Purple Tom

Ooh ooh ooh! I've just remembered! If you decide to replace the crank sensor then I have one! They are BIG money from VAG (in fact, if you have a look at the first page of my TDi thread you can see the work I did on the car before, when it was a 2.0 8V), something in the region of £120, but I have absolutely no use for it so if you want it then its yours for £25. I replaced it in February 2009 and carried out the TDi conversion in March 2011 so its probably only done about 15,000 miles. Still in perfect working order too. Just thought I'd mention that! Sorry, £150 is what it cost!

Horrible video to watch but I would have thought that some of the running gear might have been salvagable. I always keep a fire extinguisher and 10mm spanner handily accessible in my car. I once read a horrifying story about a policeman who arrived at the scene of a head-on accident to find an uninjured man trapped in one of the cars (doors mangled so they wouldn't open and the steering column was between his legs). They chatted for a few minutes and then they noticed a small amount of smoke coming from under the bonnet of the car. The long and short of it was that the policeman, despite his best efforts, was eventually forced back by the heat of the ensuing electrical fire and he had to watch, and listen to, the driver of the car burn to death. All because the battery was still connected. Once wiring starts to burn (even if its unrelated to the cause of the fire) then if the battery is still connected it will just keep burning as more and more wires short together. Very scary and very quick - a 10mm (or 13mm depending on the car) is all you need to disconnect the battery and remove the electrical supply.

It looked really nice....if he is ever really interested in selling then I'd be very interested in purchasing, I have a thing about Sherry Pearl (it's definitely Sherry, not Cherry ;)) It's on standard 15" 5-spoke wheels isn't it too?

Might be worth giving it a compression test just to check the general condition of the engine but obviously a FI lump will turn over easier than an NA engine...lower compression as you mentioned. Until you get new tubes then the brick is the way to go.....ooo-err!

By the way....what colour is the Corrado? Is it dark metallic red (Sherry Pearl?) If so then I saw it driving down the promenade back in November!

But it obviously is as bad as that really....the car rolling out onto the pavement isn't exactly ideal?! I think it'd be best to replace the handbrake tubes and cables so you can leave the handbrake on overnight really because then you won't have an issue. Either that or just use the brick.

Just leave it in 1st and have a handy brick nearby that you can bung under the rear wheel before you get out (you should be able to lean out of the door with your foot still on the brake pedal and place it under the rear wheel).

I'd suggest getting it Vag-Com'd if you haven't already - there may be someone local on this or another VW forum that can help you. I had a similar problem with my 8V (before I TDi'd it) and it turned out to be the coil. However it didn't do much cutting out and restarting, it just did it a couple of times and then died completely.

Yeah....low compression of the engine. What gear are you attempting to hold it in? I had the same thing happen to me at the car park of the Nordschleife (Nurburgring) when my car was a 2.0 8V. Stupidly left it in 3rd instead of 1st after a lap and walked away, heard some shouting and turned round to see it slowly making its way towards a propped up Hayabusa! Luckily the front wheels dropped into a drainage gulley at the bottom of the space which stopped it about a foot short of the 'Busa otherwise it could have been much worse!

Whereabouts in the UK are you?

Really enjoyed it last night. I agree that it the program has been slowly deteriorating in terms of content over the last couple of series, almost like they're simply running out of ideas of things to do. More low-price challenges would be good in my opinion. It is nice to see supercars being put through their paces or a 'Top Trump' style race between a Eurofighter and a Veyron, but I feel that there's a huge amount of low-budget motorsport that they could get involved in which would be potentially more appealing to the average viewer. For example, I think it would be awesome watching them squeezing in and out of a class 1 Mini grasstracker (standard 998cc), or having a go at racing lawnmowers, or taking part in proper banger racing. Or even going and doing proper muddy off-roading in knackered old Series 2A Land Rovers. Not high speed stuff in a Wildcat/Tomcat, but deep wading and then experiencing the lack of brakes on the way home - all good fun :) Regarding the Noble, I think they could perhaps have made it clearer that the clutch wasn't a problem with the car, more of an externally sourced component, but they did make a point of saying that Noble made a big effort to get another car to them straight away. They also didn't spend the rest of the program slagging Noble off for having sh*t clutches. Either way, I enjoyed it, even Will.i.am came across as a decent enough guy which I guess is something the SIARPC aims to achieve. Looking forward to the next 6 weeks :D

I've got one, in good condition, reasonably heavy so postage won't be cheap but you're welcome to it for a tenner plus the cost of postage (say £20 posted)...

