oneohtwo

Came up with a bit of a solution to the old propping the engine when removing the front bumper conundrum - I've always felt that the middle bolt must be designed to carry the full weight of the engine, it just doesn't make sense otherwise (Obviously just when static) but never fully felt comfortable with it not propped. Anyway, realised today you can easily disconnect the bumper brackets from the bumper, stick them back in the chassis legs and bolt the cross-member back on with the main big 17mm bolts. Et voila no need to mess around with propping, which is useful if you're jacking the car up and down a lot, or want to move it again with the bumper off (obviously don't drive it!). Not sure why I didn't notice this until now... I'm sure people have figured this out before, but I thought I'd share as a tip!

Good stuff. I'll find out how much postage will be tomorrow and PM you the details.

Yep still available, Culshaw I think has dropped his interest. Yours if you want them.

They are a straight fit to the spindles, but may take a fair bit of fine tuning to set them up so they don't hit the A pillar or the plastic trim at the bottom, although that depends largely how much play is in your linkage I think... mine was all over the shop so there is a quite narrow sweet spot. The stock wiper blades don't fit as I'm sure you know; I use Bosch A928S as a replacement I think (do double check this!) with the shorter wiper on the drivers side. You likely will need to sand down a corner of the plastic trim just by the passenger spindle as well. The wiper tends to hit this as it gets to the top of its arc (hence the worn down bare metal spot in the picture above). There is a thread on here detailing the conversion: http://the-corrado.net/showthread.php?26056-TT-Wipers-(arms-amp-blades)

I tried switching the cables around again and all started OK, so maybe was the ignition switch and just a coincidence. Although I did notice one of the insulating sleeves on the plug had slid off, so I wonder if it could have shorted on the metal cage? On my old unit the wiring had also been cut and spliced to bits, but I couldn't see to what end. It all just seemed to go to the same places, but a fuse had been inserted. Was a massive mess though.

Pair of used Audi TT wiper arms for sale, after I mistakenly bought new ones. Condition is OK, just a few chips here and there but work fine. Only major bad bit is a bit of a gouge mark on one where it rubbed on the plastic trim after the previous owner didn't sand that down. £30 for the pair + postage Good for a cheap conversion or spares as the cheapest I could find these new was £90 for the pair. Fine as they are but could easily be smartened up with a quick rub down and black spray paint.

Could be, I haven't had a chance to look at it again just yet. Could be coincidence and have nothing to do with the stereo wires, would seem a bit odd!

I've also just bought a head unit and in the manual it says you need to swap red/red and yellow/yellow to red/yellow and yellow/red for VW cars, as others have said above. Mine handily came with connectors fitted to these wires so it's easy. One of them is the battery feed so should keep the settings running in the background. Have had a bit of a weird issue with this though. Car was fine after first doing it, but when trying to start it again after a short drive the electrics went dead as though it had all shorted. Swapped the cables back and started fine again. Need to do a bit of investigation and try it with the cables swapped again, but very odd it started first time after swapped the cables... doesn't make much sense. Be interested to see if you encounter a similar issue.

I just bought from here so cheers for putting up the link. Couldn't find others anywhere else. One thing I did notice; I bought these because I thought the splines on my old Audi TT(came with the car) arms had rounded off so they were slipping on the spindle but I notice the brand new ones don't have any splines at all. I figure the 'splines' on the old ones were therefore just cut by the splines on the spindle which is slightly annoying as I didn't need the new ones at all... Unless I have just got 2 duff ones somehow! Anyone just able to verify this?

Thinking of going for the DAB upgrade but not selected a head unit yet. Anyone any experience with these: https://www.halfords.com/technology/car-audio/car-stereos/jvc-kd-r891bt-digital-receiver I think the square chunky design would go fairly well in the Corrado, except for the awful multicoloured button... They do similar styled ones with a more restrained button but they don't have DAB unfortunately.

I had similar a number of years back where the linkage popped off the plastic and then wouldn't stay on. Solved it by carefully drilling a small hole through the spindle and creating a split pin to keep the linkage on. Been fine every since. (although another part of the mechanism has just broken so I have had to get a new one)

Yep, it was the collar stuck in the block. Got it out and got the new part in ok!

Yes, indeed this is it really - I was being overly simplistic just to illustrate a point and it shouldn't really be an issue when moving at a decent speed. It is just the sitting in traffic and moving slowly, which seems to be an increasingly common occurrence! I don't think the fans on their own have enough to force it out under the car and as you say once it is saturated there's not a lot to be done. I don't have the card section on top of the radiator though, that is something I need to rectify. the old radiator I had never had it, and I don't remember if the new one came with any - might have accidentally discarded it as packaging. Will need to sort something out there. I guess that must happen pretty regularly! I do wonder how much difference an airduct at the back of the radiator would make, behind the fans. Always seemed a sensible idea to have the radiator in a separate compartment, if nothing else from an air resistance perspective.

Fair points all! Although I wasn't so much getting at the engine temp itself, mine is sits around 90, oil around 100-115 so the cooling system is doing it's job well. It's just all the heat from inside the engine pretty well gets dumped into the bay, from the rad, around it and has nowhere to go. I was thinking of all the other parts that sit in the bay outside the block that might not like it. Taking it to an overly simplistic level, i's almost the situation where there better your engine cooling system is, the hotter the rest of the bay will get - all that heat removed from the engine has to go somewhere, and the more that is removed the hotter it, wherever it is, will be... So the things mentioned above, whilst improving the engine temp won't help the rest of the bay! Maybe it's not a problem, just anything excessively hot doesn't feel comfortable!

