Toad

Just out of interest, in comparison, how much was a corrado new, back in the day?

if you can get your hands on it a 19mm single hex socket (impact driver socket) is ideal for the sump plug, the last thing you want to do is round it off if some monkey has wound it up extra tight!

I've seen 3 H platers now and they've all had very rotten battery holders, they look fine, but take the battery out and there's a hole. I reckon it's more to do with careless owners over filling the batteries with water, and letting acid sit under the battery. it's a pretty easy fix cutting the appropriate section out a mk 2 golf wing and welding back into the corrado i believe.

I'm pretty sceptical about this gimp too really, i saw him on the news last night, you wouldn't just sit there on the phone crying would you? wouldn't you pull the hand brake on (RWD so no funky skidding just added braking effort) and start rubbing the side of the car down the armco to shave speed off? You'd have to be a bit of a halfwit to sit there while it worked it's way to 130mph surely? It must've taken him a minute or two to cook his brakes while he was on the phone, he could've done something slightly more constructive than call the spotty AA call centre worker in that time? In all honesty it was bloody dangerous, i'm amazed he never killed anyone.

Red H reg near bar end in winchester 2.00ish friday, only just saw it as i was busy texting someone when my mate told me it was coming the other way. doubt you'll have seen me, i was in a pikey van on the way to the scrap yard (got £25 for 3 car radiators, which was nice).

If the forum and the club were to amalgamate as some people have suggested i think the trouble would be getting the balance of benefits for the paying members proportional to their contribution, from the number of members of this forum (5513 right now) there can only be a relatively small proportion who post with a high frequency, and many people who might post once or twice and just skim the web site for information relavant to them, the people who use the site often would (i imagine) be prepared to pay more, but would probably look for reasonable benefits, whilst the more infrequent visitor probably wouldn't want to pay as much. At the end of the day our level of interest in our cars varies so greatly. there are people here who consider and undertake work to the level of completely rebuilding thier cars, and there are people here who struggle to open the bonnet, but just want to chat, and find out if they ever get 'spotted', and many people in between.

Personally I think a pound or two every month is very little, especially when you consider the benfits we can reap with the forum currently, I think most of us have recieved valuable (in the true fiscal sense) information here, and it would be nice to help out the guys who put so much time into providing the rest of us with such a great place to come.

I don't really know what the answer is, I think this topic might just roll and roll for years. Good luck with working an answer out!

Nugget yellow lowered corrado in the robin hood car park, durley. Used to work round there and hadn't seen it around before. left the web address on the wind screen.

One of the gimps i used to work with had an article from one of the broadsheets on his desk, can't remember which one tho, which said in the beginning the stig was actually 2 drivers, can't remember who they were. Didn't they reveal the stig recently?

I think the barrier they built for the mini might have been slightly over the top!! one of my local pubs was showing the winter olympics sunday night and left the projector on so we could all watch top gear, which was nice.

Like a lot of the guys are saying, it's pretty hefty money for that car, and you've got to consider the fact that you might need to spend money on it pretty quickly, if you throw all your £5k into the car and something falls off, you'll be pretty rooted. I bought a decent well looked after 16v 18 months ago for £1500, the first 6 months cost me the best part of £2500 on parts and repairs!!!! The right car will turn up for you sooner or later.

Have you tried HPI checking the VR6?

Saw 2 yesterday and again today, was dropping my mate off in Winchester station car park, first a nice k reg vr6 in dark blue, and an equally nice dark blue H reg 16v, just like mine, apart from the dirt on mine, of course. My mate thought i was a little odd when i got excited about seeing the Vr and even odder when i noticed the other parked a few spaces away. Nevermind.

If it's the alternator shoddying about, pop down and try a spare from mine, i've still got your old spare, and i should have the new car by the weekend. did have a recon unit, but my dad gave it away! (doh!)

Is it a new dizzy? or a second hand beast, if second hand you might need a new o ring.

Assuming that it's a 16v Replacing the dizzy is almost as easy as falling off a bike!! well, sort of, if you mark the old units position on the head, it doesn't matter how the engine is left rotation-wise, undo the two 10 mm bolts holding it in and pull it out, the new unit can only fit with the rotor arm in the correct position for the engine due to the off-centre coupling, push it in so that it is fully engaged, now you can rotate it till the marks from the old distributor line up, bolts in, swap the ht leads(i left mine connected to the old cap for reference till i was finished) and bob's your auntie. it might be worth checking with a timing light, but it shouldn't be too far out.

