Purple Tom's Corrado TDi - gone

[Purple Tom 0]

(for the TDi conversion keep reading down, you'll find it!)

 

Hey,

 

Thought I'd start a thread on my Corrado - a 1996 'N' 2.0 8V motor in Sherry Pearl. I got it a month ago in a straight swap deal for my (knackered) Audi A3 1.8 20V. I hated that car and had always wanted a C, looking at quite a few around the country until I found this one just 6 miles from my house :D

 

It's quite highly specced for an 8V, I guess it must be one of the last off the production line being an 8V and also first registered on 01/03/96. Amongst all the normal Corrado stuff its got a full black leather interior with heated front seats and also 15x7" Castellet wheels, mirror polished, which were I believe an optional extra and are listed on the build sticker in the service book and the in the boot.

 

Since buying it I've done a few things to it, mainly a good clean, fitting some headlamp protectors (from Chris aka shawshankkid) and making a list of the things that don't work/need attention. All I've got so far is that the heated switch doesn't illuminate and the heated rear screen switch doesn't light up when its switched on. Apart from that everything works! There's going to be some maintenance needed soon, I want to replace the front suspension bushes and maybe whip the subframe off for a coat of paint. I'm also going to sort the brakes out with new fluid and rebuild the calipers, but for the moment everything works so it's all good.

 

Here's a pic, I'll get some more when I can and update this thread as an when - hope you like :)

 

 

Tom

Edited May 9, 2012 by Purple Tom

[Leonard 0]

Well as you know I think it looks spot on. Nice rare late spec valver, especially on those wheels.

 

Enjoy! :D

[Purple Tom 0]

Hey,

 

I've now taken the Castellet's off, as I want to refurb them over the winter. I managed to get hold of some G60 steels cheaply from eBay, they are brand new and I've now got them on the car:

 

 

I know the arch gap is huge! One day I'll hit it with the stick but for the time being I want to enjoy decent ride quality and also not ground the car out on the way to work.

 

Anyway, I was wondering, should I paint the steelies black? I'm trying to picture in my head what it would look like, and I think it would look good, but as I haven't got a clue when it comes to photoshop I can't really decide. I've got some sherry pearl paint, and I was thinking of going a bit OTT and putting a sherry pearl band around the outside of the rim as a sort of colour-code, been as though they're just my winter wheels.

 

What do you guys think? Any help/advice would be appreciated. I know at the end of the day its my car and I can do what I like, but its always good to get other people's opinions :)

 

Thanks

 

Tom

[Kaz 0]

I'd leave the G60 steels as they are, good contrast with the paint colour IMO.

 

Although, can it be a 96 and a 8v? Shouldn't it be a 16v...

[KIPVW 0]

Agree as above, leave as they are otherwise they'll look like those liqurice wheels :lol: (cant spell that one)

[KIPVW 0]

I'd leave the G60 steels as they are, good contrast with the paint colour IMO.

 

Although, can it be a 96 and a 8v? Shouldn't it be a 16v...

 

8v's were introduced in the final years of sales but i guess it was sat around before being registered, like my VR6 which was registered in march 96

[Leonard 0]

Id leave em Tom. You can mod for moddings sake and I think they look pretty spot on in silver.

[Purple Tom 0]

OK guys, thanks, always good to get other opinions. I will leave them as silver! It also seems pretty pointless ruining a brand new set of G60 steels too :lol:

 

Yes, the car was registered in March 1996, hence it being an 'N'. I guess it was sat around for a while before being registered, obviously not a factory order!

[Purple Tom 0]

Well, recently I've been pretty busy with the car, sorting things out. I've managed to find the time to recondition my recently-acquired calipers and carriers which have allowed me to fit 280mm discs. I've also fitted braided hoses, new fluid and renewed almost all of the suspension components with 'just' the top mounts and steering rack left to replace to sort out a handling issue. As well as that I've fully serviced the engine, with new consumables (oil, filter, plugs, leads, cap, rotor arm) and also changed the cambelt and tensioner just to be on the safe side.

