Black ABF Corrado - they call it Magnum

[Diamond Hell 0]

Well OK, I'm actually pretty chuffed.

 

My Corrado was swapped with Nick 'Horney', as he needed something cheaper to run around in and I'm a sucker for a 16V.

 

It came to me with a few issues and I've removed some of them and created different ones. The first session on it was to replace the n/s front lower control arm. That didn't go too well and after snapping off the front securing bolt I needed to replace the front sub-frame. A Golf3 item has been swapped in, along with a set of new engine mounts. I also replaced the o/s outer front CV boot as it was just about to go. The stricken car:

 

 

As I really don't like big, heavy alloy wheels, Nick hung on to the 17" ones that were on the car during his tenure. For now I've fitted some 15" alloys from a SEAT, which I had lying around. This gave me the next photo here:

 

 

I then got a new lens for my SLR, so went out and played at the weekend:

 

 

 

 

Last weekend I collected some parts from ShaunG60 and had a delivery from Vee W Services in Bristol. I had a few hours to get some bits sorted, so it got brand new OEM dampers all round, new top mounts front and back, as well as bumpstops too, I've put second hand OEM springs on all round and I also fitted up a rear wiper arm and motor (the old one wasn't present).

 

So, I now have a Corrado that looks like this:

 

 

 

This may upset some people, but on Isle of Wight roads it's a huge improvement - the car now drives beautifully tightly and the ride is very well controlled - much better for my kind of driving!

 

I've got lots more to do yet, including an ABF motor to be fitted and then I want to get some 16" rims on, with slightly lower profile tyres, to sharpen the ride up a touch.

 

Love it to bits, as does the wife.

 

Now, does anyone know where I can get a hypo so I can inject superglue into the steering wheel to stop it moving on the core?

Edited December 11, 2013 by Diamond Hell

[The_Dude 0]

Good to see Magnum lives on... :salute:

I think you did the best out of this swap!

[Diamond Hell 0]

As you can tell - I focus on mechanics more than cosmetics. Hopefully this means Magnum has come to me in an easy-to-maintain good cosmetic condition and I'll now sharpen it back to better-than-box-fresh on the dynamics side.

 

I'm already having fun getting it there. :grin:

[delfinis38 1]

looking good.... especially the pix looking up at (sp) tenason (sp) and the needles. :grin:

[Diamond Hell 0]

Tennyson :wink:

 

I prefer the one on Tapnell straight myself and I got a couple of good ones on Broad Lane, too.

[shaung60 0]

Is every owner of this car a dab hand with a camera? :)

 

Looking good, glad the bits got you sorted and you're enjoying the drive.

 

And I like what you've got in your garage. Wish I had one.

[Diamond Hell 0]

Sadly Shaun, the ramp's not mine - I was at a mate's place.

 

At the moment I have a very open ex-milking parlour, with a leaky roof.

 

I need to do some block work to stop the draughts, then repair the roof, then sort out the sides and a roller-shutter door at one end.

 

After that it'll be ace - 3-phase and online air from a 250litre compressor.

[Jim 2]

You certainly won't hear much criticism for concentrating on getting the mechanical bits and the ride quality improved (rather than the pretty stuff) from folks on here.. the Corrado is all about the driving experience, not the posing experience :)

 

Looks great - look forward to more updates on this one :)

[Diamond Hell 0]

I'm not happy with the front springs - they seem to be pushing the nose of the car too high at the moment, which on these roads means I'm in danger of lunching the strut top mounts.

 

As they're off a scrapper Corrado I'm not sure what's causing this :confused4:. Did the G60 have more weight to carry on the nose and these are off a G60, maybe? I may return to the lower springs, but on the OEM dampers to control the ride better than the original, need to have a think over the next few days.

[Conker 0]

Hi DH, nice to see you on this forum.