Was followed by a real nice looking Black corrado, de-badged 3 bar grill. K reg from winchester to twyford at about 7.40. I was in a pretty bad mood this morning, and late for work, and it cheered me right up seeing another one. It seemed pretty rapid too, not that you can get too much speed up in rush hour traffic.

Cheers guys. I always wondered what that little beast was, so its just another temperature sender then? I wouldn't be surprised if the wire might be a little chafed, I'll have to check it out.

Cheers guys, by the sender beast, i'm not overly sure what you mean, do you mean an actual screw in temperature sender? as mine all hide in the passenger side end of the head, or in the back corner adjacent to it. or do you mean the funny looking lump which is sat as you described on the front left hand corner on a little bracket which is held to the head by a rocker cover bolt?

The first time i really noticed, it started up as i was poking the alternator with a 17, wondering how the mounting bolts were so loose(i hadn't tightend them earlier was the answer) so i could've dislodged something. It was still running this evening until about 7 seconds before i wanted to test the switch. I fitted a new one anyway which seems to have the car running a bit cooler, but as always i guess the acid test will be the run to work in the morning.

Sorry, shoulda thought about that before, a 1.8 16v, 1990. on the way to work this morning it seemed to run cooler with the fan unplugged, how perverse is that, it must've just been me driving a bit slower or something? when i rocked up i tried plugging the fan back in and it wouldn't switch off again.

Hey dudes, I was just having a fiddle under the bonnet of my car, trying to work out where the funny burning smell comes from ( i *hope* its something to do with the knackered water pump pulley assembly) and the cooling fan started up, seeing as i hadn't driven it for about 9 hours i was a touch surprised. it wouldn't switch off, and even speeded up at one point so i unplugged it. I guess this is the temperature switch in the bottom corner of the radiator being knackered. Does this sound about right? Knowing my luck it'll be something far more expesive but i thought this was a good first stab.

Blue N reg VR parked in between the exhibitors tents at grasslands on the 19th.

Then a Red beast possibly a G60 passed me at standon on romsey road headed toward winchester that evening. I woulda tried to catch up, but i'm getting pretty anal about letting the engine warm up before ragging her.

I keep seeing a couple of dark coloured Cs near bishops waltham, but i'm usually half asleep so i've never gotten many details.

Toad

Just as a quick update. I bought a radar detector and just before i had a long journey, i thought i'd just pop down the road to see if the thing actually worked. when i came to turn round to go home, the car just stopped. it wouldn't fire when i tried to spin it over, after a quick play looking i over, i had a suspicion it was ignition based, a nice AA man rocked up, and confirmed there was no spark. I managed to get an exchange bosch distributor from euro car parts for £78 (no where else even had one) and I was running again easily enough. It looks like the oil ingress might have damaged the hall sender unit or something, although i didn't expect that.

when I first got my valver, I changed the coolant, can't remember why now, but i think it's fair to say i've put about 50l through it in 6 months!!! anyway, I re filled the beast, but it kept blowing water out and overheating, it turned out a lump of cack had blocked the hole in the top of the rad which the breather pipe (the little one which runs to the top of the header tank) attaches to. when you run the car up, you should be able to see coolant and air bubbles moving from the rad to the header tank through the end of the plastic fitting on the tank. if you don't try getting the pipe off and poking the radiator fittting with a paper clip-its a pretty small hole. as the bishop said to the actress.

Cheers. I hadn't really thought about the tensioner when we did the work on the car, too busy thinking about everything else. I guess i'll add a new one to the list next time i order some bits.

Toad

By the way, Baz2004, you did change the cam belt tensioner too I hope.

By this I guess you mean the eccentric pulley bolted to the block? I changed the cam belt on mine and left the original tensioning beast on there, do they fail very often? I am getting a whining noise from the cam belt, which i put down to it being a bit tight, could it be the tensioner?

cheers, toad.

I have noticed a leak into the distributor on mine today too, i thought i'd tidy it up and put a new set of HT leads on her and noticed the oil in and around the distributor.

I'm pretty sure my leak isn't the outer o ring between the head and distributor, as it was new when i put the new head on in january, and besides the oil shouldn't get into the distributor if it was that one leaking.

Does this mean I can look forward to spending more money in GSF? I wacked £120 on my switch card this morning in there. Arse.