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Really? I don't see how that's relevant to my thread kev! Corrado hater! On another note, Good to hear from you slim, thanks for the kind words on my project progress :) it's a shame to hear you let your car go, Im certainly missing driving mine at the moment and I will be for some time yet :(

Never a truer word spoken! :)

For a G60 I would replicate how my previous car was built. 1) Replace the tired cloth grey interior with a stock, good condition black leather interior + the black A,B and C pillar trims, dash, etc. 2) JMR stage 4 charger and 68mm pulley 3) CTN diesel gearbox (my G60 returned 35 mpg on a steady run with this box fitted) 4) KW variant 1 coilover kit - handled fantastic on 16's 5) Do the 5 stud hub conversion (for a greater choice in wheels) 6) VR6 front brake set up and mk4 golf rear calipers 7) Shot blast and powder coat all running gear and replace bushes/components where necessary.

Aye. More being done tonight sorry Mr Mexico, no Juan's allow in! Hahah

Made some more progress towards getting the engine built this evening. I cleaned the crank end oil seal retaining plates ready for new oil seals, separated the rods from their original pistons and started cleaning them, cleaned all the crankshaft main bearing caps and a few other bits. I installed the new core plugs into the block too. No pics as of yet but I hope to get some up tomorrow evening :)

I would love to have a mill here and we are working towards getting one. The lathe is so handy for modifying small bits :) In regards to the pictures I'm not sure what goes there... Johns pictures are hosted in the same place so I'll have to talk to my web hosts. Thanks for the positive feedback guys. Sorry coullstar, it is going to be a bit out there but hopefully in a good way :)

Thanks guys, I'm just taking my time to post more, there has been more progress than this so far. I will post some more later this evening :) The T5 boxes with Quaife internals for about a thousand pounds more than the T9 as they are more popular and can take more power than what I want to run. I had already purchased the T9 with plans to make my own bell housing and found the kit after :(