 

Here's a few pics:

 

 

Reconditioned bearing housing/hub with new wheel bearing:

 

 

New front calipers etc:

 

 

 

--------------

 

I've also ordered three new engine mounts from AVS as the original ones are getting very tired now, especially the front one. While having a look at the work that I'd need to do to replace the mounts, I noticed a damaged wire leading to some sort of sensor at the front of the block, behind the oil filter. Further investigation revealed that its the crank position sensor, pretty crucial in keeping the engine running. I contemplated trying to repair the wire in-situ, but then decided I best take the sensor off and have a look at the job in hand. To get to the 5mm cap-head bolt securing the sensor to the block I had to remove the radiator fan and its cowling, as well as the front engine mount and its bracket. I then was able to get the bolt and sensor out easily, and found it looking like this:

 

 

 

Bit of a mess really :( The wires are twisted around each other during manufacture for some reason, but 13 years exposure to heat (running near the block) has damaged the insulation and made it very brittle, meaning I'm unable to strip the wires back to fresh insulation and re-solder new sections in. I got as far back as the sensor itself but there's no chance of repairing it. The insulation is fine up near where it plugs into the engine loom as its well away from any heat source, but it doesn't help at the sensor end unfortunately. So its new sensor time, and for part number 037906433A I think I'm looking at around £150 from VW. Replacement sensors are listed on eBay but they're non-genuine and with crucial engine sensors I prefer to stick to genuine OE. Oh well! At least the front engine mount is off now :lol:

 

I've managed to borrow a car from work for the couple of days it'll take for VW to get the sensor in, and then I'll fit it this week. Its a good job really, as the missus and I are heading up to Scotland next sunday for a week away driving in the C, and it would have been a bugger if the sensor had failed when I was up there.

 

Plenty more to come as I replace the steering rack, rear axle bushes, fit the Mk4 calipers, do the rear wheel bearings and new discs/pads etc - all good fun :)

[dirtytorque 0]

car seems top be in very safe hands.

enjoy. 8)

[oldskoolkool 0]

new brakes always look satifying when on a car!

 

looks really good buddy well spotted tho would have been a right pain up north ! :(

[TomB 0]

That looks like a cracker of a car, and some sensible mods in the brakes being done there! Keep us up to date,

 

Tom

[Walesy 0]

Agreed, it looks like a lovely example! Keep me in mind if you decide to sell it :lol:

 

It really does need a drop though, if you do it properly with some quality components and dont go lower than 35-40mm it shouldn't compromise ride quality much and wont ground out, and it'll make all the difference to how it drives and looks! :)

 

Enjoy the blast oop norf!

[til2143 0]

Agreed, it looks like a lovely example! Keep me in mind if you decide to sell it

 

Me too :D

[Purple Tom 0]

After months of looking I finally happened upon the eBay bargain of the century last night. 4 16x7 BBS RX's with brand new Toyo T1-S tyres (215/40R16) for £250!!! Went down to collect them today and got them fitted, they are literally brand new, couldn't believe my luck.

 

Next on the agenda is the rear axle rebuild, mk4 calipers and a subtle 35mm drop on Weitec suspension:

 

 

 

Slowly getting there now :)

[Purple Tom 0]

Hi,

 

I just wanted to let people know that I've recently bought a VR6 so this will be for sale soon! It really has been the best first Corrado I could ever have asked for, and I'd keep it if I had the room, but I don't :(

 

I'll get a proper for sale thread up in the next few weeks but just wanted to make people aware that it will be available!

 

Tom

[Flexso 0]

Hi,

 

I just wanted to let people know that I've recently bought a VR6 so this will be for sale soon! It really has been the best first Corrado I could ever have asked for, and I'd keep it if I had the room, but I don't :(

 

I'll get a proper for sale thread up in the next few weeks but just wanted to make people aware that it will be available!

 

Tom

 

I have done the same Tom. I just ghot myself a vr aswell. I love my 16v but again cant afford to keep two cars. :(

 

Did I see your car in the CCGB stand at the GTI internationals.

[Steve Storm 0]

Give me a shout when you come to sell it as I might be intreasted in it :D

[B41LEY 0]

When we getting some photo's of the new vr tom ??? You might be able to keep up on the next convoy now insted of lagging at the back! :lol:

[Purple Tom 0]

Well, in a bizarre twist of fate I have bought this car back!

 

I owned the VR6 for pretty much a year and did LOADS of work to it (see this thread), including a pretty much full suspension rebuild and OBD2 conversion. However I found that my country lane commute was really bad for my wallet, and also that I wasn't really using the car for its intended purpose. I built it to be a bit of a cruiser with the ability to go silly when necessary, but in the end I just used it for pootling around which wasn't doing it much good at all. So I decided it had to go, in the process freeing up some funds for other stuff and leaving me with a bit of a pot for getting a new car.