 

I'm going down a similar route, albeit with comfort in mind for my daily commute - I've just fitted the original solitudes with some nice squishy tyres (replacing ultra low profile rubber bands on heavy 17" wheels), and the difference is monumental.

 

Having said that.... Get it washed and waxed ya lazy geet!! :grin:

[blue95 0]

Hi mate,

 

Welcom to the corrado forum!

 

Nice workshop!

 

When you going to Syncro the Corrado then LOL?

[Diamond Hell 0]

Having said that.... Get it washed and waxed ya lazy geet!! :grin:

 

It's already had enough of that for this year, in Horney's hands!

 

I'll get round to it..... later.

 

Nice workshop!

 

When you going to Syncro the Corrado then LOL?

 

Don't tempt me!! Sadly I already have my eyes peeled, waiting for a cheap Golf Syncro to pop out of the woodwork, for me to butcher.

 

As I've said in another thread - that workshop's not mine. Mine is being renovated in my spare time. I'll get pics up in due course, but damn! it's nice being in a situation where you can fling the doors open with gay abandon, even on the Corrado!

[Diamond Hell 0]

Between track days with the Golf, buying a new house and burying my uncle you'd have thought the C was being severely neglected.

 

And you'd be half right.

 

The night before I took the Golf to Brands we had torrential weather here on the IOW and driving home to hitch the trailer on the Passat I was driving through some floods when the C bogged down and simply wouldn't pick back up.

 

No problem, I thought - bit of water somewhere.

 

Cleaned everything through by the side of the road, still nothing - plenty of spark, plenty of fuel, but no goes. :confused4:

 

Never mind, it got dragged home and we went off to Brands and

which was nice.

 

Came back and it still wouldn't run any sense. Then it would run on cold start, but died as soon as it warmed up. Anyone got any suggestions?

 

DannyP and I figured there was only one truly effective cure for this malaise: ABF on Digifant 3.2.

 

Any other theories are welcome.

 

The C is currently in the workshop, nose in the air, engine, gearbox and brake master + servo out, with an ABF being prepped next to it - new cambelt, water pump and a Toledo/Golf3/Cordoba gearbox, which I think has a taller fifth.

 

The non-immobiliser loom and ECU I have are also being prepped - the loom has been re-wrapped in fresh loom tape. Hopefully won't be too long until it's back on the road, barking healthily, with a touch more harumphf under the bonnet.

[Diamond Hell 0]

Annoyingly it turns out the CE2 connectors aren't standardised.

 

No working speedo for me, yet.

 

ABF is running OK, but there's some hesitation and other slightly odd symptons. We've narrowed it down to either a problem with the fuel pressure, or the ABF management can't handle the ported throttlebody.

 

If anyone's had any experience with problems with ported bodies I'd be interested to hear their experiences.

 

Still, at least I got a couple of cool images on Saturday evening:

 

 

9 images composited together:

 

 

Oh and I need a new passenger-side headlight lens, after some pheasant decided to inspect the front of my car at about 60mph on Saturday.

[Diamond Hell 0]

Well, that's only been three years off the road for the Corrado. :suprised:

 

After various issues and a change of jobs I didn't need it, so I mothballed it.

 

FINALLY got round to sorting it out in the past couple of months. It now just needs three brake pipes replacing and a steering gaiter and it will be back on the road with another, fitter ABF under the bonnet.

 

MOT station last Saturday, in the process of failing:

 

 

Should be re-commissioned by Christmas and then may well fall into daily use, as I'd forgotten how nice it is to drive a petrol powered car. WHOOPS!

[mic_VR 3]

Welcome back! Love that composite image you made, very nice.

[seanl82 23]

Mk3 Derv consigned to the barn for the forseable then. :dance: How is the abf in a Corrado? Surprisingly few of them around.......

[Diamond Hell 0]

The infamous Golf3 TDI will be being flogged in the new year - I have too many vehicles at the moment!! :nono:

 

How it's spent most of the last three years:

 

 

:confused:

 

And then when I finally had some time:

 

 

Eventually to:

 

 

As it turned out it was (weirdly) the speedo in the cluster that was shot, so we have a replacement cluster in the dash now - all is gravy there.

