Diamond Hell

I've got to counter this one. A mate and I made a 4-2-1 manifold to suit a Golf2 Syncro, to fit on an ABF. Here it is in all of it's glory prior to wrapping and fitting: The ABF went in OEM, down to only fitting a clean panel filter, on a standard ECU - we actually checked the cheaksums on the chip after to make sure it was OEM. Just by getting the gasses away faster, on equal length tubes and making the secondaries as long as possible to plump the torque curve we pulled 173bhp out of this ABF: That was corrected for clutch drag due to the wrong plate being supplied by GSF. A *good* 4-branch really does seem to give the ABF some serious legs, which is why I'm so keen to get one on the Corrado when I fit the ABF I have. It's annoying that no one offers a 4-2-1 - more work I guess.

It's already had enough of that for this year, in Horney's hands! I'll get round to it..... later. Don't tempt me!! Sadly I already have my eyes peeled, waiting for a cheap Golf Syncro to pop out of the woodwork, for me to butcher. As I've said in another thread - that workshop's not mine. Mine is being renovated in my spare time. I'll get pics up in due course, but damn! it's nice being in a situation where you can fling the doors open with gay abandon, even on the Corrado!

Which one did you buy? It's likely that the difference is more to do with the cable-change gearbox mechanicals than the steering rack, but I'm happy to be corrected on that.

TSR just quoted me £320 for a 4-branch, which was apparently 'designed last week and we're awaiting stock'. I've asked if it will fit when heat-wrapped, but they don't know. So much for product testing :roll:

I'm not happy with the front springs - they seem to be pushing the nose of the car too high at the moment, which on these roads means I'm in danger of lunching the strut top mounts. As they're off a scrapper Corrado I'm not sure what's causing this :confused4:. Did the G60 have more weight to carry on the nose and these are off a G60, maybe? I may return to the lower springs, but on the OEM dampers to control the ride better than the original, need to have a think over the next few days.

Yes, I think they look gash - the single aero blade doesn't look right on older cars - it's out of keeping with the design. I take it no one's tried the non-aero wipers then?

No one's got any suggestions on what 4-branch to use?

Maybe it's heresy, but has anyone fitted non-GTI Lupo arms and non-aero wipers? I take it that it's the design of the arms on the Corrado that causes the issue here? If you fitted the non-GTI Lupo arms and blades, would that work better? I'm curious, as although the aero upgrade is a lovely functional upgrade 1) they're painfully expensive 2) They look gash.

Sadly Shaun, the ramp's not mine - I was at a mate's place. At the moment I have a very open ex-milking parlour, with a leaky roof. I need to do some block work to stop the draughts, then repair the roof, then sort out the sides and a roller-shutter door at one end. After that it'll be ace - 3-phase and online air from a 250litre compressor.

Tennyson :wink: I prefer the one on Tapnell straight myself and I got a couple of good ones on Broad Lane, too.

As you can tell - I focus on mechanics more than cosmetics. Hopefully this means Magnum has come to me in an easy-to-maintain good cosmetic condition and I'll now sharpen it back to better-than-box-fresh on the dynamics side. I'm already having fun getting it there. :grin:

Could have hit the hedge a lot harder, then. :lol:

Well OK, I'm actually pretty chuffed. My Corrado was swapped with Nick 'Horney', as he needed something cheaper to run around in and I'm a sucker for a 16V. It came to me with a few issues and I've removed some of them and created different ones. The first session on it was to replace the n/s front lower control arm. That didn't go too well and after snapping off the front securing bolt I needed to replace the front sub-frame. A Golf3 item has been swapped in, along with a set of new engine mounts. I also replaced the o/s outer front CV boot as it was just about to go. The stricken car: As I really don't like big, heavy alloy wheels, Nick hung on to the 17" ones that were on the car during his tenure. For now I've fitted some 15" alloys from a SEAT, which I had lying around. This gave me the next photo here: I then got a new lens for my SLR, so went out and played at the weekend: Last weekend I collected some parts from ShaunG60 and had a delivery from Vee W Services in Bristol. I had a few hours to get some bits sorted, so it got brand new OEM dampers all round, new top mounts front and back, as well as bumpstops too, I've put second hand OEM springs on all round and I also fitted up a rear wiper arm and motor (the old one wasn't present). So, I now have a Corrado that looks like this: This may upset some people, but on Isle of Wight roads it's a huge improvement - the car now drives beautifully tightly and the ride is very well controlled - much better for my kind of driving! I've got lots more to do yet, including an ABF motor to be fitted and then I want to get some 16" rims on, with slightly lower profile tyres, to sharpen the ride up a touch. Love it to bits, as does the wife. Now, does anyone know where I can get a hypo so I can inject superglue into the steering wheel to stop it moving on the core?

Sounds like a CV to be honest, especially if you already just did the other side. Check the gearbox mount first though. When you herck the shaft about to get the movement, do it from above and see if there's any movement on the flange the shaft bolts up to - if there is then it's more likely to be gearbox related rather than CV or mounts. I'd err on CVs first though.

Sc0rian on Edition built an ABF with an Eaton strapped to it, so knows a lot about this. Unfortunately his bunged it into a hedge, shortly after building it, so might be a bit scant on day to day running experience.... My experience/knowledge of 16VS/T motors is that they're a rich man's 20VT. :lol:

Yes - the whole front end will need setting up properly after swapping all that out - the new arms alone may change the geometry as the bushes aren't sagged in from years of wearing the newness off.

