dr_mat

20vt? but.. four cylinder turbo is boring! Lol I quite like not being part of the herd and having a proper old school six cylinder naturally aspirated engine. It's pretty quick, even by modern standards. It's the equal of a GTi (but not an R). It's literally only in the last five years that some hot hatches have reached 300bhp and left it behind, and all of them do it with forced induction. What I'd really like to see is an all-electric drivetrain conversion... :) A nice round 500lbft in insane mode.

This is always going to be a divisive question... There is no "best" because everyone has different requirements from their cars, there is only "different". So, what's your requirement? Fastest (standard) is obvs the VR6. Cheapest to run? 2.0 8v. Best handling? All of them have the same amount of grip and controllability, so there's literally no measurable difference. People may disagree on this one.. Which one to buy? I'd stick to a late car myself, just for pragmatic reasons. And if you can afford it why not have the VR6 for performance alone...?

I wouldn't say "cheap" is the word, but "more cheaply" is a statement of fact. :). Ford have a long way to go to catch up with VW pricing. I got a PCV not that long ago myself.

On the other hand, you've bought three cars off the forum so quite successful then!

FWIW I believe all these components are shared with the Ford Galaxy VR6 and can be had more cheaply from Ford dealers.

The standard bushes do make a signficant difference on the NVH front. If nothing else now you've experienced one, why not try the other?

So that's only one more then. It's for a reason. If you want to join the forum you have to prove your love and committment to the Corrado by KEEPING ONE for at least the first six posts. After that you can go buy another boring-o Audi like every other fecker if you so desire. ;)

http://www.dual-metallising.co.uk/ These guys can refurbish your reflectors and they make a huge difference. Don't worry about the glass as long as you don't have huge cracks in them. I've just gone through the exact same process and am very happy with the results. Mine hadn't actually *failed* the MOT but the tester was clear that they were being generous in passing it and it's certainly true that the beam pattern was almost invisible. It's razor sharp now. The only difficulty is the useless adjuster thing which will break when you attempt to disassemble the unit. Reassembling that is a pain in the butt.

Sorry to hear about your husband. What made you decide to renovate the car? What's been done?

In fact this doesn't seem to be the case, the water warms up quite quickly compared to the oil. That's one of the reasons the car has an oil temp gauge in the first place so you can tell when the oil is up to operating temp. The coolant water is running around the engine block itself and it probably circulates more quickly than the oil itself does, particularly before the thermostat opens the fluid capacity is seriously reduced.

..and when you start talking about "spare engine", perhaps it's time to take a step back to the beginning of the process and work out how you get here! Burning a bit of oil ..? We enjoy tinkering with these cars so much there's a temptation to fix problems that aren't really problems yet. :)

Well this is it .. you find yourself a grand and a half in and you're told it needs another one or two on top .. are you able to bail out without it costing an arm and a leg? To be honest, BAD bore wear is probably quite rare but at this sort of mileage a bit of leakage wouldn't be a big surprise, and probably not worth fixing.

I have my old one sitting in the shed. It's fine, but typical 140k miles usage marks. I replaced it because a new one cam available rather than because I needed to.

You would likely not see blue smoke unless you're really keen eyed tbh. If it was belching enough to be that obvious you would be using a hell of a lot more than a litre per 1k miles. Yes, bottom end rebuild usually means you prefer to buy a recon engine and hand yours back in part ex.. Or, like most people, you just live with it and buy more oil .. lol

Do note that the car may still burn oil after all that work due to bore wear. Sorry there is no magic bullet to a new Corrado.. there are always other bits to do!

I suppose it depends what was wrong with it ultimately. As you say they can't get new parts.

They are usually very reliable, I've no doubt the supply of working valves will not disappear for a while.

I was going to say exactly this. Doesn't look too bad to me.. FWIW they also burn a lot sporadically at this sort of age so judge it on how badly you want it done. That said the timing chains is a risk anytime beyond 80-100k miles so if it's never been done I would definitely consider it. Also, don't know what Stealth are charging for this job these days but I'd bet they charge a lot less than that, just because they can do them more quickly with the probably ridiculous number of them they've done over the years.

Don't know whether it was a coincidence but my abs unit went shortly after the car spent a day in the oven after some paintwork got done. But yes. You have a faulty abs pump unit...!

For the record, today I succeeded in using a pair of adjusters off a MK1 Scirocco (£2 each from VW heritage), an M5 lock nut and a 40mm penny washer to knock up a mostly suitable replacement for the broken beam adjuster piece. So this, coupled with a pair of Bosch +90% bulbs and a pair of reflectors that I had refurbed by Dual Metallising (a great job by the way, so impressively *shiny* they look when they come back), and I believe I now have headlights almost as good as new...! The pictures shows the original adjuster screw forced into the plastic adjuster thing from a Scirocco (which is too small but if you're careful you can expand the hole to accept the corrado adjuster screw without splitting it), but coincidentally does catch into the recesses in the headlamp housing. The locking nut on the outside therefore grips the headlamp housing between the penny washer and the Scirocco adjuster grommit. It's really a pain to use, as I found that you need to use the chuck of a battery drill to grip the screw to actually make adjustments. But once it's adjusted it's fine...

The only way to fix traffic problems is for fewer people to drive .. that's it. And that means people have to either work less far from home (average commuting distance has increased massively in the last generation) walk to school instead of drive (more kids have two working parents dropping on the way to school than ever before) and mostly provide a viable alternative with good subsidised public transport. Truth is that unless there's radical upheaval in working practices or society very soon then people have to let go the conceited belief that they have a *right* to drag over a ton of metal everywhere with them anytime they want to go anywhere. Electric bikes all round!

Check the compatibility. Even the early VWs with the SCART-type connector didn't actually speak full OBD2 protocols so the reader needs to be aware of this. I've never attempted to get one for a 2.0 16v. You can still get the 4-pin adapters with USB connected dongles that will work with the old 3.11 version of VAG-COM (which is still free from what I recall).

I believe they're usually on the thermostat housing, but that might just be the VR6 I'm thinking of!

Also some prehistory: https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=27965 Generic reader should work but be aware it's an early four-pin connector not the later SCART socket type. You may as well just get your multimeter out and check the engine temperature sensors have the right resistance.

IMHO it's much more likely this is a result of a sensor fault on the engine. Do you have accecss to a diagnostic code reader? VAG-COM or one of the older two-wire diags tools should be able to query the 2.0 16v engine iirc.