Jim

You'd hope. I might have some external help on this soon so will update accordingly.

This could be very exciting news. Have to find out about headlight lenses too. Hope they don't require a massive order!

Thanks Dave - much appreciated. I've got a new exhaust cam on it's way to me in the post so I should be OK for now... unless I break another one! :|

Not sure what make the ones I removed are.. will have to grab a photo of the logo on them to see if they look familiar to anyone.

Spark plugs were removed mate. I've not had much enthusiasm to go and stick my head under the bonnet again yet but I will hopefully this weekend.. will have to go inspect the left most tappets on the exhaust as that's where the problems seem to lie.

Seems like a possible coincidence that the heater fan has packed up and you've also got a stellar water leak... might be worth getting the scuttle area cleaned out, and the heater motor cover gasket replaced.. still available from VAG :)

Yep - they are the same from a visual inspection. Could do with comparing the inner element though (height from the base of the tappet, to the bit that actually rests on the top of the valve).

These are INA's... I deliberately didnt buy cheap ones! :)

We originally tried to install the OE cams and they didn't yet have the sprockets on. The instructions I believe are you install the cams first, then fit sprockets which is what we were working to. In terms of removing the schimmels, just fancied going back to and trying out OE in a bit of a question to put my VR back to pretty much bone stock :) Plus selling them was going to pay for the work I was doing (tappets, injectors, and associated gaskets / bolts, etc) - as it is, technically the job has cost me twice as much now with them breaking :(

The presoaking thing was clearly a majorly bad idea - but I was sure I'd read it on this very forum. It's looking like (with the absence of any other logical explanation) that it may have played the major role in this problem.

Yes mate. Did try on one or two of them earlier and found there's very little movement - could get them to squeeze in (as oil came out of the little oil hole) but it was a minuscule amount of travel.

Hi Dave - thought this was an interesting idea that I will look to follow too. Just wondered how much travel you expect on the 'compressible' part of the tappet (no idea what the technical name is) - are we literally talking a few mm? Don't want to risk over tightening them and ruining them if I can help it!

Will do. Thanks Darren - that's extremely kind of you. I love this forum sometimes - some extremely generous folks on here.

That is my only thought - I have a feeling we didn't have them in the correct position prior to tightening down. It's the only logical explanation. Just hope it hasn't damaged a valve into the bargain if so.

That is extremely kind of you mate - I'll snap your hand off for those. Do you think £10 will cover the postage?

Thanks for the replies guys. Feeling pretty hacked off. It's not been a good year or so with this car but this is the biggest set back in quite a while. We don't know for sure if the tappets are feeling moving, but they are a brand new set of INA's so I'd hope they were correct. I did soak the tappets overnight in oil for 24 hours - was that the right thing to do? Should I have waited a few hours before trying to tighten down?

As per the thread title. Thanks.

Hi guys... Well got stuck in today with changing the tappets and injectors on my VR today. We eventually got everything apart and replaced the tappets (which I had soaked in oil for 24 hours) but upon installation of the cams, starting with the exhaust cam and tightening down the inner bearing caps (as per the workshop manual) the cam snapped around the area of the journal of cap number 3. ****. We assumed it was a fault in the cam (which were some second hand OE ones I'd bought a while back) and just put it down to bad luck and set about reinstalling my original Schimmel cams instead. To our horror the exact same thing happened - so I've basically wrecked two cams and now have a dead and unmovable car in my garage :( Not a good day. We're trying to work out what we did wrong. What the hell did I do wrong? My only doubt is around having had the cams actually in the correct positions prior to trying to tighten them down... is that the most likely thing? Pretty gutted especially as it means my Corrado is now in my 'home' garage and stuck until I can get it reassembled again and my normal car is going to have to live out on the street until I can get it sorted again. Cheers.

Well, it rolled out of the same factory as the Corrado so gets some points for that :) Can understand running a Corrado as a daily would be a very difficult proposition for anyone, especially on a pension so seems a very sensible decision given the circumstances. Hope your fortunes change and you're able to find yourself back into a Corrado again some day though! :)

Apparently the only legal requirement is to make any new owner of the car (assuming you ever sell it!) aware of the mileage change. You could also look into a mileage correction service though to put the mileage to what it should be - given the age and simplicity of the Corrado clocks, I'm sure it'd be quite trivial for most companies to do?

Pictures added to the first post!

Hard to tell as they were not sold over here of course.

I will Private Message you my email address - I can arrange getting your photo's on the site.

Pretty sure you'll be able to sell all 250 sets eventually. There should be enough demand especially at such a reasonable price. Window scraper seals would definitely be hot property too if you wanted something else to look into!

I don't think it's uncommon for metalwork in the interior such as the seat runners, to have been missed by the spray gun so I wouldn't be concerned about that :) Same for the VIN number in the engine bay - I'm not sure if it's the case for EVERY car, but it's certainly not painted on mine either.