Aftermarket Cams, Headgaskets & Mapping

[donpulsar 0]

I’ve been a member of the site for quite a while and found some very helpful info and advice, so I thought it’s about time I contributed a bit more to the site.

So far my VR6 has been my daily driver since I bought it a couple of years ago (with Milltek exhaust and Piper-X panel filter), had its chains done and a new clutch around 90K and on 111K now, and the mods so far have been an LPG kit (fitted soon after I bought it & worth its weight in black gold!), a G60 3.68 final drive (amazing mod!) and a selection of air filters, finally settling with a modded airbox w/ K&N panel. I removed the decat for the last MOT and am currently running with the cat back in & the old bum dyno hasn’t noticed a difference! An oil catch tank rounded off the mods…til now!

Things have taken a bit of a downturn as I suspect the headgasket is on its way out (coolant bottle pressurizing and blowing coolant out no matter how many times I bleed it, lots of air bubbling into the coolant bottle, removed the secondary pump as that had stopped working but still got same problems). I’ll be testing the coolant for headgasket failure soon and doing a pressure test as well, so if it has failed or whether something else is amiss I’m hoping it can be found when it comes off the road in the next few weeks.

In the meantime my mate brought me a parcel back from the US after his holiday…

Alrigh-hht..giggity giggity! Autotech 262s'!

So these will be going in whilst its off the road and if it needs a new headgasket then the head’ll be off. I’ve got a couple of questions which I hope can be answered?

1. Can anyone recommend what – if anything, to have done to the head if it does come off to be skimmed? And anything else with the engine regarding things to check/change?

2. I have heard that LPG can reduce headgasket life due to higher burn temps; now whether that’s true I don’t know but if I do need a new headgasket what’s recommended for me to use? I’m aware that I can use a US spec 12V headgasket (raises compression a tad which can only be good)…I’ve also heard that either the Sharon VR6 or the Transporter VR6 had a steel headgasket..would any of these be worth using instead over the standard one? Where would be the best place to source a headgasket kit from?

3. How & where have people had their VR’s mapped for the cams…custom chip in the ECU, piggyback ECU or is the OBD2 good enough to remap itself for the changes?

4. And something not quite engine related - would I need to fully remove & split the gearbox again to put in a diesel/turbo diesel fifth gear for better cruising rpm (any idea what sort of rpm drop can I expect at 70mph)?

Any help anyone can give is greatly appreciated. :-d

Now I’m not loaded by any stretch (so unfortunately I won’t be using this an excuse to have it bored to a 3.1, nor will I be turbo’ing it or supercharging it!), but if I have to save a bit more then sort things out then so be it. I’d rather do a job once properly rather than faff about doing it twice or having it drag out for months! My “fine days & holidays†car (Pulsar GTi-R) is slowly being resurrected (I’ll be hopefully driving that whilst the VR is in my garage in bits) so money is being split between the 2 cars when needed!

Thanks for reading and feel free to comment or leave any helpful ideas/suggestions!

Cheers,

Steve.

[michael5556 247]

1. When the head comes off, get it skimmed, replace the head bolts as they are stretch bolts and can not be re used. Also get them to replace the valve oil stem steals.

2. Get a standard head gasket. Victor reinez.

3. Get a proper remap. Stealth or united Motorsport are the peps too talk too. Ecu can't learn it's self due to motronic being crap and not advanced lol

4. Yes you would need to strip it again, and it's around 2500 rpm with a diesel 5th gear.

Hope that helps

[donpulsar 0]

Cheers for the quick and detailed reply, that'll be a big help.

Any other info appreciated!

[Lukey. 381]

Everything I read with regard to head gasket says you have to make sure the surfaces are uber level for the metal gasket as its a third of the thickness, hence the compression bump.

[donpulsar 0]

Ah, I take it thats with the Transporter VR & Mk4 12V VR headgaskets?

[Lukey. 381]

Yes.

[donpulsar 0]

Cool, cheers for the extra info.

Any other info appreciated!

[donpulsar 0]

Bump!

[FishWick 21]

Did we not answer these same questions on the Corrado forum?

