Stonejag

Rear right for me! :lol: A contributor on mine was the rear brake hose banging on the beam, the tiny clips come loose and vanish. Cable tie sorted it...

Put some longitudinal fins in it for cooling? Would still protect it....hmmm :scratch:

Got my Dubpower exhaust ceramic coated - looks excellent :) Gradually gathering parts but it'll go on with my refurbished head, chains and 263s in due course! Advice from Stealth was not to bother - especially not with the ebay specials - as they've seen a few substandard ones which cracked when imperfectly heatwrapped. Dubpower got the nod though! Stock headers are good for 250hp but the noise is probably worth it ;) Stone

M25 clockwise, J25-26 at 1520: black C, aftermarket headlights, stopped on the hard shoulder with an HGV...hopefully not post-accident :(

Was looking for some cheap winters. LMK what you think 'a good offer' would be? :)

Plus most people seem to hang the cone filter directly off the MAF without supporting it, which cracks the inlet elbow and gives the MAF wires metal fatigue. Ask me how I know... ;) Stone

If you're lucky you may find the wheel stuck in a layer of grease in the bracket at the bottom of the glass, they sometimes get glued in. Nowhere for it to go if it's fallen out unless you have a huge hole in the bottom of the door... Stone

No Golf required, my Corrado fans have already caught fire! Twice! Why did you think I converted to Spal? :lol: Stone

Have you checked your alternator / battery voltages? It's just a resistive sensor so any variation in the voltage will make it over- or under-read. It's only connected to the MFA, not used by the ECU or anything, so it doesn't matter overmuch if it's high or low, provided you know which :)

Hey Hasan, Yep, just join the two outputs from the thermal switch in the radiator. Then they're just in parallel so either switch closing will trigger the fan relay. Although my Spal setup works it can still overheat when stuck in traffic for a long while - the coolant temp stops rising at 110 but the oil temp keeps going. Just checking I've not hooked it to speed 2 by mistake, but if I haven't then I'll most likely swap the switch for a single-stage one at a lower temperature - the fitting is industry standard, you just need any thermoswitch with an M22 thread. Will be very glad when I've got shot of the factory wiring too, it gives me the fear! ;) Stone

As a quick tip for posterity - one of mine split away from the backing like this. If you glue it and then drive a couple of pins through at right angles they disappear invisibly into the leather and give it a nice stable base to let the glue dry. Have lasted well so far :)

I've got half a spare front one - had to fit a new mount as my old one was beyond salvaging, so I have an extra one of the red inserts that would have formed the lower front mount. Might be of use to someone, if not it can stay in my bits box until the front mount dies :)

Wow, you definitely don't need to take out the seat! Wouldn't have dreamed of doing it that way... You can test the ignition switch easily. Take off the lower column plastic (three screws, unless one or more have been snapped off in the past - extremely common) and unplug the switch from the harness. Then crimp four short lengths of wire onto a spade terminal at one end, and all four together into a single spade at the other end. There are four contacts around a central pin - I forget which order they are in, but one is radio live, one is the starter, one is the 'key inserted' signal and one is the 'key in accessory position' signal. Plug the four-way crimp into the middle, then experiment using one of the single-crimped ends and you'll find one of them should turn the radio ignition feed on. If that works but it doesn't with the key, then your switch has died. Important safety note: you can start the car doing this, but under no circumstances do it without the key in the ignition and turned. The key needs to be in the ignition so the immobiliser coil can read its chip (if fitted) and it needs to be turned to deactivate the steering lock. If you forget then you'll get it locking when you turn the wheel too hard while driving - dangerous! To replace the switch, the easiest way is to drop the column. First remove the steering wheel by pulling off the horn push cover and undoing the 24mm nut in the middle. Look for the two shear bolts inserted into a metal 'wing' that sticks out from either side of the black-coated outer column tube. Grind the heads off with a Dremel or similar, keeping an eye on the wiring, and then remove the other two (regular) bolts from the wings. The column will then drop into your lap, releasing the top column plastic as it comes - support it as it comes down and remove the immobiliser ring (if fitted) with a straight pull over the ignition barrel, as its cable is a little short. Slide the seat all the way back to give yourself a little more room. You can then either undo the single bolt holding the UJ together at the base and do the rest out of the car, or leave it in which is slightly more fiddly. I heated a Christmas-cracker Philips screwdriver to cherry-red and then bent the tip 90 degrees with two pairs of mole grips to get access to the tiny screw, but the other methods already mentioned would also work. Replace switch, reassemble, all should work :)

Fit an auto box? ;) Stone

You're probably right, but just check the right-most fuse on the fusebox first. If the wiring hasn't been modified to the most-recent ISO standard (swapping permanent-live and switched-live) then a poor connection on that fuse will knock out the radio. Most likely if your fusebox has jumped out of its mountings as the fuse can work loose against the bonnet release. Ask me how I know..! Stone

