Project "little monster"

Oh, meant to post this a while back. Here's the main reason why I'm putting a VR6 in - the noise!

paul_c said

Now taken the cover off, need to check if the chain and guides need replacing or if there's plenty of life left in them.



Area B has a little wear, tapering from nothing to maybe 0.3mm next to zone A. Most of the wear is in area A, which is nearest the crank. It tapers from area B to near the end, from around 0.3mm to 0.8mm. Any ideas guys?

looks like the chain has become a bit sloppy over time maybe causing wear on the tensioner worth changing the tensioner for piece of mind

The chain's sloppy because the tensioner is removed….its tight with the tensioner on.

yeah but should the tensioner have the scores on that it seems to have?

I'm guessing, as it goes through its life, it wears like this. I'm just wondering what's mid-life and end-of-life.

i think now that you have to the effort of inspecting it you may just as well change the tensioner

what do the chains look like? any wear on them

last thing you want is tensioner lettine once the engines in the car that would mean pulling it back out to change at a later date

you may be better asking the question of cgti

Did a bit more background reading and found a comprehensive guide on how-to change the chains and tensioners. The author had a damaged upper tensioner but the lower one was fine. So, I took off the inlet manifold and cam cover, lucky I did because I found the upper guide rail damaged.


The damage


Worn but not too bad - maybe 0.4mm most of the way along its length it rubs


Another area of concern. The pink stuff is obviously coolant, initially I was worried the head gasket's gone. But on further inspection, you can see the gasket for the thermostat housing wasn't fitted properly, its obviously leaked under pressure and the coolant has dribbled down the engine


Hmmmm, those cams look way too pointy……  :twisted:

i bet a set of cams for that aint gonna be cheap mate

well at least you have the brains to check these things most people just spoon the engines in and worry later cant see the point myself i want to know the engine is good before i spend the time and effort to put it in

276? cams cost $550 + shipping (+VAT), which isn't too bad a price, but I've heard they don't actually add that much power. Thing is, obviously the car is designed to use a cat, since I don't need to run one, I can afford to afford to go for more duration (and hence overlap) on the cam. Or I could go for a 288? cam. With the megasquirt, I guess I can optimise the running for all rev and load ranges. With the lighter body, lack of torque at lower revs could be a worthwhile trade-off for top end power.

Or I could just go for a 100bhp nitrous kit.

if you go with megasquirt with the lm-1 you will be able to map it to exactly how you want it

 if you want max power on wot you just tune to do it or if you want good mpg you just adjust the map bins until you get the desired afr

ms will also control nos if you want it to  :wink:

paul_c said

Oh, meant to post this a while back. Here's the main reason why I'm putting a VR6 in - the noise!

i put a cone filter on my vr6 and had to take it off and replace it with a k&n panel filter.
 the noise was just soooo delicious, i couldn't change gear any more. that's with all the acoustic dampening in a mk3!

Guess the price:

?50.00  8O

Would you believe - ?56.05 inc the VAT! Apparently they're platinum plugs and will last 40,000 miles. I casually ordered a bunch of parts (seals, chain tensioner, etc) and included the plugs and filter with the order. Then casually walked out of the VW Dealer without checking the price of individual items, only checking the bill once I'd gotten home.

They'd better last 40k miles!

nice boxes tho, classy!

Not much of an update, because I've not really had chance to get stuck into the car. My rear driveway is blocked with my daily driver Merc, it seems that the 350 mile round trip to Santa Pod towing a trailer took its toll, so it spat its dummy and one of the hydraulic rear suspension pipes has sprung a leak. Lucky I have 2 other cars to make use of in the meantime….

Anyway, I did a couple of hours tonight, just disconnecting stuff on the Mk1 and labelling it nicely, to minimise those head-scratching hours ahead of me. The pics were taken at the start of today's work so you see a fairly together-looking car, I kinda packed up in a hurry because the most humongous apocolyptical raincloud loomed overhead.





It has the feel of an ?800 Mk1 Golf GTI underneath the bonnet - a couple of non-factory wires, rusty screws, luckily nothing show-stopping though; and the Super Crack is doing its job. Once the Mercedes is sorted, I can pull it off the grass and onto the driveway, to pull out the old motor.

so have you done your homework on the vr to mk1 mount yet? and the downpipe will have to be a fabbed up one i guess

looks like you have hours of fun with a mig welder :wink:

looking good paul, keep going mate

Not long now….nearly ready to pull out the old 1.8 engine.

common sight that mk1 on axle stands      pretty clean mk1 tho :wink: