Flash Red Rado

[Laser Mark 0]

Tuesday's update

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]68694[/ATTACH]

Had to pop in to work this morning and paint the arb as we needed it a bit sooner than I thought. Got the subframe built up with fresh new bolts for the steering rack.

 

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A fairly clean bay. We could have spent all day cleaning it, but had to get on with other things. New subframe in and engine loom in.

 

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Freshly painted wishbones and new drop links.

I fitted and torqued up the subframe, then undid it to get the bolts in for the wishbones. All torqued up correctly, then fitted the drop links and fitted new bolts and got everything torqued up.

I stood back and admired my handy work, and then noticed I'd put the wishbones in upside down!!! :bonk:

Never mind.

 

Not much to show today really as its all been wiring, Tom has also been sorting out the heater matrix, heater controls, and the fan wiring loom, as well as the main engine loom.

 

Hopefully the engine will be going in tomorrow.

[dragon green 4]

Really enjoying this thread,

You and Tom make a formidable team !

[Laser Mark 0]

Thanks, I'm learning a lot by doing this project.

Tom's a great help, glad he's clued up on the wiring side of things or I would have been at a loss.

[CazzaVR 0]

Excellent progress Mark! Nice to have someone else to work with on stuff like this 8)

[Laser Mark 0]

I spoke with someone at the Brooklands meet about buying my 16v subframe once it was off and powder coated.

Unfortunately I can't remember who it was. Could you please make yourself known.....

[dragon green 4]

It was me !!!

[Laser Mark 0]

Ahh, excellent.

Well obviously the 16v subframe is out and will be blasted over the next couple of weeks. (I'm off all this week)

Are you still interested? If so I'll give you a shout when its done.

Please bare in mind Tom and Dave have both had breakers in the last month so I have their stuff to get on with too.

[dragon green 4]

Still interested,but it's a long term project,so I'm in no hurry

[Laser Mark 0]

Ok, no problem.

Will let you know when its done.

[Laser Mark 0]

Wednesday's Update.

 

Today's main aim was to get the engine in, but there where a few little job's to be done first.

 

Tom fixed the heater control's and quietly got on with putting the dashboard back in along with glove box, tray, and tunnel plastics.

 

My job was get the front end ready. So, lesson's learnt today

1) When blasting the cross member and painting it, leave the bungs in it. They where a bloody nightmare, luckily Tom managed to mock up a tool similar to the one Kip has made. This helped loads, but still a fiddly job to do.

2) When fitting power steering lines to the rack, its much easier to do it with the subframe on the floor. But my subframe it attached to the car, so I spent a little longer than necessary fitting them.

3) Tom has a thing for copper grease. Every nut, bolt or spline must have a smear of it. It is good practice as most of the front is going to be adjusted for the tracking.

 

Not many pictures at the minute as I've left the camera in the car. I'll edit this and add them tomorrow. I'll also put pictures up of the powder coated bits.

But the important one.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]68700[/ATTACH]

 

 

 

The engine is in, and at the end of today it was bolted down, the drive shafts are in, hub's and front struts are in. The down pipe is bolted in and the power steering pump is back on.

Tom has been working on the mod's to the fuel lines as they are a little different on the 16v to the VR6.

Edited August 2, 2012 by Laser Mark

[Laser Mark 0]

Thursday's Update.

 

The aim of today was to get the engine running. There was still a long way to go.

Tom was still working on the fuel lines, filter and tank.

As it turned out, we had to use the tank from the VR as just swapping the pumps over wouldn't have worked.

 

I turned my attention to the plumbing under the bonnet. This was going ok until the rad was dropped in.

I've always thought that the rad panels are the same for the VR, 16v and the G60's, but having struggled for half and hour to get the rad to sit right, it appears that the rad panel on a VR has a bracket which makes the left hand side sit forward of the top of the panel.

 

5 minutes thinking about it and I was on the phone the Dave16v to tell him that I'd emailed a photo of a drawing of a part and asked if he could knock it up for the following day. This is only a temporary fix until I can get better measurements and design something a little more substantial. I'll put a photo up tomorrow of it.

 

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Started putting the inlet together.

 

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The daily looking more like a delivery van or storage unit lately. Nice freshly painted slam panel.

New disc's and pads, new oil, fuel and air filters. And the ever present Bentley manual.

 

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Inlet all together, alternator on and tensioner in. Not long after this we fired it up and made sure the wiring was fine and everything was plugged in correctly.

Happily to say, everything has gone ok. Tom checked and no faults or codes where found.

 

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And this is how we left it on Thursday night.

The disc's and calipers have been fitted and the coolant has been done. The oil has been left to drain ready for tomorrow when fresh oil is being added, along with steering fluid and brake fluid.

Also hoping to get the car booked in for front end alignment tomorrow afternoon, and then take it for a spin.

[Laser Mark 0]

Well, I know its a bit late but here is the final update on the conversion.

 

Friday morning was spent filling the car with fluids and going down the check list making sure we hadn't missed anything.

The brakes bleed quite quickly, 15 to 20 minutes and they where done.

We rolled the car out the garage around 2 ish ready to take it to the alignment centre when Tom noticed that the power steering pump had failed.

20 minutes later we had a spare pump on and hadn't lost too much fluid.

 

A slow 3 mile trip up the road to the alignment centre, where they said it would take about an hour. So we popped to Sainsbury's for some well deserved dinner.

Once back at the garage (ETS) we where told that they couldn't align the wheels as the camber was out and they didn't have the tools.

To say I was a bit annoyed is an understatment, why say you can do and job and then not be able to do it.