 

The ABF is loverly in the Corrado. They are such a storming motor when they're right.

 

It currently has a cat out of the Cordoba the ABF came out of on the back of it, which looks to be a later and (hopefully) better design than the original. Being the same floorpan it fits right up, too which is nice.

The biggest issue with it was the exhaust manifold, as when I released the downpipe it sheared two of the downpipe bolts. :bonk:

 

Off to a mate's workshop (the one in the first post actually!) who has a proper pillar drill for some of this action:

 

 

As they didn't respond to being heated up, or having nuts welded on them.

 

The car also now has a 6kg flywheel on the motor (I was getting one done and had two sitting around, so got them both done, so it's keen to rev, which is nice. Original flywheel is around 10kg, so it's a significant difference.

 

Thanks to the donor Cordoba the car is now running on 280mm front brakes. When it came to me the ABS had been 'disabled' - the warning light had been disconnected!. As that's now an MOT fail I've worked through the system and found a poxy connector in the back and a blown front sensor. Now those have been sorted/replaced it all works right, which I'm delighted about.

 

One of the handbrake cables had seized, resulting in too much yanking on the handbrake to pull it on. This had in turn torn the front securing bolt out of the tunnel, so that had a dose of cleaning up and being welded back in, along with a pair of new handbrake cables going on. The original OS one was completely seized in the outer.

 

I have a set of 16" multispoke rims from the Cordoba which I might get blasted and coated in white and fit to replace the nasties on there at the moment. It needs tyres anyway, so it's the right thing to do at the right time.

 

Now, how the hell do people get their CE2 fuseboards back up and fixed properly? The space is TINY!

 

Once through the MOT it will get stitch-welded control arms and TT bushes to the rear of them, along with full alignment on the front with -1.5 camber to make it properly pointy.

 

And yes, it will be remaining at that ride height - I need suspension travel to ensure I can make steady progress on my local roads.

[Diamond Hell 0]

Replaced two brakes pipes from the compensator to the beam and both flexis tonight.

 

What an utter arse of a job that was.

[Diamond Hell 0]

Replaced the two pipes running from the ABS unit to the rear compensator today. Also remade one of the rear pipes, as the flares on it just weren't cutting it.

 

I switched from using one of these tools:

 

http://www.frost.co.uk/brake-pipe-flaring-tool.html

 

Which hasn't improved with age, to an older version of one of these:

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Draper-SAE-Hand-Held-Flaring-16-inch/dp/B008YFX2LM

 

Which I would heartily recommend - it's not possible to put not enough/too much pipe into the flare and there's no way of the blocks going off-centre, unlike the tool from Frosts.

 

Next up: DIY front wheel alignment with string.

[sexybourbon 0]

Nice progress mate

[Diamond Hell 0]

Finished off the brake pipes and bled things up last night, then got out the baler twine, for some wheel-alignment farm-style:

 

 

And it now drives straight.

 

On the first test-surf (I can't describe it as a drive, given the weather) the ABS light came on when I stamped on the anchors then the ABS stopped working, so I took it back in, checked the resistance of the sensors, disconnected the ABS ECU, re-connected it and tried again - worked fine. Now I guess I need to search for ABS problems on the forum :shrug:

[Diamond Hell 0]

Final bleed of the system tonight and the braking system is behaving itself and the ABS is working and the G60 front brakes feel like G60 front brakes should do.

 

Partial re-test tomorrow.

[Diamond Hell 0]

Now with added MOT!

[seanl82 23]

Cool beans Thomas. I've been meaning to do the alignment on mine for ages actually. What's the routine for doing it like this? I read up on it a few years ago but don't remember now, and I don't trust any of the monkeys locally to do it. A little sticky would be quite good I think!