Hi all, I wanted to finally get around to starting a thread on here detailing my project that has been in the wings for a few years now. I took my original G60 off the road several years ago when I managed to fracture a piston and at that point decided I wanted to build something special. For those of you who don't already know I joined John at John Mitchell Racing two years ago and went back to college to study motorsport engineering at degree level. The only problem with working with John is, and those of you who have read his 500+ bhp 16v Turbo 4-WD build thread will understand this, is that there is no way I can build a standard Corrado :) Firstly I toyed with different ideas, levels of trim, what power plant to use and whether to stay with a G-lader or go with a turbo. In the end I really made the decision that I wanted to build a car that would challenge me to learn new skills in fabrication, manufacture of my own parts and vehicle design. The brief then settled on a very definite plan for the drive line of the car: It had to be rear wheel drive with a longitudinally mounted engine, I then decided it had to be light, as light as it could possibly be as I knew with rear wheel drive I couldn't chase big power like John is (so to have any chance of being able to keep up with John I need a good power to weight ratio advantage ) I also wanted to build the car with an ethos very a kin to that of BMW in the sense that I wanted to build a very well balanced car. BMW build their cars to have a weight distribution of as close as you can get to 50/50. In going rear wheel drive it is easier to achieve this as your drive train components are spread across the length of the car. So I started buying parts..... The first thing purchased was the carbon panel work, this will take the weight out of the top of the car and lower the center of gravity. So far I have the bonnet, roof skin and tailgate. I am in the process of buying wings and doors when they have been manufactured by Lewis at LWS. Even though they look like they have a coat of lacquer they are actually manufactured in the pure dry weave as there is no gel coat on the top of the panels, this can be seen in some of the other pics. Detail of the tailgate can be seen here. As can be seen there is a sheet of perspex for the rear window, the only glass I am fitting back into the car is the windscreen. The car is in no way going to be an every day road car, the brief over time became increasingly angled at motorsports, however the car will be road legal so I can drive it to events. So with the major panels purchased I started looking to source a gearbox. Ideally a Quaife 6-speed sequential was my item of choice but I was hesitant to go straight for the big money box for two reasons. Firstly, I know how the box will perform on paper, I did all the required calculations to tell me what my peak velocity would be in each gear but this is only theoretical. Secondly, the box I was looking at was around 7k so if it didn't perform as expected that was a lot of money (and time saving it) wasted. With this in mind I kept my eye out on eBay for suitable gearboxes, I spotted a Ford (I know, eurgh) Type 9 box built by Phil Peacock who is well known in the rally world as he used to build the gearboxes for Ford Motorsport. The box has a Quaife straight cut gear set with the extra heavy duty lay shaft bearing fitted. Basically this will take everything I want to throw at it and some more, all for a fraction of the price of the sequential. With a great gearbox purchase comes great difficulty. Mounting the gearbox to the engine is difficult as obviously it wont be a direct fit, no one makes a bell housing that takes the Ford type 9 box bolt patten to fit the VAG 4-cylinder bell housing bolt pattern. My original idea was to take an Audi 1.8t gearbox from an A4, cut the bell housing off the gearbox and weld in a suitable section that could take the Type 9 bolt pattern. During my research I found a bell housing kit that adapted the Borg-Warner T5 (a derivative of the Type 9, but with a different gearbox to bell housing bolt pattern) to VAG 1.8t engines. I spoke to the manufacturer and discussed with them my needs and they agreed to machine the bell housing to take a type 9 bolt pattern rather than the T5, so with that sorted I purchased the kit, it was priced at £1100 but it came with a very nicely machined, super light weight flywheel, clutch friction + pressure plates and a hydraulic slave cylinder to suit. However, modification is still required. Due to the Type 9 box that I bought having the heavy duty lay shaft bearing I need to remove material from the back of the bell housing to make it sit flush with the face of the gearbox. The extra bearing housing can be seen in the picture below with a layer of engineer's blue on the surface. You can also see in the above image where I had to machine down the nose cone that covers the gearbox input shaft. I found the diameter of the base plate of the nose was greater than the orifice machined into the bell housing and that the length was too long, this prevented the clutch slave cylinder being placed as far down the input shaft as required. The mating face on the bell housing marked up to be cut to give clearance for the bearing housing. I then found that the bolts that were supplied with the kit had the wrong thread pitch for my T9 box. The bolts supplied were M12 x 1.75 and I needed M12 x 1.5, I had some bolts with the right thread in the bolts bucket in the workshop but they didn't have the narrow heads that fit the recessed holes in the bell housing, time to machine the heads down :) The original size bolt alongside the diameter of the head required. At the other end of things, I obviously need to build the bottom end of the engine so I can mount the flywheel to the crank and make sure all my parts for the gearbox are dimensioned correctly. I bought a 9A 2.0 16v block, it was quite heavily corroded but looked to be okay internally. After a blast off with the steam cleaner I was left with this: After a bit of work with some more aggressive equipment: The block went off to have the bores machined to the pistons. My block is the one on the right with the JE 9:1 pistons on top, the block on the left is a 9A 16vG60 we are building for a customers Mk1 Golf. I then painted the block with cylinder black. Ahh..... that's better :) The bung placed in the hole for the dipstick guide tube is a blanking plug I machined on the lathe whilst I waited for the cylinder black to dry. I need to bung the hole as I don't need a dipstick on this build. There will be no oil to measure under the block as this engine will be fitted with the same dry sump system we have developed for John's car :) That's pretty much as far as I have got to date. Bear in mind that it has taken me two years to develop the idea, try and finalize it, save up and buy the bits. I'm hoping I can find the time to build the bottom of the engine this week but as soon as there is updates I will post some more. Troy.

I'll take them thanks, pm me with payment details if you would. Regards, Troy.

Are these still available?

Durhhhhh

Hi all, I'm urgently looking for a passenger side (near side) headlamp. All tabs and reflector must be in good condition in order to pass an MOT. Glass condition isn't an issue. Let me know what you have. Thanks.

I ran 100w H4 bulbs in my headlights for some time and never had any problems but the reflectors were in perfect condition. If the reflectors have started breaking down on the surface then higher rated bulbs may just accelerate it. However 100w bulbs are illegal to use on the road as far as I am aware, something you might want to consider :)

Larger wise it has to be Sapporo for me! Ale wise there is a really, really good brewery here in Sussex called Dark Star, they do a cappuccino porter that is amazing. I love wheat beer too.... but that makes my bowel especially active :(

Hi all, I'm looking for a G60 supercharger, preferably a later unit with the white metal scroll. I am willing to consider units that need a re-build but must be in complete working order. Please let me know what you have :) Thanks, Troy.

Did any pictures emerge of this?

There's a lot more work than unbolting the G60 and bolting in an Eaton. You would have to fashion a bracket to hold the Eaton charger. The boot pipe outlets are in different locations so you would have to make some modifications to the pipe work and realistically as the boost characteristics are different a re-map would be best for the engine if you are looking for reliability. For their size the Eaton chargers arent as efficient as the G-lader anyway so without extensive work you would loose engine performance any how My advise would be to find a good, second hand G-lader and have it serviced before you fit it. Chargers can be found for 300-400 pounds on eBay and the likes. In regards to servicing check out http://www.johnmitchellracing.co.uk for pricing. If you find a charger for the right price you can purchase it and have it serviced and see change from a grand. Troy.

