What did you do to your MKIV today?

Andyinchville1 said:

I put 4 Hankook Cinergy h735 tires on my car (upgraded size from 205 70 r 15 ecopias to 205 75 r15 ..
I'm hoping for better fuel mileage because of the overall larger tires...

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The tire circumference will be greater, so your odometer will show fewer miles traveled than actual. So you may think that your fuel mileage has declined, but this will not be so.

I have spare 109s in a couple TDIs but in 18 years and perhaps 10-12 TDIs I've never had a Relay 109 fail.

I bought a new 109 when I had a no start issue. Classic symptoms of no glow plug light, etc. Ended up being a bad ECU...

Cheap insurance as mentioned, but I think one of those things largely blown out of proportion from 20 years ago.

IndigoBlueWagon said:

I have spare 109s in a couple TDIs but in 18 years and perhaps 10-12 TDIs I've never had a Relay 109 fail.

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Better to have and not need than to need and not have. IOW, this is one of those ounce of prevention vs pound of cure situations.

My dad had one fail in his 2001, drove it home with a jumper wire from the battery + to the fuel shutoff solenoid. Luckily it was just 7 miles.

My 02 got its 7th set of tires yesterday.

Based on the mountain of positive feedback around here, I went with the General Altimax RT43s this time, in my usual 205/60R15 size.

They replaced a set of Nokian WRG3s I'd had on for the past couple years. The molded-in tread depth indicators on the center rib still claimed I had about 4/32 left, but their grip in the wet took a noticeable turn for the worse on the drive to work this past Tuesday morning - coming around an offramp at about 35-40 that I take every day, I actually felt the car start to slide a bit and had to back off. To the Nokians' credit, backing off the speed settled the car back down without incident, but a noticeable drop in wet traction tends to turn on my "replace tires now" light.

Disappointed in the Nokians, to be honest - for an "all weather" tire, their handling of wet pavement on this car started out mediocre at best and got downright unnerving at the end.

Got rain in the forecast in a couple days, gonna have a chance to see how I like the Altimax in the wet...

Saturday I drove my brother home to the DC area Saturday. About a 950 mile round trip. Thankful for not much traffic. The one fill I needed was 48.7 MPG. Lower than usual, but I was running at 85 most of the time, A/C on. Still not bad.

TornadoRed said:

The tire circumference will be greater, so your odometer will show fewer miles traveled than actual. So you may think that your fuel mileage has declined, but this will not be so.

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Hi,

Thanks for that... I think my current fudge factor for MPGs is 5 % .... a friend calculated for me that with the bigger tires my new fudge factor would be 8%

We I get my starter replaced I look forward to seeing some mpg figures ....

Thanks

Andrew

Here is a tire size calculator: https://tiresize.com/calculator/

Does anyone manufacture or sell a brush guard or deer guard for the front of a Jetta?

lyndonstrother Wrong thread.

Updated my cluster coding to correctly count my odometer miles after goofing and setting it to impulses that were way too high. Good times

romad said:

Better to have and not need than to need and not have...

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A Murphy's Law corollary can be written from this. I think having the spare prevents the original from dying. If the spare isn't there, Murphy will jump in and destroy the original.

I know how Murphy works. He lives at my house. He visits other places, but he lives at my house.

Cheers,

PH

Powder Hound said:

I know how Murphy works. He lives at my house. He visits other places, but he lives at my house.
Cheers,
PH

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Then who’s living in my basement........ ; )

4th timing belt change from IDParts plus new thermostat and housing. Lock tight on right side drive shaft due to bolts being loose. Checked wheel bearing play and all were good.

Onward to 400k!

Yesterday I went to one one the PYP yards here and pulled brm intake and turbo, intake needs cleaning, turbo looks like it was recently placed in the car. No play and spins freely. Also had no difficulty removing any of the manifold bolts.

Also picked up a completed lift gate harness that was in really good condition.

Had 2 BRM and 1 BEW to pick over, decided I’m gonna use that yard more over the one used to go to. Most times everything is strips within days at it!




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csstevej said:

Then who’s living in my basement........ ; )

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Actually, he is only visiting for long periods.

That's how the Portland yard is over here. I don't even bother going there anymore unless I'm reaallly desperate. Sucks, because that's also the only local yard that pulls stuff off cars before dropping them in the yard. Your yard seems to be pretty liberal with their paint markings though.

Nero Morg said:

That's how the Portland yard is over here. I don't even bother going there anymore unless I'm reaallly desperate. Sucks, because that's also the only local yard that pulls stuff off cars before dropping them in the yard. Your yard seems to be pretty liberal with their paint markings though.

