I'm sorry if this post sounds a bit scatty, I'm really disheartened and a bit pissed off with the car as I'd spent the whole weekend working on the golf with my girlfriends dad, changed the front disks & pads for some brembo ones which were on offer at GSF, we modded the oil breather so that it no longer pumps oily condensation back into the air inlet, we dropped the oil, swapped the filter & filled it back up with some nice oil & some "Wynn's oil treatment" which is meant to reduce wear and enhance the natural properties of the oil. We changed the fan belt (which started squeaking tonight when it overheated! altho it sounds more like the alternator squeaking than the belt!??!). We searched high & low for this damned water leak, but couldn't find one, so decided to let me replace the pressure cap today and see if it was that which was leaking a litre of water\steam a day (50 miles). When we had done, it ran so smoothly with the oil breather mod in place and I was chuffed to bits with the results. Especially as I've also just been paid out £1000 for a saxo which I wrote off a few months ago into the back of someone with a towbar! oops! anyway, I'd decided to spend the £1000 on the golf and priced up a black mohair roof, wheel refurbishing (i really like the look of alloys with the center powder coated black and the rims left silver - i thought this would look the dogs as the Brock b2 alloys i bought are deep dished 7" wide jobbies!) and I was also looking around for places to do me a full re-spray of the car - keeping it the same colour (rare white) but just making it all shiney and new!
But, it looks like the damn engine has other plans for my £1000!
Another branch of the saga reared its ugly head too tonight, as when i was trying to work out why it had overheated tonight (working in the dark after it had cooled down, having to wave my arms around to get the sensor light on my garage to come on every 5 Min's!!) i had filled up the expansion tank and had started the engine to let it warm up, then i noticed that there was a faint whiff of petrol, upon closer inspection, it was coming from the fuel rail (i think thats what it is), over on the left of the rail, behind the round silver thing with a fabric coated pipe going into it, just next to the place where the fuel pipe connects to the rail i found traces of petrol which seemed to be seeping from somewhere (possibly the pipe) and running down the rail onto the injector.... "Bugger" i thought, "can things get any worse!". So I tried mopping up the petrol, thinking that maybe it was just hanging around for some other reason! but it kept, slowly, seeping down the rail!! ARSE!... so i turned the engine back off (water was leaking out of the expansion tank cap anyway by this point) and mopped up all traces of petrol, which did clear up so i thought I'd be able to see better where it was coming from. Whilst mopping it up, i did push the fuel pipe down onto its connector, just in case it had some muck or something in it causing it to leak, but it didn't seem to move at all (not that i expected it to with a jubilee clip on it!!) then i started the engine back up and low & behold, no more leak! so whether this was a one off random occurrence, or whether its waiting until i drive it to work in the morning to start off again, i do not know!! by any chance is this a common problem?
Oh dear, i seem to have wrote a bloody essay! Sorry about the length of the post. I hope it hasn't put you off reading it as I really am stuck. I do have a lot of passion for cars, but as you can probably tell, I'm not that great with them. By trade I work with computers and that is my area of expertise! So if I can pick anyones brains about my car, then I'll return the favor by way of computer assistance!
I love this car and I know it's a classic which would prefer to be locked up in a museum, but I'm sure that it has a few more years life left in it yet... I was looking forward to making it a minter with this spare grand that I wanted to spend on it, but after tonights episode, I'm tempted to throw the dosh at a motorbike (Africa twin) to get me to work & back! but that would mean that this golf may just get left to rot and I'm sure that would be a serious crime of the dub variety!
Right, anyway, best get some sleep, else I'll be asleep at the side of the M1 waiting for the AA when i brake down in the morning.
I'm hoping someone will be able to help in some small way. Anything at this point would be greatly appreciated, so many thanks in advance (anticipation!).
Kind Regards,
Chris.
p.s. to answer the questions posed earlier in the thread; It's a K reg 1992 Mk1 Golf Cabriolet "Karman" with a factory fitted 1.8 gti 8v lump, which i think has a digifant ecu (altho i cant be sure - someone may be able to confirm from the year\spec?). The black temp sender i replaced for the dash guage was a 2 pin one. What is a "sniff" test? is it to test for an airlock? is there a way to clear one if there is? and would it cause me to have to keep topping the water up (every time the red light on the temp guage flashes - but temp is normal)
