Tempest

Now available! Well, at least ny local Smiths in the centre of Coventry has the latest issue of VW Driver with write-up of our national day on the shelves :) Tempest

Went to a little Classic Car event at gaydon today, where the majority of cars present were admittedly from a brand that I unfortunately share no passion for (Morrises :lol:, Minors and Transporters galore - if we only could muster that many Cs in one location!), but what caught my eye, and the reason for going was the presence of the Crossfire club, Crossfires being regarded by Gaydon as a potential future classic. OK, thought I, get my Karmann, collect Jim, and show the Crossfire boys what other cars Karmann built. Only C present, indeed only 2 VWs turned up, the other one a Beetle parked next to my C, we wandered off to the Crossfire section, to be greeted by a chap that didn´t want to know about the C or anything Karmann related (even though he was sporting the Karmann logo at the bottom of his car´s B-pillar - non-standard BTW, because on the Crossfire Karmann apparently weren´t allowed to put any of their own badges), behaved like a Merc-driver, and yes, the Crossfire is 80% a Merc (albeit the old model at the time of the Crossfire, where Merc itself used the new platform to base their own cars on), but it is still a Chrysler, and hence cheaper than a real Merc, so no need to be up-his-bottom, which he definitely was. Anyway, found a nicer chap later on, who although also never having been to his car´s birthplace was interested in stuff, and indeed the C :) Also went for a little Landi-experience on the offroad-testrack at Gaydon, which ws impressive what all those modern-day electronic helpers can do when offroading. The driver did admit that these electronic gadgets are pretty much there fto help all those would-be offroaders, that buy a Landi, and as soon as they do dare go offroad, they get stuck, because they lack the skills to actually go off-roading, and that´s where all these electonic helpers can get stupid people like that out of the sh*t. None of that was needed in the old Lara Croft generation of Landis, of course :), but men were real men back then :) Still impressive how effortlessly this modern Landi mastered all the stuff that the driver chucked at it. Pics: Tempest

One mod that I can recommend on the charger itself, but it won't provide any measurable increase in bhp, but will make maintenance work, eg. removing charger for overhaul, easier, is the RS outlet kit. Tempest

Personally I don´t rate the SWG filter box contraptions, too Barry-Boy. The claimed 6 bhp increase is very debatable and probably more an emotional increase in power. More importantly is the lack of lubrication of the charger with the SWG solution, because the oil return from the crankcase breather hose will be deleted. There is a reason why VW attached said breather hose to one of the inlets of the charger. Don´t rate the K&N panel filters either, same problem as with cone filters. it´s not the shape of the filter, it´s how fine the mesh for filtering is, and in that respect nothing beats the old OEM paper filters. You can completely ignore all of this with any engine bar the G60 because of the soft material the scroll inside the charger is made of, and that requires maximum filtration of air entering the charger, unlike with NA engines, where you can let in almost any old crap. To increase noise from the charger, you can try and remove the plastic pipe inside of the air flter box. This will result in a constant drone from the front right of the engine bay, which IMHO get tiresome after some time, and again, there is a reason why VW put that pipe inside the air filter box. It´s not only to get rid of the afore-mentioned drone, but also to maximise the surface area of the filter for filtration by guiding the air to the rear of the box, whereas the charger then sucks it through the filter towards the front of the box. The more I read my stuff, the more I realise what an old f*rt I am :lol:, and just love the solid engineering that VW have put into the design of the G60, and hence I believe it´s best to leave it all alone. Tempest

Checked my WH Smiths in Coventry town centre, still had the old issue on the shelf *grumble* Maybe today. Tempest

Just a quick reminder: The next issue of VW Driver mag with write-up on the CCGB National Day at Castle Combe is on sale from tomorrow at most major WH Smiths etc, but – unless there is one very close by – then probably the most expedient method is to order it online from the website at http://www.volkswagendrivermag.co.uk or call the office on 01525 750 500 and receive it by post. Neil also informs me that: Photos of many of the cars on track can be ordered from the official photographer Jim Gaisford. Tel: 01225 743 400 or e-mail: [email protected] Tempest

Another nice Italian designed Karmann coupe, nice! Have fun with the Corrado´s spiritual grand-dad. Tempest

The season end show, not to miss! Last year in excess of 60.000 people walked through the gates at the NEC, to look at our cars. 5 car slots for us this year, so get your name down. Don't forget: You MUST get your car to the NEC by Thursday 14/11/2013 12:00, leave it inside the hall on our stand till Sunday 17/11/2011 17:30, no vehicle movement duing the show. You will get a car parking pass for a support vehicle (to get from and to the show during the show dates) as well as wristbands for each show day. Only fill in your name if you are going to display your car for the full 3 days. No need to register if you are only intending on visiting the show as a day visitor, but not put car on stand. Visit the official Classic Car Show website for things like hotels (in case you are travelling from further afield), but may I suggest the possibilty of staying in nearby Coventry (much cheaper hotel costs), and taking the excellent 10-minute train conection straight to the NEC/B'ham airport train station. Ibis hotel in Coventry Centre, eg., 10 minute walk from Coventry train station usually a lot cheaper than any of the on-site hotels. Day visitors: Use the discount code that will be advertised in CCGB stuff shortly ;-), then hand in the ticket stubs to Eric on the CCGB stand, so that the CCGB can get a small bonus per ticket handed in to the organisers. We'll be in Hall 7, stand 340, opposite of the Scirocco Register and Golf Mk1 Owners Club stands. Tempest