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The guy didn’t realize the turbo and manifold were one, he was about to charge me for exhaust manifold and turbo! They will be gone before it gets on the car!


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Long day (I'm slow...)

So I finally have the time to get some work done on my 4-dr, because I MUST do it before the middle of next month.

Today I:

1) Replaced both front springs
2) Replaced the right side strut with a new Koni. The left side was done a couple of months ago in emergency mode because it was displaying Koni's famous amazingly fast rust and the bottom of the strut looked like it was splitting under compression.
3) Replaced both control arms
4) Swapped the inner CV joints
5) Replaced 1 spring perch, but am regretting it. My old spring perches are rusty and don't look good, but they're still stronger and have better dimensions than brand new TRW perches, which appear to be very cheap stampings compared with the OEM ones. If you are contemplating this, get OEM perches from VW. The aftermarket ones are not worth the trouble. I just wonder if this is the beginning of the end for TRW's previous reputation for quality, or did they have brain fade on just this one part...

Swapping the CV joints was the one thing I was a little iffy on, as in, do I really need to do it. There was a very mild front end vibration that disappeared entirely when I lifted my foot off the go pedal, and that sort of matches the inner CV joint indication. But the usual indication is a steering wheel shimmy while this was just a faint vibration, not felt through the wheel. I decided to do it anyway.

The passenger side CV joint was perfect. 283k miles, and the balls are shiny perfect and the races have a couple of shiny spots on them, but no noticeable wear. The driver's side was a different story, with 2 races on the inner spider showing pits. The pits were rather shallow, and there were only 2, so that must be why the vibration was so mild.

But the upside is that I'm glad I did it because the problem would only have gotten worse. So now it is off to another 200k miles on these original CV joints. Yay!

Cheers,

PH

Chapter 2

Today I decided to work on the a/c as well as the front clip.

Both front fenders have been replaced, but the replaced parts were a silver left fender (the car is white) and a "white" right fender that has seen better days. Recently I found a guy parting out a golf that has sat for many years (10, I think) but instead of fixing it and driving on (had a timing belt mishap) he just let it sit. I got the front fenders and the hood. The fenders had a little bit of rust in the usual places, but just on the back side, and the hood has rust in a couple of strange places in the bracing. I was able to sand blast the fenders and use some rust blocking paint products and today installed them.

I replaced my hood because while I did it myself (there's a post about doing a hood mold in the far distant past) I decided it was time for it to go until I decide to re-do it to be a little more accurate on size. So, back to OEM. Unfortunately, adjusting the hood is a new game I'm not good at, so that's going to take a while longer.

Also I did the RCV valve in the a/c compressor, but I did not find the connection for my vacuum pump to the freon manifold. Hmmmpf! I'll have to find it tomorrow to find out how I did. For now, it is back together, but there's still some work to do.

Last, I decided I need to check the balance of my front wheels at least, but in looking over the tires I see that I mounted a directional tire incorrectly, so it is rolling backward. Sheesh, I didn't even see that. I'm never buying directional tires again!!! But this is a rash oath - I didn't think I was buying them when I got this pair...

Cheers!

PH

The reman off the shelf Bosch starter quit after 3 weeks use. I got a used one from a yard local to me & my mkIV fired right up. I'm so happy right now.

pulled the A, B, and C pillars, along with the rear headliner trip pieces. Painted them black with the Dupli-Color cloth and vinyl paint. Part of my swap to an all black interior. Pretty happy with how they came out so far. Will see how long the smell lasts. I have it sitting in a warm outdoor shed for a couple days to allow them to off gas.

Will be painting the rear hatch trim pieces with Black plastic paint. Cleaned them with acetone tonight. WIll paint either tomorrow if it does not rain or the next day if it does rain.

carl20320 said:

pulled the A, B, and C pillars, along with the rear headliner trip pieces. Painted them black with the Dupli-Color cloth and vinyl paint. Part of my swap to an all black interior. Pretty happy with how they came out so far. Will see how long the smell lasts. I have it sitting in a warm outdoor shed for a couple days to allow them to off gas.

Will be painting the rear hatch trim pieces with Black plastic paint. Cleaned them with acetone tonight. WIll paint either tomorrow if it does not rain or the next day if it does rain.

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Pictures if you would please when you have an opportunity...

After reading the Check your fans sticky and discovering a partly seized fan, into Concept 1 for new fans, coolant flush, new thermostat and temp sensor. And an oil change.
Big shout out and thanks to Concept 1 for spotting a leaking water pump and replacing it under warranty.
Hopefully improved AC in the summer and better heater in the winter.....

