pete_griff

That would make it a seriously nice corrado. hehe - i do hope so - you can find out when you see mine before long ;) don't see why it's horrifically more difficult with mk5 bits-n-bobs - only real difference is the PAS/alternator bracket and the fuel presure regulator - both easy fixes....

to "reliably" charge a 12v, you should really want a rebuild unless you have a very low mileage car. granted a rebuilt 12v should be as reliable as a factory 24v - but lets face it, which would you rather have if someone said drive as far in that as you possibly can without it breaking down! the r32 has far superior burn characteristics etc due to the newer lovely design of the head and newer ecu - ask kev there if you want to know more! i would say surely that to charge a VR would cost the same as sorting an r32 lump unless you can source a charger on the cheap (ask herisites about sourcing cheap chargers! no offence or anything meant there by the way mr herisites!). then you've got the cost of the rebuild of the VR to think about on top of sourcing the charger and then getting the engine remapped. also the chargers are limited in power unless you go adding things like intercoolers/chargecoolers, at which point don't you have to think about new injectors... the FI list goes on. all that when you can just buy an r32 lump and it will fit straight in - all you have to worry about is the exhaust and the wiring - neither of which are major headaches now. also fuel economy - not something which you should really worry about when driving a charged 2.9 or a 3.2, but the r32 would surely return a much much better figure than the 12v admittedly, it's reasonably simple to do both types of install, and personally i don't think that one is particularly more work than the other. but once you've finished it all, in my mind anyway - there's only one lump out of the two i would like under my bonnet. :D

in general i'm not a fan of replicas - they go against everything that the original great car stood for; but i will say, they can be very nice if done to a good standard and you can live with the fact that you are in fact driving round in a "fake!" this guys has put mloads of work into that and fair play it does look very very nice - it looks like it will last a bit longer too! i had to have a look at this one as my friend used to own a mirage replica lambo countach - i put two new engines into it for him; and yes, before anyone asks, the scratches on the side were from my engine hoist :oops: :nono: - lesson learned! my friend owned it before this guy on this page (sean jones) linky - http://www.seanjones.co.uk/lambo/lambor ... eplica.htm

great write up david - thanks very much (Pete adds another job to the list!)

hey there buddy, if you've got a new beam then i'm glad to hear the old one is going to the tip as it looked pretty corroded (well compared to how mine was anyway). youcould probably have reused it,but that would have been effort! also, if i were you mate, i wouldn't touch the brackets on the car that hold the rear beam on - they were set at the factory for the rear geometry - if you put new ones on, then you would have to find a place that really knew their onions to set it up properly again. they didn't look bad at all - if it was me i would just get some waxoyl on there and then leave them... (just my 2p!) glad to see it's coming along anyhow - the joys of corrado ownership! :)

hey there my friend, all have eibach springs (albeit a bit rusty!) and rears i can confirm are not leaking... have yet to get the front's off, ride was good until now though i have given first refusal to a very good friend of mine who lives nearby. he has always helped me out loads when i've needed it and has been a bloody good egg in general, so, sorry - no hard feelings or anything, but he has definitely got first refusal. (he has got something like an s plate vw toledo. if the will rears will fit on that, then he can have them as his rears are currently buggered and the car is pointing at the stars when it drives down the road!) if he doesn't have them then you are more than welcome to them - at a very good price i would imagine too. like i said, i haven't had the fronts off to check for oil misting etc, but the rears were fine. i did have an add in the for sale section a while ago, but there were no takers. i won't want much for them, so you can have first refusal if you like. (collection or your arranged courier only though - from hereford, or possibly salisbury too, and the route in between) cheers :) Pete

dam straight - wideband is very much the way forward! lambda's ain't cheap though so it's a good job i got the ones off the donor car delivered with my engine! cheers, didn't know the corrado crossmember was a one-off! good job mine was in reasonable nic then! ummmmmm, unsure exactly what you are getting at with the PAS system - just running the normal system, with the cooler pipe that runs throught the rad-support panel as standard.... no braided lines on the car anywhere unfortunately (save the goodridge brake hoses). as for the oil cooler, not a bad idea i guess if there's clearance - haven't offered it up yet; will hopefully get the opportunity in the coming days - gotta wait until my exhaust manfold is all sorted first, then can get the inlet manifold back on and start with the rest of the plumbing...

