Purple Tom

Yep.....as long as your engine has a coilpack then they'll be fine, I couldn't say for sure whether the distributor leads will fit a coilpack engine. Also assuming that by OBD2 Golf VR6 you mean a Mk3 with the AAA engine. They won't fit the later OBD2 'VR6' 24V engines.

Dogger - I'll be in touch via PM in the next couple of days because I'm pretty sure (thinking about it) that the inside design of the Passat clocks (the ones that my Corrado TDi uses) is different, I think I'll strip them apart so you can see a more detailed picture and see what you think. Thanks for the reply, I'll get on it straight away! Tom

Ok, I have an unusual request.....what would be the chances of having a set made for a TDi Corrado? I've done a TDi conversion you see, and the clocks look like this: (sorry about the poor picture, but you get the idea!) Would it be possible to have them reproduced in black, with the tachometer reduced to be the same as the TDi ones listed above? I don't need them to be backlit or anything like that, it'd just be nice to have them looking like original Corrado clocks but maintaining the correct tacho dial. It'd be nice to have 'Corrado' in the tachometer section, and 'TDI' in the speedo section (in the right mid-90's font if possible?). Sorry to be very specific, I'd be happy to buy more than one if it's too difficult to produce in a single go as it's likely I'll be doing more TDi conversions in the future! Thanks in advance Tom

I've literally just put a Daihatsu Fourtrak on eBay, not really my cup of tea anymore but you might be interested. Not looking for a buy it now so am going to let the auction run until the end: Linky It's not a minter but a perfect workhorse with plenty of life left in it. Has got a towbar and electrics too. Cheers Tom

I've got one....£15 posted as its reasonably heavy, I reckon its gonna be a fiver minimum to post. It's in original condition, ripe for powdercoating :-)

Black all the way for definite - subtle is definitely the order of the day for a nicely modified car I reckon :) Thanks for the hard work on the engine mounts, really looking forward to getting them on the TDi!

Just to add a bit of an update to this thread, I've been driving the car for a month now and its been getting better all the time! Since its been on the road I've done a couple of jobs. Firstly I've changed the starter motor as the original one was very tired, making a horrible noise once it disengaged from the flywheel (a loud screech which is pretty common on mk4's). At the same time as that job I fitted a new thermostat as it never properly warmed up, always staying at around 60º on the gauge. Those two little things have made a big difference to the car, it now warms up properly which makes a big difference to the economy - I've been getting about 50mpg in just normal everyday driving including my country lane commute and quite a lot of playing around in the snow over the last week or so :) I've fitted winter tyres to it too, it now goes pretty much everywhere just like the Corrado did! Fitted a new gear lever gaitor to it too, which has improved the inside, and I've given it a few good washes, including cleaning under the bonnet. All sorted now, along with the centre caps - I'm not 100% sure on them but I'll see if they grow on me! Pics: I'm well chuffed with it - everything is working 100% as it should and its nice to know that my Corrado is safely tucked away in the garage :)

No, it looks like your heater box has been fitted incorrectly at some point...perhaps been taken out to do the matrix with the dash still in and then not put back properly?

The early (up to about 1996 'N') Golf VR6 ABS pumps are identical to the Corrado VR6 unit. These are the type with the seperate ABS ECU and will bolt straight on - easily identifiable by the 6 in-line brake pipe connections on the front. The later Golf VR6's (1996 onwards) were equipped with the Teves 20 ABS unit which is the one with the built-in ECU. It has many advantages over the earlier type but unfortunately isn't a straight swap at all, requiring the entire ABS loom to be replaced as well as all of the brake pipes and the removal of the rear brake compensator valve. It is possible as I've done it on my TDi, but it's not straightforward. I hope the first paragraph answers your question! Tom

Bit more information required really...do you want to stay 6-cylinder, as in are you just thinking of a 2.8/R32 or something totally different?

All Corrados are OBD1* Late mk3 Golf VR6's and Passat B4 VR6's were OBD2 and its possible to convert the Corrado to use the OBD2 engine management fairly easily (depending on your mechanical/electrical abilities). *unless they've been converted by someone already ;)

Jon - thanks :) Supercharged - in reference to your post somewhere in the middle - yes, he'd have scrapped it when MOT time came, either that or he'd have sorted a dodgy MOT and driven it for another year. In fairness to him though he's seen it now and is really happy with the outcome, saying that he just wouldn't have been bothered to do the work. The thing is though, if he'd just sorted stuff when it went wrong, and looked after it then it wouldn't have deteriorated like it did! And I've already got some tools for doing the Corrado/Mk2/mk3 etc bearings ;) But yes, I shall be keeping them!