Wow, incredibly lucky escape, glad you're ok! I totally know the feeling, my very much cherished and much worked-on Polo GT got written off because of a pheasant (I stopped, the guy in the XJS behind me didn't), it's so hard to keep driving when an animal jumps out :(

There's only a tiny decrease in overall capacity of the engine so yes, the ECU will compensate for the very minor differences and maintain a steady AFR, timing settings etc. No problem running an AAA on ABV management. OBD2 conversion is fairly involved, the most complicated bit is removing the necessary wiring from the Golf loom as you only need the engine bit of it, not the headlights - Daves16V has recently done it and his build thread is pretty good for information. The actual fitting of the parts is a piece of cake, apart from feeding the loom through the bulkhead.

Have you tried a new temperature sender? Not sure if the K-Jet operates in the same way (slightly inexperienced with them) but with Digifant there's a temperature sender for the ECU and a seperate one for the gauge. It's possible that the temperature sender has become faulty and is sending an incorrect voltage to the gauge.

The engine is OBD2...read below...

Looks great, and very kind of you to share your hard-earned data so readily! I presume your mapping has all been done on the road with the laptop plugged in? I wanted to ask as I've heard rumours but I understand that quite a lot of 'remaps' for DBW cars involve quite a large modification to the Pedal Translation aspect of things. By that I mean that the pedal translation is tweaked to give 100% throttle quite a bit earlier in the pedal movement, if that makes sense? Therefore the car 'feels' quicker because the throttle opens more than before the remap for the same pedal movement. Another reason I ask is because my Mum has just bought a brand new Alfa Romeo Mito 1.6 JTD. Its quite a nice little car and has Alfa's 'DNA' technology fitted, which is supposedly borrowed from Ferrari and has three modes; Dynamic, Normal and All Weather. When switching from 'Normal' to 'Dynamic' while holding the throttle steady you feel a noticeable surge and the car 'feels' a bit quicker. However, if you plonk it back into 'Normal' and then give it plenty of throttle (on the pedal), the car picks up just the same as when its in Dynamic mode, albeit with a lot of dead pedal at the top of the travel, and vice versa when its in Dynamic. So, I'm inclined to believe that all this system does (as regards the performance) is alter the Pedal Translation settings in the ECU. It might well tighten up the dampers and alter the TCS, but I think it does bugger all to the performance! Sorry for the long post - Kev, your engine looks brilliant! Could well be tempted with a 24V one day :)

Sorry Jim, hopefully you'll have the leather in your car soon!! :)

All good then! Make sure it has transmission fluid in it - I've known 'overhauled' boxes come dry!

No problem...just thought, while you've got the gearbox off you may as well do the clutch and its release bearing too. 20 minute job with the 'box off!

M8 12 point spline tool - like this

You'll need consumables - oil, oil filter, G12+ coolant. Service items if you choose to do them (air filter, fuel filter etc). Might be worth changing the crack pipe and small water pipes while you're at it. Thermostat perhaps. Anything you think might need replacing. Might be worth changing the auxillary belt while you've got it apart too. Exhaust and inlet manifold gaskets. You shouldn't need power steering fluid as you can just unbolt the pump without disturbing the system. Inner CV joints should just unbolt from the output drive flanges using the correct tool so nothing needed there. Other than that just time, patience, a reasonable amount of mechanical ability and the proper tools to do the job. Its remarkably simple under a VR6 bonnet, just take your time and it'll be fine.

Do you have the standard VR6 (280mm) front brakes? If so then pretty much all 15" and above 5x100 VW wheels will fit, width and offset depending obviously. If you have uprated 288mm front brakes then your choice of 15" wheels is slightly reduced, not by much, but anything bigger will still fit. 15" Speedlines and Solitudes (Storm wheels and also fitted to the Golf VR6) will fit over 288mm brakes. Speedlines seem to be still reasonably priced for a set but I imagine they'll get rarer and pricier as time goes by tbh. Solitudes are still very cheap (sub £100 for a set) because seemingly every Mk3 Golf VR6 and its dog had them fitted (not quite, but near enough!). I personally favour 16" wheels on a Corrado - for me they're an ideal compromise between: - Decent looks - Decent ride quality (as you don't need an uber-low profile tyre to get them on the car) - Fairly low unsprung weight (depending on the design of wheel) - Cost (of both the wheel and tyre) - Reasonably big brake clearance (including 312mm discs) It really depends on what you want the wheel to do. For trackdays I think 16's or 17's would perhaps be more suitable as the availability of decent track-orientated tyres is slightly better, but it depends how serious you go with it. 15's for originality though! HTH Tom

Bit more information required matey...what is it...16V, VR, G60 etc? Whats wrong with your current engine?

Looks great, looking forward to seeing it done! Out of interest...presume you're running 280mm front brakes, how do you find them with reigning in the performance of the 20VT?