Surely it depends what you're bracing? If you're bolting onto the towers then you'd need quite a lot of metal to brace it, but if you have one of the ones that fits over the top of the struts (held down by the same nut that holds the strut into the spring plate and top mount) then it'd be taking some of the radial load out of the top mount bearing by preventing the strut from tilting inward. When I was at the garage the other day I got handed a nice steel OMP one out of the bits box that looks like it'll fit nicely so I'll have to give it a go when the weather holds off for a bit :) Stone

Tip for anybody thinking of fitting these: Spal 11" fans fit the large mount but you need a 6.5" Spal for the smaller one. Kenlowe call that size 6" but the mounting holes are in the same places (on a 135mm square). It looks like an 8" Soak will fit but the mounts are about 3mm out. I bought the wrong size for the smaller fan so will just be running the single 11" fan - I can always revisit it if need be. Frustrating but maybe it'll stop someone else making the same mistake! The 11" shifts a bell of a lot of air given that it only draws around 6.5A at 12V do it'll most likely be fine without the smaller one :) I bought my fans from Serck (http://www.serckservicesmotorsport.co.uk) and was very impressed with the price, speed of delivery and customer service :thumbleft: Stone

The bit closer to the camera (edge) is higher than the middle, from this shot. It took me quite a while to make my mind up which way round it was, though :lol: Decent price for a nice bonnet, not my thing but good luck with the sale :) Stone

Tristan, The early bonnets dip down in the middle, like this one. The later bonnets bulge up in the middle. The reason for this is that the VR6 wouldn't fit otherwise! Stone

Hi all, This is a bit embarrassing for an electronic engineer, but I really can't make head or tail of the wiring diagrams in the Bentley :scratch: I'm looking at the harness to the radiator fans, fan control unit and radiator fan switch - since my fans failed and I'm replacing them with aftermarket bits, I want to remove the old harness that's no longer doing anything. I think this is the right diagram from the Bentley: This seems to imply that there's just one live feed from the fusebox to the radiator thermoswitch (a 2.5mm red wire) and another that feeds both the yellow sender and the fan control module. However ETKA shows the harness is actually huge! I can only assume it contains far more than the circuits shown in the diagram. I'd really like to strip out the bulky wiring, especially the bit that joined the fan controller to the fans since it's huge, but I'm not mad keen on just cutting the ends off the harness as it'll leave those live feeds loose where they could potentially short on something. Could I just pull fuse 13 and disconnect whatever connector T1a is to isolate these? The plan is to just hook the radiator switch to a relay and use it to directly drive the replacement fan off the battery - when the ignition's off it'll overrun until the system's cooled down. I'll probably end up hooking the aux coolant pump to this circuit as well to keep things circulating. Cheers, Stone

I found 17s way too crashy, on 18s you'd never get your front teeth unjammed from the dashboard... Go for 195/45/16s, same diameter as OEM so the speedo reads correctly and they fill the arches nicely :) Stone

Right, so now I have a set of bracketry and one fan (the other's in the post) :) Just trying to make sure I have all the hardware I need now - what holds the bracket on the passenger side? The mounting holes are much bigger than the others, is there a feature on the radiator that they fit around or do I just need some big washers? Also do the smaller mounting bolts go all the way through the radiator or is there a thinner flange around the edge? Can't see a thing on mine as it's still attached to the car... Cheers, Nick

No, it doesn't do that - every time you remove the key it will revert to showing the clock. If it really bothers you, you can mod your gauge cluster to automatically press the button five times every time you start it ;) Stone

I wasn't laughing, there's no reason it shouldn't work (provided you are still metering the air correctly, i.e. the 'charger' is hooked up upstream of the MAF) and modern motors are very efficient. You just need one a lot larger and/or better quality than in the stupid eBay adverts! I disagree with you on the second battery though - they'd be pretty worthless for fulltime use if they used more current than the alternator could provide as you'd just be slowly running your second battery flat. Swap out a couple of the high-draw items (radiator fans are a good example - there's a 50A fuse on the stock fan controller but my Spal replacement only uses 6.5A to move more air!) and you'd have plenty of beans left over; or you could fit a bigger alternator. I'd also prefer to add a spur onto the inlet tract rather than just bolting it to the front of the inlet, otherwise all your airflow has to go through the fan even when it's not running which would probably lose you some power when it wasn't running. [edit: Or, you could use an auxiliary battery to drive the system, only at full-throttle, and recharge it off the alternator when it's not active. Like this one, which seems to show dyno gains of nearly 20bhp on a Mk4 VR6 ;)] Stone

Worth checking the ignition switch as well. Make yourself a bypass cable and keep it in the car just in case, you may be needing it soon... Stone