dr_mat

It's not a lack of lubrication it's a lack of oil pressure in the tappets themselves. The oil gets everywhere in the first couple of seconds after a restart to provide lubrication but you need to rev it a bit to get the pressure up enough to fully pressurise the tappets.

That is pointing to the isv cabling or driver circuit in the ECU then, unfortunately. However you would need to clear the error first if you haven't already done so..

Similarly I find a bloody good long thrash will burn off all the nasties and the car will run much better, idle much more smoothly than with all the coking that builds up over short runs.

What he said. ^^^^ Or get one off ebay for thirty quid. Who cares if it works or not? If the problem gets no better then there was nothing wrong with your old one.

The lambda is not used at all until the engine reaches operating temperature. I assume you can see that the engine is reaching temperature in VAGCOM/VCDS and you have been able to verify that all temperature sensors are working properly. If not, that's still the obvious answer. Note that the ECU will auto-calibrate the sensors to some extent, but one that's wildly out of range (though "working") may not actually, "work"..

Mine never had a slot thing.. So no idea what that's about..

It will need to be bypassed as they are set to auto immobilise after thirty seconds otherwise. I found that despite the state of charge of the batteries, the contacts in the remote used to get corroded and stop the remote working. They also fell off once and I had to solder it back on. When it gets a reliable 7.5v supply though I did find it pretty reliable. Issue is that if it's getting 5v due to bad contacts the red light comes on making you think it's working but it ain't..

Basically a lead acid battery degrades during any time that it's not fully charged. Keep it fully charged for all time and it will literally never fail. Unfortunately the cold start pulls one or two Ah of capacity out of the battery each time and it takes five to ten minutes of solid charging to replenish it.

Me too, if the charger wasn't designed for it you'd kill the battery in short order. Fortunately they are designed for it. http://optimate.co.uk/optimate%205.htm

45 quid seems very cheap.. Eurocarparts supplied a Bosch S4 60Ah for me just a few weeks back at £58 - saved my bacon and nearly £20 cheaper than anywhere else. Only one way to prevent car batteries dying on a car you don't use much and it's to keep it on a trickle charger when you're not using it. TBH all lead acid batteries are pretty much the same within the mass market, so buy the one you get the best price on, but I wouldn't fit less than a 60Ah on a VR6 myself.

They are a bit of a liability now.. They were not factory fit standard, but they were extremely common dealer-fit items. You can't get the bits, full stop. Most people are having them ripped out.

It serves a secondary function too as an annual registration system. Is the car in legit use by a registered keeper, is it SORNed or is it owned by a dealer. Mostly it's a cash cow but this is a useful function too.

Perhaps that's why Ireland can afford to charge Apple, Amazon, emc and all those other multinationals almost no corporation taxes then..

To a point. If the pedal end stop is radically out of position the pedal could be holding the throttle butterfly slightly open at all times which would screw things up right royally. But I doubt that's the case here.

The idea is you leave the pedal where it is and move the sensor.. ;)

At least they are still flat rate and not rated on CO2 emissions ... Personally, I think we have to take the rough with the smooth. I think it would be right if the stamp duty thresholds went way up because the tax was actually intended to catch the uber wealthy house exchanges only, yet now it has become a general form of taxation. Equally, the modern car will easily last 25 years, unlike those made 50 years ago, so I'm ok with the threshold moving out a bit .. So, if the government wants to make it 40 years, fine, but they should adjust other tax thresholds that are no longer relevant too..

Cue: "when I were a lad .." But it's true, when I were a lad cars 6 years old routinely needed welding it was a widespread and common practice. Now we're seeing Corrados reaching 25 years+ and they're only now starting to show up under the torch .. How far have cars come!

Yes the first number is the cold viscosity, but you won't cure piston slap with oil. The only way to cure that is to never start the engine from cold.. The exhaust is often quite rusty (it gets very very hot..), but this doesn't mean it's more likely to be cracked. The fact it's been on and off a couple of times and tightened up after-the-fact does though.

On further thought, yes I agree with Baconator. It'll sound really really bad if there's a bit of a leak around the exhaust manifold and that hole MIGHT close up as the engine warms.

Won't make any difference on a cold start (still 10W) but will be noticeably thicker when hot. I've not tried it, I just put up with the "natural" sound of a VR6..

Thing that bothers me here is that the noise started when the manifold was bolted up to the back of the head. Taking the head off to do the gasket you don't need to take the cams out at all so there's no reason tappets might have got messed up in that process. However if the new gasket blocks or partially blocks an oilway somewhere you might well have issues coming up that weren't there before. Who did the gasket and where did the replacement come from?

They can use mine if they respray it first ...

Yes but bigger number == thicker and more viscous not less. Don't think there's much in it between a 10w40 and a 10w50 though tbh.

As for oil densities.. it's a balance. With an engine with very tight tolerances between all mating surfaces you want an oil that's sufficiently thin it'll squeeze in there (particularly when cold!). That's why all modern engines tend to come with ultra-light 5w30 oils. Old engines with between components, particularly when cold, don't need a thin oil to get it in there. In fact the thicker the better, as it provides better protection as it forms a thicker surface layer and hopefully plugs those gaps and keeps them plugged. In an ideal world the oil's density profile will thin steadily as the temperature increases and will follow the expansion profile of the metal used in the block/pistons/bearings. In other words.. generally you don't want to go too thin on these engines, it'll just get noisier, though performance will improve a little.

Ok. My speakers in the office made it sound pretty muddy and graunchy tbh, and I wasn't really able to pick out any slap amongst the general sound of a VR6 not quite fitting together yet because it's cold... Need a high quality mic to carry the way it really sounds and yeah as Jim says phone mics are pretty awful. It's certainly true that it's at its worst in extreme cold.