tonytiger

Is that JUST a suggestion or are they confident? If you're doing the work yourself it's not so bad, but if you're paying somebody else then you don't want to be forking out unnecessarily. Has it been on diagnostics? The diagnostics *may* give an indication as to what the problem is. For the MOT, see if you can find a place that is helpful with older cars - rather than just any MOT place. Good luck!

I think it's repeated tomorrow (Wednesday) @ 7pm - at least I'm hoping it is, as I didn't see it either!

I agree with DanVW - breaking it could be more hassle than it's worth and drag on for ages. But obviously if it's got serious faults then that may be your only option - but if it runs and drives then it can't be that bad, cant it?

I think the moral of the story is, don't sell anything via a mate (trust no-one - if you want something doing properly do it yourself) - and it ain't sold for the price you want, until you've got the cash in your hand and you've counted it! :wink: I say full credit to gg7aph for paying up the £20 8) - personally I'd have said splitting the difference at a tenner was fair (but perhaps that's just the influence of my dad's yorkshire roots) :lol:

Not sure I agree with all the comments here. For example, most cars for sale have an asking price - are you all honestly telling me you go and look at a car and just pay that price? And regarding parts prices on the forum, again there is an asking price - but whenever I've listed parts - regardless of whether or not I've stated I'm open to offers - I nearly always get asked if I'll take less. Don't see any real difference here - other than it wasn't the guy selling the parts that made the final decision. Oh, and IMHO £80 for speedlines that need a refurb and only have 2 legal tyres is NOT a bargain. Have you tried selling speedlines recently? I have! £60 seems about right to me! Without tyres, the going rate seems to be £10 each! A damned sight cheaper than when I was buying a couple of years back.

:cuckoo: Why do you want to drive something boring to work everyday? Something cheaper to run perhaps, but surely not boring... Petrol currently costs me £60 a week, the vr is my only car, but if I got another car that could do 50+mpg then I could probably run them both with no difference in cost - the economic car for commuting, and the vr for fun - but then I'd probably not use the vr that much and it would be come almost pointless owning it. But it may come to that if petrol prices continue to rise like this. :(

Well it's been a while since I updated this thread, but as it's 4 years ago yesterday since I bought it, I thought it was about time. No new pictures at the moment - mainly because the car could really do with a little attention on the bodywork, but it will have to wait until next year. And that's because of all the other things that have been done in the past expensive year(ish). June '06 was a terrible month for the car - first of all the heater matrix went while I was on the motorway, but luckily there was only a little steam so I could still see (though as it started coming out of the instrument panel/steering column I though it was smoke and on fire at first!). Matrix was bypassed by the RAC man, and as it was summer I wasn't too worried. A couple of days later, after driving 'fairly quickly' I could hear a rattling / clanking sound and it didn't sound good - noticed the oil temp was showing 135.... :shock: Car continued to drive, but sounded terrible - diagnosis was a problem of some kind in the bottom end. :( At that time, and as car done had 160k miles, it seemed like a good idea just to replace the engine with a lower mileage s/h unit, rather than rebuild - and as a garage would be doing it - probably a cheaper option overall too. So, car was taken of the road for a while to sort this out - ended up being off the road longer than expected - mainly due to the garage where I always had my work done closing unexpectedly. Still, eventually found a localish garage prepared to do the work but it didn't go quite as I planned. Of course, with the engine out I obviously had the clutch done at the same time, but there were numerous other unexpected expenses too - the original radiator disintegrated, the slave cylinder wouldn't bleed, the bonnet wouldn't open and the cable had to be cut (apparently), the battery was dead (apparently), igntion leads needed replacing, etc. Also with the exhaust off the car I could see it wasn't in a good state, so had that replaced too. To make matters worse, when testing the newly installed engine there was a misfire that they couldn't track down for a while, so spent hours trying to sort out (and for a while I thought I'd bought a duff engine). Eventually it was all sorted though and I had the car back :D but still needed to sort out the heater matrix :( And I was a bit depressed by now, to say the least. Estimate for engine swap was around £400 in labour, but in the end including *some* parts (I provided the new clutch, radiator, bonnet handle and cable, and exhaust) it cost over £1200 (actually might be closer to £1400 - I think I've tried to block it from my mind!). So, adding on the cost of the engine and other parts, it was probably over £2,200 - double what I'd expected. I could have cried - especially as the week I got the car back somebody on here was selling a similar mileage VR with leather, in what seemed to be really good nick, for just £2k. Anyway, I then replaced the heater matrix and front wiper linkage, and finally thought about getting it back into daily use - until I realised the aux water pump was leaking. So replaced that too - what's another £70-ish anyway! Also realised that the garage had broken one of the headlight fixings - presumably when releasing the bonnet - more expense :mad: Oh yes, nearly forgot to mention - I'd had the front jacked up for something (can't remember what now) and when I lowered it back down again a front spring broke. Damn, I thought (or words to that effect). Finally though, it was back in daily use - though I was listening for every sound expecting something to go wrong! But it didn't - well not straight away... After using it for a few weeks it developed a vibration at the front somewhere, which got worse and worse - I couldn't see anything obviously wrong, and thought there must be a problem with the hub, or driveshaft. So, after buying a suitable selection of spare parts, including a big breaker bar to release the hub nut, to cover the possible problems I started work to fix the problem. Chocked the wheels, big breaker bar and socket on the hub nut and went to apply much force to remove it - and nearly did myself a nasty injury! The hub nut wasn't tight! :shock: Bloody garage! So, tightened it up and sure enough - problem solved! Then everything was pretty much okay after. A couple of new tyres, and then, MOT time! Really wasn't sure what to expect this year, but amazingly, and for the first time (probably the first time on any car I've ever owned) it passed first time!! A few months later (July) it developed a squeeling sort of a noise which was in the area of the aux belt - and I had a bit of a panic that it was the main water pump. Not wanting to risk any cooling problems I replaced the pump (breaking the front engine mount in the process), but it turned out not to be that. So then I replaced the belt tensioner (which I should have done in the first place) and that solved the problem. Since then everything has been okay (apart from the water pump pulley coming loose - oops). Car's now done over 175k miles and will hopefully keep going for a good while yet. So, that's it for now. Hopefully next year I'll be able to get the paintwork sorted - and then I can take some more photos!

