c0vert

Thanks for all the replies. I took the general advice and called VW customer services in Milton Keynes. By giving them the VIN number I found in the cars logbook and on the sticker on the car body in the boot, they were able to pull up details about the vehicle. At first I was worried because the man on the phone said that it was only coming up in the model description as 'Corrado VR6', and mentioned nothing about being a 'Storm' limited edition model. But when I asked him to confrim he was sure, he mentioned that there were actually some letters and numbers following that description that he couldnt decipher. These were I think L2140 GKAT5G. Luckily after speaking to someone else with more information and a different database he was able to tell me that this code did in fact identify my car as being a genuine Storm, and one of the 250 made in classic green with beige leather interior. Phew! The original solitude alloys must have been swapped at some point, but the speedlines grew on me more I think anyway, and although they were annoyingly kerbed, I was able to find quite a nice newly refurbished, mirror polished set of speedlines on ebay for only £50, so im sticking with that for now. I wasn't sure of them at first but in the couple of weeks Ive had them on, the interest in it Ive attracted from random people has literally quadrupled. One guy the other day tried to buy it off me as I was cruising down the M6, pulling up next to me doing 60 asking if it was for sale?! I laughed all the way home after that. Anyway thanks again people. Its nice to join the community.

Hi, I am a new storm owner. Had it for a year and been busy trying to fix all it's problems so this is one of my first posts on here. But im interested to see if anyone knows if there is a definitive way to find out a Storm really is one of the last 500, or if its just been made to look like one. If there anywhere the records or chassis/engine numbers were recorded to check or anything? Basically I have one of the N reg corrado VR6 Storms in dark green with beige leather interior. It has the heated seats, colour coded front grille, storm badges on the gear surround and the rear bumber. The only thing it didnt come with was solitude alloys which Im aware the storm should have, and instead came with a set of speedlines. Now since Im aware it was possible to buy the regular VR6 in green with beige leather and heated seats, I was thinking, how difficult would it be for someone to just get a couple of storm badges, and repaint the front grille? Would there be then no way to tell if it really was originally one of the final run models? There seem to be a lot of them still popping up on ebay even after 15 or so years, and it makes me wonder if some of them (and god forbid, mine included) arent actually bandits.

Had to replace my VR6's Thermostat unit which was leaking. Didnt want to take any chances so I bought the main unit, thermostat, bottom cover, and front cover with all new gaskets and o-rings. I ended up getting Meyle German parts and a blistein thermostat and it costed half what VW wanted, I'm new to buying VW parts so I hope these are of decent quality? 3 hoses to take off it first, then Took three allen bolts to remove it from the engine, then once it was off, the front cover just pulls out of the rigid pipe that goes to the water pump. Then three more allen bolts for the bottom cover and two the same again for the front cover to separate it all. The bottom cover ones were so rusted I couldnt remove them so I got all new bolts from VW. They gave me allen bolts for the main unit to fix it to the engine, and torx replacement bolts for the front and bottom covers. Don't know why they dont do the main unit ones in torx as well because it seems like a better idea. Wasn't a difficult job, just not very convenient accessing it with the fans getting in the way, so taking the hoses off was probably the most fiddly part. And trying to carefully remove all of the old rusted allen bolts without shredding them up was the most stressful moment. 2 hours to finish, as I took my time cleaning everything up before refitting it. On another subject - Looks like the main housing i removed wasn't an OEM part, and was so rubbish it was crumbling from the inside out. It seems as though every part I change on this car is some low quality, badly done job. Had to do the interior heater matrix last month and was raging when I discovered it was some unmarked low quality part that a previous owner/garage had tried to save money on. I put a new Valeo one in, but surely I wouldnt have needed to do all that work if it had been done properly in the first place. Anyone know of somewhere decent in the Liverpool area who can be trusted with corrados? I don't always have time/tools to do everything myself but I'm losing faith in garages to be able to repair these cars the way they should be. I've taken it to about 3 different paces for random things but I always end up undoing/redoing what the garage has botched. :(