Tactical nuclear bomber, long range and could operate at extremely low altitudes. Fantastic piece of engineering, shame that this may be the last year it will fly unless the £200,000 winter service schedule costs are raised. After the 2015 season it will become a non flying exhibit, displaying only engine thrust runs and taxi'ing shows, this is due to major components of the aircraft being unavailable and far too expensive to start manufacturing again. See the website for more info and how to support the project with a donation: http://www.vulcantothesky.org/

Sounds like that could be the problem guys!! :) In all seriousness is it just the images on the forums that people are having problems with, or is anyone having problems with our website? Either way, if someone would be so kind to post me a screen shot of the error they are getting that would be great! Thanks, Troy

Hi guys, for those of you having thread picture problems; are you trying to view at work or on a personal PC/mac?

Clumpy, I am extremely passionate, given that my car is just a shell at the moment! :D My third corrado though, so yes I have been an owner for a few years now. True there are more VR's in particular left, therefore there is more likely to be a greater number in better condition, but you have to consider ~10,000 unit imported into the UK is not a great deal at all to start with. The only thing that really outshines the Corrado from the same era on that front is the Rallye!

Jim, if you boil it down that says "it should sell for that" on the other hand "it should not sell for that" That's what I see, but every one is entitled to their opinion at the end of the day. Mine is that it is a sad thing that people say it shouldn't. I'll leave it at that :)

That's a contradiction though. "it'd be nice for it to sell for that, purely to help the Corrado economy along" and then you go on to say "The traders don't deserve to get their asking price". If you were looking to buy that car you would be doing research, your research would probably lead you to find that you could get it for less. Okay so the trader has done little work but if someone wants to pay that for it let them! The more we write about how we think its not worth it and that the traders are earning a big fat one out of it, the easier it is for people looking to buy these cars find that out. Were shooting ourselves in the feet here!

Clumpy, firstly please bear in mind that I have used terms such as "generally" in my statements. Secondly, I'm not saying people aren't keen owners, far from it.. I know there are people out there who do keep their cars in a good state of repair, maintain them well and care about them an awful lot. What I react to is outlandish comments about why things shouldn't be priced so. You are right in saying that 10k is probably more realistic a price for it to sell, I didn't say that was too little either though... It is when people just write 'far too much money for that!' or 'its just a trader trying a mark up' it makes me despair, why are people so negative about these situations? Why do they seem to take offense to the fact that the car could even possibly be sold for that kind of figure? it just irks me that people seem to focus on the fact that it has a high price tag and can't see that the car, realistically, if not now, but hopefully in the very near future will be worth that figure. If any one has been offended by what I said then, well, they obviously disagree with me. If it perhaps came across as "I think no one on this forum cares about their Corrados anymore" then to clarify, that's not what I'm implying. I'm implying that good cars were lost to bad ownership because the cars became devalued to the point that people bought them and didn't care for them in the way that true enthusiasts would have. They ended up in the price bracket of the buy and forget market. I think that's a shame and the prices of Corrados needs to come up. However, I think that's probably not going to happen now as there aren't enough good condition cars remaining. That's what makes the minter at 15k the right price in my eyes. Where some collector, who as I said would have "kept locked away somewhere, to be driven on the very rare occasion, to be maintained, preserved and cared for", becomes useful to us is because it is then seen as desirable, a collector's item to have. As a result of being seen as a collector's item a status will start to form and then those of us with the cars that have been lovingly restored and cared for will have made a great investment. Which is after all, what we want right?...

If i was an eccentric collector of vehicles and I wanted one in my collection I'd pay the 15k price tag, sure he will have a tough time selling it or a long wait but leave the man to his business... What's the point in having a go at him. There's too many people down treading the value of our cars generally, that's why they have ended up in the hands of people who couldn't afford to run them and keep them in good condition. Hence why there are so few of the G60's left in good condition. Yes 15k is a high ticket for a '91 car, even in terms of most cars that age not just corrado's. But look at it! That's probably just as clean as any other car, even the ones in VW's collection of cars... 28,000 miles! Stored from nearly new until 2002.. What's wrong with what he is doing?! So what if he didn't even pay 7k for it, that's the nature of business. If you buy it and decide you could sell it for more then that's your business, no one else's! If I was the seller and people started ringing me up, telling me 'you can't do that! That's way too high blah blah blah!' I'd be telling you to mind your own business and do one!! I would rather see that car sold to the right person for a ludicrously high price and it be kept locked away somewhere, to be driven on the very rare occasion, to be maintained, preserved and cared for, rather than for a low price where some jerk off that has no interests in keeping the car in its fantastic condition gets hold of it and destroys yet another classic car. What would you guys say if it actually sold for his asking price?