 

The problem was I didn't have a clue about what car to get next. I contemplated buying a diesel Passat B4, running it for a bit while looking for a suitable Corrado donor and then merging the two together along with an AFN lump to make a Corrado TDi, but for various reasons that wasn't really workable. Then the person who I sold the 8V to got in touch and said it was for sale :wave:

 

To cut a long and complicated story short, on the day I sold my VR6 I went and viewed the 8V (3 miles from my house), made an offer and bought it. It's not really changed much since I sold it apart from a repaired heater blower, seat lifter cable and two new front tyres. Bodywork wise it has grown a small amount of rust but nothing that can't be easily sorted out :) I'm really happy to still be in a Corrado - it might be far slower than the VR but I'm loving the 40+mpg economy and it still looks great sat in the works car part among the boring euroboxes. I considered loads of different cars but the Corrado bug has bitten deep! :cuckoo:

 

I've had it just over a week now, and I've already collected a few parts together for it, those being:

 

R32 wishbone bushes

Top mounts

Rear discs and pads

Rear wheel bearings

Uprated headlamp loom

Oil and filter

TT wiper conversion

 

They'll all hopefully be fitted this coming saturday before the CCGB National Day.

 

I'll get some pics up soon, although cosmetically it hasn't changed at all so the last pics posted are still in effect pretty current.

 

I do however have some plans for it for the future, they include a widetrack conversion and either another OBD2 VR6 lump or possibly a high power pre-PD TDi but I need to do my research into that!

 

I'll keep this updated as an when :)

 

Cheers

 

Tom

[KIPVW 0]

Lol! What a story :lol: :salute:

[Leonard 0]

You should have kept the VR6 and bought a runaround for the general commute something like a Seat Ibiza Tdi or someit.

 

Ha ha only messing do actually love your 8V always been a little gem. Glad you bought it back mate, perfect daily to be honest!

 

Look fwd to seeing how youimprove it further

 

Matt

[Purple Tom 0]

Hey,

 

This little project has been in the pipeline for several months now, and a few members on here already know of its existence. However been as though I'm about to take the plunge and rip my Corrado apart I thought I might as well start a thread detailing roughly whats going on.

 

Firstly, some of you probably know my 8V. It was my first Corrado, I bought it in 2008 and spent a happy year owning, maintaining and improving it. I then sold it to a local guy and bought a VR6 which I also owned for a year. However, moving into my own place meant I needed to free up some capital so the VR6 had to go. The day the VR sold I saw my old 8V driving past with a 'for sale' poster in the window. I followed it back to the guys house and eventually struck a deal to buy it back. Result - some capital free'd up and I was still in a Corrado :)

 

Here's the 8V (and the VR for good measure):

 

 

 

There's something else though, while running the VR I also had a brief fling with a Mk2 Ibiza TDi (90bhp) which I bought cheaply for the missus to learn to drive in. It was a great car, nice and torquey but still great on fuel (55mpg +) and with plenty of tuning potential. I sold the Ibiza to Matt (Leonard) on here just before buying the 8V back, but even though I'd only owned it for a short amount of time it had planted the seed of an idea in my head, here's a picture:

 

 

Soooo...where was I...oh yeah, inspiration. I bought the 8V, ran it for a while and in September 2010 my Dad decided that he didn't need the Discovery TDi that he was using as a daily and asked me to help him find a more practical daily driver with a similar internal capacity. 'Passat B4 TDi' sprang into my head as I'm slightly biased towards VW and I knew that they could be picked up cheaply in reasonable condition - so an eBay search ensued and not long afterwards I found a 150k Passat B4 GL TDi a couple of miles down the road, with FSH and 2 owners from new for £400. It was immediately purchased and my Dad was a happy chap.

 

I was also a chap with a head full of ideas, as while researching for Passat information on the internet I'd discovered http://www.tdiclub.com - an American website devoted to the VW TDi range of engines. While having an innocent browse I'd also discovered a member called 'G60ing' who happened to have built two Corrado TDi's over in the states. Reading his build threads over on VWVortex led me to think more and more about the possibility of doing my own TDi conversion. More research, including finding 'Mikkijayne' on this forum and Vortex, led me to discover that the ideal donor vehicle for such a conversion into a Corrado is a Passat B4 TDi - exactly the vehicle I'd bought for my Dad!

 

The B4 is ideal because it is essentially a Corrado in all the bits that matter. The clocks are the same so are literally plug and play, the engine wiring loom is seperate from the headlamp loom (unlike the much more common Mk3 Golf TDi) and a lot of the other bits are a simple swap onto the Corrado, even as far as the fuel filter bracket on the O/S suspension turret. Further research led me to establish that the B4 GL TDi (not CL) was the one to go for, as that spec level featured the MFA as an optional extra, which I really wanted to retain on the Corrado. I established that if I could find a B4 GL TDi donor (with MFA) then pretty much everything would be a straight swap onto my Corrado, as they both run CE2 electrics so everything *should* work.

 

About the same time as all of this was happening I had bought another Corrado VR6 which turned out to be a total rust bucket and potential moneypit. I soon decided that it wasn't worth trying to get back on the road and set out to break it. However, the widetrack running gear wasn't going anywhere as I decided my potential Corrado-8V-TDi would really benefit from being widetrack and therefore 5-stud, allowing a much wider range of wheels and of course the possibility of better, bigger brakes. So the VR6 unfortunately met a slightly sad end but parts of it are on probably 50 other Corrado's so its not all bad!

