Just bought a nice condition A3 1.8T MY99

[h100vw]

I had 165KWatw of my A3 with the JBS04 fitted. I was running a solid flywheel and clutch to suit. It was far from a handful to drive with 225 tyres on 16 inch TT rims. I am not convinced that an LSD is a must have??

Gavin

[XXX-1.8T]

Im not saying that an LSD is a must have but the gearboxes crap themselves after being chipped. There are 10 people that i know on vww and vortex who have had chipped 1.8T's in either Golf, A3's or TT fwd's. Just be wary of the gearbox/CV's and you should be fine.

[parso_rex]

did the other ones die after the fitment of the LSD or it didn't matter. I really thought being FWD you have a bit of a fuse so to speak with the front tyres breaking traction before damage occurs, obviously its not the case

[parso_rex]

OK the early 97/98 A3 1.8Ts have the Bosch Motronic 3.82 ECU's with DIL 40 or PLCC 44 pin Eproms/eeproms, these have a socket

The later A3 1.8T's have a Bosch Motronic 3.83 ECU with a PSOP 44 pin eeprom. (29F200 2Mbit)
Its seems that I have one of these suckers. Its the hardest of the lot - Tops !!!!!!!

The last A3's had the Bosch ME7 ECU

[XXX-1.8T]

did the other ones die after the fitment of the LSD or it didn't matter. I really thought being FWD you have a bit of a fuse so to speak with the front tyres breaking traction before damage occurs, obviously its not the case

No all these gearboxes are original oem gearboxes. People fitted LSD's after they blew while the gearboxes were apart getting repaired.

I bought my 99 A3 Turbo with 20,000kms got it worked with various mods at around 35,000kms and gearbox blew at 95,000kms. A lot of the other guys had similar stories to me.

But yeah I was like you that with wheel spin it shouldnt put too much strain on them but it did.

Maybe start a poll in the Mk4 forum if you are really worried.

[h100vw]

Was it the diff rivets that gave up?

Gavin

[parso_rex]

I ordered the PLCC and PSOP adaptors for my programmer this morning. I need these for other cars so why the hell not.

I'm Trying to find a dump pipe at the moment for a reasonable outlay. There are the name brands but postage to Aus is a killer I'm still waiting on some suppliers though. I would prefer Milltek or similar. The other option is to use one of the catless Ebay dumps and then add the cat in later I can pick one of these up very cheap
..... less than $240 delivered
I have a couple of highflow metal cats spare that would be overkill for this. I just have to weld one on if there is sufficient clearance

[schwartza3]

i'm looking at upgrading my down pipe to 3", let us know if you have issues with clearance, apparently lhd are little different to rhd because of the brake booster, unless these are from uk?

[parso_rex]

Will do, I'm almost excpecting problems with this one however there are some vendors in the UK selling this one so fingers crossed. The worst case scenario is that it gets used as a template for something else
I've sort of moved the rest of the thread over here
http://www.vwwatercooled.org.au/show...-1.8T-makeover into the projects section where it probably belongs even though its not a full on project like most of them