Alfashark

What's the mileage on your coupe? I ask because mine had 330,000 and had a bit of lifter noise. Gave it 2 oil changes a week apart - Got it nice and hot before pulling the plug each time, and added some MBL8 with the second fill up of oil... Problem solved.

Just the 2500's - 2000's are almost "square" whereas the 2500 gained all it's size increase via a 19mm stroke. The only boing/thump I ever encountered was from previous owners "enthusiastic" driving causing a slight amount of play in the drive-shaft splines, allowing them to bind up if you loaded them up in a fast corner or bend - rather than sliding smoothly as the suspension compressed, they'd stick and then snap free, causing the noise and a momentary over-steer... Similar to the "twitch" they get with rooted bushes. Both of mine + the parts donor had mint dashes and bootlids, but all three had the front corners of the bonnets lifting slightly above the guards.

Two long hot weekends spent up to my elbows in the dash, but the old bitch finally has a stereo... Nothing fancy, just an old JVC AM/FM/CD unit that was floating around in the boot of my Audi when I bought it. I had some 4" 3-way Jensen speakers in boxes left over from one of my Alfas too, so they've been tucked down behind the rear seat on velcro pads. The other job was the installation of the tacho I'd scored earlier... This ended up being a no-go after a helpful geezer rocked up on my doorstep at 7am on Saturday with a complete GTI dash cluster for the total sum of $0.00 It had a fuckin awful looking red sweep on the speedo past the ton mark, and had ticked over twice the mileage mine has... Pulled the GTI one apart and flogged the tacho from it, did the same on mine and removed the analogue clock. A quick cut n shut with a black frozen yoghurt container lid and a marker pen to fill up the holes where the GTI temp and fuel gauges sat and the job was done. What was interesting when I took it for a drive, was the diff ratio is taller than the build sticker in the boot correlates to - The metric ton in 3rd gear = 3150rpm whereas the diff code and everything else I'd read worked on 3900rpm at the same speed.

I'm not trying to prove anyone wrong here, but it seems like a grey area... Assuming you're not going for a total blackout look, most tinted tail lights would probably be brighter than the factory tails on my CGT - marginal at best during the day time, but exactly as they left the factory: And this chappy with his Vento Coupe... Tinted tails from a Vento sold in a European market - No NZ new or Jap import Vento used them:

Throw a pic or two up of the lights you tinted... You should get a pretty quick consensus as to if they're too dark or not.

Been hunting around for a suitable period tacho recently... VDO and Jaeger were high on the list, but either priced out of my league or of the wrong style. The big Saffa I worked with until recently had shown me pics of his CTI and those of his friends - All running an older model Mallory tach. So, for the price of a dozen beers I bought one from a member on another forum I lurk around: He was unsure on it's exact year, but had fitted it to his Camaro 30-35 years ago... It's going to live below the dash in the center console so I'll update when it's installed.

Well, as purchased the car had a slow coolant leak. The previous owner couldn't quite pinpoint where from, and since it was in the order of a 750ml top up every few weeks it wasn't a big deal. In the last month or so, it started drinking a bit more and quite a bit more frequently... The problem being found as the coolant outlet flange on the trans end of the block. Fired up my version of ETKA to check out my options (despite the car being a '93, the relevant section in ETKA is for an '85 and the single outlet flange is listed under '83...) 3 days and $18 later, the part arrived along with 2 bottles of G12+ coolant: Pulled the bung and drained the system, left the garden hose in the top tank for 10-15min to flush in the normal flow direction and then 10-15min in the reverse flow (G11 coolant that the car was running creates orange concrete when it mixes with the newer G12 and I didn't fancy having to deal with that). Off with the old flange... Brittle as fuck, and the o-ring was well past it. Gave the mounting surfaces a good clean up with a rag to take off the worst of the crap, then a good wipe with a clean rag soaked in petrol. Attacked the o-ring on the new flange with a liberal smearing of vaseline and put it all back together: All hoses reconnected, I filled the cooling system up with plain old water and let it idle up to temp and purge any bubbles in the system while I check for leaks... Left it sitting for a few hours to cool off so I can dump the water and pour some nice clean G12 ready for a long hot summer's driving.

