You have to expect to gather a whole load of new problems when a car has been off the road for a while. The lcd displays and rev counter are playing up, with the rev counter hardly moving and the lcd screens showing weird characters. I have take everything appart and cant see anything obvious, so will have to do some google-ing to see if I can find any fixes.
I had problems with the fuel pump not working at all so took it out and it was a proper mess. I replaced it with a new one which primed as soon as I turned the key which was awesome and it meant I didn’t have to deal with chasing down electrical gremlins. I just need a fuel level sender for it now . Sadly though it still doesn’t start, turns over but doesn’t even try and fire. The timing marks are all lined up and I’ve got a spark so will have to do some more fiddling about to see what’s up.
As the Corrado has been off the road for a while, it needs new belts, oil and coolant so I thought I may as well replace the water pump and thermostat when I’m at it. It’s a bit of a pain to do as you have to take the alternator and supercharger out to get at it, so takes a while, most of the time trying to find where all the bolts are. Hopefully I fitted it ok as I don’t fancy taking it all apart again if I find a leak.
So I hopefully found out why the coolant hose kept popping. The engine mount bracket had snapped and the bolts had fallen out, causing the engine to be able to move about a lot because it was only supported by the rear mounts.
I managed to find one on a facebook group (VW stopped producing them years ago) and bought a new engine mount to go with it. I dont know where the original mount came from (on the left) but it’s not the correct one for the car.
My Corrado has been off the road for a few years, now I’m slowly getting the parts together to get it back on the road. It’s not easy finding some of the parts and when you do, there is a massive retro VW tax on them.
My Corrado has been feeling a bit slower and rougher than usual recently and running a bit hotter. I bought myself a cheap timing gun from ebay and went about fixing it.
The crows foot socket is a good tool to have if you’ve grown attached to the skin on your knuckles because it’s kind of hard to get at the bolt holding the distributor tight and pulling the throttle open with a shoelace to keep revs at about 2000-2500 is my finest piece of caveman engineering.
Now that the timing is set properly it feels so much smoother and responsive.
The simplest ideas are always the best …and cheapest. I needed to lock the flywheel in place to undo the bolts and this was the best option I could come up with. It worked really well.
I had an old Ballistic X-Ocet mountain bike frame lying around that I used to ride when I was younger (a lot younger …back in about 1996). I decided to build it up with all old parts I could find or get cheap, even free with the the help of my brother who is in to mountain biking and donated some parts.
I’ve been out on it a few times along the handily placed new cycle track behind the house trying to get fitter but at the moment am still at the stage of feeling sick after about 30 minutes of riding.
When I was younger I used to be able to ride up and down mountains all day long. It’s going to take a while till I can do that again.
I’ve just picked up these leather seats to go in my Corrado. They were on ebay for a good price and only a few miles away so it would have been rude not to.
A short but sweet documentary about a group of guys from the UK heading out to Worthersee for the annual dub festival.
