Stonejag

Bought some of these last week for £250! Bargain. I did get a pair of wings for free with mine though :lol: The bodies come up beautifully with a bit of wire-brushing but be aware that as with any coilovers the powder coat will start to flake off the springs eventually (inevitable, it's not flexible enough to cope with the length changes the springs experience) so take it easy when you clean them up. You can't really see the springs when they're fitted anyway :)

The factory fit immobiliser doesn't have a battery-operated keyfob, so yours can't be factory. As with most 90s cars, the factory one uses an RFID chip in the key, which takes power from the reader coil located around the ignition switch. Stone

Part number?

Is the cowling for a fixed or adjustable column? On the offchance it's fixed, I'll take it.

New they're not cheap, but they pale in comparison to the update by Brabus. link They have a 700hp twin-turbo 5.5-litre V12 in them and cost €379,000! Stone

See if you can get one of the early rubber ones - they don't split quite so readily. Or swap for a metal one! Be aware that the short corrugated plastic pipe between the blue dummy heater element (on the inside radius of the elbow, connected to the left side of the cylinder head) usually cracks too - feel along the bottom and if your hand comes away oily then you'll need to swap that too. Stone

Wow, I'm glad you take precautions too! (although also perversely glad it's not just me having all these issues...) My fan freed off when I rotated it a little too, but it was locked solid immediately post-mortem so I suspect some of the internals had melted together. When it's out of the car I'll take it all apart for some pictures / analysis...might see if I can get the materials lab at work to take me some x-rays as they'd probably be interesting! To be honest I don't really know why I bothered replacing them with OEM the first time around, it's not as if they've ever worked properly for me anyway. Especially looking at the specs of aftermarket fans you can achieve higher airflow at drastically reduced current now we've had 20 years of advances in motor technology so there doesn't seem much point in bothering with the originals any more, especially given how rare and expensive they're getting. Probably going to invest in one of these though: (link) I'd rather have the quick-disconnect attached to the battery wiring all the time as the mad scramble for the 10mm spanner isn't fun! Stone

A G-Wagen? They're mental but tough to drive... Stone

Late and early are visually different (the embossed line at the top is a different shape) and the later ones are also slightly wider to accommodate the wider track. So yes, as Cazza said, any late one will do you :) I believe both will bolt up, though? Stone

Should have asked, I have a spare cam sensor in the bits box ;) I had MAF trouble the other day after replacing it with a different one (swapped to an aluminium MAF housing with a bung welded on for a 1.8t inlet air temp sensor, and used my spare instead of swapping my working one into the new housing). It was pretty pronounced and luckily I've had it before so recognised it immediately :) The VRs don't seem to rely on the MAF when you are accelerating so that feels fine, but if you let off the pedal and allow the engine to slow down slightly on its own, then the next time you hit the pedal it bogs down instead of pulling straight away. It took me longer to find my Torx bits than to do the swap back to my working sensor :lol: I've also had the connector come loose before as the little wire retainer piece had pinged off and it vibrated free. Same symptoms but you only need a piece of tape to fix it! Stone

Be aware - if it's dodgy it may only misbehave when (very) thoroughly warmed up. Even after mine had gone on the motorway, it took 45 minutes of idling it on the back of the recovery truck before it was warm enough to start the revs jumping, and it still didn't throw a code at that point. Just replace it and see if it stops doing it in the next week or so :) Stone

Also, make sure the bolts holding the tensioner to the head are torqued correctly. If they're not quite tight enough then the belt will squeak :)

Mine was getting slow and jerky - it could slide back in one or two hits, but only moved an inch or so for each button press when moving back to the closed position. Tilt worked fine at all times. When the tilt jammed as well I took it apart - turned out one of the two mounting screws for the motor had come adrift and the motor had slipped slightly out of place; refitting it correctly made is a bit better, but swapping the motor for a good spare made a huge difference and now it slides fine in both directions :) So try replacing the motor first, second-hand ones aren't expensive and you may be surprised! Simple to do - remove the trim, then make sure the roof is fully closed and wind it in on the allen key if necessary (check from outside - if you get this wrong it's annoying and you have to do it again - ask me how I know!). Then simply connect the new motor to the old motor's harness and operate the close button until the motor stops moving before installing it in place of the old one - this times it up correctly between the motor's internal switches and the roof mech. Stone

Anyone know what kind of Oz wheels they are? Plonker :lol:

