HVB G60

I'm going to have my steel braided hoses custom-made by Goodridge on Friday. Could anybody give me some info on the length of the original hose and perhaps post a picture so that I can get an idea of how they should look.

Maybe the previous owner had the alarm installed in "automatic" mode? In order to tell the system that the car is an automatic, they ground a specific wire. With this wire attached to ground the system will bypass the security measures taken in shift-stick mode. I don't know which colour it is on your C500, but you should get hold of the installer manual in order to find that out. I don't know the C500 as far as wiring goes, but I guess the basics are the same throughout all of the systems. You shouldn't experience any problems by detaching the wiring loom that goes from the intellistart to your steering column. It doesn't do anything else than to start the car and power your aircon during remote start. That way you can be absolutely confident it won't try to start by itself anymore...

VW has one in their program, it's in AKTE in the electronics section where they show the factory-fitted alarm. It's a very sturdy design with a rubber cap over the top. Not cheap though, about €25...

I had H&R adapters in the past, the bolts bolted right into the alloy, no helicoils what so ever. Issues did arrise when I tried to unbolt my wheels after 6 months; on 2 of the bolts a part of the thread did come out along with the bolt. Alloy adapters with helicoils seems the best possible solution to me; low unsprung weight without the risk of threads being damaged after some time.

A friend of mine has the 312s fitted behind his RS301s without any problems. It's a tight fit, but who cares, it fits and it's a beautiful combination! :D

What is "digi-lag"?

The timing belt usually breaks due to the bearings seizing. The belt doesn't give in unless it's very old, got contaminated by oil or if it had some fysical damage. In all three cases it doesn't matter whether you have a normal or a extra wide timing belt.

Wrapping some heat wrap around your exhaust manifold will help even more in protecting your wires against the heat, not only those from your injector loom.

As my old loom has got some damaged insulation too, I'm going to make my own loom also. I would only recommend this if you have the proper crimping tool for the connectors, otherwise your loom might not be as reliable as you want it to be. But in the end, I would advice everyone to buy the crimping tool, some wire, glue filled sleeves and the proper connectors, instead of just buying the loom from VW (or even worse: just buying those yellow pre-crimped cables from VW). Money wise it’ll set you back about the same amount, but those tools always come in handy when doing repairs to other wiring looms. Just make sure you solder all the connections between wires and use sleeves that seal the connection with glue when you heat it. Otherwise water might be captured in between and cause the connection to corrode, potentially causing all kind of weird problems with your fuel injection.

Not using any thermostat at all isn't such a great idea. You'll want your warmup phase to last as short as possible, since your engine takes the greatest beating during this stage. I even dare to state that mounting no cooler at all will do less damage to your engine than what you're having right now; too long warmup times and oil temperature not coming over 100 degrees (thus not giving the water that builds up in your oil the chance to evaporate, thereby contaminating the internals of your engine).

Mine openes at 74deg, but the thermostats can be replaced by a piece that opens at a higher temperature, so that might be different in other kits. My cooler is a 16 row 330mm wide one. I wouldn't recommend going any bigger on a G60. Too much cooling capacity ain't good for your engine either, due to the fact that the water in the oild doesn't evaporate anymore, eventually contaminating the internals of your engine.

With my old setup (68mm pully, chip, FMIC, supersprint exhaust, that was basically it) 120 degrees was no exception, even at normal (120-140km/h) speed. If I would floor it, the temperature could easily get to 130. My charger probably wasn't very happy about that. After having placed a 268/276 cam my temperatures already dropped by 10 degrees, not having changed anything else. Probably due to the better extraction of the hot exhaust gasses. And after mounting an external oilcooler the problem was totally gone. I could drive 180+ for an hour on the Autobahn, 30+ degrees outside and no problems with oiltemperature what so ever.

I used the standard one (begins opening at 74 degrees if I remember correctly?). This works fine and lowers the oil temperature quite considerably. The only minor drawback is during warmup, the cooler catches too much wind at highway speeds, because of that it takes ages to get the engine from 74 to 90. I once drove at night, 10 degrees outside temperature, a little damp, directly from the parking lot onto the highway, it took the engine at least 20kms before I saw 90 appearing! With my new engine, I'll probably mount a thermostat that opens a little later. Especially since I removed the oil/watercooler also, which doesn't help when it comes to a quick warmup either...