Stonejag

If the fuse has gone you'll probably find a duff bulb as well, so be prepared to change it! Just so it's written down somewhere, cars with auto boxes use the brakelight feed after the fuse to control the lock that prevents you shifting out of P or N without your foot on the brake. If the fuse is blown your gearbox won't unlock and you'll be stuck! (you can remove the cover and push the solenoid down manally but you'll be driving with no brake lights...) Stone

That's a bit of a specious argument by the police there, they're relying on the 'must be made from reflective material' clause. The plastic they make regular plates from isn't reflective, it has a film applied to it exactly the same as the metal ones! If anything metal ones are better for automatic reading (provided they have the right font) as the black parts are coated on the front surface instead of the back behind a layer of clear plastic, which is why plastic ones go grey when they delaminate and fill with water. I've only ever had one metal plate delaminate on me and it was made incorrectly (stamped too hard) which the manufacturer replaced for free. The Dubmeister ones address the main complaint with other metal ones, which is that they don't include postcode of manufacturer / BS AU mark, and get around people peeling the sticker off by laser-marking them. Any MOT station will confirm that they're UK-legal; if I ever get stopped and asked to change them I'll head straight to the nearest garage, get the same plates approved and send the bill to the local police. They have to enforce the law as written, not just their interpretation of it! Stone

Now he tells me :lol: I've still no real idea what happened but I'd been repeatedly frustrated by my failure to get speeds 1/2 working so I guess I shouldn't have been quite so surprised! Having replaced the yellow sender, blue sender, rad thermoswitch and fan controller, it had got to the point where bridging the solid red wire in the rad switch plug to the other two pins would give me speeds 1&2 and bridging the two pins on the yellow sense connector gave me speed 3, but only speed 3 came on while driving :-/ Not 100% convinced I have the right fan controller fitted, what's the right part number? They were quite sluggish on the lower speeds and arced noticeably when bridging the pins so could have just been duff fans all along? I tend to be of the opinion that the OEM stuff is designed this way for a reason but if it still doesn't work right with new fans I'd be seriously tempted to roll my own fan controller and be dine with it. At least then I'd understand how it worked! Stone

You can have mine if you can wait until next week? Was in pretty good nick and not leaking but got it replaced after the fans caught fire since it's the same amount of work and I wouldn't have been bothered to do it later! £60 + postage?

The ECU gets its temperature reading from the blue sender, which is what you're reading with Vag-com. The coolant temperature gauge is run off half of the yellow sender (the other half activates the 3rd fan speed when necessary) but be aware its colour changed to blue/black when VW last updated it. Across three different senders my gauge has consistently reported between 10º and 40º lower than the blue sender, so take the reading with a pinch of salt ;) Stone

If it's a brand new one in the standard black plastic (ABS) then you don't need to prime it if you use a decent spraypaint designed to go over plastic. What you will need to do is wash off the release agent that helps it out of the mould at the factory, which is often not removed because it makes it look shinier ;) Warm water and Fairy liquid will do fine, I usually stick a small amount of meths in the bucket as well for the degreasing effect but check a test patch before you melt the plastic. Wash it all over with a soft cloth and let it thoroughly air-dry. Spraying it is best done on a still, warm day ideally just after rain so there's less dust/pollen in the air. The trick is to use many extremely thin coats - so thin that the first few will be barely visible as a coloured 'haze' over the plastic. The can will have instructions so follow them but on the last lot of trim I sprayed it was touch-dry in 15 minutes so I put another coat on every 20. It took 4-5 thin coats to get good even coverage. Don't spray too much in one place, in too long bursts or get carried away with how thick a coat you can get away with as it's a guaranteed recipe for thick, sagging paint with runs in it. Same as the above if you want to put clearcoat over it - I like the matte finish so rarely bother but it will blend into your bodywork better if you do. White primer is better for bright colours, grey is better for dark colours, and make sure you don't get high-build primer unless you really enjoy sanding. Stone

Not true at all! Got stuck on the M1 on Friday (Transit on fire under a bridge...) and even with no grille, plastered with months of road dirt and viewing it from the previously-keyed side with the most obvious rust and flakey wheel arches I still had someone wind down the window to tell me how much he liked it :D To me, it's a car - it gets driven every day (usually hard), washed when I feel like it and fixed when it needs it. One of my big reasons for getting a car I cared about was to learn about the general mechanics and to learn to do some of the jobs myself and I've had that in spades. Short of writing it off I'm planning to keep it so I don't resent spending money on it when necessary, and when I replace things I tend to swap them out for uprated parts. Getting from 'badly lowered, Magnex exhaust' to the spec list in my sig hasn't really cost that much and I still have a huge pile of parts to fit when I get around to it, everything from an oil cooler to some 263s! More to the point I've had great fun doing it. My mum still disapproves (especially after my fire!) but I always put it in perspective by reminding her that the depreciation of her new Mini Cooper over the next year will exceed everything I've spent on the car so far including buying it :D Stone

Current tally on the damage is approx £460 for replacement parts and another £500 for the labour to fit them :( AA parts insurance is paying £460 towards it but my motor insurance has a £450 excess so I'll end up just paying the difference. Which has put a huge dent in the respray fund, but then there's not much point in having it resprayed if it's been written off so feeling a bit less chuffed but still counting myself as pretty lucky... Beans on toast all this month then! Stone

Work has a friendly machine shop so it would be free ;) Nice to have the odd home-made (or home-designed!) part in there...