I've asked the VR6/1.8T->RWD question to someone more knowledgeable than I... T5's are the box of choice apparently, using an adaptor. My source says there's word of a run of adaptor plates/full bellhousings being made for VAG stuff on MotorGeeks...

$1k could get you a complete 20vT in perfect order with loom/ecu, add $50 or so for immo/cluster delete. VR6's are dime a dozen since there seems to be a flood of auto ones with rooted boxes... Not entirely sure what RWD box is used for them, I know a guy in Napier has converted a urQ box to RWD only with no dodgy pissing around.

Here's a couple of suggestions from the VW/Audi camp... How about a 1.8T - 4-pot 20v turbo, common as dogshit with tons of aftermarket parts. 150hp stock, with buckets of torque... Audi versions are set up for North/South mounting. Possibly a little heavy, but a 2.8/2.9/3.2 VR6 might fit the bill - plenty of grunt, readily available parts, compact (only 15° angle between the banks and one cylinder head) RWD mountable easily and not too thirsty, especially in such a light car. Oh and the noise... Your ears will love you for it!

It clearly has some effect... VW/Audi have used after-run fan setups on their cars for a long time. Mk-3 Golf onward and Audi 100/200's with the 5-pot turbo engines ran both a fan and electric after-run water pump too.

Cheers guys. The priority at the moment is to deal to a pin-hole of rust below the windscreen from a stone chip, and some minor paint cracking on the roof from where the wooden packing cradle was tightened down too far in the container... Whatever else I do, I want it to be easily reverted back to stock. I'm thinking somewhere in the order of a 40mm drop and some BBS RS reps ex-China, say 14x6/14x7 with small subtle lips.

Scored some 13" factory alloys a couple of weeks back... $80 with tread although they need a bloody good clean:

Chur KK. She's 4x100, so thousands of options out there. Scored some factory 13" alloys and threw them on today... Will update in a sec

Discussion thread viewtopic.php?f=18&t=35893 I was a bit iffy about starting a thread for this little car since it's not entirely old in terms of calendar years, nor is it going to be a true "build" - More of a touch-up and simple period mod thread... She's a 1993 VW CitiGolf (VW S.A started building Mk.1 Golfs in 1978 and from 1984, kept on churning them out as CitiGolfs until 2009) with a tickle over 140,000km on the clock. 1.6L of Wolfsburg's finest, breathing through a twin choke carb and spitting out a whopping 75hp via a 3-speed auto... It's not exactly rapid, but given this one scored 720kg on the local dump's weighbridge, it's not bad either. It was bought new in '93 by a couple in Bloemfontein. Auto aside, they left the options list completely blank - No stereo, no power steering, no rear-window demister, no rev-counter and 13" steel wheels. This couple knew they wanted to move to NZ, so they drove it around for a year so that the car could qualify for export. Landed, cleared and registered coincidentally on the same day that I arrived in NZ. Fast forward 18 years, I picked it up from the original owners along with a swag of paperwork: Sales brochures, sale and purchase agreement from the VW dealer, every service invoice, export papers, import papers. Apart from some very minor bits of carpark rash, it's like new inside and out.

Got access to a VAGCOM scanner? I know if the battery is disconnected and/or the TB is disconnected and removed it needs to be realigned via VAGCOM - only do-able with the real deal, not the generic scanners. As for the stepper motor, I'm not sure what year the V6 is in this article, but he's got a how-to as far as removal and cleaning... http://wiki.audiworld.com/index.php?title=Idle_Control_Valve&oldid=1623

Mint to see someone else shaggin around with a Lada! I had a 2105 Riva with a Fiat twin-cam in it for a while... If you're going down the transplant route, SR20's are a nice easy proposition. I know a geezer in Auckland who's just dropped one in his Niva, using whatever Nissan 5-speed that came from the donor Silvia... Food for thought.