It was the bolts holding the pulley to the pump - so I'm sure the pump will be okay. Annoyingly, I needn't have even changed the pump - I did so because there was a noise in that area and I had a bit of a panic that it might be the pump - but it wasn't and the original plastic pump looked just fine. Turned out to be the belt tensioner. Still, at least I know the water pump is okay! Problem with getting new bolts is they're usually dealer only, and always have to ordered. And one or two quid each (or towards £5 for suspension bolts I think) doesn't sound much until you end up buying quite a few.

Thanks for the write-up - very useful. I replaced the water pump a couple of months back using this and it was pretty straight-forward (though I did snap a bolt in the front engine mount when putting it back together). However, I had a problem with the car this week as result of me doing this - sounded like problem in the head somewhere - a very loud clatter/rattle/knock, which increased with engine speed :shock: I couldn't see any obvious problems, neither could a mate - so I took it to a garage fearing the worst. Initially they also thought it was a problem in the head and we were just discussing options when one of the guys realised it wasn't that at all. Fortunately, it turned out that 2 of the water pump pulley bolts had come out (completely) and the third one was loose and it was just the pulley clattering. So, might be worth using some threadlock on those bolts when refitting to make sure this doesn't happen. Cheers, Tony

Dukest - I don't think the costs that Wendy quoted are anything out of the ordinary (at least for a vr) - I spent £3k in the first year of ownership, and even taking out the non-essentials it still cost almost £2k. I've now owned my vr for approx 3 years and 11 months - total spent (exc. tax and insurance) - £7k. Allowing for the fact that it was off the road for about 7 months last year - that works out at about £175 a month - and I've still not got the body work sorted out - and it doesn't have lowered suspension, fancy alloys, a charger or a schrick - it's all standard apart from the lupo wipers! Plus I've spent almost £10k on petrol in that time too. These are not cheap cars to run - they may be at times, but usually there's something that needs doing. The spoiler mechanism on mine is now in need of attention, last month it was the tensioner pulley/bearing. Despite the costs though - these are great cars :D So anyway, Mushy - did you see the car? did you buy it? Are you a rado owner yet?

Mushy, what do you actually want? Do you just want to own a Corrado, or do you want the fastest you can afford to run? I specifically didn't want a G60 as I was bothered about service costs & reliability of the charger (doing 20k+ per year didn't seem a good idea in a G60), but I also didn't really want a 16v (or 8v) as I wanted a significant performance increase over my old Scirocco. However, knowing what I know now, I'd probably go for a 16v. Okay they're not the fastest cars on the planet (either 1.8 or 2.0) but then almost no matter what you've got there's always something faster on the road. So, if performance isn't a major factor why not look for a 16v? I've not looked at prices for a while, but chances are you'll be able to buy one cheaper than a G60 and insurance should be lower too. And I'd expect maintenance costs to be lower. Though I guess fuel economy may not be noticeably different. Which ever one you choose, I'm sure you'll enjoy ownership (well mostly anyway - apart from when it's broken and costs a small fortune to fix - but that's part of the joy of owning an old car :lol: ).

Hmm - £20 for 150 miles in a TDI doesn't seem great to me - I reckon that's about 32mpg. Not sure what a G60 is like for mpg, but I do 80 miles a day in my vr6, at least 60% of which is on the motorway, and with reasonably steady driving I get about 32mpg - of course, if I hammer it then I average closer to 27mpg. I can't see you getting any worse economy than that in a G60 - but does obviously depend how you drive. Don't assume the charger has been done though - find out if it has, when and by whom. Maintenance costs may or may be high - obviously depends how well it's been looked after in the past - but it's never going to be as cheap as a Golf, but may not be any worse than your Audi. Also depends whether you're going to be doing work on it yourself when possible or always handing it to a garage. I'm sure someone with a G60 will reply soon.

When I had the engine replaced in my car (and had the clutch done at the same time) the garage had to replace the slave cylinder - didn't have any visible faults, but they just couldn't get it to bleed - yet before the engine swap I hadn't had any problems with the hydraulics at all. And, as you say, at least a new slave cylinder is fairly cheap if you do need one.

I think under FOI a formal request has to be made in writing, and they're obliged to reply within 20 days - even if that's just to say they can't provide the info. Could be worth a try again. Other than that, one of the motoring mags might be able to help - I seem to recall when Autocar ran features on secondhand performance cars they often quoted production numbers, and numbers left in the UK.

Think this has been asked a few times before but don't think anyone has tried to obtain the figures. I agree it would be interesting to know how many were left of each type / year, especially as there always seems to be several being broken. The DVLA may provide the information under the freedom of information act - see here

Thanks to Dan_NI for a grill with badges - sent out promptly and packaged well enough to survive the postal system in one piece. :thumbleft:

Looks a really good one. 8) Nice to see a standard one too! (Though personally I don't like the standard orange side repeaters - would look better with clear or smoked IMHO)

I could be wrong on this, but I thought that for standard fuel (e.g. 95 Ron) one depot might supply numerous different retailers (both supermarkets and big brands such as Shell) using the same base fuel, and it was just the additives that were different. If that is the case, then this might affect more than just the supermarkets if it's the base fuel that's contaminated.

DaveVR6, forgot to say - if you jack the car up you might be able to see if the spring is broken. On mine the very top coil had broken off, and as this is smaller than the rest it fell to the bottom. If this has happened you may not be able to see it, so stick your fingers through the spring and see if there's a loose bit inside. Hope that makes sense.

DaveVR6, in my case I'd had the car jacked up on the passenger side and a few minutes after dropping it down there was an almighty bang/twang from the driver side. So I then lifted the drivers side to have look and could see the top coil on the spring had broken off. I think it'll be obvious if you've got a broken spring as you'll probably hear rattling and/or funny boing/twang noises (for want of a better description) if you drive the car - it was certainly obvious on my sister's Ibiza (on which I've just replaced the broken front spring today - much easier to do, as the bolts hadn't corroded solid and the springs was much softer and easier to compress). Storm Monkey, definitely wasn't a torx head - is your's standard suspension? Or perhaps a different model?

Thanks again for the info + tips here guys - did this work a couple of weeks ago. Was fairly straightforward apart from the bottom bolts which were really badly corroded - ended up using a power saw to cut through them! The very top nut was indeed a problem to remove initially. For a start, it seems that a 7mm allen key is not a standard size - at least not in the 3 or 4 sets I had lying around - so had to go and buy one from Halfords. But then once I realised a 21mm spark-plug socket fitted the nut it was fairly easy - a spanner fitted round the top of the socket, and the allen key through the socket.

Thanks for updating this Supercharged. :thumbleft: Any idea who funds the discount? Does the dealer just take a hit on it's profit, or is it claimed back from vag? Still can't really understand why trade get such a big discount anyway.

We'll I've just been quoted £143 (inc vat but with a 10% discount) by VAG for a new headlight. Last time I bought one was 2 years ago and it only cost £106 - a 35% increase in just two years!!! Wish my pay went up like that! GPC don't do them anymore as "they've come down in price so much recently"! Anybody know where I can get a new light substantially cheaper than VAG?

Does anybody have the price list for 2007 that they could post up? I know I can't get those prices myself - but it can be useful for seeing how much discount they can give on some parts, and so whether to push for more than the standard 10% discount.

I think it's a big plastic nut 'thing', which fits to a bolt that goes through the hole I've arrowed in the pic. As I say, I *think* that's the one. Possibly you've already figured this out by now.