R32 Corrado build - New Zealand

[VeeDub_NZ 0]

So I bought this car when in 2005 when I was 16 - it was my first car.

 

It's one of 13 New Zealand new VW Corrados (all were 16v), and now one of 10 left on the road here. It is finished in a factory option Helios Blue Metallic (LA5Y), which has a sweet violet pearl in the sunlight.

 

At first I ***** it and thought it was the most ugly thing I'd ever seen, but then it grew on me.

 

This is how it looked when I bought it, with 183,000kms on the clock. It stayed like this for a few years while I worked in a pizza shop saving zero dollars. (Pic is really small because I have no old ones!)

 

 

A few years later I bought another of the NZ New Corrados. The intention was to take the bilsteins & -40mm jamex springs out, along with every other good bit I could find.

 

 

Next up was a FK badgless grill that I bought on the-corrado.net.

 

 

Then long nothing. It cost me enough just keeping the car tidy and maintained with genuine parts. Until came the idea of BBS RS. I bought my first set in the hope that they'd fit, not knowing a thing about stud patterns, widths, offsets, adaptors, redrilling etc. They didn't fit and couldn't fit. This sent me on a downward spiral of whoreism. I became probably the country's worst BBS RS whore, buying every set that I could sniff out of the woodwork. I even bought cars just for the RS that were on them!

 

I went through so many sets of wheels, buying & selling to make a buck to fund more bits for the Corrado. But as I learnt about what was what, I didn't want to settle for anything less than a 16" 4x100 RS - the rs003. It took me three years, but I finally found a set in NZ and snapped them up before anyone else had seen them.

 

 

Imported a bunch of bits for some friends and I from Germany

 

 

And did a bit of a refurb on them. They went to 16x7.5 and 16x8.0. At the time I thought that'd get them sitting flush, but I was wrong. I was also broke, so it had to do for the time being.

 

 

Some more 17" RS that I found for $300, probably around USD$150 at the time!

 

 

This is how the car was sitting on the same -40mm jamex springs, but we had then chopped a couple of coils out to get it sitting lower. It drove like ****.

 

 

---------- Post added at 11:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:49 PM ----------

 

Then I found a '76 pre facelift mk1 scirocco - probably even more rare than the Corrado in New Zealand. It needed a full resto, but I had to have it to match the rado. Like brothers, they sat side by side for a while.

 

 

I then moved to a flat with a MASSIVE garage because I didn't have enough room for both cars & work space.

 

 

Then I found this BMW with another set of rs003s on it! He didn't know what they were, and I bought the whole car for $1200. I took the wheels off the car and sold the car for a profit :eyebrows

 

 

These wheels were to become the newly refurbed, wider, better 003s that I'd put on the Corrado. I used the rear lips off the other set and put them on the front. I got some new 2.5" lips for the rears, new black/chrome 3D badges, new chrome bolts, new 1/4 height caps. The final spec was 16x8 et12, 16x8.5 et6. I ran them on 195/45 Kumho tyres, which is the smallest 16" size you can get in NZ.

 

The front wasn't stretched enough, so I imported a pair of 195/40/16 Toyo T1Rs from Holland, they cost around $400 each. I also had bought some cheap (sh*t) V-Maxx coilovers by this time and wound them right down, but they weren't low enough.

 

Edited October 2, 2012 by VeeDub_NZ

[VeeDub_NZ 0]

Just a few of the sets I had at the time

 

Here's a little trophy I built for a show that we started called Stance Off (http://www.facebook.com/stanceoff)

 

I then polished up the original 1" lips for the other set I had and sold them to a nice guy in Luxembourg with an E30 cabriolet.

 

 

Then I found a little mk1 golf which had not been registered or warranted for 10 years and had sat in a field on Waiheke Island. It was totally illegal to drive it on the road, but I thought it'd be a bit of fun. Over the weekend, I transformed it into the "RatPig mk1". The pig part being the police theme :stickoutt I took the springs out of this thing, but it still wasn't low enough. So we chopped the bottom off the shock housing, dropped the inserts about 30mm lower (through the bottom of the shock), and welded the insert in place. The shocks were ****ed anyway so it didn't matter.

 

 

Anyway, by that time, there was one little thing on each panel of the car that ****ed me off, so I went balls deep and had a full respray in the original colour. At the same time, I had all the guards hammered dead flat, removed the rub strips from the doors & smoothed the front bumper.

 

 

Still unhappy with the ride height, I bought some new FK Konigsports from Venom in the UK. They are height & damper adjustable, and they go lower than the V-****s do. Nice.

 

Oh, forgot to say I had a 24v VR6 motor and VR6 O2A box lying around that was meant to be for the mk1 rocco. But I was bored of the 1.8 16v so decided to whack it into my Corrado instead.