:D Great write up. The problem is that you're on a slippery slope once you've discovered how great track driving is. Next thing you'll be stripping out the interior and being amazed at the difference it makes to how the car drives, then you'll need a safety package and that's cage, buckets and harnesses and you can't skimp on that, then you'll realise that also means you can't drive it on the road all the time now - you get the picture. Good to hear the B8s are the shiznit - a mate's just jumped into them on the front of his G2 Syncro track car, ready for 2010. I'm holding off re-fitting my suspension pending harness/bucket/cage install - things get serious when you're looking at that. Get on over to the 'ring next year - put your kit to some proper use. 8)

You need a proper mappable ignition system such as mega-spark, rather than a one-size-fits-all solution. Unless it's properly mapped you're not going to get a good result in power terms.

Given the lairy spec of the engine you're going to need some proper diagnostic equipment to set that up properly and you're going to need to be able to map the spark appropriately. If you're running OEM spark timing then given how different the motor is to OEM you're going to be waaaay out on the advance curve to accommodate the cams - the whole lot's simply not going to work properly. Do you have any idea what the mixture is doing across the rev-range? Is there a vacuum feed that goes to the ECU? If this isn't connected then it may be that you're not getting the spark advance you need because the ECU doesn't think it's under load at any point - sh*t in, sh*t out. Ads this topic has visited the carbs vs EFI thing, the carb proponents need to answer is how are you going to control the mixture appropriately across the whole rev range (and a 16V loves a wide rev-range). You're running on open feedback loops all the way, so there is little to no control, just a bunch of fixed values that have been defined on a certain set of variables under certain conditions. You *can* set up carbs once, but the requirements for winter temperature running will be substantially different to summer running - there's no way for the carbs to accommodate that. You just have to look at the number of considered variables pulled into a modern EFi unit to understand how many things are considered to generate optimal running within the defined parameters of the built engine. Unfortunately if you mod the engine substantially you take the EFi outside of the parameters it has been set up to operate in. This is when you get running issues. To get those carbs running properly you need a gas analyser (wide-band lambda would help)and a spark unit where you can control the advance, preferably hooked up to a knock-sensing box. Once you have these feedback loops you can control the mixture by manually adjusting the carbs and enable a basic self-tune of the spark, so it advances to the point that knock *just* starts to come on and then pulls the advance back. With those controls you *might* get it running properly, but to get it optimal (and capable of running a cat) you need to toss the carbs away and replace with well set up throttlebodies and proper EFi. If you *really* need help with this I know a guy in Ross-on-Wye who might be able to assist. Just my thoughts on the matter.

The heat's not an issue, as I'll heat-wrap the sucker. Unfortunately I've had really good results with a home-built tubular manifold on the back of an ABF in a Syncro - +170bhp ain't bad for liberating some breathing :wink: Whether I'll see anything as keen from a 4-1 vs the 4-2-1 I built I don't know, but it's going to be interesting finding out, as I have to build a second Syncro-specific manifold in the coming months.

After a few weeks with the 9A and it's bloody KE-Jet fuel misting system I'm ready to take it the hell out and fit the ABF I happen to have lying around (everyone has at least one spare motor lying around, don't they?). I've got the Golf3 ABF loom to fit up the Digifant 3.2, so it should run beautifully I did a quick search on here, but there's not a lot about 16V 4-branches to suit the Corrado. About the only one I've seen out there is a Miltek unit, which Awesome GTI have the last five of. It's listed for the Corrado, but says it's for Golf2. Does anyone know that this manifold will fit ok or not? I'm a bit loathe to spend nearly £300 on one if it might not fit!

Here are the subframes bolted together back to back: Photo of the two different O/S mounts (ish): Photo showing what I cut off the subframe: Car-on-ramp type shot:

No. It's in the captive nut, which is recessed and I can't even get the control arm out. Oh and it's a 10.9, which means it's going to be somewhat brittle. I'll hang on to the subframe and maybe later I'll see if I can get the remains of the bolt out, but it's going to be a challenge and a half. The Golf3 subframe did bolt right up, although the trailing mount holes had to be re-cut, to suit. I also had to fit the ABF rear mount and the bracket on the back of the block, but it all fits up really well and I'm happy with the end result. Now I need to replace the front mount, as I couldn't get that one off - the top bolt was seized solid. Many of the other bolts were seriously seized/over-tight, but it was a good end-result from this first session.

Has anyone tried fitting up a Golf3 unit? It all looks eerily similar to a G3 16V subframe down there. Can I get some clarification on the 'extra mounting points' please? Would these be the bolt-up points at the very rear of the sub-frame? I know the Toledo subframe has these. The rear engine mount looks to be the same, too which would pitch it into Golf3 16V territory. All suggestions gratefully received.

Argh, I've just snapped off the bolt on the front control arm mount on the passenger side on the Corrado I picked up last Saturday. :mad2: ETKA says the front subframe is shared with the 90-92 Golf. Does anyone know what the difference is with regards to the later Golf3 subframe vs the Corrado? Having given the last rights to various Seats and the odd Golf3, the subframes all look pretty damned similar. It looks identical to the one I took off the Toledo 16V I had the ABF out of. I understand there's a G3 somewhere near, which may have a good subframe on it, year unknown. Anyone know the likelihood of it fitting? I know often on VAG parts the differences can be tiny and insignificant, or tiny and significant. If anyone can give me some pointers on the in/significance on this subframe that would be great.