VW Specialist - Dublin or N4 to Mullingar

GTE

Hi all,

My year 2000 Mark 4 Golf TDI is in need of a service (nearly 200,000 miles). I have been posting a thread here or there trying to fix certain problems but sadly the only thing I was able to diagnose was a faulty dash light dimmer, not bad for a drummer

Anyway, below is a list of issues and background for the car. I post this incase its useful to a mechanic reading. I know of George Dalton and how he is rated on Board 47, but Portlaoise is a bit out of my way. I am based near enough to the N4 and Dublin to Mullingar is fairly handy for me. I am open to all options really, but being on my tod, a courtesy car if my wagon will be off the road for a while would be lovely and open me up to a wider area (probably a long shot)

- Steering wheel looks to be off, straight is actually pointing a little bit to the right

- Smoke, I have had smoke in the dark under acceleration for a long time, but not an ounce in the day time, but today when accelerating to the motorway a fair puff of dark smoke came out of the car which is a first.

- Brakes, they are squeaking slightly. It has been a few years since a pad (and disc) change.

- There are some knocks here and there, probably the odd bushing and there is something when I reverse and apply the brakes sometimes too. I am interested in polyurethane replacements for whatever can be replaced with them. The Golf seems to eat front rubber bits. :P

- I have flickering headlights (flickering in intensity) which go away when the engine is revved (maybe alternator/battery) but sometimes the lights go off for an instant when going over some bumps. I am yet to check the ground connections due to time but lets just say for now that its an issue.

- The radiator was leaking, which got fixed up with some radweld but it is moving about in its bracket so that deserves a little investigation on condition.

For a 13 1/2 year old car, 3 of those issues are just wear and tear with the odd minor worry so I think that is fairly good.

I also want a head to toe inspection of the wagon and if possible some TLC given to the engine to see if it can be, well not tuned, its a just a TDI but if anything can make it run better than it is then great. I hope to have the car for a lot more miles. I have been doing servicing myself for the past few years aside from big jobs, so a fine tooth comb check from a mechanic would be good peace of mind. A remap would be interesting if the turbo can take it. I am tempted to do a DIY injector cleaning as it does not look too bad if I do two at a time.

Hopefully from now, I can start judging costs and at least get the car given a once over to establish what needs doing.

All the best
bbk

GTE

Well, after a bit of a trek to George Daltons the car got a bumper to bumper inspection and was given a very clean bill of health. All that is needed is a fluid service when the time comes which is good to know, peace of mind there. It was also good and cheap so the drive there and back was worth it.

Headlights - Electrical Issues
It looks like I have been able to sort out the headlight issue. There was nothing serious going when checked by George and he said that tracking it down could turn expensive for an intermittent problem which was only a noticeable nuisance rather than a problem affecting safety.

Today, I had the first chance to get into the engine bay. Once the battery was out I had a bit of an archeological dig around with a brush and cleaned up the ground connections, though there was nothing corroded there, just dust and a few generations of bugs.

Attached is a set of photos of an electrical connector that has some issues. I have no idea what it is or what it does, but I wrapped some electrical tape around it and in combination with the cleaning the headlight issue seems to have stopped.

Normally, I would see the headlights die for a couple of instances within 30 seconds of leaving the house but all is good now.

Smoke
Too early to say if the smoke is gone as it is intermittent but I noticed that the front of the CCV was loose and that there was a lot of gunk surrounding it. I have cleaned it up and will monitor if it gets dirty again but possibly this is a cause of smoke depending on how much the CCV has come out of its normal resting place? The car is also meant to be slightly down on power so maybe that is the cause of that too. I hope so, I would love to have all of my rip roaring 90 horses back =P


Other issues
I would say a lot of what I noticed was me thinking that there should be something wrong with such an old car, but it turns out that the knocking is probably the brake pad as the knock I hear only happens when reversing and applying the brakes.

I also chucked in a new engine air filter too.

EDIT:
For the second photo, notice where the gear selector mechanism is at the top and the word "connector" is where the positive batter cable goes to. Hopefully that will give people an idea of where this connector is.

GTE

I found the Haynes manual and the plug is for the starter motor. No idea how it could cause issues with headlights.