really bad day just turned a little brighter....I am one lucky !@%&*()...
I haven't driven my 99.5 much since I got in this thing, so today I thought I would take it for a spin, a quick spin(a trip to get things up to normal temps before we take a trip in the denver area into some winter weather).....
Cranked up just fine, drove the wife to work, not a problem...then on the way home I got a whiff of BD & D2 coming in the heated air....then I saw I was marking the road with a dotted line of fuel to trace my travels when I got home. It was a very light drip, not much of a fuel drip so I threw some atf-4 with stop leak mixed in the full tank again. Then I took for a varied speed drive of about ~25 miles to give the seals a good coating with some temp built up in the fuel from getting my speeds up close to ~80 mph on a local freeway...
Now this car(99.5 Jetta) has had the top of the top of the pump off a few times over the years with that upper seal replaced each time. It did sit for at least two years at the end of my adopted "father"s life" with it only being driven a few times when I took him off for a ride to eat or to a doctor apt....
The pump seals have given me a scare a time or two with an unknown drip on the bottom of the pump, that went away with an adding of a container of auto-trans stop leak to the fuel, like I did again today.
When I got back home after the end of the drive I got another whiff of leaking fuel so I got down on the ground to take a look see...not good was my thought as enough fuel was flowing under the car to oil a dirt road to cut down on the dust flying while traffic would traverse...
I put down some newspaper then backed the car into the garage, thinking the worst! Took the plastic cover off to get a look see, then I was a little puzzled as to seeing the top of the engine being covered in fuel???? I got a bright light out then cranked the engine back up to try to see where the flood of fuel was coming from expecting the worst.,,,,,.....anyone care to guess?
To my dismay and relief, it was not the fuel pump spewing out fuel, but thankfully there was a pinhole leak in the top of the injector braided fuel line return cap spraying fuel up into the air. I spent over an hour looking through my tool boxes that I know somewhere in one of them, there is a new replacement cap somewhere in an envelope.....
I finally gave up the search and took a new piece of braided fuel line with a screw inserted to make a cap until mid-week when I can buy a replacement...
So thankfully this day went from what I thought was going to be a week-long nightmare of pulling the pump apart to replace seals, into a repair that will cost me more time to go the parts store & back next week...
....merry x-mass to me, and to all that read this....may all who have need of repairs this week be as lucky as I was today!....