Yeah, but I like shiny things...;) Stone

Hi all, Getting a new radiator in after my fire and not overly convinced about the ropey old top elbow... Would like to get a stainless one made but need a pattern for the flange at the bottom. Has anybody got a leaky one in their garage that I could have to measure up from? Only the flange needs to be intact so even if the top's totally smashed it'd still be useful. I'll post CAD drawings afterwards :) Cheers, Stone

Another quick nudge for Jay, could you post me out another bolt, mate? Ta :) Stone

There are tons of VR6es in Germany and Austria, my money's on Australia ;) If you get an ODB2 Golf it'll be much more efficient than the 2.9 anyway, and the better engine management means they can run with more ignition advance so it'll still be quick!

I'm still waiting for a replacement grille after the last one broke so I shouldn't even have needed to open the bonnet! Probably for the best - if I'd had one fitted it would have melted anyway and it probably gave me an extra couple of seconds warning of the smoke. Needless to say I'm feeling pretty lucky now!

Foam's not ideal if the battery's still connected (you risk damaged wiring as the liquid shorts across the battery...) but stops fuel fires better than CO2 extinguishers. If you have a puddle of burning fuel you have to let the foam flow over the top of the pool (don't just spray it in the middle, it will make the pool bigger) - the usual tactic is to aim at a flat surface behind the pool so it rolls down the wall etc and spills onto the pool from one edge. Dry powder forms CO2 when heated so they work in a similar way, it just settles and forms the gas when heated so lasts a bit longer than CO2. Very messy by comparison though..! More pics of that car here: (link[/link]) Amazing quality but I very much doubt I'd be taking photos while it was happening to mine...especially if it was a VR6T with as much effort as was put into that one! You're absolutely right. Remember I didn't know it was on fire, I was expecting to have to top the oil up, it was a bit of a shock... Anyway, the garage rang me back after washing the snowstorm away. Basically it was nothing to do with the sump at all, the coolant fans had shorted internally and were actually on fire :shock: It's all seized into one solid lump, the belt between them melted, the works. Even damaged the radiator. The best part is that it should all be covered by the AA parts cover I added last renewal so I pay £35 excess for up to £500 of parts and labour :dance: New OEM fans are £300! Absolutely chuffed to bits considering what nearly happened. Stone

In retrospect my 2kg one was a little on the small side - don't forget you have to use it all in one burst (once the seal is ruptured the gas comes out whether you squeeze the handles or not, if you stop for two long you run out of propellant before you run out of powder). Fitted nicely in the rear passenger footwell though. For 11 quid it's mad not to have one in the back. link Either that or my fans were on fire... I like your fix too :D

Heading home from my gf's in London late last night, the oil temperatures were a little off - both higher than normal and continually rising rather than warming and cooling with demand. It hit 114 so I pulled into a garage to check the oil level, thinking it might be on the low side and needed topping up due to a slow leak I've been keeping an eye on. Popped the bonnet and got out to see quite a lot of steam escaping around the wings. Lifting the bonnet I realised it wasn't steam, just lots of white/grey smoke... I've been carrying an extinguisher around for over a year now so I gave it the lot. That bought me enough time to get the battery disconnected (just in case...) and use one of the petrol station's for backup since it was still smoking a bit. They weren't best pleased at the mess I made of their forecourt :lol: [edit: Cause determined to be that my cooling fans had shorted internally, seized solid and caught fire. Nasty!] Obligatory snowstorm picture: So, if you haven't got one yet, why not? The less of these on the Internet the better... Stone

Being hauled onto a recovery truck yesterday (:(), the driver got out as he arrived, put on a huge grin and said 'ooh, nice, is it a VR6? My boss used to have one of those, it was great!' Some small comfort..! Apparently it shows up on the AA's database as 'VW unknown model, purple' so he was pleasantly surprised :)

When they're changed the third screw is often not refitted - it tends to corrode and get stuck. Swap it for a new one once you remove it, or leave it out :) Stone

More from the endless saga of my cooling system... It looks like my radiator's split where one of the metal mounts slots into the top. Is it best to replace with OEM - I presume with the same flaw in the mounting method? Or is there an aftermarket brand that's improved on the original design? Thanks, Stone

No, I swapped for another OEM unit in good condition since it was cheap and easily available. It's now better than the driver's side so I may end up replacing that one too :) Stone

You do know they're cheaper brand new? link

Wow, another option I never knew existed! :lol: If you have no rear hump do you still have the zippered pocket in the backrest for the warning triangle? I have one of the ones like that (in a red plastic case, think it's an Audi one but they're all pretty much identical) and it *just* fits in the backrest. Neater than losing your boot light... Stone

Dibs on the stalks / cruise control module pending pictures :)

Not fitted to mine and doesn't look stock. Most likely a previous owner added a bracket to hold a fire extinguisher. The toolkit lives in the spare wheel - the outside of the wheel goes in first so the 'well' is uppermost, leaves plenty of room for the jack, wheelbrace, can of instant tire fix etc etc :) Stone