 

This meant I needed a facelift bonnet, in a country located at the asshole of the world, with 10 nz new corrados (all with the early bonnets) and about two imported cars with the facelift bonnet. ****. Even Germany wouldn't supply me with one after they had quoted me $2,000 to get one. I was running out of options, but luckily I keep tabs on all the other Corrados in the country, and had remembered meeting a nice guy with a facelift 2.0L 16v. I had stayed in touch with him for years, always wanting to buy the car, but he didn't want to sell it. I thought i'd flick him a text and ask if he wanted to sell me the bonnet. 'Nope, but i'll sell you the car'. That night, I bought the whole car... just for the bonnet.

 

I swapped bonnets, and a couple of other little bits, and sold the car three days later to a young dude in Hamilton.

 

This was the car. For those who don't know - the facelift bonnet has a lump in the middle as you can see, which allows an extra 2" of clearance required for a VR6 swap.

 

 

Motor in, bonnet on, things were underway.

 

 

I had sent the ECU away to a guy in the Isle of Man to get remapped & deimmobilised. When we got it back and plugged it in, it wasn't deimmobilised :mad Turns out he had never done one to the point where the car was still running corrado clocks & key. So 13 days out from the SO2013 (Stance Off show) that I was organising, I thought I was f*cked.

 

Stealth Racing to the rescue! Within 6.5 days, I had expressed the ECU over to them, had the immo removed, tested, and expressed back to me. I try to forget that I spent $400 just posting an ECU around the world!

 

But I got it back in time for the show and the car was all go. The radiator came in from ECS in the states, and left us no room to mount the fans on the engine side. So we whacked two big 12" and 10" fans on the front side of the rad. These things blow way harder than any girl I've ever come across!

 

The motor is 204hp standard out of a V6 4motion mk4 Jetta with 77,000kms on the clock. It's now running a remapped ECU, BMC air filter, new Sachs clutch kit, Powerflex nolothane bushes all round, mk3 subframes, 2.5" catback exhaust & solid front engine mount. I haven't had a chance to dyno it yet but I imagine it'll be somewhere around 220 - 230hp.

 

 

I got the exhaust done, 2.5" cat back with one resonator & a small back box. It sounds awesome, doesn't drone at motorway speeds and is nice and quiet, but when you put your foot down you hear it alright...

 

 

Then I found an oldschool NOS wooden BBS steering wheel, rare as a rare thing. I got it for $50 too! Put that on (excuse the filthy interior and missing dash bits in this pic)

 

 

I also gathered together a full set of original half height centre caps for the wheels - quite hard to find. I had them polished and whacked some new badges in to freshen the wheels up. They look 10x better than the aftermarket ones!

 

[VeeDub_NZ 0]

I had the car ready for the show and that's how it sits now.

 

 

I'm pretty stoked on the car now, all it needs is a full beige leather interior and maybe a turbo in the future. The interior will have to wait because i'll have to go to the UK and buy a car and send it home for that, haven't quite got $10k for that exercise yet!

 

Anyway, if you're interested, here is a write up of our show on the hellaflush website:

http://hellaflush.com/society/stance-off-12/

 

Be sure to check us out and like us on facebook too:

http://www.facebook.com/stanceoff

 

I'm also still ****ing all my money into the wind on wheels, here's another set of RMs that I'm nearly done. I'm about to try and buy another mk1 scirocco also as a daily driver so will put these on that!

 

 

---------- Post added 2nd March 2012 at 12:02 AM ---------- Previous post was 1st March 2012 at 11:53 PM ----------

 

Here's a little video of the exhaust note and another one of me pulling up the hill at the show

 

 

And one of the show:

[easypops 8]

Superb work there mate..........the photo of it sitting back to back with a white mk2 golf is Perfect 8)

[VeeDub_NZ 0]

Oh, and when the road workers were resealing my street, I went out and spoke to them one night.

 

Explained that my car was quite low to one of the bros and that it scrapes like a c*nt, and asked if he could hook me up. Next minute I had a custom driveway and they wouldn't even accept a box of beers!

 

[lilfuzzer 1]

Wow! Great dedication on buying and selling. Also good to see the keen-Ness on the motors. Looking good. Think I need to go to ms but fear you have every rado sown up :)

[stevef182 0]

Awesome rado, I especially like the last photo. I wish all driveways were like that!!

[Jim 2]

Absolutely fantastic read and great to see someone so committed to retro VW's! :) And the last picture / story is excellent - that sort of thing would NEVER happen here.

 

Good choice with Stealth Racing - I only live a short distance away from them and have been going to them with Corrado's for over 10 years. They are one of only two places I'd ever take my Corrado for work!

[KIPVW 0]

indeed, a very interesting read, thanks a lot! i think it's safe to say you have a problem though lol! keep it coming. :)

 

as jim says, there's no way they'd stick a little extra tarmac down like that here, the workers would give you all kinds of public liability get out stories.

[VeeDub_NZ 0]

Thanks for the comments. So at this point, I've bought 5 cars to get this car to where it is (actually 6 kind of...) The first was the black corrado, second was the E30 for the wheels, third was the facelift import car for the bonnet, fourth was a mk3 GLI that I bought for parts, I used the subframes out of that, fifth was just a Mk4 Bora V6 4 motion 24v that I just bought to make money off, but ended up driving as a daily for a few months, which was what sold me on this motor swap.