Boss-news from VW. When big corporates like VW are thinking about successors to the ¨thrones of power¨, the press is always keen to report (and make money in the process). So, the rumour mill has started as to who could be Martin Winterkorn´s (former Audi boss, current boss of the VW-brand and has been for the last few years) successor. VW want a techie at the top to run the VW brand (not to be confused with VW as a group), and are thus considering the development head-honchos within pretty much all their brands as well as Porsche CEO Mattias MÜller. It´ll be another 2 years till the cat is out of the bag, though. Good engineers amongst you lot, why not apply? :lol: Looks like an in-house job anyway ... More importantly and more gossipy (that´s what we like) is the rumour that has been spread initially by the German Handelsblatt last week that Ober-Chef/big boss/head-honcho Piech might be leaving *shock* *gasp*, allegedly due to health reasons. Piech strongly has denied these rumours (¨I ain´t leaving my company yet, I ain´t dead yet!¨) and threatened to get the guillotine out as soon as he´s found out who´s spread this rumour. Nice one, Piech, that´s democracy at is best, eh? Glad I drive Karmann, and old-school Porsche and NOT VW :lol: Tempest

Train, plane all in hibernation? :lol: Public transport best for this one, IF you want to enjoy a German Xmas market the way the Germans do :) Mind, it´s still a fair trek for folk up your neck of the woods, granted. Tempest

To finish off the year 2013, during the winter month of December, when many a Rado has gone into hibernation, this is the last chance to meet up with like-minded people. What better way for afficionados of German cars to meet up at an Ur-German event, the German Xmas market, the biggest one outside of Germany is held in Birmingham. Meet up at the fountain on Victoria Square in Birmingham (10 minutes walk from New Street Train Station) at 13:00 on Saturday, 14th December. Last chance too for some late Xmas shopping. This is not necessarily a car meet (for obvious reasons) rather than a get-together with like-minded C-nuts :) Map: http://goo.gl/maps/C3Bpe Tempest

Issue well worth buying. Some dodgy writer contributed a few words to the CCGB national day page, too :lol: Tempest

The sensor that seems disconnected, attahced to your boost pipe, is the CO-pot/boostpipe air temp sensor. Needs to be connected to the G60-ECU. Tempest

Dreading the end of this month when AF will also offer me to renew the insurance on my C. Roll the dice, roll the dice for a price. LHD car, kerching!!! Doesn´t matter then that I am an old fart or drive sensibly or whatever. B*st*rds. Agree that since the government want us to be insured, they might as well also manage it rather than the greedy private sector. Mind you, the government would be totally inefficient and disorganised as usual ... so not an option either. Tempest

Next Wednesday, 18/9/2013, get yourself a copy of VW Driver magazine. There will be a 5-page feature on the track day that took place at Castle Combe in July, with one full page of pictures of the Rados attending! Tempest

Off I went on a gorgeous sunny morning towards Hopwood Park Services along the M42 to join a 3-car convoy (OK, not that great, but it did have 2/3s 928 content :) ) back to Gaydon, where TIPEC (The Independent Porsche Enthusiasts Club) held their national day. At the eight of the event there must have been around 600 Porkers, in all shapes and varieties, no doubt the majority 911s and derivatives, but also an astonishingly large number of front-engined (where the engine should be in my book :) ) Porkers. Lots to see, lots going on, lots of talking to folk, and even passengering with another 928-owner, who had just had his 928 back from a major engine rebuild on the JLR testtrack next door for 3 parade, well cavalcade, laps, an enjoyable event indeed. Pics, and yes, they are leaning a bit towards V8 content :) Towards the end even met up with Wendy who had arrived in an, erm, non-Porker, but still sporting the correct number of cylinders, if you´re into the 911-thing, that is :lol: Tempest

And here are the comments from the Rocco crowds: http://sciroccoregisterforum.co.uk/carforum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=15739 Tempest

Jim´s over in the States for a week, so may not get round to sorting things till when he´s back in the UK. Tempest

Next weekend at the Stoneleigh Park Showground! See here: http://www.corradoclubgb.co.uk/ccgb16/index.php?option=com_illbethere&controller=events&task=view&id=62&Itemid=202 Tempest

Third that, Infinity stuff (one Kappa, one Reference) in 2/3s of my fleet :) Tempest

Reading the recent press in Germany, things to bear in mind when you get inundated in pro-German documentaries is that: 1. Siemens, traditionally largest employer for electrical engineers has been having trouble since 2008 (started with massive corruption affairs, new CEO had to sort it out, who in turn just literally 3 days ago was sacked and replaced by an very conservative new CEO, who industry analysts already state will not be up to the job to modernise Siemens to place it firmly on the global stage, and given Siemens can no longer survive on the German market alone, this does not bode well). 2. The German car industry can no longer survive on the German market, as a matter of fact the market has shrunk last year by 6%, as German are no longer or can no longer afford to buy new cars. 3. German press recently reporting (this is a first!) that the British economy is picking up quite dramatically, suggesting it is doing better than Germany even! Tempest

I think it is safe to say that based on my years of having grown up in Germany (80s and early 90s, when a single parent salary could still sustain a whole family, thus allowing one parent, usually the mother, to stay at home and look after the household and kids; but that has changed since the intro of the Euro with German salaries effectively halved), and still speaking to and visiting quite a few of my carmates that things have changed a LOT in Germany, and they do not necessarily match the cliche-driven documentaries that the BBC seem to be firing at us as of recent (for whatever reason, politically motivated? What is the deeper reason behind these documentaries?). Child care centres (Kitas in German, stands for Kindertagesstätten) are expensive, they suffer the same problems we have with day care centres, families have to calculate whether it is cheaper to send your kid to a Kita and let mum work or not, but the biggest problem is there aren't enough of them. Germany's family minister does want to encourage mums to get jobs (as even in conservative Germany things are changing in that women are demanding more rights, and one of them is the right to a job, something that was almost unheard of when I grew up there) but acknowledges there are problems with integrating worklife with child support. Germany in effect is behind us and the times in general in this respect. Now it could be said that in the days when a family did not need to send both parents out to work (because salaries were sufficient AND materialstic demands were not as high as they are today!) things were better, there were fewer people needing to go onto the job market, leaving a better choice of jobs for those that did work thus offering more job satisfaction and so forth. You can maybe start to see why Germans were more motivated to do their jobs ... Today, however, I know enough Germans that are just trotting to work everyday like we do in GB, not enjoying their jobs, but doing the work because they simply need the money. Times are changing, and a lot of the current situation we see in Germany through the BBC stem from times gone by, that do not necessarily exist like that any more even in Germany, and certainly not in the UK, because we have increasingly become more materialistic and earn less money. This trend, as always, starts in the US, and gradually works its way eastwards, first through to the UK (no language, well almost no :lol:, barrier), before it transfers to the Netherlands quiet easily (hardly a language barrier in the NL, everyone speaks English), then give or take 10 years before it hits Germany. I have seen this happen so many times. In a nutshell, another biased take on Germans to probably hit Brits with a stick with. Question remains: Why? Cameron? If him, maybe he should become like Merkel, and feel the hate from a desperate German nation, who although they have elections looming on the horizon, will have no alternative but to reelect Merkel! Tempest

Checked the Lambda-sensor? Try disconnecting it to see whether the engine will run better again. Tempest

Just watched this documentray on the iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03866cj/Das_Auto_The_Germans_Their_Cars_and_Us/ I feel completely for the comments made about how engineers are disregarded in the UK compared to Germany, where I naturally started a career as an engineer, only to end in the UK amidst a nation of bankers and insurance brokers, which is probably why Britain was hit more severely by the recent crash compared to Germany. Biased in places, of course, but largely true, and worth watching. Why else do we not drive Allegros and other highlights of British industry on this forum :lol:? Nicely summarised, too, that Britain does and did have the skills to make beautiful and good cars, but largely down to mismanagement (still blatantly obvious even in today´s British conglomerates, not to mention in government, where you see loads of highly paid CEO that are too incompetent to even lace their own shoes) and the unions fighting their petty little, typically British, class war (a left-over from Victorian ages gone by). The documentary fails to mention that a) BMW actually took over Rover because they also wanted the Landrover technology, a segment they would have grandly missed out on; sadly the public now buying more X5s et al than Landrovers (although that may be changing slowly, but Landrover is no longer British!) and b) that China, currently Germany´s largest export market, thanks to which they managed to survive the financial crisis, is now slowing down, and that this is already predicted in Germany to have a massive effect on the German economy. It does raise the general question whether our model of capitalism, blindly placing all our bets on continued economic growth, is ultimately going to fail in a catastrophic manner. and c) the Euro was Germany´s biggest trump card to keep its exports going beginning of the noughties, when due to the strength of the D-Mark German exports were becoming too expensive, and the introduction of the Euro effectively devalued the currency (my parents as so many other people living in Germany at the time will be able to testify how all important daily commodities like food and clothing became twice as expensive). and d) the documentary fails to report on the how German trade unions have had to swallow major setbacks, too (Nokia closing shop, Opel closing factories - OK, that´s American, so who cares :lol: - VW renegotiating or trying to renegotiate worker contracts, but thanks largely due to a veto-shareholding by the state of Lower Saxony, these attempts are quickly thwarted, and yet VW manages to stay profitable with a Winterkorn on 15 million Euros a year!), and how it´s not all threat rosy in Germany, and that that is not all down to Germany having to bail out countries like Greece and Spain. Still, as an engineer I would much prefer to have an interesting engineering job, but in a nation of bankers that will probably stay a major challenge. Tempest

Same here, off to the SciroccoRegister National Day in Cosford that day. Tempest