536 replies to this topic

[Purple Tom]

Well there really shouldn't be anything wrong unless the fan you're using is tiny. Is the ECU throwing up any fault codes when scanned?

[Purple Tom]

Well the new owner came and drove away in the Mini on Saturday 4th September (last weekend). It was a sad moment as I watched it drive down my drive for the last time but I am very happy with the chap who bought it, he seemed to be very knowledgable and will hopefully do nothing but improve the car. He even liked the colour so all is good

I'll hopefully be able to see it at Castle Combe at the end of the month, and I have offered to be technical advisor should any work involving the intricacies of the conversion be required.

So, until I either get another Mini or save the money up to buy this one back I shall declare this project thread officially ended.

It's been fun - that's all folks

Edited by Purple Tom, 09 September 2010 - 09:53 PM.

[Purple Tom]

It's been a while since I've been on this forum as I don't have a Mini anymore therefore I don't really belong, but I've still got the engine conversion bug so I've been busy building a VW Corrado TDi - one of only a handful in the world at the moment. I've really enjoyed doing it and now I have a Corrado that does 65mpg If anyone's interested in the build thread, here it is



Cheers
Tom

Edited by Purple Tom, 12 June 2011 - 08:00 PM.

[alexcrosse]

looks great tom, I really like this idea of 'tuning for economy'. Coupla questions if you dont mind... when your doing 65mpg do you have to drive v.carefully (like i do everywhere atm!)? How quick is it? And most importantly... what insurance like now you have swapped the engine (even though its for a diesel)?

Cheers! and its great to see something different, ive seen a couple of mk1 golf TDIs but not a corrado, looks brilliantly OEM too well done!

Al

[Purple Tom]

Cheers Alex

65mpg is a pretty much average figure to be honest. Cruising at 80mph sees the MPG drop to about 52-53mpg, but my 8 mile commute to work along A-roads yields about 77-80mpg. I can get roughly 900 miles from a 70 litre tank when just cruising about. Constant 80mph cruising sees it drop to about 750 miles, so its still a long way between fill-ups.

Performance wise, it's no slouch, but neither is it a racing car. It only has 90bhp at the moment but it does have 150 lb/ft of torque at 2000rpm. The fairly large FMIC helps to lower the inlet temperatures so makes the most of the boost and if I keep it singing between 1500-2500 rpm then it really does make good progress. It's important to remember that it isn't a petrol and that revving it above 3000rpm does absolutely nothing I'd estimate 0-60 of about 10 seconds which is quicker than when it had the 2.0 8V engine in. It'll be a different story once I start playing with it though, I'm aiming for 170bhp at the crank which should make it very lively indeed Obviously economy will drop when that happens but I reckon I'll still get in the region of 55mpg on average then.

Insurance - I had a 1.9 TDi Ibiza as a daily while doing the Corrado TDi, which was group 7. As standard, the Corrado 2.0 8V is group 18 so I was expecting there to be a major charge for doing the TDi conversion. Imagine my surprise when I rang up to enquire as to the cost and was told it'd cost just the admin charge to swap over! It turns out that they did the same as when I did the C16SE in the Mini - that is, quote for the engine, not the car. So I'm paying a premium for a 1.9 TDi engined car, with all modifications declared. Bonus I think it'll be about £350 next year once you factor in the increased premiums, although I am 26 now.

Hope that answers the questions

[benb12]

Just read through your build thread for the Corrado, that is very impressive! The standard you have done that to is absolutely top notch, and in such a short space of time!

[minitim28]

hi how hard was the wireing to do

[The Matt]

Very easy in these. You've basically got to supply power to the ECU, the coil and the fuel pump/relay.

[Purple Tom]

Well...bit of a thread revival I suppose in a way.  It's not often you get to buy your first car back, but the opportunity came up so I took it.  It's changed a bit along the way, cosmetically at least.  Not a big fan of the colour personally but that can be changed at some point.

 

Here it is as I bought it, July 2018:

 

 IMG_9975.jpg   80.73K   8 downloads

 

Did a little bit of work just to quieten it down a bit and put it a little bit back to how it was pre-sale (apart from the colour) - black arch trim, lost the pin stripes and some custom 1275GT stripes:

 

 IMG_0292.jpg   81.53K   10 downloads

 

Then took it to Donington Park on an evening trackday and won joint car of the night!

 

 IMG_0302.png   158.12K   8 downloads

 

That's it for now, bit of work to do over the winter but it's just good to have it back.  Still love driving it

 

Thanks

Tom

[Artstu]

Welcome back Tom, my doesn't time fly  I quite like the new colour, its a bit unusual.

[Rich1]

Car looks in good nick mate

[andrewmini67]

The subtle changes look good Tom and great news winning a prize...