Jim

Here here. Even the Classic Parts division of Volkswagen, which I'd hoped would be our saviour, I'm now less optimistic about. The folks that run it are really enthusiastic it seems and trying very hard to get the thing off the ground. But VW are, apparently, quite uninterested in it's existence. They're badly underfunded and are struggling to get any real official support from within Volkswagen. The latest story I heard was that Classic Parts wanted to expand out their enterprise and launch Classic Parts counters within VW dealerships.. incredibly this was met with NO enthusiasm from Volkswagen, and this has been instead spun out to a seperate company and run as an entirely seperately funded enterprise. Do VW not care about taking care of their longer term customer base? Are they not proud of the cars they made? VW it seems are purely interested in selling new cars, and have no interest in keeping the old cars on the road. Like you, I simply can't believe their total disinterest in supporting their older cars. I had to laugh when the new Scirocco launched, and a number of VW dealerships went scrabbling around to find good condition examples of the Scirocco and Corrado to stick in show rooms. No thanks to the parent company who have been steadily obsoleting parts, making it virtually impossible now for us to keep pristine examples on the road without having to resort to all kinds scrabbling through parts bins and individually refurbishing parts, etc. I'm lead to believe that BMW and Mercedes-Benz are substantially more interested in their heritage and I do quite seriously keep thinking about chucking in the Corrado towel and going off to buy a nice old 3 series or W124 Merc knowing at least the parent company are proud of the cars they made and are a bit more keen about keeping them on all the road. Get a grip Volkswagen.

Entrance for the Top Gear show gives you entry to the Classic Car show and vice versa. Obviously you can only view the static displays in the Top Gear show as the live stuff is extra.. both shows fill several halls of the NEC but you should be able to get round both in a day easily provided you're not the kind of person that needs to spend 10 minutes looking at each and every car :) Be good to catch up with you pete_griff - as Steve says, lots of us will be there!

Bugger! We were staying near Osnabruck.. and had plenty of time to kill so would have been up for a meet-up and a beer! :) And yes, we drove over in my VR6. Might well go back again next year so will remember to give you a shout!

Yup - exactly the same problem for me.

Um yep... they sold a Passat R36 over here. Not a massive surprise :) Not sure if the R36 lump is, externally, any different in size to the 3.2's or whether the capacity is achieved simply with different piston sizing, etc.

No :( Classic Parts can get them but had none in stock when we went.. so would be subject to a few days lead time. We ideally need to put together an order and stick them in as one with Classic Parts directly to save on shipping, etc. I was disappointed believe me as my VR rad neck has a pinhole leak and it's something I've been looking to swap for a while!

Fantastic... just shows that, compared to some of those big power cars, you don't need to spend loads of money to get something with supercar performance. 182MPH in a Corrado just superb.. I'd say that I'd love to have a passenger ride some time, but I think it might be terrifying ;)

Powerflex bushes in, my opinion, firm up the ride excessively without providing any noticable benefit. I'd personally stick with genuine VW bushes all round...

Stealth Racing would probably be able to hook you up with that combination :)

Alloys look very good! Like the BBS301's but without the added scene tax! :) In fact you could, arguably, stick on some BBS badges and most folks would be hard pressed to tell the difference. Let us know how you get on with the additives.. generally most folks on here use VW oils & fluids and tend not to use any kind of additives - and the engines seem to last pretty well. However on my old Mercedes 200TE which had horrendously noisy tappets, when I had it serviced at DG Autotech they did stick in some Top End treatment and it did definitely quieten them down so I'm pretty open to the idea of using them now! :) ---------- Post added at 11:07 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:06 AM ---------- Also a quick note - you might want to replace that expansion tank cap for a blue one at some point. The black ones are known to have a defect in them which can cause problems (coolant escaping / not sealing properly).. the blue one fixes the problem!

Hmm.. still not seen this car! Will have to keep an eye out for it, and carry a Corrado Forum & Corrado Club flyer whenever I'm in Leamington next :)

Looks nice and there's a good few little jobs for you there to keep you busy it seems! Regarding windscreen wipers, I can highly reccommend either the Lupo or MK1 Audi TT setup. Substantial improvement to the wiping!

Welcome aboard :)

Strange... my one covers all the bumpers, spoilers, etc perfectly? Think it was this one... http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_storeId_10001_catalogId_10151_productId_565257_langId_-1_categoryId_165611

Halfords one, medium size... it's almost like it's designed to fit the Corrado. Just make sure you remove the aerial first.

Yes - and I would like to point out that I did mention in the email to Golf+ that the comments were an assortment from various committee members and not just my own answers.. but seems that fact didn't make it into the article? Just don't want my colleagues thinking I was hogging the limelight which wasn't my intention :) Will have to go try and find a copy somewhere for a read!

I'm sure I could source the equipment to get this sorted and would be only too glad to finally get this encoded and put up for everyone to enjoy. I would promise to look after the tape like it was my own! I'm just about to go away for a week but will drop you a line when I return if you're OK with me borrowing it for a week or so to capture it? Cheers.

Would you be either willing to get this captured onto computer, or loan it to someone who has the facility to do this? I've still never seen this video and would very much like to!

I'm going to guess it's just related to the alarm, but that they've used the 'Use unleaded petrol' blanking cap and just drilled it? Either that or it has an LPG conversion and you didn't realise :D

Not so sure. 16V values are in the absolute dumps so.. it does look pretty straight but priced about right now sadly.

Did you buy that £1,500 VR with the Recaro's and 212,000 miles on the clock mate?

RW1 is Mr Corrado... there is very little he doesn't know about the inner workings of these things :)

Yep drill them out and just replace with two more of the same types of bolt that are just behind them filling the other two bolt holes on the steering column tube :)

Superb! As Jay said, just one of those wheels that works so well on a Corrado!

Well done mate :) I bet it's about a thousand times more rewarding having slogged through all that and got it done yourself! Congratulations :)