Has anyone ever had much success with reducing the residual heat in the VR6 engine bay, or given much thought to it short of cutting large holes in the bonnet? We all know it gets pretty hot under there, small bay/large engine etc, but after coming home the other day having just been driving around pretty slowly I popped the bonnet but could barely touch the bonnet stay it was so hot. Obviously having been going so slowly no airflow could build up and eject the hot air, but even so. I imagine they are designed for the temperatures but nevertheless all that heat can't be tremendously good for the components in there. Best I could really think of was wrapping the exhaust (odd thread in here on the subject), the aforementioned vents in the bonnet and stripping the sound proofing off. I even was thinking of some sort of cowling around the fan/radiator with a pipe running over the gearbox and venting under the car perhaps... I think it could be done, and if the piping is designed well may even improve airflow through the radiator! Anyone else given it any consideration? I'm sure no one really wants to go cutting up a perfectly good bonnet, but thought it might make a good discussion point!

Well this is it, yes the O-ring did remain in the block, it appeared that there was a groove inside the block into which the O-ring was fitted. But the thing is the replacement part has a flanged base with the o-ring in that was larger that the hole in the block so I didn't go any further - however I am wondering now that you say perhaps the retaining collar had come off the original part and was stuck in the block. I'll have another look, always difficult to see when wedged under the car in the dark and just an inspection light! (underground car park) I will have a look for the relay 109 as well, ta.

I finally got a chance to swap out the crank sensor at the weekend, only to find the new part (Not a Valeo one, they sent a Delphi thing) doesn't fit as below: Word of warning if anyone else is looking to buy one. The original part is the metal one below, new one is the cheap looking plastic one above. You can see at the base of the plastic one it widens and has an O-ring fitted - this won't fit in the hole in the crank case. The O-ring is located in hole and the sensor should be the same diameter all the way along. Very frustrating. Looking on the website quite a few of these sensors have the widened base, including the Hella one for £170! Something to look out for. Anyway, cleaned up the old one and put it back in, then drove around locally trying to replicate the fault. Engine got up to temp just going along below 30 mph for a good hour but no issue, ran fine... so not sure what to do now! Leave it and hope it was an odd one off?

Hi, are the fog light switches and rear window heater switch all in decent nick with the lights working? The bulbs in mine have gone and looks a faff to fix.

Went for the Valeo but still waiting for it to arrive, so haven't yet fully got to the bottom of things. In the meantime I've had a listen to the fuel pump and nothing sounded odd about it, and I have changed the fuel filter on the off chance using the wiki guide. Couple of things I found different to the wiki guide was that the bolts are17mm not 16mm, and it doesn't mention the metal clips holding the cage onto the bolts which were quite fiddly. Also the minimum size of fuel line clips is 14mm. I couldn't find 12-15mm, so ended up with a variety, 12-13, 13-14 and 15-17mm. The 15-17mm are too big and won't tighten, and the 12-13 won't go on.

I've not had a chance to poke about just yet, but have ordered a new fuel filter anyway as god knows if that's ever been changed and it's been on my mind anyway. The crankshaft sensor did sound a likely culprit, so I was going to swap that over anyway on the off chance, but it's no longer available from VW. (Just as well as they were charging over £100 for it!) I've found a few here: https://www.autodoc.co.uk/car-parts/crankshaft-sensor-15032/vw/corrado/corrado-53i/1755-2-9-vr6 But somewhat unsure what to go for. don't really want to be paying £160 for the top end Hella effort, but nor do I want some cheap junk that's worthless. Was thinking the Valeo might be ok, as I believe they provided some OEM parts, but was wondering if there were any recommendations from that list, or recognised sensors? Cheers.

Some good info there thanks. Will try and do some investigations this weekend. That pipe looks nasty, don't particularly want that getting in your fuel!

Had a bit of an odd moment on the M25 last Friday. Was in slow moving traffic when all of a sudden throttle became unresponsive and started stuttering. Pulled over to the left and it seemed to settle down and was ok just at a steady speed or slow revving. The traffic came to a stop and seemed likely to sit there a while so I switched off, but then it wouldn't restart. Kept turning over but not firing. Pushed it over to the hard shoulder and was waiting for 2 hours for assistance and on the off-chance tried again and the engine fired up and I got to the next services with the engine apparently running fine. Didn't want to risk the same again so got towed. Could this be fuel pump related or something else? (Didn't want to hijack the fuel pump thread down there!) That's my initial thought... temperature all seemed fine and normal, low 90s. Oil all fine. And how can I diagnose it as fuel pump definitively short of swapping it over and seeing if it happens again?

Another shout for the Hella. I got mine from a place in Plumstead, ABM motor factors. Unsure if they can send them on.

From memory I think it was slightly recessed as well. Bit odd, but I think it has had the odd bit of respray down the years (not well in some places) and maybe they left the strips on and sprayed around? I'm not sure how well that would polish out if it is recessed? I agree would look a lot better though, especially as I've sort of got half on and half on at the moment!

Been contemplating this for a while. The rear offside piece came off of it's own accord a while ago, which was handy but left the adhesive crap all over the place. I found that, not having much else to hand, cellulose thinner gets that stuff off in double quick time. Pretty well just dissolves it. Nothing I've used since seems to work as well... obviously have to clean it off the remaining paint sharpish, and it's pretty nasty stuff. Only thing I found when the strip was off was that there was an imprint of it in the paintwork under. I have had that panel resprayed when the sill was repaired, but I don't really want to get all the doors resprayed if the other strips have left a mark so have been reluctant to remove them.