 

Just after christmas my Dad asked me to help with the cambelt change on his B4, so round I went to help him do that...

 

 

While working on it he happened to mention that the car was due for an MOT fairly soon and that it would need discs/pads/caliper rebuilds all round as the brakes were constantly seizing on. He knew all about my TDi plans and I asked him whether he'd be willing to let me buy him another B4 (in better condition but not necessarily a GL), so I could have his B4 as a donor vehicle. The long and short of it is that the answer was yes, I found him a really tidy B4 CL TDi in sherry pearl (the same colour as my Corrado!), and I ended up with his old B4 GL sat in my garage as a TDi donor 2 days after I'd finished breaking the VR6 and scrapped the shell :)

 

 

 

Here's the MFA clocks with the MPG potential:

 

 

So...my plan was this:

 

Corrado 8V

1.9 TDi 1Z engine (90bhp - 142lb/ft as standard)

Widetrack running gear front and rear

Reconditioned suspension components

288mm brakes

Mk4 rear calipers

 

There are quite a few things to do apart from just dropping the engine into place. Firstly I have had as many of the widetrack suspension components and 288mm brakes blasted and powdercoated black (thanks Mark and Dave!):

 

 

 

I've also been thinking about lots of other things, such as enlarging the fuel filler neck (diesel fuel nozzles are bigger!), fitting a front mounted intercooler and pipework as the Passat one doesn't fit at all, sorting out fuel lines, ensuring that the exhaust will work ok and of course making sure the engine bay and inner bulkhead is suitably soundproofed - I don't want a rough, unrefined car.

 

Then there's the tuning potential. Advice from tdiclub.com pointed me in the direction of the AFN engine, which is a 110bhp lump fitted with a VNT (variable vane) turbo as standard. They were fitted to the Galaxy/Sharan/Passat B5/Audi A4/Seat Toledo and a few other models and they will work quite nicely with the Passat B4 engine loom. However they are £500+ on eBay and I couldn't justify that. So more research established that the AHU (Mk3 Golf, Mk2 Ibiza) engine (90bhp, no VNT) is an AFN in every way apart from the lack of VNT. I looked for AHU's and they fetch about £200 - even better. Then I looked at the difference between the AHU engine and the 1Z as fitted to my donor B4 and found out that there really isn't much difference between them at all - 3lb/ft and a small amount of difference to the internals. I decided that the best thing to do would be to get the conversion running and then worry about tuning later on - however a set of injectors will see me at 120bhp from 90bhp with no other modifications so that'll do to begin with. Couple that with a VNT turbo, PD130 inlet manifold, a remap and a couple of other small modifications and I should see 150-160bhp with approaching 300 lb/ft of torque which I think would be plenty for a daily driver.

 

One final modification that I'm planning on doing while the conversion takes place is an upgrade to the later type ABS system thats fitted to the Passat. Its made by ATE and basically gets rid of the annoying ABS ECU (it's integrated into the pump) and the even more annoying rear brake compensator valve. The ABS sensors are the same as the Corrado and the bracket that mounts it to the bulkhead is even the same - job's a good'un! I'm planning on replacing all of the brake pipes anyway so it makes sense to quickly fit the new ABS system while I'm at it. Wiring should be fairly simple too as the Corrado and Passat are essentially the same in the wiring department.

 

I took the Corrado off the road at the end of February in readiness for the conversion and happened to buy the old Ibiza back from Matt to use as a daily while I carry out the conversion - it all worked out rather well really! I think that's about everything, hopefully you're not bored to death reading about it by now!! This weekend just gone I set about removing the engine from the Passat, which was nice and straightforward:

 

 

 

 

The Passat will be weighed in this Saturday coming (2nd April) and then the Corrado will be coming home as I've got the next week booked off ready to do the majority of the work. I'll also be replacing the heater matrix and a few other bits and bobs while I'm at it.

 

I think thats about it - plenty more to come but its going to be done for Stanford Hall on the 1st May, that is my self enforced deadline and I really don't like missing deadlines ;)

 

Thanks for reading, keep an eye out for more updates

 

Tom

Edited April 30, 2011 by Purple Tom

[Pat_McCrotch 0]

Ohh this is interesting. A Corrado TDi using period parts :)

 

Does the Passat have one of those cupholders? ;)

[Meathead28 0]

Sounds like you've got a hell of a lot of work ahead of you...

 

Good luck to you Tom,.............. a corrado with 50mpg or over sounds like a pretty interesting idea. I struggle to hit 30.

 

Mark