KEYNE ON DUBS

Copy and pasted from old forum - updates added:

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Hey guys/girls,

I'll start things off with the old motor, some may have seen it about:



Came from the Polo Camp previous so was a quite an upgrade to a VR as you can imagine. The upgrade came in the form of a 1995 Aqua Blue VR...







Three previous murders, 109k when i bought it. Full VAG service history up til last, spent most of its life near Milton Keynes only for the last owner to take it to Wales. (Guess where i live? yep Milton Keynes way.) Took around 1100 miles of traveling to view 7 corrado's across four days including 2 x 400 mile roundtrips to view and eventually pick up the above example but was definitely worth it.

No major noticable changes yet but a lot of maintenance carried out behind the scenes and a couple a trick interior bits.

Did oil, filter and sump gasket change when i first bought it, cured minor oil leak immediately.....yey!



Then came new throttle body elbow and oil breather pipe, camshaft sensor, clutch slave cylinder, clutch cylinder pipe and main dash surround which have tidy'd up the previous owner issues (VAG Parts naturally). Grooved black diamond discs and ebc greenstuff pads upfront to see off questionable brakes (graunching noises are not good with all that grunt). Full set of 205/50/15 Toyo T1-R's have been ordered today to replace grey old worn out rubber.

As far as the interior goes, the 280mm wheel has been complimented by a new Audi gearknob, brushed alloy shaft and gaitor grafted into the existing surround. Along with some bling door pins and heater control rings to finish things off.

That about brings me up to present. Been enjoying the driving experience since Dec '07 despite the under estimated running costs.

Hope you enjoyed the read and keep an eye out for updates as i have big plans.



Oh and it can be done, even at the young age of 24 - you just have to be gentle.

Rubber, 4 new Toyo T1-R's:



OEM Interior pimping, well chuffed with this mod:

Right, time for a serious update guys and girls.

Been a busy month or so. Managed to get the mods rolling along nicely with some more maintenance to boot (it).
Had a full week off work at the end of June and we (myself and helpful bro) set about 'the transformation' as i like to call it.

I'll let the pics do the talking.

Part 1 - Waterpump, Aux Belt and Coolant change.

Nice little parts order from VAG set us up well.





So glad we changed the 'snakey' belt, as you can see it had some nice chunks missing, revealing the belt inners. Not to sure how long that would have lasted before letting me down. Add in the fact a friends MK3 VR broke down the other day due to a snapped belt i felt safe in the knowledge this was being replaced.



Waterpump finally out, relatively straight forward with only one minor heart in the mouth moment when one of the pump bolts started rounding off. New bolts had been bought tho which would have been a serious life saver had the bolt sheared. I couldn't quite believe how much abuse the actually pump took before finally freeing from the block. Being an exchange item, i was hoping they wouldn't check it to find chucks of the casing missing. Oops?!?!? :nuts:



New Vs Old, thankfully all blades in tact on the old one but one crunchy, werring bearing so another part caught before failure.



Drain, coolant, drain!



All back together with bolts torqued up. Kinda wish i'd got me one of the Gruvenparts pulley's now. Oh well.



Belt back on and tensioned, coolant replaced and ready for a quick bonnet less test run. :norty:



Part 2 - Clutch, main oil seal and Coilies - yeah!

Some would argue that we were a little mad for attempting this without a lot of prep but i had faith in my bro's ability being a almost fully qualified SAAB tech so we thought hey, whats the worst that can happen. Famous last words any one?

So this happened:



and a few hours later we'd acheived this nice little parts whoring stash.



My want to take photos demished once we'd got into the tricky stuff and so there's probably a few missing in here but i certainly found the desire to take one when this little bad boy was free.



Old clutch was well and truly fooked, i'm surprised it had been performing as well as it had with only minor slippage at the top end considering i was almost down to the rivets.



Nice shiny new LUK clutch. £75 nicker at the mo of ECP online, which i thought was a bit of a bargain considering i'd paid £110 for a sach Polo GT clutch a year or so from them.



Main oil seal was next on the hit list as it was clear as more things came off, that is was the bigger source of my oil leak.
Chains were sounding pretty damn quiet since i've had it. On closer inspection they seemed fine so they were left for now.



This has to be the shot whole 'transformation' for me, really felt like we were 'parting out' the car apposed to fixing it before the box came out. So many bolts and so much to contend with. I really felt at times we'd bitten off more than we could chew.



Anybody for parts?



