no breakdown cover any more ( lapsed :bad-words: ). I literally had bottles of water, and the knowledge that the specific heat capacity of iron before deformation is that much better than alloy, which made me think that the head might not warp and I might juuuust be able to limp Stella home (I'll put out the gunson and do a compression test sometime).

The big nut is the hub nut. On a VR it is a 12-point nut, whereas others it is a simple 6-sided hex nut. General wheel hub removal should be: Hub nut removed, Wheel nuts loosened, jack up car, wheel off, Caliper off / strung up to coil spring, disc off, Track control arm off, 2 x suspension to hub bolts off, Driveshaft out, Lower Ball Joint out, Hub off.

Who mentioned low end torque, Don? Did i miss something? I've seen it happen on a 5 cyl Audi 20vT but i think he was running 2.5-3bar dynamic boost pressure, can't remember if it was TIG/MIG/ARC/FBI welded off the top of my head.

I'll wait for someone with either of those items to post :nuts:

Sorry to hear that multis messed up your engine, coolrado. These ones seem to be working well for my 16v though. I know other people run Super 4s etc, so maybe some work with some engines? My car is currently doing 35ish mpg on the motorway which i don't think is too bad, considering the amount of dead sensors the engine has. Strangely enough, the ones I ordered from AVS were BERU and were also triple-electrode! Interested to hear other people's opinions though.

@Stu, yes you are right that money is probably better spent elsewhere and it's not wise at all to skimp on engine internals with regards to high-revving or blown applications :salute:

Yeah I agree with not using the standard manifold for F/I Stu; it'll work (in the same way a bike with oval wheels will work,) but it's not ideal. short runners on N/A is fine if you hate idling below 3000rpm, but on a boosted motor you just want the shortest path to the cylinders which is why log manifolds are so good. I know it's all extra money (and tbh, now my 16v is running much better i'm not even sure I will go turbo in the foreseeable future) but as Kev says, it's the difference between blowing stuff up and making the power your were hoping for. As stingy as I am, and as how little money as I have, I am starting to come round to the fact that you really do get what you pay for, as a generalisation (mates rates and bargains don't count! :lol:)

thanks :nuts: I meant the whole assembly with the pump, the 75 metres of piping going everywhere and the other bits (collector? etc) Maybe I will put the filter on this avo, god knows I don't need to jack it up for the clearance :lol:

@Dec & JMC, Thanks guys :salute: @VWDeviant, yeah I hear you buddy! The pipe that keeps going has 3 spring clips on, I'm starting to get used to them now! They're not so bad if you know your way around some mole grips. @DirtyTorque, :lol: I can MMS them to you if you like! I will dig out the cable and software and put it on the laptop just for you :camp: ;) I think since changing the battery and allowing ProdigalSon to clean up the voltage reg and alternator a little, it's been a lot happier. A couple of my speakers used to buzz which I put down to blown cones, but now they work again! This car is weird :cuckoo: :lol: I guess I won't bother putting the newer dizzy on now cos I know that it's not the dizzy stopping it from revving, so that's cool. Still got the fuel filter to put on at some point. Still need to get my head round how all that gubbins works :scratch:

yeah i'd agree with that. The Plum is on standard suspension but both top mounts have gone and "clunk" over big bumps, the bumpstops have disintegrated, the shocks have probably lost most of their pressure too! :nuts: The standard springs are surprisingly hard (i thought). I bought a KW suspension set recently on the cheap and the springs are probably half as stiff as standard? I cut my losses and took them down the tip! Now I have two new VR6 front gas boge shocks, and I've built up the entire strut with standard springs. If I had more money I probably would have gone with the H&R Springs that Supercharged has as he rates them, but money is tight and I really don't think the standard springs are that much of a compromise. When the Corrado was hailed one of the best handling FWD cars of the 90s, it was on standard suspension after all.

For off the shelf underseal, use Grey Stripe. It's good stuff. Don't know anyone in Kent who can do it though, sorry.

So, i changed my coil, dizzy cap and arm today. Now my car pulls cleanly to the redline where it would splutter and jerk above 5000 before. That's a 2000rpm increase, not to mention the fact that a valver makes, what, 120hp at 5000, if that! So I am slightly happy now. Fast gearchanges are still crap cos my mounts are made by Pilsbury, but when the new front end is on, it is gonna be so good. Stella, you fruity minx :norty:

you're not trying hard enough ;) :lol: seriously though, why reweld a manifold? You're just adding weaknesses into something which was cast in a mould. Surely there are some well-designed ones out there at reasonable prices? Maybe I should start designing stuff, put this "boost monkey" name to good use :norty:

29.4 psi (or 44.1 psi absolute) and yeah I know it's a lot! What's your point? :salute:

If the springs are new and the shocks are old, the springs will ruin them imo. just stick standard springs on for now, I really don't think they're that bad at all! Also, I don't think that shocks with 50,000 miles on have settled. I think they're just tired mate! Settled is the term for when suspension beds in, not for when it's sagging. :salute: