Clonking exhaust

When we have passengers in the back or drive over speed bumps, the rear end of the exhaust has been clonking on what sounded like the floor of the car.

I had a look at it a week or so ago and found that there was a badly fitted exhaust clamp banging on the rear crossmember when the suspension was compressed. I've taken off the old, rusty clamp and fitted a new one in a better position. There are no clearance issues now so job's a good'un!

Power steering fixed

Since buying the car, the power steering has been a bit iffy. On full lock, the belt would squeal and chatter and it would sometimes stop working completely for a second or two.

£3.78 for a new belt, so I got one ordered rather than trying to tension the knackered old belt already on the car. When I came to replace the belt, I found what seems to be a common fault. The adjuster nut had been battered by someone trying to adjust the belt without turning the adjuster. I tried to get enough bite on the adjuster to continue to use it, but it was too far gone. I've had to adjust the belt and lock it off using the lock nut with a couple of washers behind it for the time being.

I have a feeling this knackered adjuster is the reason the original belt was chattering and squeeling. The power steering is now lighter than before and works lock to lock without issue. You can see the toothed section that the adjuster nut should mesh with in my 3rd picture below. I'll order a new adjuster at some point, but it'll do for now!

Lit up the backside!

I've just been out in the mid afternoon gloominess to sort out the lack of reversing lights. Unfortunately, the existing wires were black and crispy after spending the last 15 years on top of the gearbox. I traced them back to where the wiring was good and joined some new, flexible wiring to the exisiting loom. Gemma can now see where she is going when reversing and other people can see her intentions too. Reversing out of the drive has been a bit iffy with no lights!

I contacted a few breakers to see if they had an original plug available but it seems like they are as rare as rocking horse poo!

Hmmmm the sensor is duff after all

I repaired the broken wires to the lambda sensor, reset the fault codes. There were 2 intermittent fault codes and 1 other. Took the car for a run and it felt pretty much the same as before - slightly hesitant on small throttle openings. I checked the fault codes again and the intermittent ones have gone but there's still an error code for the lambda sensor reading so it must be duff.

As a test, I disconnected it and took the car for a drive again. No hesitation this time and throttle response at small throttle openings is much better. Soooo, looks like a new sensor is needed on payday. Still, at least it is driveable, albeit in safe mode which prevents the car revving beyond 5000rpm (according to what I have read). To be honest, we never rev it beyond 5k anyway so not a problem!

Lambda sensor problem possibly solved...

I finally got round to jacking the car up and sticking it on axle stands so i could wriggle far enough underneath (it's quite a low car!) to check out the lambda sensor. On first sight, all looked well but then i untucked the cables and found that at least one of the wires had snapped where they had been joined with small crimps connectors. This has probably got something to do with the intermittent lambda sensor fault the ECU keeps throwing up!  :op

Just need to strip the wires and rejoin them to see if the problem goes away or if the sensor itself is duff. Hopefully the sensor is ok as it looks pretty furred up and in an awkward position to get a socket (i have a proper sensor socket) and ratchet on there!

Fuel filter and pressure regulator

I've just thawed out enough to type after spending the last hour or so replacing the fuel filter and fuel pressure regulator on the car... Easy enough job, but made harder by numb fingers!

Replaced some vacuum hoses today.

I ordered some 3 and 5mm silicon vacuum hoses the other day and they arrived this morning. Here are some pictures of the hoses I've replaced so far. There are also a couple that are out of view and fiddly to get to so I didn't get pictures of them. The hose that goes from the intake manifold to the fuel pressure regulator had seen better days so was in need of replacing. The others didn't look so bad, but they were the old fabric covered type so replaced them just to be sure.

 

There's also a hose that attaches to the top of the intake manifold that had split around the jubilee clip so I trimmed this back to get a good seal

 

As a precaution, I decided to wrap the air intake pipe in Duct tape, to rule out any risk of there being any splits in the corrugated parts of the pipe, which are awkward to detect. Looks rough, but it's only a temporary measure until I've got to the bottom of the slight hesitation.

 

I was hoping the new fuel filter and fuel pressure regulator would arrive today but it seems like Christmas is slowing things down a bit with Royal Mail!

 

 

Oil breather hose

Here's a picture of the plastic oil breather pipe I replaced after finding a split that ran almost all the way round the pipe. It was being helt together with a bit of duct tape!

And another thing!

Just remembered another job i've done.... Replaced a leaky rocker cover gasket! It wasn't leaking much, but for the cost of a gasket, it was a job worth doing

The work continues...

• Ordered and replaced the crankcase oil breather pipe which had a pretty nasty split in, covered by duct tape!
• Ordered and replaced the clutch cable which was in desperate need of changing! I managed to track down a second hand part for just under £12 on ebay. The difference it has made is massive, although it was a pig of a job to change! I should really have taken pictures, but it was going dark and most of the job was done by feel. I could pass as a contortionist now, after the positions I had to get in, whilst reaching up behind the dashboard. Still, it was a job well worth doing.
• Ordered a new fuel filter.
• Ordered a fuel pressure regulator in an attempt to get rid of the occasional cough and fart!
• Ordered some 3 and 5mm vacuum hose to rule out any vacuum leaks on and around the intake manifold and fuel injection systems.
• I also need to repair the broken wires that go to the reversing light switch on the gearbox. Thanks to Phil (No Bike) from the Roadrunners bike forum for identifying the mystery part (yellow arrow) when I posted up the picture below... You can also see the creaky auto-adjusting clutch cable in the foreground.

I reckon the bits have cost me just over £100 so far so not too bad and proves it is possible to sort things out on a tight budget... Just takes some bruised knuckles, cut fingers and cursing! lol

And so the work begins....

 

The car is very clean and solid and in much nicer condition than some of the other, more expensive examples we looked at. The interior is in great condition too, with no rips or worn out seat bolsters, which as a pleasant surprise. It did come with some issues, but nothing too serious and working on the car keeps me out of mischief! lol! The car wasn't super smooth on the way home, throttle response was poor, it felt down on power and hesitated a couple of times. I'd describe this is a cough and a fart! Squeezing the throttle a bit harder or dipping the clutch and giving the car a quick rev soon cleared this. The clutch pedal felt terrible too - really creaky and notchy.

 

Here's a list of things I have done to the car so far....

 

• Downloaded a free version of VAGCOM and connected the car to my laptop. The only fault that was reported was "Lambda sensor upper limit intermittent". After some research, it turns out that this doesn't necessarily mean the lambda sensor is duff and could be down to something else causing the car to run incorrectly. I cleared the fault, but it came back after another run up the road.
• Replaced coil, dizzy cap, rotor arm, HT leads and spark plugs - Throttle response and acceleration is much improved since but not perfect.
• Checked air filter and air intake pipe for leaks. Air filter was like new and no leaks could be found anywhere.
• Replaced MAF (Mass Airflow) sensor that sits between the air box and intake manifold. I found that this was faulty by removing the electrical connector from the original sensor. This forced the ECU to run at a default setting, ignoring the air flow sensor completely. This improved running a hell of a lot so confirmed that the original sensor was duff. I got a replacement sensor for £14.95 from an online breaker.
• Attempted to get some lub on the top of the clutch pedal and on the auto-adjuster section of the clutch cable under the bonnet. This improved it very slightly, but it was still no good really

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Intro

 

We bought Gemma a 'new' car in mid-November after looking out for a reasonably cheap hatchback for a while. The plan was to find something a bit cheaper to insure than her old car but not something too boring.

After looking at lots of ideas, I spotted this 1998 mk3 Golf GTI 8v on ebay and decided to bid on it. We won the auction for £527 and collected the car the very next day.