My Volkswagen love affair (read constant wallet lightening) started with a 99.5 White 2.0 Golf with an auto. Actually, I never had a bit of trouble out of that thing. I didn't do any kind of aftermarket anything to it, and it didn't lighten my wallet at all. I'd change the oil and the filters and pile on the miles. Then, I fell asleep on the interstate, rear-ended a semi and killed that one in 2004. A couple of years later, I found a Green 2.0 manual 99.5 Golf for basically nothing with 90,000mi not running. I drove all the way to Florida to pick it up. I knew better, but for some reason, I couldn't resist it. It turned out that was just a MAF preventing it from running at that time and that I had a running VW again with minimal work and cost. Once I started driving it, I realized that EVERYTHING was wrong with it. It may have been a flood car. It may have had repaired coolant migration. Hurricane is my best guess. I don't know. I typically had it worked on rather than working on it because it hurt my feelings every time I tried something. I'd worked on antique tractors, a 70's International Scout, lawnmowers, etc but nothing fuel injected--nothing with a computer. My dad taught me to work on stuff, and he was the type of person who didn't want to have to use a manual during a repair. He'd just split a tractor in half, look at what was there and figure it out.
The Green Golf started turning up with missing coolant. I was baffled. This persisted for months, and I could never find a leak. I remembered the comfort I'd taken in being able to keep my own car running back when I had that Scout with the huge motor we'd swapped in it. Something would go wrong, and I'd figure it out myself, and I'd never worry about driving it anywhere--not because it was inherently reliable but because I could fix most anything that went wrong. Anyway, I ultimately found that missing coolant. The oil cap started having the smallest amount of milkshake underneath, and I sold that thing ASAP.
I bought a 1985 Toyota Pickup with the plan that I'd use it to learn about working on EFI and daily drive it until I was financially in the position to turn it into an offroad capable restorationish project deal. You can read that story here if you're interested.
I got a job with a 55 mile commute and was just killing that old truck. It tops out at 55mph because of the gears, and it has 350k. I did some math about mileage and maintenance, and I bought my third MK 4 VW back in the second quarter of 2013. It's a Silver Jetta sedan. It's a 2002 (the year I graduated high school). Something about that not running, musty Silver Jetta--I think mostly the smell--reminded me of an MK1 Jetta diesel that my dad had briefly while I was in high school. I hated that thing then, but I wish I still had it now. This 2002 is automatic, so my girlfriend can drive it too, and it paid for itself in less than a year. I bought it not running, for $1900. I had a good amount of general repair work done to the suspension and brakes, a lot of neglected maintenance done and the timing belt replaced. I forget what all it was exactly. The guys at that place were nice but not quite as particular as I'd like maybe. After that, I just drove it for 50,000 mi with a falling out headliner, a radio that wouldn't shut off when I turned the car off, a cluster that reset every time I turned the car off and a persistent check engine light. I'd change the oil and the filters and hit the highway for another pile of miles. It ate an 01M all at once one day. Everything was fine one minute, then it just starts sounding like I've gone and put a can full of nuts and bolts in a paint shaker. I had that replaced with a used unit at a shop that I can't decide whether to recommend. In retrospect, it would have cost me a lot less to have swapped in a 6 speed from RyanP. I think I'll do that when it inevitably eats this one.
In January of this year, my dad passed away, and I was driving so much. I was in Tennessee, then Georgia, then Mississippi, then Tennessee, then back to Georgia--over and over and over. I was so sick of driving. I asked my girlfriend to drive the Jetta take us to dinner one night. She turned left onto the highway from our neighborhood and straight into a fellow driving a Ford Expedition at well over the speed limit. She said couldn't see him around the curve. I was looking to the right; he was coming from the left. I'm not sure how exactly it happened, but we collided, and his SUV flipped and slid ~200 feet on its roof. He left in an Ambulance, and I was left with a car that looked like this:
This was the third car I've "totaled", but this was the first time that it had been my fault (hers), I and only had liability insurance. I mistakenly let them take it to the impound. I should have had it towed straight to my house. It took me a little while to decide what I was going to do with the car. In the mean time, I purchased a 2010 Sportwagen TDI to drive because the Toyota is in full project mode. It's ripped all apart. I didn't know whether to start buying non running TDIs and start using the parts off of this thing or what. But, ultimately, I realized that I had an out of work friend who does amazing body repair. He needed something to do, so I had him come pick this thing up. He hadn't done much work on a Volkswagen before, so other than straightening sheet metal and straight up removing and replacing things, he wasn't going to be the person to get this thing actually driving reliably. He did source tons of junkyard parts for cheap and he did some really amazing work getting this thing back rolling and looking like a car:
At this point, we realized that we were missing an intercooler. It was just totally disintegrated, or exploded from the crash. No sign of it. He hadn't realized that we were missing that when he did the tear down. I sourced one from Darkside and a MAP. I put it together only to realize that I was missing the connector to the harness for the MAP. I bought a new connector but was unsure of which pins I needed to go in it. I found the correct pins by going to a junkyard and pulling them out of a turbo Passat with a blown motor:
I need to get one of those Paladin open terminal crimp tools and the 2031 and 2033 dies so that I can make good terminal connectins and make use of the great info that I later found on VW terminals from burpod, and graeme86 on here, and from darkscout on the vortex.
The Green Golf started turning up with missing coolant. I was baffled. This persisted for months, and I could never find a leak. I remembered the comfort I'd taken in being able to keep my own car running back when I had that Scout with the huge motor we'd swapped in it. Something would go wrong, and I'd figure it out myself, and I'd never worry about driving it anywhere--not because it was inherently reliable but because I could fix most anything that went wrong. Anyway, I ultimately found that missing coolant. The oil cap started having the smallest amount of milkshake underneath, and I sold that thing ASAP.
I bought a 1985 Toyota Pickup with the plan that I'd use it to learn about working on EFI and daily drive it until I was financially in the position to turn it into an offroad capable restorationish project deal. You can read that story here if you're interested.
I got a job with a 55 mile commute and was just killing that old truck. It tops out at 55mph because of the gears, and it has 350k. I did some math about mileage and maintenance, and I bought my third MK 4 VW back in the second quarter of 2013. It's a Silver Jetta sedan. It's a 2002 (the year I graduated high school). Something about that not running, musty Silver Jetta--I think mostly the smell--reminded me of an MK1 Jetta diesel that my dad had briefly while I was in high school. I hated that thing then, but I wish I still had it now. This 2002 is automatic, so my girlfriend can drive it too, and it paid for itself in less than a year. I bought it not running, for $1900. I had a good amount of general repair work done to the suspension and brakes, a lot of neglected maintenance done and the timing belt replaced. I forget what all it was exactly. The guys at that place were nice but not quite as particular as I'd like maybe. After that, I just drove it for 50,000 mi with a falling out headliner, a radio that wouldn't shut off when I turned the car off, a cluster that reset every time I turned the car off and a persistent check engine light. I'd change the oil and the filters and hit the highway for another pile of miles. It ate an 01M all at once one day. Everything was fine one minute, then it just starts sounding like I've gone and put a can full of nuts and bolts in a paint shaker. I had that replaced with a used unit at a shop that I can't decide whether to recommend. In retrospect, it would have cost me a lot less to have swapped in a 6 speed from RyanP. I think I'll do that when it inevitably eats this one.
In January of this year, my dad passed away, and I was driving so much. I was in Tennessee, then Georgia, then Mississippi, then Tennessee, then back to Georgia--over and over and over. I was so sick of driving. I asked my girlfriend to drive the Jetta take us to dinner one night. She turned left onto the highway from our neighborhood and straight into a fellow driving a Ford Expedition at well over the speed limit. She said couldn't see him around the curve. I was looking to the right; he was coming from the left. I'm not sure how exactly it happened, but we collided, and his SUV flipped and slid ~200 feet on its roof. He left in an Ambulance, and I was left with a car that looked like this:
This was the third car I've "totaled", but this was the first time that it had been my fault (hers), I and only had liability insurance. I mistakenly let them take it to the impound. I should have had it towed straight to my house. It took me a little while to decide what I was going to do with the car. In the mean time, I purchased a 2010 Sportwagen TDI to drive because the Toyota is in full project mode. It's ripped all apart. I didn't know whether to start buying non running TDIs and start using the parts off of this thing or what. But, ultimately, I realized that I had an out of work friend who does amazing body repair. He needed something to do, so I had him come pick this thing up. He hadn't done much work on a Volkswagen before, so other than straightening sheet metal and straight up removing and replacing things, he wasn't going to be the person to get this thing actually driving reliably. He did source tons of junkyard parts for cheap and he did some really amazing work getting this thing back rolling and looking like a car:
At this point, we realized that we were missing an intercooler. It was just totally disintegrated, or exploded from the crash. No sign of it. He hadn't realized that we were missing that when he did the tear down. I sourced one from Darkside and a MAP. I put it together only to realize that I was missing the connector to the harness for the MAP. I bought a new connector but was unsure of which pins I needed to go in it. I found the correct pins by going to a junkyard and pulling them out of a turbo Passat with a blown motor:
I need to get one of those Paladin open terminal crimp tools and the 2031 and 2033 dies so that I can make good terminal connectins and make use of the great info that I later found on VW terminals from burpod, and graeme86 on here, and from darkscout on the vortex.
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