Once the seal had been fitted, the box was back on (never known a box to just pop on like it did, so happy!) and subframes and drive shafts were re attached if was time for the fun stuff. Anti 4x4 stance here we come. :clap: :clap: :clap:



Oooo yeah, no bonnet, rake stance ftw, if only we could legally drive it like that... :norty: ... :hitler: ...



Dreaded arch gap considerably decreased.



And the final product, well partial final product. More exterior mods pics to come.



All in all, it was the worth 3+ day effort, new clutch is awesome in everyway, coilovers have improved the ride no end. I'd even go as far as saying its rides better than standard imo. Almost like buying a new car. Chuffed to bits. I'll wack up some more pics of the exterior mods i did on the thursday but for now i'll let the 'click for pics lot' enjoy.

Weekends work: Bass in the place raddo...

Courtesy of another forum user 'mariojoshi' and an unfortunate basstube blowout, I took up the challenge of rebuilding it as it sat so nicely in his VR boot, coupled with the fact he'd got a new box. All for reusing stuff apposed to throwing it away, so after picking up the following from various sources (ebay, homebase etc) i got cracking this weekend.

1. Basstube - check
2. Subwoofer - check
3. Amp - check
4. Amp wiring kit - check
5. 18mm mdf sheet - check
6. Terminal block - check
7. Box carpet - check
8. Spray glue / wood glue - check
9. garage with random useful stuff for building box - check

Started by making some new end pieces for the tube as original's had been ditched ( :cuckoo: - josh?) only messing my fault for not taking them first time.



Tried for size, bit of fettling and we were there.



Same again for the back, with a hole for a terminal block plus some carpet. Have hidden the screws by part carpetting, part fitting then carry on carpetting. Think it worked quite well personally, quite fiddly tho and time consuming. Have done a fair bit of audio work before so knew what i was up against.



Shows you the original tube.



Back end all tidyied up and carpetted, really pleased with the finish and carpet i had matches quite well.



And here's the finished product, mega bargain blaupunkt sub picked up off ebay along with an amp wiring kit.
All bolted up and sealed and front end carpetted like rear. Really liked the finished look, looks almost like i meant to go together like this.



May invest in a sub cover of some kind from maplins just for safety but for now should be fine.



Ran out of time yesterday and gave up on wiring it up. Amp i had planned for it was not playing ball so called it a day. Busy one with emergency MOT in the morning. Gunna wire it up and try it out when i get back from Hungary later in the week but overally very chuffed considering this has been a budget addition to the VR.

Couple of final shots for all you click for pics, walked out wickes last week and thought 'damn thats looking good':



and had to say :wave: to the santana GX5 i part own last week, been a fun year using it as a show cruiser by running the VR is more expensive that a Polo GT so had to go:



That is all. Enjoy.
Thanks to: Josh (Mariojoshi) for basstube amongst other things, Matthew (Brother) for organising last minute MOT @ work for me.

Update time:

So, finally got around to actually making the basstube i re-made actually work. Had messed around with an amplifier intended for the job but wasn't happy due to it not having the necessary low pass filter. Thought about buying a crossover and wiring it in but ended up heading over to maplins and picking up one of their cheap and cheerful nikkai amps. Really only a temporary solution as wasn't to fussed about power and quality etc. Mounted this to a thin piece of mdf I had lying around, covered this is black carpet and mounted it to the front of the tube. Amp mounted.

Got a mate over at the weekend to help with the finer points of the install and got it sounding as good as it looked. Well chuffed on the install front, makes for a tidy boot install with plenty of room for other tings still. Pics for clicks.





Next update: nothing like the comfort of leather.

You know how sometimes the best things happen unplanned? This was certainly the case this month with the VR. I was all ready set to go by some wheels one Friday a few weeks back. I had the money, had um'd and ah'd about this specific set, had bartered the guy down some and finally said ok, yep i'll take them. Cue one unplanned msn conversation with a fellow cf user and this happened: (important point to note is the black interior in the back ground.)





Unhappy I have now have leather in the VR? Certainly not. Surprised I have leather in the VR already? Yes, very much so.

So this kinda put pay to my wheel plans for the month, but in hindsight was the better move. I had planned sometime in the future I was going to upgrade to leather, I had originally wanted to buy one with it already fitted but having seen a few cars with the spec I wanted I decided I'd settle for a mint cloth interior over a set of tired leathers, and the car I bought was a perfect case in point. Exterior colour I wanted with a set of mint black cloth seats. Having the opportunity to get my hands on some grey leathers in this reasonable nick (have spent over 8 hours cleaning these bad boys to get them to the standard you see here.) in such fortunate circumstances, I would have been a fool to continue on and buy the wheels. So the deal was done, and the cleaning commenced. (pic heavy, I think I went a little crazy in my excitement).