 

Here's the other two unsung heroes of that story:

[Abdul 0]

Like I said on edition this is spot on!

 

Love everything about it!

 

Can't believe you paid $400 for one 195/40 though lol!

[VeeDub_NZ 0]

Thanks for the comments. So at this point, I've bought 5 cars to get this car to where it is (actually 6 kind of...) The first was the black corrado, second was the E30 for the wheels, third was the facelift import car for the bonnet, fourth was a mk3 GLI that I bought for parts, I used the subframes out of that, fifth was just a Mk4 Bora V6 4 motion 24v that I just bought to make money off, but ended up driving as a daily for a few months, which was what sold me on this motor swap.

 

Here's the other two unsung heroes of that story:

 

And the 'problem' I have is getting worse..

Edited September 2, 2012 by VeeDub_NZ

[BILLCOR 1]

One word - Superb!

Great story, crazy dedication, damned nice Rado :thumbleft:

 

I'm sure a lot of us would be happy with this little "Problem" :grin:

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Ah, Helious Blue. My favourite. Sits just as well on a Corrado as it did the MK2 Golf.

 

I'm glad Vince was able to sort you out. He's a top bloke :D

[24V Renshaw 0]

Awesome story, but did I miss somewhere why you are not running the 17" RS's?

 

Jay

[bristolbaron 10]

great write up, although im sure this was posted around a month ago? maybe i just read it on edition?

 

glad you got the bonnet sorted, buying a car just for parts is defo extreme, but well worth it.

i bought a g60 just because i needed a rallye supercharger outlet.. sometimes these things have to be done!

 

looking forward to seeing what you do with the interior..

 

Baz

[lewvw 10]

Oh, and when the road workers were resealing my street, I went out and spoke to them one night.

 

Explained that my car was quite low to one of the bros and that it scrapes like a c*nt, and asked if he could hook me up. Next minute I had a custom driveway and they wouldn't even accept a box of beers!

 

 

That's awesome!

[Storm Guy 0]

Absolutely fascinating, nice collection and top pics - great to see something from the other side of the world!

[VeeDub_NZ 0]

Thanks for the comments.

 

Fishwick - thanks heaps for your advice & help with the Stealth thing.

 

Renshaw - I think 16s are the perfect size, and always wanted a direct bolt on solution without redrilling/adapting. So rs003s were my only option. I'm 100% happy with the fitment it now has. Each to their own I guess, 17s look great too but I prefer 16s on my car.

 

I guess in the next year or so I'll have to buy a car from the UK and send it home to solve my interior needs. I'm after a car with beige heated leather, and it'd just going to be easier to import a whole car than it would be to buy the seats & door cards, then hunt for every other little piece. It must be a 2.9 VR6 or G60 also for resale value (we have 2x G60s and 2x 2.9 VRs down here) so would make more money back/cost less for the interior! Anyway that's getting a bit ahead of myself!

 

Still need a VR6 badge front & back if anyone has any lying around?

[20vtvw 0]

brilliant story !!rado looks amazing , keep up the good work ,,

[Abdul 0]

Would it not be cheaper to have your interior retrimmed? You can buy after market heated seat kits too.

 

I agree on the 16's btw. 17's are nice but make the car look even smaller then it is IMO.

[VeeDub_NZ 0]

To be honest it probably wouldn't be cheaper, depending on the quality of leather. Also, if I retrimmed, they couldn't get the door cards the same as factory, and even if they could, i'd still have a grey interior with beige leather door cards & seats. I want every last little trim piece in beige, so it looks like it rolled out of the factory like that.

[VeeDub_NZ 0]

A few weeks after putting the 24v motor in, it seized. Not sure why until we open it up, but seems to have lost oil pressure somehow. Super ****ed off and not wanting to waste any time on that motor, I found an BHE 3.2L V6 in Japan (ex Audi TT). I guess I made the best of a bad situation because I was starting to get bored with the 2.8L 24v power and wanted a bit more.

 

The motor arrived from Japan last week and is going into the car this weekend. I have some all red lights being made up in the UK also so they're next. I also got some NOS roof gutter rubbers which I was stoked to find locally.

 

I've found a complete beige leather interior too (carpets & all). I'm waiting on a forum admin to complete my registration before I can get in touch with the guy arrrrggghhh.

Edited August 29, 2012 by VeeDub_NZ

[VW_OwneR_85 2]

damn that sux man, i like the fact your staying in the game by buying the 3.2 though :)

just a shame, i can only imagine what it must be like haven to go through all that, i recently done the 24v swap and if it siezed i dont think idd be replaceing it this year! its one expensive hobby! but i guess you can just sell a set of them wheels you keep whoreing haha

[VeeDub_NZ 0]

R32 motor is in! A solid weekend of work saw the swap complete. I still have a few small things to do: Send ECU to Stealth to get a map for the 3.2L motor, need a new MAF housing, G12, P/steer fluid, put one drive shaft in etc. Just little things but I've got a couple of weeks before I have the ECU back now.

 

Pics here:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Haus102/250992111652838