tonedef

Well I did get £28.78 change from my £1800! The variable service (remember intervals are approx 2 years) was £198, the Haldex service £81, both +VAT, while the car was in I also had cambelt, water pump, some parts for the driver's seat, a new key and coding, 2 track rod ends and a re-track. Had I been at home I'd have done a lot of it myself but I was in Singapore for a year and my wife ain't so clever with the spanners. Problem is that people buying cars are such hypocrites, everyone wants a straight, unmodified car with full dealer history but then complains on a forum about the price of dealer service and fits a load of bolt on non original parts. I plan to sell the S3 next year and it'll have FASH, the Corrado has no real value any more and we'll be keeping it forever so I'll service it myself.

My wife drives the VR6 to work every day, she was after all the one who wanted to keep it when we bought the S3. She also drives the S3 which is rather more powerful than the VR6. I'm not quite sure why a woman wouldn't be able to drive a Corrado, they're only a car with a wheel, three pedals and a stick in the same place as all cars. Or am I missing something?

These might help, they're from the Passat manual I borrowed from my local dealer when I was doing my climate control install. Everything I looked at to do with the CC was the same as in the Corrado so they ma well be something like close!

^^^^^ This has been my argument all along, the Corrado is a great car, I've owned one for approaching 12 year now and I certainly wouldn't have spent over £13K buying the VR6 had I not enjoyed driving the valver before it. Unfortunately as VW have dragged their heels for so long replacing it, I decided that I had to get something newer and in my view I was left with little choice. I like my VW cars, I've had my fair share of GTIs too and a new Corrado would have fitted the bill perfectly, but there was (and will be in my view) no new Corrado, the new Iroc is delayed again, maybe it'll be dumped on the pile of others that have been coming out to replace the Corrado since 1995, maybe not. I'm not sure the S3 looks like an A3 TDi with big wheels, I could tell mine apart from a fair distance, and anyway, what's wrong with a TDi? Chip it and you've got a real torque monster with decent fuel economy. And at the end of the day, yes, you might be able to get up and drive to work at 120mph if it's 4am, until you reach the next jam at least, I'm happy enough coming in at 6am every day. Real roads, real driving, the S3 is a great car to drive. The Corrado feels like an old car when you drive the two back to back, and mine was built in the last couple of weeks of manufacture so there are few newer. But.....................The S3 is going next year, I'm not going to get caught in the same trap of buying a car for a shed load of money and then keeping it too long until there's no value left as I have with the VR. Not quite sure what I'll replace it with, new S3, S4, RS4 or maybe I'll give in to my Evo urges and buy Japanese. I will not however be selling the VR, that's here to stay even when it becomes a fair weather driver, that's if my wife ever gets tired of using it every day?

Two can play that game, the Porsche makes them both look tiny!

If VW had built a new Corrado sooner I might not have needed to go to Audi for something I can do my 500 mile round trip from home to work in without worrying about it being reliable. I may get a new Iroc when they finally come out, but now I have the Audi bug it might have to be an S4 :lol:

I own and drive both a VR6 Corrado and an S3, I can say without any doubt that the S3 is the quicker. If you drive on real roads with plenty of corners thrown in the Audi will have it every time as it's faster round them and also gets out of them quicker. That's not to say the Corrado is any slouch, put the two together on a straight road an there's not the same margin, they're pretty evenly matched on a dual carriageway at 120 and the top speed is very similar (like we ever get the chance to drive at that in Britain any more :x ). As for the power, early S3s were 210bhp until end 2001ish and 225 after, a chip and nothing else frees 260/265 and makes them a lot more fun, they're still no Evo beater as the handling then needs a lot of work.

When I swapped from my old valver with slider controls to a VR, the salesman advised me to first stop the fan when changing the heater settings. That way less strain was put on all the mechanism. It seems to have paid off over the 6 years we used it as mine never broke or jumped any teeth.

No matter how severe the punishment we have to accept that until somebody introduces a hands free camera there will still be very few prosecutions. There are simply too few police actually on the street to enforce the laws. When I was first driving, if you had a light out you were pulled and got a ticket, now I see cars every day with lights out and nobody gets stopped. However on my 250 mile journey from home to work I pass over 20 "safety" cameras on dual carriageways and motorways that are simply collecting another tax for Tony and Gordon.

You sould see the price a well prepared Mk2 Escort rally car will fetch even nowadays, £70 - £80K is not unusual. Many people still consider it the classic rally car, everything since then is downhill!

