Sunday, April 12, 2009

Solving Mysteries

I did more reading and talked with Andy some about cars. I think my mystery vacuum line is supposed to run back underneath the car to the gas tank. This then ties into the charcoal canister and captures fuel fumes rather than releasing them to the atmosphere. That line has a hole and needs replacing, but one mystery solved. I also should correct my thinking in the previous post about vacuum being generated by the exhaust. It is generated by the pistons as they bring air in (perhaps I mis-read someone who said it generates it as it exhausts). So the intake manifold is thus the source of vacuum when air is sucked into the cylinders.

There is still a capped hard line in the same location as the above line that I cannot identify. It runs underneath the intake so I’m trying to remove that to see more. I’ll need some PB blaster or something to loosen those bolts though. I have an all-angle allen key and managed to break off the rounded end inside one of the bolts when trying to remove it. Thankfully it didn’t bind so I could pull it out easily with a magnet.

I think that whole in the trans-axle, is a vent around the flywheel. I’m not sure if this is part of the trans-axle or the engine, but it’s in the vicinity. From my reading this engine was supposed to have a small slit vent, not a big hole, so I’m a little confused. However, more recent models of this engine are supposed to have a hole capped with a plastic piece. Perhaps this is a later model replacement frame, or I’m not clear on when the change occurred. Either way, I’m going to want to find some way to cover that, because I don’t like such a large upward facing hole with no vent cover.

I’ve slowed my messing around in the engine bay and decided to mess with the other end of the wiring mess for a bit. So I took the interior apart. I discovered that this car does have the central locking vacuum pump, not sure what will be needed to make it work. It’s hard to test components with the battery out of the vehicle. I don’t quite understand how it locks and unlocks the fuel door with this, but did discover that I will need to drill out a riveted piece and find a replacement if I want to get the fuel door to stay shut anymore. It currently flaps around as I drive.

I removed all the cruise control wiring and its control box. I don’t see how to remove the vacuum and electric switches on the pedals so I will probably just leave those. I also removed a hot start pulse relay. I’m not sure why it is in this car. I know it was in the cabriolet version, and was a recommended upgrade to install them on the automatic versions of this due to the location of the starter in those cars. But this car isn’t supposed to need or be helped by one. Either way I pulled it out for now. It won’t be that hard to reinstall if it does turn out to be beneficial.

• Posted by jfs at 23:32:38 in Scirocco
• Add a comment