Progress on Projects

After the delight that was working on the CX, I shifted my attention to other motors for a couple of days.

The Golf

This car has been lying in bits far too long! Bought about eleventy years ago, its hardly turned a wheel since coming into the Burd’s hands. Due to a variety of reasons, progress has been at a stop for a few years. But no longer!

When parked up, the car had an annoying tendency to flick its oil pressure buzzer on randomly – with accompanying red light of doom. The Mk1 golf gti can apparently suffer from failures in the instrument cluster circuit board than can cause the warning to go off, or it could be that the oil pump was mullered. For £35 I’d rather not find out that it was the latter.

I drained the sump – lovely clear golden oil came out- lucky if she’d done 50 miles on it.

Total Barnfind!

Then it was hunners o 10mm bolts to get the sump off- all coming out easily, and only needing a 1/4″ drive ratchet.

Looks a bit grimy!

2x 13mm bolts release the oil pump and it just drops down – the drive spline is simple to line up and a fairly chunky thing.

With the old pump off, I was able to double check that the new pump was the same – luckily (having been bought 5 years ago!) it was.

That’s done a shift (184k miles)

The new one had the baffle fitted, and was then offered up, slotting home happily.

With that done I thought it was time do something rare- actually cleaning and painting things.

 

Luckily I had my scabby shorts on, as the item to be renovated was the sump. 33 year old sumps are not pretty things, in fact, you could go as far as to say that this was manky.

Boggin!

A strong soap mix, plus Jetwash made short work of the clag, and I was able to set up the prep and paint shop.

First up was a guid coat of rust killer, with the Sump having been heated to dry it off.

Coated after heating..

Then it was time for a couple of coats of high temp black paint – with each coat being treated to a heat cycle courtesy of the two fan heaters.

Lookin no bad!

All that is needed now is a new gasket, and it’ll be good to go back on.

I also got the waterpump and thermostat tightened up, with the associated pipework refitted and tightened up.

Next up was a recce to see what parts were still kicking about for fitting.

What goodies are hidden in here?

New discs and front springs

New dampers were also found.

The setup for the front dampers is the same on the mk1 golf as it is on the e30 – the damper inserts slot into the strut, and are held in by collars.  The ones on the car were very ropey, so we’d managed to get a spare set to tidy up.

These are the “good” ones

Completely blocked drain holes!

Application of some wire wheel/rust stripper got them looking half decent, and ripe for some rust killer.

Before that though, we had to remove the collars and the bearings found underneath – a C spanner and some judicious tapping with a hammer saw to that.

 

The last thing to do was to strip down the original struts from the car – for reference and to see how far gone they were. By the pictures below you can see that they were well overdue replacement!

 

Looks like some topmounts, spring cups and bump stops are needed. Moreover, some front arms and track rod ends will likely be required.

 

The 205

2 major things were wrong with the car – Firstly the fuel system seems to be drawing in air, and secondly the brakes were horrible.

 

second things first then..

When braking there was a horrible pulse from the front left- feeling like a warped disc or sticking caliper.

The likely culprit

Initial investigation the other week highlighted that the pads were not wearing evenly, and that the disc seemed to be out of true. New pads and discs were procured cheaply so we set about fitting them.

First up, the disc retaining screw. The Hulk must have worked in the garage that last did the discs, as a herculean effort including an impact drive, penetrating oil and even a blowtorch was required to get the bleeding thing out.

It may be small, but it was a bastard.

Once it was out, the disc came off easily, without the caliper being removed. the hub was cleaned up, new disc installed, and the pads of much newness fitted.

Phwoar!

the other side took 5 minutes- no issues at all. Result? brakes are now superb- strong, consistent and controllable, well worth the moderate expenditure.

Onto the fuel issue then..

Several chaps knowledgeable in such things had suggested that as the car was running on a 40% WVO mix, the additional viscosity and pumping effort required to draw the fuel could show up any weaknesses/ potential air leaks in the fuel system.

This seems to be what is happening – if you prime the system, and bleed the pump, she’ll run grand for 5 mins, then you can feel the performance reduce. Despite this, I’ve put 600+ miles on her in 3 days – I don’t really do mechanical sympathy;)

First up, I replaced the leak off pipes – no difference.

All new leak off pipes

Then we checked the injectors- seeing some bubbling at the seal at the left most one – with nothing showing at the others. We checked it was tight with a 27mm spanner but it seemed to be fully home.

There also seemed to be fuel leaking from the base of the fuel filter housing, but that was left untouched as I had to keep the car in 1 piece to get home – subsequent investigations showed it to be hammering out a fair rate of fuel- so I’m scouting for a replacement part.

The air filter was mawkit, so got a good clan prior to refitting (I’ll likely swap it for a new one should I get the bleeding thing to work..)

Not the cleanest of filters

 

Its also running on Derv at the moment, but is still bloody grumpy and not keen to hold and idle.

Got to love French cars..