tim-spam

Presumably, you meant "can't". Well, here goes for starters: 1) Rear seats far better. 2) Load area much better with seats removed. 3) Car actually bigger on the inside and considerably smaller on the outside. 4) With the Eberspacher working (and mine, like most, always has - 8 years old and 120,000 miles), heating much quicker to warm up. 5) Better fuel economy. 6) Spare wheel. 7) Rear suspension sags much less when fully loaded. 8) Metal tailgate can be used for carrying bikes. You also have to bear in mind that you're comparing new with old - any perceived advantages of the newer car have to be offset against the much higher running costs of a new car.

Alhambra is cheaper than the Sharan spec. for spec. Have you tried the latest 2.0 TDI? I think you may be pleasantly surprised - go for it!

If you switch off the engine before it's fully warm, the coolant circulating through the heater is still fairly cool and will cause the heater to cool down more quickly - this could be the cause. I assume of course that the overrun water pump is working.

This sounds like a problem with the sender or gauge. Bear in mind also, when comparing Mk1 with Mk 2, that the coolant circuits are different and that the booster heater is 5kW on the Mk 2 as against 3kW on a Mk 1.

The plastic impeller has come loose on the shaft, so a new water pump is needed - the new ones have metal impellers. Because you have to remove the cam belt to change the water pump, if it has been some time since the last change, it would be a good idea to renew this and the tensioner and idler pulleys - VW dealers do a kit with all the right parts in.

Later cars are generally much better, and feel more solidly screwed together.

40,000 miles

....until you try to stop quickly on a wet motorway....

If the heater works with the engine under load, this would suggest that the water pump is working. The fact that it cools down at idle would point to the thermostat being the problem.

If the engine is the same, then yes it will.

Possibly sticking turbo vanes.

Well, over Christmas, the wipers on my Alhambra started to slow down such that they were slow even on high speed. When I looked at the wiper frame, it was flexing when the wipers were on, indicating that the spindles were siezing - the driver's side was the worst. What I did was as follows: 1) Remove the wiper arms using a 16mm socket. 2) Remove the circlip and washer from the top of each spindle. 3) Start the engine and switch the wipers on to high speed. 4) Squirt WD40 onto the spindles. 5) Screw the wiper arm nuts back on a few turns. 6) Press down on the nuts with a 16mm socket - with WD40 and firm pressure the spindles should start to move down. 7) You will then notice that as the taper moves down into the frame, it forms a sort of reservoir for the WD40. 8) As the lower end of the spindle becomes visible, sqirt some WD 40 onto it. 9) Using a pair of pliers on the nut, pull the spindle back up again. 10) Once it starts to become easier to slide the spindles up and down, start to use engine oil instead of WD40 - this is a much better lubricant than WD40. You will also notice that the frame will have stopped flexing by this time. 11) Eventually, the spindles will start to fall under their own weight. 12) Turn off the wipers and the engine. 13) Replace the washers and circlips. 14) Wipe away all excess oil and dirt. 15) Replace wiper arms, adjust and tighten nuts to 34Nm. Job done, and no need to remove the whole wiper unit. Hope this helps others with similar problems.

Try bleeding the clutch with a pressurised bleeder. By the way, assuming reasonable use, a clutch should last much longer than 76k.

First thing to do is diagnose the problem - what makes your friend suspect the crank? This is very unlikely - big end failure sounds like a very heavy knocking noise and is usually accompanied by partial or full engine siezure. It would also be worse with a warm engine. Main bearing failure usually sounds like something between a knock and a rumble, and is very rare. Crank breakage usually means you stop right where you are. So that means it's probably something else - a dribbling injector or poor injection timing can cause a significant amount of noise, as can cam wear.

To answer the original question, yes, it is possible to remove the top rubber mounting without removing the strut - easy job. The difficult bit is getting the rusted nut off the top. In fact, removing the top rubber mounting makes it easy to remove the strut without having to remove the hub carrier. However, the rubber mountings are very durable and are unlikely to ever need replacing.

I agree totally.

Seriously though, there is a small sliding cover in the wheelarch liner just behind the headlamp unit. Simply slide it open (it will be a little stiff), squeeze your hand in until you can feel the bulb holder, twist and remove. The bulb pulls straight out. By the way, the indicator bulb is accessed in a similar way.

Yes.

That sounds reasonable to me.

1) You can be absolutely certain that this system will have been very carefully considered by very knowledgable and highly trained engineers, and I am certain that they would be able to answer your question which was bound to have been asked many times during the system's development. If you had any experience of automotive design at all, you would realise this, as well as the raft of legislation that has to be complied with together with the many other constraints that the engineers work within. All design has to be a compromise between function, appearance, manufacturability, quality and cost. 2) The manufacturers will have this data, and if there really was a significant safety issue (ie: if this type of failure actually resulted in real accidents, rather than just brown underpants), it would have been addressed long ago, probably with a product recall. After all, this system is used on millions of cars, a significant proportion of which are now quite old.

George is quite right about fly-by-wire throttles and his comparison with a breaking throttle cable (which, by the way would not reset itself...). People who have never designed machinery such as cars tend to be very quick to criticize the design engineers, as they always have, usually (but admittedly not always) without much justification. Another example of this type of situation is switching into limp mode when the turbo VNT sticks, causing excessive boost. Again, this is done for your, and the car's, safety, even though it is somewhat disconcerting at the time. The alternative is complete turbo failure, no power at all and potentially expensive damage. If you regularly get this problem, you really need to either clean the VNT mechanism, or replace the turbocharger. Similarly, problems with the throttle potentiometer usually show up on VAGCOM before the type of failure described above. Again, the DTC should prompt replacement / cleaning before failure occurs - otherwise, who's really to blame?

There is no pin allocation for reversing lights on a single 7-pin socket, so I would assume that these connections are to disable the rear parking sensors with a trailer attached.

Haynes does a manual for the Mk 1 - you could try there.

Which headlight, and are they regular halogen? Normally easy enough in situ. The flap in the wheelarch is for the sidelights and indicators.

And if you have HID's the procedure will be somewhat different, but most have H7 halogen bulbs.