Got the autoglym leather cleaner, care cream, cloth & buckets at the ready.



Back seat tops before clean.



One of the back seat bottoms, looking like it had never been cleaned, let alone hoovered years.



Both pairs of door cards pre clean.





Back seats post clean, I'm sure you'll agree, looking a lot healthier. Well pleased with my efforts at this point, gave up and went to bed for the night.



Attacked rear cards the following evening, mid clean.



Post clean again, serious improvement especially around arm rest area.



Same again on passenger side, both came up remarkably after a good scrubbing.



Front door cards too, probably the most soiled as obviously see most use (abuse in the case).





Front seats looking a little tired, mid clean phase.





Fair bit of ingrain dirt in the seat beds.



Passenger seat unsurprisingly in better nick than the drivers.



And a real good shot to show the difference between dirty and clean leather seats. The difference was quite remarkable and definitely made me think I'd made the right choice in buying these i.e. worth the effort.



Couple more in car shots mainly put up to show the grey / black combo. Also very please with how this turned out. I know all grey interior corrado's as far as I'm aware come with the grey interior plastic. I'm really not a fan of these and kinda took a gamble putting these into a black interior car but I think it works. Certainly helped by the black door plastics, pods, handles etc...







All in all if you hadn't guessed I'm as chuffed as chuffed can be, was a enhancement to the car that I hadn't even considered thinking about for a good few months yet but boy what a difference. The leather is definitely more comfy than the cloth and hugs you better when giving it bit in the corners.

Haven't fitted the heated seat loom yet so got that still to come but should make for a slightly more bearable winter period this time around.

Thanks for taking the time to read, more to come soon. Oh and by the way I have a full black interior for sale, any takers?

Ran out '08 in the rado with no serious problems, i say no serious problems but i think most would count cracking your sump as one. I kind of knew this was inevitable running the car silly low, i just couldn't resist as i'd never had coilies before. On the way back from Edition '08, tired, hungover, wet from the autojumble and with a car still full of rado parts, I didn't see the tarmac lump coming:





Thankfully I was breaking a car with a friend and so the sump was stolen and problem was fixed.

Having turned down a set of DZ Exclusive's in favor of the leather, I some how found myself contemplating buying some wheels in a car park in Guildford. Good ol' No Rice. Even got to trial fit them in the car park to make sure, which was hilarous.





The package kinda sealed the deal: wheels, tyres, adapters and bolts all thrown in. Literally the full package making life easy for once so handed over the hard earned. For those non wheel-whore types who are interested, they are 8x16 Mercedes SL (iirc) wheels from around '90-'95 with 195/40/16 Toyo T1-R's fitted with H&R 5x100 - 5x112 20 & 25mm adapters + Mercedes wheel bolts.







Very happy with the overall look, hadn't even thought about Merc wheels as a possibility, just got chatting with previous owner and before i knew it we were undoing wheel bolts. Wheel dilemma solved!

Xmas rolled round and I got this bad boy as a pressie from my brother.



Wanted a BMC quite badly having borrowed mariojoshi's for a few weeks, it seemed wrong to give it back and not get one. Wanted to stray from the norm a little so managed to track down the special edition version. Fitted on Xmas day:



I keep hearing a phrase lately which i really think should be stamped somewhere on corrado's now they are getting that bit older. "Buy something shiny for your car, expect something of equal value to break." 2008 turned out to be a a year of corrado ownership bliss, minor rolling maintenace and a year's happy motoring. 2009 started badly and continued to be expensive.



The car ended up on the back of two low loaders in the space of month. Firstly a small electrical fire took out a whole section of wiring loom which ran from the boot to the fusebox causing the reverse and brake lights to remain on with the ignition and lights turned off. The 'fooked' loom was painstakingly replaced courtesy of the breaker (splicing in later style diagnositic plug section among other wiring changes). This required half the interior to be removed. All fixed we thought, no such luck, with the car being a late '95 it features the transponder chip and box which due to the the wiring damage screwed itself and decided to not work properly. Car was taken to Autotronix in Bedford to have a new ECU, transponder chip and box and all remaining wiring tidied up to get the car running again. - Not cheap and frustrating as I / We (brother being techy) felt useless not being able to fix it. This meant no car for best part of two / three weeks whilst they sourced to the correct parts to resolve the problems. So in the mean time i borrowed my friends Polo GT to get to / from work (the beast in its full glory):



Mega thanks to Alex aka JackBlack for the lend of, got me out of serious transport problems.