How'd you mount them into the shroud, just drilling extra holes? Bit wary of the labour involved to do things while the car's apart so it'd be good if I could get some fans fitted to a spare and ready to bolt up when the front's off and the radiator hinged away. Unplugging the fan harness it seems only to go to the fans, fan controller and a small branch off towards the back-right of the engine bay (I assume to the thermostat sender for speed 3) so it looks a lot like I can just remove the lot and wire something similar. I make a lot of wiring harnesses in the day job so that bit's no bother, I can get rid of the fan controller's stupid bracket as well. Would probably work fine to connect the fans direct to the battery (through the relay, and a fuse) as well, then it'll overrun even with the ignition off, as long as the temp sender's closed. Any horror stories or fan manufacturers to avoid? Other than whoever made these last two, obviously :lol: Stone

Just need to add a couple more further up the arch for the true scene look. Stone

You're welcome, mine melted yesterday (!) when the fan caught fire (!!!) so I have the parts pages on speed-dial... Stone

There are a lot more Mk2s in scrapyards (and on eBay) though! I have a couple of used ones but none with perfect chrome. VW Heritage do the pre-87 part (as fitted to Golf Mk1 Cabrio) but not the later one that Corrados have. I used a Mk2 one for a while until I gave up on finding nice chrome badges and sprayed a set of black badges in VW Brilliant Orange instead 8) Stone

Just a left-field idea here - and I really hope you fixed it since this time last year! But, if not...I know your car used to be an auto. Mine has a cutout to prevent you starting it in any gear except Park or Neutral. Just wondering whether there's an equivalent for the manual-boxed cars (I assume not) and if not what you did with the auto wiring for this bit? I've previously had trouble where turning the ignition on works fine, but turning the key does nothing - not even a click. It invariably turns out to be a slightly misaligned shifter - moving out of Park and back in always solves it. Just thinking aloud :) Stone

1H0 119 137A "4,68X860MM". Stone

Thread resurrection! Amazingly, given that it was all replaced with OEM parts at ruinous expense this time last year, they've just done exactly the same thing again :bad-words: Luckily for me (again), since it was past midnight I was getting tired and was driving with the windows open to perk myself up a bit. Lucky, number one. Also, I've been paying a bit more attention since my fans have been working of late and noticed when they didn't kick in but the coolant was at 110. Lucky, number two. Also, on getting a hint of a plasticy-electricky burning smell, my first thought wasn't "what's on fire in Kilburn" but "oh :censored: my fans are on fire again". Lucky, number three! So, I pulled over pretty much straight away. Also, since last year I've been keeping a 10mm spanner in the door pocket, just in case; so on popping the bonnet and seeing the fan housing glowing cherry-red and emitting gouts of acrid grey smoke, it was dead easy to disconnect the battery and let it cool down... So, some of it is luck and some of it is cunning preparation :D Don't feel quite so paranoid, now! Anyway, I hung about for fifteen minutes just in case and once I had calmed down just disconnected the fan controller and carried on home without any trouble. The 50A fuse had blown on the fan controller but it was still burning so must have been thoroughly shorted inside - am I right in suspecting they have a permanent live feed and three 'go at this speed' signals? The driven fan was locked solid and the fanbelt appears to have melted (second fan spinning freely) so it must have been pretty toasty in there. You know what? This man speaks sense. Any more details of this approach - how did you do it? Attaching a big relay to a convenient bracket and running live from the battery to the sender, through the coil and back to the battery is the easy bit, did you have to make up your own fan bracket or can you bolt into the stock one? I'm annoyed as it's a front-end-off job either way around so the labour will be expensive... I'm really not confident that the fans have ever been wired correctly - they didn't work at all until I put it on a to-do list with some other garage jobs and it came back working on speed 3 only - so now I think the best plan is to just rip out all the existing wiring and do it Kevin's way. I'll have a stern phone call with the garage who did the work last year in the morning and see if they'll chip in, otherwise I'll small-claims them... So, yes, keep a 10mm spanner handy along with the extinguisher! :thumbleft: Stone

The T1Rs are poor in the wet but downright dangerous in snow. They do also wear very quickly, but then many tyres do with a VR6... I'll be switching to the 4s next time and giving up on Toyo if they're no better. Stone

Sorry, I picked Tom's radiator cover up earlier :silent: Coilovers cleaned up nicely so I'm looking forward to getting them fitted next week!

So do carbon ones? :) I know John (16VG60) has some, they looked great last I saw them...! Stone

This thread bubbling back up tot he top reminded me I fixed this! Turned out my fusebox had fallen out of its mountings during my steering column swap, which is one reason why I could never get the under-dash trim back on... The fuse for the stereo is on the extreme-right of the lower row of fuses int he fusebox - so when it fell out of position it pressed against the bonet release and jiggled sideways just enough to break the contact. Since I never swapped the wires to the ISO standard, this cut the radio's switched live, and because it's in the permanent live position caused the radio to turn off. Simple really! Stone