In the end we took the car back to Tom's garage and set the camber by eye on the floor. The tracking wouldn't have been to far out as the steering rack came off the breaker of Tom's and we'd only changed the track rod ends and I'd been careful not to disturb the setting too much.

 

A bit of back and forth later in the evening and I had both my cars back at home.

Saturday the car went to ETS in Mapperley (near where I live) the tracking on the right was 0.03 minutes out, and on the left was 0.4 minutes, the camber was a little further out but not too bad.

I've got to take the car back in a fortnight to have it checked and readjusted if necessary.

 

Saturday afternoon was spent hoovering out the inside ready for Tatton Park. I managed to give it a quick wash before the heavens opened and got ready for a very early start.

 

Sorry for not having very many pictures, we tried to do a photo documentary, but as time wore on we started missing shooting times.(we tried to take 1 photo every 30 minutes from the same spot)

 

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Here's the car on the club stand at Tatton park.

 

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The natural watering hole of the Corrado en route to Tatton. Myself and Dave16v

 

Just want to say a MASSIVE thanks to Tom for helping with the conversion and doing all the complicate wiring bits, the use of his garage and being patient when imparting some of his knowledge and answering stupid questions when I asked them.

 

Also thanks to Dave16v for ordering a few little bits and mocking up brackets when needed on short notice.

 

I know own a VR and haven't been able to wipe the smile off my face for the last 2 days when driving it.

 

There are a few little job's left to finish it off. Hopefully have them done before Harewood House. I'll try and keep the thread updates as I do them.

[daves16v 1]

Well done to Mark and Tom on the conversion, looks like it came out of the factory like that.

[CazzaVR 0]

:notworthy: Well done guys! Mark, how do you find it compared to the valver?

[Jim 2]

Fricking awesome work - you guys made it look easy (though I'm sure it wasn't!)

 

Did you replace the entire engine wiring loom or is most of the stuff you need in the loom already there?

[Laser Mark 0]

Andy, since finishing it on Friday I've covered 300 miles or so, and I must admit they have been very relaxing. In the valver I constantly had to change gear to find the sweet spot, but the VR just wofts along, quite content to sit in 5th and tootle around at 40 mph or hoon along at 70......ish.

Its also better on fuel than the valver, I managed 37.8 mpg on the way to Tatton and 38 something on the way back. I really struggled to get anywhere near that with the valver, only mustering 31 on the way down to Brooklands.

 

Jim, the entire engine wiring loom was changed, the original fan loom was left in. Tom's the man to talk to regarding the wiring, its all a bit much to me.

We'd done plenty of talking and planning, but there where still a few issues which popped up and took us by supprise.

The fuel tank isn't the same, so I had to swap the original tank out for the VR tank.

The rad panels are different, despite the part numbers being the same. The rad panel I had din't have a bracket for the VR radiator to sit on.

The valver has 2 fuel pumps so one was removed and that lead to modifications to the fuel lines.

 

All in all, its been great fun, I've learnt loads, and I'm looking forward to the next project.

[Laser Mark 0]

The woes!

Well after being delivered to my mates garage on Sunday morning by the AA the news from the garage is the bottom end has gone.

 

I'm going to have to move the car to a relatives garage to get it out of the way as I can't afford my mate to strip it down at the minute and fix it.

 

So what are my options?

 

1) Completely strip the engine down and find out what's knackered, re grind etc to get it fixed. While its stripped I've thought about getting the head cleaned up, possibly getting it bored out. Its a thought at the minute, but an expensive one.

 

2) Get another 2.9 from a breaker and stick that in. Run the risk of something going wrong again as these engines have covered some mileage.

 

3) Find a new engine, either a 2.8 or 3.2 24v a lower mileage, more modern engine is less likely to go pop after 3 weeks.

 

I guess each has the pro's and con's. Cheap but risky to pricey but reliable.

 

One thing which never crossed my mind, even when sat beside the M1 on Sunday was getting rid of the car.

 

So what are your thoughts????

 

Any other ideas?????

 

Cheers

 

Mark

[Jim 2]

Well that's a total fricking nightmare! Did you get any warning at all? Presumably the engine was running well when you put it in?! You've come this far - stick with it. Rebuild the engine!!

[floppyman 0]

I think that its worth having a look at whats damaged... Know what happen first.

[Laser Mark 0]

Jim - The engine was fine, the breaker it came out of used to belong to Purple Tom.

After the conversion it was driven to Tatton Park, and driven back with some gusto which was fun.

The only incline I had was about a mile from Woolley Edge services, the engine didn't sound right under throttle. I checked the oil temp which was at 120 degrees. I phoned and flashed Dave to pull over at the next service.

Luckily it was where everyone else was, parked up switched off and checked water level, oil level etc. Everything seemed fine. When we set off again the oil temp was at 80, pulling out of the services and giving it the beans along with everyone else the knocking started.

And it got worse.

And worse.

Just before j43, with an oil temp of 148 and climbing I gave up and pulled over. 12 miles since first noticing it.

[floppyman 0]

Main bearing or conrod bearing by the sound of it?

[Laser Mark 0]

Thanks chap. I'll keep an eye out in that area when I strip it down.

[Nathan Harvey 10]

Dude sorry to here this...bad times i'm sure you'll sort it tho

[Butterfly 0]

I'm with get it looked at first then think about your options.

If it's bottom end then there may be no need in disturbing the head.

 

Still gutted for you.

[Macdaddy 10]

If it was me I'd be toying with taking the VR out and having it completely overhauled, chains, gaskets, painted etc so you know it's all been done,

 

Or

 

R32 lump transplanted.