Got the car back at the end of January, drove it to work for the week, great I thought back rolling...until late friday evening after work. Got about a mile from work, launched off from a roundabout a bit quicker than i should have and CRACK-BANG-No drive. Turns out I had taken out in the inner CV joint which in turn I think snapped a drop link which in turn had taken out the outer CV boot of the driveshaft on that side. Not good.

This was pulled out of the gearbox drive flange:


Off low loader into garage for the 2nd time:


After a comedy of errors which I won't go into now with replacing the broken parts, got the car back on the road within a week or so. I'd figured out by now that trains suck and so does walking.

Guess that brings me in to Feb '09. Plenty more to come...

Summer 'if you can call it a summer' updates:

After the start of the year woes, i decided to put these behind me and plough more money into the car. Wanted to do the classic magnex + decat upgrade-mod since i had the car and more so since helping mariojoshi fit his. Que a very reasonably priced, low mileage item to pop up on ebay. Turned up and i seriously think i can't have done more than 5k, still shiny as fook. :clap:





Picked up a VR6 Miltek decat from Amber Performance in Dunstable, another ebay find but when i realised where they were i couldn't resist collecting the following day. Nice little kit which came with mounting kit including stainless exhaust clamp, nuts and bolts and adapter piece.





Turned out the decat fell a touch short but managed to adapter the adapter (pikey i know) to get it fitted and recently have had a new stainless section welded on to remove both the adapter extensions and the adapter piece itself as we were sick of failing to get it all gas tight. Overall tho well happy, sounds stupidly raspy thru the gears. Worth every penny just to see the look on peoples faces when you give it beans, tis hilarious and simply divine through tunnels.



If any one is considering whether or not to go decat. I'd say performance benefits are definitely noticeable although the big difference for me is the noise. If you want something which replicates the standard VR note then i wouldn't advise fitting a decat. If however you love a bit of race spec exhaust action which you just can't get bored of, its well worth the extra £70 odd for the pipe, just make sure you get the right length item.

Next up was a serious cooling system overhaul, my rad started showing signs of going Apr/May time, got to work one morning and noticed some water oozing down the grille, popped bonnet to see water hissing out of the front end. It seem to be only minor so quickly got on the case to organise a new one. Threw a few emails about the place to try and track down a geniune item and to avoid the sub par GSF items i'd heard about. Managed to organise a very well priced Behr-Hella item from a UK supplier, sent next day to work. Not geniune but based on quality i really don't think you can do any better for almost half the geniune price.



Old item, blown in the middle:



Thanks to Andy aka Yeti for lend of his old rad to tied me over til the new one turned up.

As well as the new rad i'd wanted to order a set of Black Forest Industry engine mounts and whilst browsing fourseasonstuning.com i noticed they had a sweet little cooling kit to replace some of the often over looked items. Thought whilst we were doing the rad and change coolant it would be a great time to switch various plastics which i didn't want to fail in the future:



New vs Old:



Kit contains: OIL COOLER TO PIPE HOSE,BLOCK TO OIL COOLER HOSE,WATER PIPE,70C THERMOSTAT,T/STAT HOUSING,T/STAT COVER,PIPE ADAPTOR, ALL SENSOR O RINGS. All geniune parts are may add, which i loved. The package from the US did take a little while to arrive and I had to pay import duty on it but seeing extent of the cooling kit soon made me forget price in comparison to what the UK VAG bill would have been.

Engine mounts are BFI Stage .5 Polyurethane jobbies, the softest in the current range at 60-65A hardness. For people who want dash rattling, race spec there are two harder spec options above these. The mounts tho, once fitted turned out to be the single best mod i've done to the car. Instantly obvious that my old mounts were well past it. Gearbox mount had leaked all its fluid:



Tall mounts had completely done this:



Including shipping and import tax the full mount set and mounting hardware worked out at under £150, rather pleasing when thats about the cost of one VF engineering mount. Performance wise, engine movement is heavily reduced. Few added vibrations for the first couple of weeks but they have warn in a treat and i don't think passengers would noticed any difference over standard.

Mid fit:



Quick bay shot after engine bay steam clean at my bro's work:



Attended Stonor Park this year and realised i've been completely missing out, was literally the best show i've been too. The mix of air cooled and water cooled was spot on, very relaxed atmosphere, nobody acting the fool as the hillyside grass stopped that and most importantly the calibre of metal on show was un real. Couple of cheeky snaps from the car park, car in steels mode for a change:



Would have been rude not to park next to this:



Refurbed mercedes wheels, new tyres & centres, rebushed painted wishbones and some keyring additions to follow...

Very nice read . Stunning car

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh CORRADOOOO <3