After rebuilding the front struts Mark come round to help again so we fitted the driveshafts and front struts etc. Got the O/S/F discs and pads on without a problem and then when I came to fit the N/S/F disc it just wouldn’t go on – major problem! Turns out that the ‘spare’ carrier which the previous owner had given me with the car that was supposed to have been taken off the car wasn’t off the car at all – he’d obviously got it from a breakers because it was for a Golf fitted with the smaller 256mm discs. With earlier cars (Corrado’s, mk3’s etc) this wouldn’t be a problem because you’d just change the brake caliper carrier, but the mk4 (apart from cars with 288/312mm brakes) uses a bearing carrier with a built in caliper carrier. Sounds complicated, but the difference is clear to see in this picture (256mm on the right, 280mm on the left): This was also a disaster because obviously I’d have to press the hub/drive flange out of the 256mm carrier and fit it into the 280mm carrier. Unfortunately when you press the hub out of the bearing it invariably destroys the bearing because the ‘outer’ inner race remains on the hub/drive flange and you have to pull it off. The only way to pull it off is to grind a couple of notches in it so you can get hold of it with a special bearing race puller. So that meant I had to buy another front wheel bearing….very annoying as the one in the 256mm hub hadn’t done anything at all! It was quite late in the evening at this point and I was pretty ****ed off. However, not to be put off I decided to just leave the O/S/F alone and concentrate on getting the car started as everything else was ready to go. Filled it with oil, coolant and gearbox oil (good old Redline MT90), connected a battery and turned the key… It fired straight up! I was well pleased, at least it proved that the cambelt was ok etc. I let it run for about 30 seconds just to build up the oil pressure etc then turned it off as I had an airbag warning light on inside. This was because of the change of seats – Vagcom soon sorted that out – just cleared the faults and all was ok. I then went to restart the car and it just wouldn’t go – crank, crank, crank, leading to the clocks screaming ‘STOP’ at me, presumably because of the oil pressure dropping off. Much brain wracking ensued and then it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard the lift pump prime when I switched the ignition on. I’d changed the fuel filter so I expected a bit of rough running while the air bled out of the system but I didn’t expect it to just not start at all. Normally with PD engines you hear a little bit of a squealchy noise when you turn the ignition on, or a low ‘hum’ as the lift pump primes and it definitely wasn’t doing that. So when I first started the engine it obviously ran on what little diesel was left in the lines from the fuel filter to PD pump (on the engine). I diagnosed the lift pump as being faulty and I wondered if it had been like that for a while but maybe that the PD pump had just enough suction to maintain fuel flow from the tank – changing the fuel filter had allowed air into the system which the PD pump just couldn’t shift. I can’t imagine the lift pump breaking while the car was sat in my garage not doing anything. After all of that drama in one evening I closed the garage door and went home a pretty annoyed person! Not only did I have the wrong carrier I also had a knackered lift pump…not good L I woke up the next day and contacted VW to find out how much a new lift pump would be – they proudly informed me that they actually had one in stock and it’d cost just £225 + VAT! I proudly informed them that I’d let them know and thank you for the help and put the phone down wondering if any local breakers might have a diesel lift pump. I went to work and called in at the breaker that I’d used for all of the other bits and asked them. Now they deal almost exclusively in 1.8T cars which is great for bits of trim etc but not so good for diesel specific parts. They let me into their storage facility and allowed me to root throught the pile of lift pumps that they had. 1.8T and TDi lift pumps look identical but its all down to the part numbers – 1.8T pumps run at a far higher pressure than the TDi pumps because the PD engine only needs fuel at a low pressure (something like 1.5 bar, I can’t remember off the top of my head) so a 1.8T one wouldn’t be any good. There were loads of pumps all with the same part number (ending in H) which I deduced would be 1.8T pumps, but hidden amongst them were two pumps with a different P/N. I cross referenced them on Vagcat and found that they were indeed TDi lift pumps, so I was happy. They let me take both pumps for £25 just in case one of them was faulty, on the promise that I took one of them back once I’d got it sorted – it’s nice to still have some trust and I’m an honest person so I wasn’t about to mess them around after they were so helpful. Before going to the garage I had to go to Dad’s unit again to sort out that stupid carrier out – which I have to add was all my fault for just not looking at them and assuming they were both the same. My Dad has a lot of engineering tools and he likes any excuse to use them so we turned up a special holder for the bearing carrier which makes pressing the bearing into the carrier very easy – we didn’t do this the first time as it was only a one-off but we decided to do it properly second time round: When we pressed the hub out of the 256mm bearing carrier we noticed that the ‘outer’ inner race (the one that stays on the hub) already had a little flange on it which made pulling it off very easy as we didn’t have to grind a slot onto it! It came off intact and amazingly the seal on the bearing wasn’t damaged at all because we’d been very gentle in removing the hub from the bearing. We pushed the race back into the body of the bearing after checking it was all clean and it went back together perfectly! So….the long and short of it was that we were able to reuse the bearing, which is the first time ever and it made me happy as I didn’t need to use the new bearing that I’d bought (which meant I could get my money back!). So, we pressed the new bearing in using our specially made carrier support – I’ve kept this tool as I might have another mk4/leon/a3 one day! So after all of that, I took the correct carrier home with me and fitted it to the car, along with the new fuel pump. Unfortunately the fuel system took a lot of priming as obviously a lot of air had got in, so the missus helped start the Golf using her Polo (1.4 TDi): ---------- Post added at 10:27 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:19 AM ---------- Once all of that was done and the car was running it was simply a case of a quick test drive to make sure everything was ok, which it mostly was! It needed the tracking doing because I’d disturbed the geometry when sorting the front suspension etc, and I used Vagcom to turn off the annoying brake pad warning light which was still on despite fitting new pads (must have been because the plug was exposed for so long and had corroded). I also activated the auto-locking function, which locks the doors when you go above 10mph. I don’t know why, I just like having it on. It unlocks when you turn the ignition off – I’m sure this is normal for people who have modern cars but this is just about the newest car I’ve ever owned! So, here’s a couple of pictures of it as it stands now, I still need to sort the centre caps but that’s not important. It drives really nicely and everything works, which is great J Brand new spare and toolkit J The temperature gauge is a bit on the low side and only climbs up to 90 degrees when stationary for a while so I’m going to do the thermostat in the next week or so, but other than that everything is sorted, so, I think, project done! Ironically, after all of that work I’ve ended up with a mk4 Golf that’s roughly the same as all the other mk4’s out there, but there’s an element of satisfaction at having rescued it and also it was nice to have something to occupy my time for a couple of weeks :D Thanks for reading, and I'd like to say thanks to my Dad, Mark, Steve and Dave for their help along the way!

I then nipped over to my Dad’s industrial unit and he helped me press a new wheel bearing into the spare N/S bearing carrier that the previous owner supplied with the car. The spare carrier is what he said he’d removed from the car when he was having trouble with the nut coming undone. Got the carrier stripped down and found a bit of a problem with the drive flange/hub: Knackered! Luckily I’d taken the carrier with me that I’d removed from the car…we pressed the hub out of that one and fortunately it was all ok, no tapering or wear on the bearing mating surface. So we went ahead and pressed the bearing into the SPARE carrier (not the one that I removed from the car…that bit is important!), all went well and the bearing went in with no problem: Took them back home and I rebuilt the shocks with replacement standard height springs and new top mounts. I half expected the front shocks to be knackered, but they were fine! Goes to show how resilient they are really, they’d put up with being -40mm for a long time without any ill effects. I’ll see how they stand up being back up to their standard height: Before I carry on anymore, I’ll just show you a few pics of the front suspension/braking components. Here’s the wear on the O/S/F disc. I firmly believe that this is original…136k worth of wear, it must be a good 5mm thinner than it should be: Here’s the inner face of the disc – literally covered in rust. God knows how long it’d been like this, but it wasn’t good. Next to it is a brand new disc for comparison: Also, here’s the N/S/F pads and N/S/F top mount bearing. When I got the car it made some very horrible noises from the spring area – this is because the top mounts were completely seized so the spring was rotating on the spring plate! I enquired with my colleague (the previous owner) as to what might have happened and he said “oh yeah, I went over one of those ramps (where they plane a few inches off the road surface during repair work) at about 70mph in the dark because I didn’t see it, after that the steering made funny noises but I just left it” – obviously the impact crushed the bearings! New bearings and rubbers have sorted it though:

After lots of work, including removing the front suspension, driveshafts, exhaust, selector cables etc etc, we got the gearbox off: Obviously the car was fitted with a dual mass flywheel which was beginning to show signs of failing – a noticeable off beat judder at idle. The clutch was also totally shagged: So, on went a single mass flywheel and very low mileage VR6 clutch which came out of a VR that I broke a little while ago. I have the same set-up on my Corrado TDi and its great. Went on with no problem: Got the gearbox back on and the engine mounts bolted back up, job was a good’un: I then removed the wishbone bushes from the wishbones (one of which I’d replaced because of that stripped thread) and pressed in the R32 bushes using some special mandrels that my mate Dave designed and made at his work (well, Dave designed them, Mark actually did the cutting out on the laser cutter – I’ve been told to say that!) I always put R32 bushes in wishbones now, improves the handling and doesn’t adversely affect road noise at all. All went well: I then rebuilt the driveshafts. The previous owner had big trouble with the N/S/F hub nut constantly coming undone, causing big problems with the wheel bearing. He replaced the hub a couple of times but he didn’t diagnose the problem which was a knackered CV joint. Fitted a new CV joint and boot to the N/S shaft and a new boot to the O/S (the O/S joint was fine): I also changed the O/S wing because the original was dented and also damaged on the inside lip where those massive tyres had rubbed. Didn’t take long – I love how these modern cars come apart!

Sorry that I’ve been a little while updating this thread, its been a very hectic few weeks. The outcome is that the Golf is done, but there’s lots of pictures and bodgery so I think I’ll carry on where I left off J You saw the state of the carpet, well the only real way to sort it (short of buying a replacement carpet) was to give it a good clean with a proper wet vacuum cleaner. That was done, and here’s the colour of the water that came out of it: Minging or what?! There two or three bowlfuls of water like that, but it eventually started to come clean…you could even see the diesel floating on top of the water, not pleasant. I acquired a replacement rear soundproofing set from a local breaker (for free), cleaned the floorpan properly to get rid of the diesel and all the other crap, got that fitted and it looked a lot better straight away: Then I refitted the carpet and the new trim that I’d acquired. I also fitted the glovebox properly and sorted out all of the little fixings that the previous owner had disturbed. It was nice to finally get it back together with nothing loose or rattly. I managed to get hold of a rear centre console section that had a springy cup-holder thing which might not sound very exciting but I’ve never had a car with a cupholder before! I also removed the armrest as it was broken, I might refit it later. Anyway, pic: I decided that it’d be a nice moral victory to get the interior completely in and sorted, so set about fitting the seats. Started off with the rear seats and got those in with no problem. Started on the front seats and was soon confronted with a problem – the airbag plugs. Turns out that the Bora uses a different multiplug to the Golf for some reason, so it was out with the soldering iron. Luckily I hadn’t chucked away the knackered original seats at that point so I was able to rescue the plugs, got that done, here’s the difference: After that it was plain sailing and I got the interior in and fitted. I also changed the doorcards for the Golf GTi doorcards that came with the Bora interior. I didn’t really need to do that but it allowed me to check behind the doorcards for any rubbish/damage (of which surprisingly there was none). The material from the GTi doorcards also matches the Bora Sport interior nicely, as the original Match spec doorcards were a bit rougher. So, after that was all sorted and done I was pretty pleased because I could sit in the drivers seat and make engine noises. Unfortunately there was still a lot of mechanical work to do! My mate Steve came round on a Saturday afternoon and set about stripping the front end down for me as I wanted to do a lot of work there. Luckily he’d had some practice (his is the blue Bora pictured at the top of the thread) so I left him to it. Off came the bumper: Here’s a close up pic of the bodge to the bumper after the previous owner removed the FMIC that he’d fitted. It wasn’t a bad job, strong, but unsightly! Here’s a couple of other bodges for you. About 6 months ago the previous owner had a problem with the alternator pulley. It came loose on the alternator shaft and partially shredded the drive belt. He replaced the pulley (£40-odd), but decided that as the drive belt was still half there he’d reuse it – it did well! Also, when attempting to solve a problem with the N/S/F suspension he fitted a new hub. Why he needed to remove the ARB to do this I don’t know, but he did, and he admitted that when he tried to get the bolt back in the thread in the wishbone stripped out. So rather than sort it with a new wishbone he just left it. Cue lots of body roll and slightly odd handling: ---------- Post added at 09:17 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:05 AM ---------- While Steve was cracking on with the front end, I decided to change the rear springs, discs and pads and have a look at the rear shocks. Luckily there wasn’t too much bodgery at the back, just some very poorly bumpstops: I purchased some more of those and then fitted everything. I think I’ve got it right, seems to be the same as all the other mk4’s that I looked at. I kept being surprised at how easily nuts and bolts came undone, then I remembered that it’s still only an 8 year old car! Anyway, rear end done: I decided to change the front arch liners too as both of them had been damaged by some massive 18” wheels with tyres that were too big for the car: When the O/S arch liner came off we were surprised to find roughly half a ton of crap up inside the wheelarch: Got that out, here’s the pile of crap next to a ¼” drive ratchet…I think about a second will come off the 0-60 time now all of that’s gone: One of the other problems with the car was the very noisy exhaust. The car was obviously lowered by the previous owner and at some point a couple of years ago he caught the cat on something and snapped the exhaust. Rather than fit a new cat and downpipe he just sleeved it which lasted for a month or so, he then drove it for ages with the exhaust exiting just after the cat: Here’s the old one next to the new one. As the car is post-2002 it has to be a type approved cat but luckily I was able to wangle some discount from my local motor factors so got it for a good price: We called it a day at that point. The following day my mate Mark came round to help. We got the cambelt and water pump changed which all went well: We then made a start on getting the gearbox off:

