Saturday, May 16, 2009
Tightened Steering
I hadn’t touched the Scirocco for a couple weeks after cleaning the engine bay. It looks a lot better, I can see metal rather than gunk. Today I cleaned a lot of the parts I had pulled out and so didn’t get washed with the engine bay. I also did a bunch of testing and inspecting of various components. I’m tying to put together an order for what needs replacing. I think I’ve covered a good deal of what is inspect-able except for the suspension and steering components. I need to get the car back up on the jack stands to get underneath and examine those. I think that all of the axle components and repacking of the wheel bearings and CV joints will wait until after the car is running again. Make sure everything in the engine bay is good and then put it up on jack stands and deal with the rest. It means I may need multiple orders for parts, but that’s ok.
I also installed the new steering column bearing that I purchased a while back. I don’t have a driver’s seat in the car to test it too much, but it seems to be much improved other the previous wobbly steering wheel.
Hopefully I can do some more inspection of parts tomorrow and then get an order underway shortly.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Power to the Shed
Whitney and I did some more work outside this weekend. We cut down and graded the path area and then firmly set the flagstones. We also bought a few more to finish the path all the way to the shed. Then we started to fill the rest of the path with river rock gravel. It will take a few trips buying a few bags to get all we need. The Land Cruiser could carry them all at once, but I don’t want to pull the cargo unit out, and we know we’ll be going back to Home Depot many more times before we’re done. We will have to pull up the logs that separate the path from the grass when we till and lay the sod. So we are only laying gravel in the path up to about 6” from the log. It has this unfinished look to it right now as a result. But we like what is there. I think we’ll be quite happy with the finished product.
I also ran electricity to the shed. There was a circuit in the garage that was dedicated to a freezer outlet. Instead of drilling up inside the wall to reach the circuit panel, I just tapped into that, ran it along a couple feet and then through a hole into the crawl-space and across the house. It was not fun working in the crawl space. There is lots of rat feces down there, though surprisingly clean otherwise. Before we finished grading the path and setting the flagstones, we trenched enough to bury some wire out to the shed. I wired up an outlet, some lights inside the shed, and some lights outside the shed. A little more work is needed to make it all safe (GFCI circuit breaker and a cover plate) but we turned it on with the current breaker and admired our lights and being able to see in the shed. Even during the day, with only one window, it used to be very dark in there.
While I was crawling around, Whitney was working on the irrigation system for our new vegetable garden. We’re doing a seasonal tap off the hose bib and taking that down into an underground box for the timer, back-flow preventer, and pressure regulator. A line then runs out to the vegetable garden and around various ways. She’ll figure out exactly where once we actually plant stuff.
In other news, after almost two weeks of frustrating attempts, I finally got the intake manifold off the Scirocco. It involved much dremeling and hacking at a stripped allen head bolt. Now I think I have things as far torn apart as I want. The next nice free evening I have, I’ll roll the Scirocco out into the driveway and start spraying the engine bay. Hose water, engine degreaser and much scrubbing and I’ll have something I can spot oil leaks in rather than something that is just a big pile of oil and grime itself. Once I get it cleaned or at least cleaner, I’ll put together a purchase order from a number of online places and get that going. Then I can start reassembly.
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.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Being Sick and more Scirocco stuff
I hate being sick. I was sick all last week, thanks Laurel! But I’m mostly recovered now. It does mean though that I didn’t get nearly as much research done as I would have hoped. However, things started to come together today and my learning started to converge, so I may not be as screwed for my meeting tomorrow as I thought. I will at least have something to show for the last two weeks.
I did do some work on the Scirocco since I last updated. Took apart more stuff, ordered a replacement bearing for the steering column while I was at the dealer’s today. I think if I can get the throttle body off while the engine is in the car, then I’ll just remove it and the valve cover and stop there, not actually remove the engine from the car. That is a lot safer in terms of being able to reassembly everything and I think if I can get the intake off I will have access to clean most of the engine bay.
I did find the charcoal canister, that I thought was missing. It’s hidden in the side wall and requires removing the wheel to get to it. But there are still several vacuum lines that are cut and go to nowhere and yet not part of the cruise control vacuum system. One goes to the vacuum advance on the distributor. Another leaky line (has a big hole in the side) leaves the expansion tank and goes back down the firewall and under the vehicle. This is not on any of the diagrams. I’m wondering what this goes to. My current thinking is that it goes to the component in the exhaust that generates the vacuum (Is that where most cars get their vacuum?) Various posts on VW-Vortex led me to that conclusion, but I’m not sure yet.
Another disturbing thing that has come up is that I have a large access hole in the trans-axle. I’m not sure what is supposed to be plugging it, but it is on top so it may have allowed all sorts of junk to get down in there. Even though it is supposed to be oil sealed for the life of the engine, I think it would be prudent for me to plug that hole and flush/refill the oil now. I really want to know what that hole is supposed to be for. It looks like the speedo and clutch cable holes, but I know where those two are.
I really should take some pictures of my work. Little bits of blue tape at the ends of all my hoses and wires telling me which goes where. There are lots of extra parts in the engine bay already, but I’d prefer not to generate more by forgetting where a certain piece goes.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Vacuum lines to nowhere
So I have solved the mystery of what the vacuum lines were for. They were part of the cruise control system, which is why they went to both the clutch and brake pedal. Activating either one should disable the cruise control. Since I hardly ever use the cruise-control in any vehicle, and would likely never use it in the Scirocco, I’m just going to remove the lines, and the associated control box and pump if I can find them.
I have also discovered that the charcoal canister, part of the emissions system is not there. The line that goes to it is just loose in the engine bay. So I think technically my car should not have passed emissions, even though it passed all the tests. I don’t think I ever need emissions again on it given it’s age, as long as I don’t try to register it here in Oregon. We’ll see. Perhaps that part will turn up somewhere else.
I’ve removed all the coolant tubing (most of it anyway) and some of the fuel air distribution system. I’m hesitant to start taking the fuel lines off because that will make a mess and send fuel everywhere. However, most of the electrical lines run under the fuel distributor, so I will need to remove it and the fuel filter to access and replace those electrical wires. I also think I need to remove it to get access to the shift linkage, which is the another area known to be looser than I’d like.
I did manage to remove the steering column, so I just need to find a source for those parts so I can reassemble it without that dreadful wobble it had. The bearing that holds the rod inside the column has been sitting loose at the base of the rod since I bought the car. It needs replacing to make the steering feel tight again. Possibly more work needs to be done to the actual rack, but just fixing the column will be a big improvement.