chin up karl - i'm sure you'll get it sorted soon now :D can't the phirm be of anymore help?

cheers! :D the bushes don't actually attach to anything my friend - there is a piece of metal in like an m-shape - the two outermost parts of the m go down through the two bushes on either end and serve as sleeves for the front bumper bolts. (those bolts not only hold the front bumper on, but provide support for that crossmember). the centre leg of the m serves as a sleeve for a bolt that goes through and holds the crossmember to the rad support panel. the rad support panel then bolts onto the chassis legs and holds the whole lot on in the absence of the bumper, if that makes sense... i would have preferred to powder coat the crossmember after getting it dipped; however time is of the essence as is cash at the moment, so the next best thing is hammerite and waxoyl. in all honesty, where i would definitely have preferred to get it dipped/powdercoated, the hammerite/waxoyl will still make it last infintely longer than in it's previous state. also be warned if you are replacing them - those bushes are a tw*t to get in! i tried for a while then just thought bugger it and got my friend who works at a garage to do it with a press the next day. the place i'm doing my car is out in the middle of nowehere and the house is not only empty and deserted with no furniture, but it smells from the disgusting people who lived there before. it will shortly be getting gutted, but in the meantime, i can use it to store all of my car bits :norty: i don't think my girl would appreciate me taking her out there very much!

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh - that makes sense! cheers for that, i'll get onto VW tomorrow. it honestly hadn't occurred to me that Koni supply all their own bits for that; I thought that they were the standard VW bits that had been re-used! the reason i was thinking they might be off an earlier car or something; i remember reading in chris's thread (corrado-vr6-nos) ages ago when he replaced the rear shocks on his valver and thinking that they were lots thinner than the ones on my car. problem solved, top man - thanks very much :D :D :D

Right, I was trying to fit mr rear KW V3's this afternoon.... Got my Koni TA's out and went to put the KW's back in their place (with all new rubber mounts etc). Turns out that the KW's are about 3-5mm smaller in diameter on the threaded part on the top of the stanchion. The collars that sirt either side of the upper rubber mount of the top mounts and the nuts which hold the shock in place just slid straight over the top. I phoned my mate on the VW parts desk as I thought that the smaller diameter could just require an early set of collars and nuts, but according to my man on the parts desk, the part number for the collars early to late are the same.... has anyone else fitted KW's and had similar issues? i spoke to regal autosport where i ordered them from and the bloke there said he didn't know and the bloke in the workshop who was likely to know had just gone home.... does anyone on here know the score? am i going to have to find some correct sized nuts to hold the shocks in place? - even then it seems a bit of a bad job, as the two collars which help secure the shock into the upper mount will have 1-2mm of play either side of the threaded bit, so won't hold it very well at all... (apologies for the lack of pics, but it was just starting to rain :mad2: ) :scratch: help please... thanks v much Pete

quick update from today, got the front crossmember re-bushed and all sprayed up now. just got a couple more coats to put on and all will be good. same story with the rad support panel. thanksfully there were no holes in either! the rad support panel was fairly flaky on the offside, but it hadn't gone through, so happy days. got them both to fill with waxoyl on the inside shortly too; all in good time. got my rear shocks off the car today, rear strut brace fitted and rear eibach arb fitted (surprisingly easy to fit once you get started!). engine is also back in now, just waiting on my front engine mount then i can get the exhaust welded up and i'll be getting there then! will shortly be plumbing it up and then the car will be trailered down to the vag-doctor for the final piece of the puzzle! hope to have it finished in a conservative time of no longer than 1 month from today as i go back to work then... i can't touch the car over the weekend now as i'm off to see the girlfriend, so i shall be nowhere near it. below are a couple of pics of the crossmember and my rad support panel - not brilliant, but the weather was crap today, so decent pics were impossible. also got a half decent pic of my manifold minus the flange for the cats on the end.

ditto what kipVR said - great to see you taking another corrado and your loving wing! :)

the only things that are there are the glovebox, the speakers on the top of the dash, the vent ducting for the heater vents, the vents themselves and the fan/fancowling/ducting. there's always the dash mountings themselves too - think there are a couple of bolts accessible on the side of the dash after you take the passenger undertray thingy out, unsure about elsewhere. your best bet is systematically removing all the above (dash excluded!) and finding which cures the rattle - very frustrating and time consuming, but possibly your only sure solution? hope you manage to get it sorted anyhow!