Stunning looking mk2, nice job on the conversion :) I recognise the donor mk3 I think...was it parked up outside a house down Water Lane in Wirksworth??

Payment sent - looking forward to my TDi not trying to get out of the engine bay anymore :D

Both please....presume its not too late to get in on this?

I'm confused....do you mean an engine mount?

You need the engine, gearbox, loom etc from the TDi donor. If its a mk3 Golf donor then you'll need to remove all of the headlamp wiring and add the wiper wiring to the loom. If its a B4 Passat then you'll just need to add the wiper wiring from your existing engine loom. If it's a PD donor that you're thinking of then I can't help as I haven't done one yet. Quite fun regarding wiring and the engine mounts are completely different. Definitely not bolt-in but easily doable if you know what you're doing. The Corrado tank is fine, the unleaded restrictor is easily removable. I changed some fuel lines and did a few other little mods that allowed me to keep the petrol in-tank pump without over-pressurising the diesel IP. Other than that its simple - cooling system isn't a problem, fab up some intercooler pipework and mount an intercooler just like when you do a 20VT. Oh, the pedal box is a bit of a pain in the arse unless you modify the DBW system to mount the potentiometer in a different place to standard - I ended up modifying the inner scuttle on my car but it could be done in other ways if you wanted, you'd need to figure it out. I went widetrack on mine with a VR6 subframe so used the decent VR6 engine mounts but you could get away with the earlier 4-cylinder mounts if you were using a 4-pot base and didn't want to change the subframe (obviously you could still go widetrack on the 4-pot subframe). Airbox could be an issue depending on the donor. I was able to modify the 8V one that was originally on my Corrado but again it depends on the base car. Then just figuring out where to mount the N75 valve etc. ECU mounts nicely in the original bracket, just some vacuum pipes to route nicely. I fitted some bulkhead heat shielding for the turbo, you'd do the same on a 20VT no doubt. Pretty straightforward, mine took a month but I reckon I could do it in a week now I know what I'm doing. Sorry for the brainstorm approach to this reply, just typed stuff as I thought of it!

Thought it might be. It's been on and off eBay for months....at one point it was advertised by one seller in Northampton and another in Mansfield. One of the sellers said that 5th gear didn't work and the other (when I questioned him) said it wasn't his car and he was advertising it for a friend. It all seemed a little dubious to me so I left it alone. It may have been bought by someone who's now a genuine seller but I would advise a bit of caution. Incidentally if there is anything wrong with the gearbox and you do buy the car I happen to have the engine and box from my 8v (pre tdi) sat in my garage so if you need any bits let me know!

Is it that black one that's on Autotrader by any chance? The one with the angel eyes and tinted windows?

Payment sent this morning, thanks :)

Yep, definitely 288's but the '54' doesn't denote the type of caliper, it just refers to the piston diameter. That's why the earlier 256mm and 280mm calipers also have '54' on them too! Either way though you've definitely got 288's :) (or 312's for that matter if you get hold of the 312mm specific carrier and discs).