GTSBoy

Small vacuum in the tank is normal, and shows that everything (or at least most of the purge system, at least) is working normal.

Well, perhaps less so this, because as BK said above, the cap is a suction relief (which is the only "vent" on the tank), and the carbon canister is effectively a pressure relief (ie, a vent on the overall tank system, but it's not so much on the tank). So when you're pumping in, even if the pump nozzle somehow managed to completely seal on the filler neck, you couldn't really build pressure in the tank anyway. US (and I guess others') emission regulations worked towards preventing fuel vapour spill out through the filler neck because it was a significant fraction of HC emissions wrt cars, trucks, etc. The carbon canister was supposed to catch them at fill time as well as when just sitting around. I'm not disagreeing with you - just pointing out that there is not a single two-way vent on the tank.

When it comes to boost..... think check valve. The Neo uses an ECU solenoid to dictate when to purge, and this keeps boost away from the canister as a side effect.

See answer to unnecessary cross post

Speedo head generates PWM square wave speed signal that is transmitted to every CU in the car that wants a speed signal (ie, HICAS, TCS, ABS, ECU, TCU). The ECU just waits until it sees 180km/h then calls a halt to proceedings (as well as using a threshold at about 5 km/h for idle up and similar drivability features). If you have removed the speedo head (ie the whole cluster) then you have no speed signal - unless that is, if the person who installed the Link dash put the required effort in to connect the speed sensor** (on the gearbox) to the dash and have the dash output a suitable equivalent PWM signal as the original dash would have. **which is an AC sawtooth signal because of the reluctor sensor.

Not really. It's just a box with 6 transistors in it. The usual failure mode is that they refuse to switch the coils when they get too hot, which is probably a solder joint problem, but could be in the silicon. Swaptronics is usually the only way to demonstrate good/bad. A million years ago I made a set of spacers (out of some ~6mm stainless tube and some longer bolts to lift mine up off the coil cover and try to improve airflow underneath. It did a pretty good job of eliminating the occasional heat soak issue I was having with mine. The ultimate solution was to replace the RB20 with a bigger engine. If you are having a real problem with the igniter, the correct solution these days is to bin it and the dumb coils and upgrade to a pencil coil kit (R35, Audi, etc). Do the necessary rewiring (trivial) and boost off* into the sunset. *Sorry, wheeze off asthmatically into the sunset.

You have the steering column fully extended already? I'm 197cm tall and have no need/want to bring the wheel any closer than what the original adjustment offers.

I think it just allows them to cast the manifold with shorter runners. Can't claim all the benefits of compactness and runner length etc with the turbo scrolls hanging out the other way.

No. Yes.

If nothing has been cut, then it is essentially just an alarm, not an immobiliser, and therefore should be less likely to f**k you around. Of course, it's less useful too, but that's the tradeoff with these things.

Probably reverse charged the first battery, blew the crap out of everything when it was hooked up, then with the crap blown out of the alternator, any new battery will make the same smoke show?

OP's car is in Bulgaria, so you can remove his from your Oz count.

Add front upper control arm bushes to the list of curses. At least we have glass headlights.

Yeah, I was aware of the daughter and other cop friend link. I was sticking it to you for your possible Freudian slip!

Is that because they're a bunch of pricks?

^^ Yuh, precisely. The behaviour exhibited by mine was so weird that I struggle to come up with better ideas than the possible UFO.

I'd have to be driving underneath one of the UFOs from Close Encounters of the Third Kind for that sort of inductive interference!

It's not a circuit! It is a spinning magnet dragging around a metal cup. It is a physical device. There are no electronics involved.

Model # of old battery? Model # of new battery? Photos? Next, seeing as it sounds like a pretty severe short, have you considered putting a multimeter, set to continuity/resistance, onto the main +ve battery lead** and seeing if there is much resistance to body earth? **without the battery being connected, of course, and with a new fuse in place.

Perzactly what I had to do recently when one of my original pair shat the bed after 20 years of use.

Apples and donkeys. The R32 speedo is mechanical. How does a spinning magnet in a cup turn the cup twice as hard as it usually does?

That actually sounds worse!

What else have you done just before that? Don't say "nothing", because dead shorts don't appear from nowhere.

Hack up and epoxy bodge job? Nasty.

I just wanted to bring this slightly back on track, and also disagree slightly with Tao. If Tao was talking about the Z32 AFM in the cooler piping - I would not do that. The old Hitachi plastic tube AFMs are not supposed to be put into pressure pipework. They are not really mechanically strong enough for it. The modern card style AFMs are easy to fit to pipework and everything about that installation is strong enough to handle boost.