no; but i recon the bloke who sits on my local vw parts desk is pretty sick of the sight of me now! :lol: that was the idea i was going with - really don't want to have to touch the car for a good few years after doing all of this. *touches lots of wood!*

haha, no worries! i'm hoping for the handling to be really pin sharp as you say... i have driven far too many 205's and my mate's integra too many times for me to ignore it - turn in has got to be razor sharp or i'm not happy! i'll get a list of my mods up after finishing the r32 install, but a v quick "handling related" list just for now - it's had new TT/R32 bushes on the front, powerflex on the rear, new OEM bushes elsewhere (steering rack, arb), recon of my old steering rack/pump (nothing wrong with the old one, but newer is better!), new track rods, track rod ends, drop links, ball joints, bearings all round, cv joints, top mounts all round, coilovers, eibach rear ARB, quaife, strut braces etc etc - so it bloody well better handle well after all this or i won't be happy! :lol:

cheers kip, it's honestly really not that hard once you get going - just taking the plunge i guess! it's a lovely process watching the parts come through the door then onto the car - makes it all very worthwhile - i just need to try and get the girlfriend to understand now! :lol:

precisely (from the outside anyway!)

haha, cheers my friend - maybe the shell? i'm keeping it looking as standard as possible from the outside (save the seats i guess...) - you'll only know it's not standard once it has flown past you! :grin:

howdy all, another quick update. got the pieces i require to sort my exhaust manifold now (will get some pics up in the next couple of days), so i'm pleased about that. not going to get them welded up properly until i have got hold of the front engine mount i need and de-rusted my cross-member, which i should hopefully be doing tomorrow. trial fitted the lump with gearbox attached and it sat in there superb - very happy :D got a few more bits through the post today which i shall hopefully start fitting tomorrow - very pleased to see these finally arrive. just waiting on my bonrath front mounts now, then i can get the fronts fitted too... bits are: kw v3's, upper and lower front strut braces and neuspeed power pullies for a mk4 golf r32, which are the correct ones to fit on my setup :)

my r32 conversion has cost me about 2 - 2.5k all in by the time i've had the wiring done/got all the other bits done that i need. the only thing is that i am redoing a whole load of other bits on the car at the same time, so my costs have "escalated" to say the least! - i guess it is a corrado after all! the 24 conversion is cheaper to do as you can pick up the engines for about half the price and that's for a decent one too...

if you're on about the bottom most pic of those most recent ones with the two right angle parts next to the 13mm ratchet spanner... the one on the right is the original pastic part that one of the gearshift cables mounts onto on the gearbox. these are known to be weak and break over time - they are only plastic after all. the one on the left is the gruvenparts billet replacement :)

cheers for your comments my friend - always appreciated :) aside from the wiring buddy, the only real snag you will have is the exhaust manifold. that also depends what setup you want to run though. if you are keeping the single cat setup as with the original VR engine, then you can buy the manifolds off the shelf from dubpower, so no great shakes. hopefully in future you will be able to buy the setup for twin cats off the shelf if mine is successful - we'll have to wait and see i guess. other than that though, it's all more or less straight forward (he says touching some wood!) - will sit straight in on the original mounts etc - piece of cake really :D getting a little frustrated as i keep on getting dragged away during the day, so i'm not getting as much time to go and work on the car as i would like. it's getting there slowly though. here are a few more pics of progress from today. got the box on the engine now, all ready to go in. still need to get hold of a few bits before it can be finished, but i'm chasing those up asap. found out today that i need a new threaded cap to hold my mocal sandwich plate on, as the one i bought it with off ebay is not the right one - wasn't sure if that would be the case until trying it anyway. really hoping that when Pete arrives tomorrow i will have a working solution by the end of the day - really eager to get the whole thing done asap while i am still off work. still waiting for my kw's and assorted bits to come through the door as well which is a bit annoying. hopefully getting there now though. absolutely loving the gruvenparts loveliness :D - they really are such good solutions to what are otherwise badly engineered parts (well for vw anyway!) enjoy all you pic whores!

defo replace that brake line buddy!

/\ what he said! - awesome :D