I can't see that unplugging the CPS would cause any problem but then I did unplug the engine multiplug Saturday just to get a bit more access and aftewards the engine was running rough. I went through the ECU reset proceedure in the Knowledge Base and it's all OK again, in fact as soon as the battery had been disconnected at the start of the reset it was fine again.

You don't only have to look for Passats, they must be pretty common through the entire range as my S3 has one too. It fastens up with a single screw rather than clipping to the light but I'm sure it would go into the Corrado with bit of ingenuity. P/N 8D0 858 555

You think so, I thought some might look nice on the back of the S3???

Yesterday I followed this A8 into Hull. You have to admit that if anyone is looking for a minimalist number plate for their C, Lithuania might be the place to look for one :D

Another problem with RS4s, they'd have a 112 PCD. It's gonna have to be reps!

I was just wondering if you'd tried plugging the new stalk into the existing wiring on the car even though it wouldn't be in the right place on the column, if so and if it all works OK then it's simply a case of making the wires long enough to fit everything up properly. Of course if one with the right lenth cable is easy to get then go for that one.

Have you tried connecting it in to the existing wiring and checking everything works OK even if the stalk is not in the right place? If so then it's simply a case of extending the wiring surely, soldering iron, wire and heat shrink, job done.

Thats one good looking driveway 8) Unfortunately it's my mate's 993 :lol: He does let me play though.

Protected by it's cousins.

I'm not sure if upgrading a standard a/c setup to climate control is the right way to go about it or not, some of the under bonnet stuff would be OK but as for the heat exchanger and control system that's a different thing all together. Mine is taken from a 96 Passat although a lot of the dates on parts were 94, obviously VAG have fitted many different CC systems over the years. Mine has a vacuum reservoir tucked under the front left arch liner which is then piped through the bulkhead with the heater pipes, the vacuum is used to control all the various heater valves using a manifold controlled by the climatronic panel, not all seem to use this system. Fitting the controller was pretty easy, the front panel needed trimming a bit but apart from that it was a direct replacement for the original, there's a picture elsewhere on this thread of the finished article. It's not quite flush on the front face and the black is a slightly different shade but it's close. There were only two seperate sensors I had to fit, the first is the sunlight sensor which I have cut through the small grill in the top centre of the dash (the one looks like it should be a speaker grill). The second is the interior temp sensor which is a small fan that sucks air from inside the car over a probe. A lot of the climatronic controllers seem to have this sensor built into them, however it's a seperate item on mine and has ended up coming through the dash down the left hand side, it's squeezed between CC controller and head unit on the back. There was a fair bit of wiring too, a lot of which connects to the cooling fan controller under the bonnet, I was lucky to have the later version fitted in my car for some reason if you have the earlier one it has to be swapped out as things like the a/c compressor clutch are controlled from there. My cooling fan now starts on speed 1 as soon as I switch on CC although I'm still waiting for the last bit so that I can connect the second water temp sensor, that may solve the problem. Maybe the best way forward is the advertise the existing set up you have, they must be getting pretty rare by now and a purist might not want a climatronic panel in the car but would prefer an original a/c system. Then buy a complete install from somebody breaking a Passat, you get all the bits in one package that way???

Replied, cheers Carl

I had a break from engineering a few years ago and spent two years building GrpN rally cars for Ralliart, the drive looked really good when I had David Higgins' Evo 8 MR parked on it 8)

This was today on my drive, I'd like to claim the 993 but it belongs to a mate. He's a complete mechanical numpty so I have to do all his stuff too!

Well, at first it was only going to be a wheel refurb and maybe tidy up a few car park scars on the bumpers. But then I fired up the motor one day and noticed a rattle (I'd not heard it run in maybe 18 months as I'd been out of the country) so decided to do the cam chains and tensioners. While the engine was in bits I saw a Passat VR6 climatronic set up for sale on here so I bought it and threw that in, it was a decision made very quickly and turned into quite a major challenge. The head gasket didn't seal the first time so I had to pull the head off and get it skimmed, should have had it done the first time really, not to worry! Tidied up a couple of other bits while it was on axle stands in the garage and then got it back on the road last weekend. Apart from koni coilovers, goodridge brake lines and the climatronic it's pretty standard, I've owned it for over six years now and can't really bare to part I guess although I have an S3 which is my daily driver, my wife uses the VR. Today I ordered a VT front mount as the rad had to be moved back to get the condenser in so the inlet manifold is way too close to the fan. And I'd like a VSR or maybe a Schrick inlet if I come across one some time, no other plans so far.

After a year in the garage I finally got the VR back on the road last weekend.