Oh, and a new thermostat housing. The old was rough.
"Did it break when you tried to move it?"
"We looked at it......"

Many thanks guys.

And thanks to the Check your fans sticky and TDI club

Yea, that Check your radiator/condenser fan operation NOW

is excellent. More than just the fan business. Fairly complete troubleshooter for the (98)99.5-2003 MKIVs AC.

The rest of this week

So I was able to finish charging the a/c after pumping it down. I am frustrated with my freon manifold because the little check valves don't seem to allow freon to be added if the system is at vacuum. Kinda defeats the purpose if you ask me, so I will eventually need to find new hoses. Or just new fittings.

I ended up buying a cheapie fill hose at a FLAPS to get the whole thing going. Eventually I got it all to work.

I also finished fitting the new-to-me front clip. It is a PIA to get the hood done right single handed, but after about 40 tries I did it. Also, I had to make a mad dash to get a new-to-me hood latch mechanism. I watched a you-tube video on fixing this thing, but that was that guy's problem and not exactly mine. I finally gave up after a couple of hours and moved on to the rear springs, because my parts source wasn't going to be available until about noon. And the replacement latch works great.

The rear springs were interesting to get fitted. I was sure they would not be as much trouble as the fronts, but I ended up unbolting the shocks anyway as there is just too much in the way for my spring compressors to really work. It ended up I only needed 1 per spring. And at full droop, I only needed about 3cm of compression on the spring. So it all worked out.

After fitting the wheels well inserts, the new pancake pipe (my original one was of a type nobody has ever seen - it bolts together with about 15 small screws) worked out finally. My biggest problem was that since the pancake pipe is different than the OEM one, and requires a metal end on the rubber pipe from the turbocharger, I needed to replace the original. It would NOT come off. I ended up cutting it off after a couple of really frustrating hours since the band clamp wrench jaws go perfectly closed when you try it out, but when you are using it on a band clamp, it leaves about 4mm gap, just enough so that the clamp won't come off. Ugh.

After cutting the old one, then the same sort of problem popped up with the replacement, but fortunately it cooperated before I started screaming in frustration. That car likes to push me to my limit in fighting me, even though I'm trying to do the right thing for it!!!

So it is now all together, new front clip, new suspension (the only thing left is the axle beam bushings, and they'll have to wait), working a/c, and all there is left is to fix the front tires. That's tomorrow.

Cheers,

PH

BobnOH said:

Yea, that Check your radiator/condenser fan operation NOW

is excellent. More than just the fan business. Fairly complete troubleshooter for the (98)99.5-2003 MKIVs AC.

Click to expand...

That thing was very helpful in my troubleshoot/rebuild of my ac. A little tough to get a handle on it at first, but the nuts and bolts of what should be happening at every single wire is excellent.

This all happened yesterday (Saturday).

So I took care of the tires. I also took care of extra wheel sets with worn tires and mounting a new set as well as a couple of singles. In all, I took 12 tires to be thrown away, I have 2 spare wheel and tire sets as well as what's on the cars, and a lot more room in the garage.

And after a road test, the following is fixed:

1) The a/c works. Even after sitting a couple of days since recharging the system, it works. And while it was not blisteringly hot yesterday late when I took my test drive, it put out frost bite cold air, so I'm happy with that. The vibrations I was getting from a normal drive can be readily attributed to road surfaces and the fact that those tires on the car are actually snow tires. I'll probably need to change that before my next road trip, but if there's no time it won't be a big problem and I'll just turn up the radio until the wife objects (which will take her about 2 minutes).

2) Inner CV joint vibrations gone. They were gentle, hard to even notice. Usually people wait until they complain about steering wheel shimmy, but mine only had 2 pits on one of the joints, so the vibration was hardly noticeable.

Now the only thing left (yeah yeah, I forgot about this thing above) is to cure my turbocharger's reluctance to produce boots. I am convinced that it is due to a very worn actuator ring since the CHRA appears to be just fine.

Got a spare in the garage, so I'll use that if it checks out. It has a lot less mileage (less than half, IIRC) so in all likelihood it will work. I just need to find a way to stick a wire in there to see if the vanes exhibit much in the way of play. In this case I'll be looking to see if it is obvious that it has the same problem as my OEM unit, since a definitive examination would require disassembly. I don't really have time for that right now.

Oh, and I happen to have some spare OEM wheels. If you want a set of Avus, Santa Monica, Hakunamatatta, Fat Fives, Long Beaches, or Keskin KT-5s, check my for sale thread. No photos yet, but lots more detail.

Cheers!

PH