dr_mat

We had the same problem last time around too ... I think the 263s might be reaching saturation point. Good upgrade though, I'm happy with mine.

My missus recently bought a Canon EOS 700d, and I've *very* impressed with it. That's a bit over your price range, but keep an eye out on ebay for this guy: http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_odkw=%28eos%2Cef%2Cef-s%2Cspeedlite%29&_osacat=625&_catref=1&_ssn=canon_uk1&_nkw=%28eos%2Cef%2Cef-s%2Cef-m%2Cspeedlite%29&_sacat=625&_ipg=25 .. these are genuine canon factory refurbished models with full warranty and I've seen them selling a number of EOS 650D cameras with kit lens for £300 - £350 recently.

Do it. Across the board 20 lbft, equating to about 20 bhp extra. Otherwise the engine is more or less unchanged.

Many thanks to Iain, I've now got a replacement sensor ready to go in. :) I also got a USB vagcom cable so I can check ECU error codes. Last night the crank sensor wasn't showing any faults, but you need to catch it before the ignition is turned off otherwise the error code is overwritten. I'll do that, then arrange to swap the sensor. Thanks all!

GPC used to sell them - but I've not heard from them for a while.. don't know if they're still going? I bought an all-black one years back, and I'm now glad that I'm keeping the original one clean and *not stolen* in the house somewhere! :)

There's two sellers doing this: one in the UK for £29. but there's another guy selling them from Greece for ~£15 + £5 p+p. He's selling the sealing ring separately, don't know if the UK seller includes that.

It's likely, yes, but there's only one way to diagnose this - and that's via the engine computer and VAG-COM or equivalent.

Totally agree with Jim. I've switched from the Toyos to the Rainsports and lo and behold wet weather is less scary. The Toyos are great if you live in Spain and the rain never falls and the roads are smooth, and they do make the handling that touch sharper because they're so hard, but they're not forgiving. Each to their own, I say, but you may regret it! :) I paid £68 each for Uniroyals last time I had any fitted. The best price I could find, fitted, for the T1Rs was only about 5 quid cheaper.

That's very generous of you Mr Owl, so I'd be happy to give it a whirl. I'll cover your postage at least! PM on it's way. :)

Anyone have any idea why there's THREE crank sensors available from ECP .. ?

What's the latest advice on sourcing a replacement? Just go to VW and stump up huge amounts of cash .. ?

Yeah, mine's a VR. Interesting. The engine doesn't run badly, it doesn't seem to be misfiring. I do have a VAGCOM cable but I suspect I can no longer find a laptop with the requisite serial port so time to get fiddling with stuff.. It did it yesterday on a cold start when the car hadn't been used for some time so it may be related I guess.. Thanks for the suggestion - makes sense, so I'll see if I can check it out!

Anyone else seen this? I suspect it's some sort of voltage regulation thing, but a couple of the needles on the dash are jumpy from time to time - the rev counter being the most obvious. It'll wander along looking quite normal then it gets jittery .. then it jumps way up .. then comes back to normal. Doesn't seem to match engine or electrical loading, so I suspect something's loose .. any thoughts? I tried the search but nothing came up ..

Good job it didn't go to four sets though, he looked knackered. Good show though, interesting that comment he made about being so far in the zone that he had no clue what the last game played like .. he was just playing it..

Yeah, suspect your single upper chain is not original. I've never heard of an unmolested Corrado VR6 getting anything other than the old twin-chain upper setup. And Roger yes I agree, there doesn't seem to be much logic there. Perhaps there was a feeling that two chains was likely to be more reliable? I think the old 16v heads used a pair of chains to connect the two camshafts? Maybe they still didn't have the confidence to move to a single chain until later on.

Well .. the only time mine has run rough when cold it was the coil pack.. Though I'm sure if the engine hasn't got a good feed on the temperature it'll run rough all the time.

I think there's two separate things here, almost unrelated: one is the single or double chain top end, the other is the type of tensioner. As far as I'm aware all early VR6's had the teflon-and-rivets tensioner pad which was later shown to be unreliable, so later engines (after the Corrado was pensioned off) got the newer all-plastic solid tensioner pad. Independently of this I remember someone saying that the Corrado got a double upper chain to deal with the extra power it was supposed to produce when compared with the AAA 2.8. Don't know how true this is. I also heard a rumour that the Corrado may have got a 2.9 because they had a load of rebored 2.8s sitting around and they didn't really know what to do with them.. I'm sure *that* is just a rumour though. No doubt there's others who have more details ..

That's more like it. The coolant can have an effect, and in fact running it in winter config with too much anti freeze in the summer will make it less effective, but if you're constantly moving at above 30mph and the air temp is less than about 30 degrees you really shouldn't ever see more than 90 degrees on the water temps. Any time you stop it'll climb rapidly till the fans kick in. Oil temp is a different matter and that's going to go up and down depending on how hard you drive it.

I did plug it into the ciggie socket, yeah, and that would work fine if there was enough juice, but actually the measurements I was getting off the solar panel itself weren't sufficient to do anything, let alone what finally got to the battery.

I've never seen a DC one before (though it looks like the iron vane design is pretty old). I've used plenty of AC clamp meters though. I see there's now even a clamp meter that claims to read current in multi-core mains cable, i.e. where it's not possible to separately clamp the live and neutral.

Not much left for Corrados is there? Ridiculous.

I take it back, they have developed DC clamp meters indeed. :) They work differently, i.e. it just measures absolute magnetic field - so you have to set a zero baseline "near" the cable, then clamp over the cable and measure the difference. Never seen that before, but no reason it can't work. It's not as accurate as an inline meter, but a lot less hassle. Like it. :) I wouldn't bother with a solar charger though, the amount of charge they generate overall is absolutely miniscule (unless you buy a huge one). I had one for a while and it did nothing to cover even the small trickle drain off the alarm etc. It also only actually covered the losses from about 10am to 4pm on a *really* sunny day, then one cloud comes over and it's not able to do anything at all. I considered it a waste of money .. :-\

I'm not aware of any possible way a clamp meter can measure DC, that would be a new area to physics. :) (Unless it's an iron vane meter, which is useless on small currents and unreliable.. says wikipedia!)

Clamp meters only work with alternating current, won't read anything at all on a car with 12v DC. Note that the ad says: "AC/DC voltage. AC current 0.1A to 1000A" -- i.e. it's AC only for current measurement. If you want to measure the current draw on a DC circuit you have to place something in the circuit, i.e. you have to disconnect the battery then connect your meter in between the battery and the cables. I've done this before (but be careful .. you can get a hell of a shock off it), and determined that my completely normal Corrado VR6 will flatten a standard battery in about three weeks.

I'm quite happy having a cable hanging out the window myself .. ! Will save me sixty quid every two years for a new battery! :) Yes, the standard battery should have no trouble with a bit of use of the sound system and the run-on fans and all that stuff, whether it's a 52Ah, 64Ah, or 75Ah. It's the guys who sit at shows with the sound system on all day that need the separate battery.. If you do fancy a trickle charger I'd recommend these: http://www.optimate.co.uk/ There are other similar products, and they're probably all as good as each other. Basically there's a set of spade terminals you can leave permanently attached to the battery and just run a small socket out the car somewhere. Hook it up when you're at home, unhook it when you leave. The charger will report the drain rate on the battery so you can see if you've left something on or your battery isn't holding charge. The only issue I had with it was the plug terminals got corroded after a couple of years, but they have a new design that doesn't suffer that now.