[donpulsar 0]

I did indeed indeed post the same questions on both forums (well spotted!) as there are people who are only on one forum and not the other, so I saw no reason why I should only post on one forum. The bump's were to keep the topic on the main page so people who hadn't seen it could see it and offer a different opinion/advice that hadn't already been given.

So, thankyou to everyone who read this and an even bigger thankyou to those who contributed advice. It has been invaluable.

Food for thought - The club asked for people to contribute to articles, posts etc to help the club stay active and develop - so I thought I would...and lets be honest I was hoping to have more than 1% of the club's members contribute to this post about a fellow club member tuning his VR, but unfortunately that wasn't the case.

I didn't have to take pictures, talk about my other project or yak on about my VR, but I thought I would as its interesting reading and a good topic for conversation...or so I thought. The almost complete lack of posts does raise the question - "why bother?!" and from the looks of things on the forum, I'm not the only one whose mind this must have crossed.

Oh well, back to the garage...

[VR6Pete 1,455]

There is nothing wrong with posting on other forums, I do this myself to get more opinions, and even post on facebook, it's changing times out there, and the forums on here make up a small proportion of the community, the meets and events is what spurs forum activity and gets people motivated to want to contribute, unfortunately the majority of people just surf the site, and do not contribute as much, this is something we are working on, however does not happen over night.

What also doesn't help, is when people reply with comments saying that this was answered somewhere else, how about that energy goes into contributing on here instead?

But all you people out there who are viewing threads, why not reply, contribute something back into the forums? otherwise we will just be stuck in a reclusive loop and contributions will be less and less....

Why bother? because I love this club, the cars, the people and friendships I've made over the last 9 years and I aren't just about to give up, I've invested a lot of my own money into the club over the last 12 months to get things moving, however this is all in vain if people just defer people to other forums, or not contribute at all. believe it or not, I actually enjoy doing what I do for other people, it takes time an effort, which is difficult when I also have a full time job, 2 kids and a Corrado VR6 to care for lol, but I still manage to arrange events, update the website, develop new features, contribute to the forum, over the weekend I published some articles under the "information" section so it hurts seeing comments like this when I spent my Friday and Saturday evenings sat in front of a computer when I could have been doing other things.

If you do have any ideas / thoughts on raising forum productivity then this is something I actively encourage, likewise on attending our events... a Club is more than a forum, and we've over 70 PAID Club members join since 1st Jan, which is quite good for a "niche" club aimed at an aging breed of car, with 479 active Paid club members, there is an average of 114 forum posts a day, which on its own looks ok, however with over 3,000 unique visitors a day doesn't look as good, so we need to ask, how do we transfer these visitors into contributions... This is all something I will be discussing at the next AGM.

Feel free to air your opinions guys, I only want to make things better for everyone.

Pete

[Woodyman84 3]

I think you do.an.amazing job with the forum Pete an I hope everyone appreciates all the effort you put in. I think.with social media alot of sites are finding it difficult.

I'm afraid.my knowledge is fairly limited on many mechanical questions but I think it's always worth speaking.to people like Vince at stealth as they seem to be very happy to.pass on knowledge an help people.

I've always found everyone on this site to be very helpfully as well but some questions are hard.to answer

[VR6Pete 1,455]

Thanks, and apologies for hi-jacking your thread! It's nice to get some thanks every now and then

I think its good to remember that not everyone might not be as clued up in solving problems, so please do pass on your experience to help others learn.... and as said, get your self to some of our events, we are probably one of the most laid back clubs going

[ssaunders 199]

Hi, i think you will find that the diesel 5th will go in without having to remove the gearbox, you can get to it from\through the passenger wheel arch. here is link with pics for swap.

http://www.myturbodiesel.com/1000q/multi/5th-gear-swap-VW.htm

i am doing the same thing with mine, if you google vw gear calc you will find a great little program that allows you to fiddle about with ratios and gives you gear/rpm/speed. mine has a drone between 2300-2800 rpm so i have a .756 set coming from the US, this will put 5th gear back to stock. you could go further and put a MK3 diesel which is .717, this would give in theory on stock wheels and tyres at 6500 rpm - 166mph!

good luck and let us know how it goes.

steve

just seen this on the market place

http://www.vr6oc.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?501781