Adam's '92 VW Jetta GL 8V "HellInA"

as far as the oil pressure light, try running 20w50 (if you're not already). I did that to mine last year and haven't seen that light come on since

forgot to mention that Mikey at Barry Palmer Auto in Marietta suggested that. He said that the older VW's with high mileage seem to like 20w50 and run better

forgot to mention that Mikey at Barry Palmer Auto in Marietta suggested that. He said that the older VW's with high mileage seem to like 20w50 and run better

I pulled the oil pan and pump, cleaned the sludge out of everything. Replaced the filter and filled her with 20W50. So far she's running smooth and no warnings from the dash.

The 10w40 I drained from her was super dirty, but not burnt. You could see it on the funnel; a layer of particles settled on the plastic while fresh oil sat on top of it. So my intent of using the lighter oil seems to have worked, I got all the gunk out. I just didn't drive it as long as I had planned. I think I only ended up with about 200 miles.

Coolant light did come back on this morning. It's right at the MIN mark, so I'm just going to ignore the light and add just a few ounces at a time to see if it levels off or is actually leaking.

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-A. Dub
1992 MkII Jetta GL 8V

(I like playing with forums)
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Coolant seems to be fixed now. I clamped off the feed hose and removed the resevoir. I sprayed some brake cleaner in there and swished it around for a while. Did that a few times and got some gunk out of the brand new resevior... more rebuild sludge, next time I will flush it first. So now the sensor seems to be working fine. I'm still a little worried that the cap is not bleeding off pressure like it should be. Does anybody know if the cap is supposed to be completely tight, or backed off half a turn?

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-A. Dub
1992 MkII Jetta GL 8V

(I like playing with forums)
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as far as i know it is supposed to be completly tight. the inner guts allow the pressure to bypass. is the cap new? if so i have heard of new caps being bad. did it come from VW directly? or aftermarket OEM?

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madness in a can of spam.

New, came from GAP, but I'm pretty sure it is OEM supplier, not 3rd-party. It just screws down so much I don't see how it could vent, and the part with the o-ring doesn't seem to move much. It's not leaking anyhere as far as I can tell, but the level is dropping off slowly. Could it be that it's not holding any pressure and so there's just coolant slowly evaporating out over 50-60 miles?

_________________
-A. Dub
1992 MkII Jetta GL 8V

(I like playing with forums)
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Hellina has been down for the past ~month with another blown head gasket. I relized that I didn't get the timing right, but it wasn't so bad that she wouldn't run. Don't know if I have another problem, like a clogged cat, but I'm going to try a new headgasket and getting the timing right, then work from there.

_________________
-A. Dub
1992 MkII Jetta GL 8V

(I like playing with forums)
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good luck old bean PDT_Aliboronz_15

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madness in a can of spam.

After getting her running for about ten minutes, I got more coolant out the tailpipe. Mark told me to retorque the headbolts, which I did... same result. So after another "heat cycle", I decided to make sure they were all equally torqued. Started with #1, got a setting from it of about 110Nm, so by the time I hit the 4th one... pop. Yeah, that was too much. So now the head comes back off again.... I'm really dreading this, I think I'm done.

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-A. Dub
1992 MkII Jetta GL 8V

(I like playing with forums)
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so a VR swap is in the works? i will help you out with the work. but a G60 wit a Gladder would be sick.

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madness in a can of spam.

I'll be doing whatever's cheapest... so if you want to give me one of those VR6's laying around your garage for the price of scrap, plus all the parts... then it's on. Smilie_PDT

_________________
-A. Dub
1992 MkII Jetta GL 8V

(I like playing with forums)
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well if you want to rebuild one of them you can have the obd1 block i have.

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madness in a can of spam.

Monday night I got her running again. All seems to be well with the leaks gone, not nearly as much water out of the tailpipe, and no smoke. I drove her most of the day Tuesday, while it wasn't raining and she did pretty well, aside from a little bit of odd throttle response -- either there's some water in the tank or front wheels slipping because the tires are slick as shit.

Drove her to work on Wednesday, and developed a miss and started losing a lot of horsepower. I checked the plugs last night and #4 was wet with gas. I'm going to verify the timing marks and replace the rotor cap - I cracked one of the post shrouds and glued it back together, plus being wet = not a happy rotor. If that doesn't do it, I'll rotate injectors to see what I come up with.

_________________
-A. Dub
1992 MkII Jetta GL 8V

(I like playing with forums)
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I guess it's time for an update...

Cracked all 4 pistons around the ring grooves, pretty ugly. Got a CIS motor, stripped the block and had it hot dipped, machined, and IS bearings put in at Reeve's - good work, very quick and cheap. Built it back up with all new parts, aside from the heavy peices, used the CIS rods and pistons and the Digi head. Painted her "cast iron grey", and after a very busy summer, finally got it installed.

This week I finally put the finishing touches on her and got her fired up. For some reason I always have the distributor timing off on inital startup, so it took me a bunch of tries to get her runnning. I think that dumped a bunch of gas in the cat; by the time Mark and I got the timing checked out, the cat was seriously glowing. Odd thing was that it was glowing from the back side. I had to figure it is because of the massive restriction at the end of the straight pipe, going from 2.5" to 1.75", was making the gases back up into the cat. Anybody got a better explaination?

We took her for a test run, got half way down the block and the oil pressure buzzer went off around 3kRPM, cleared it, tried again... car kept losing power, but the buzzer was only going off above 2500. After a day of wondering, tried it again and wouldn't start at all. Mark came over and we checked the cat for meltdown, good; tried spraying starting fluid and got a few fires out of it; decided it wasn't getting fuel, but didn't know why. I had noticed the fuel pump sounded funny, so naturally I thought I just had another bad MKII pump. Then Mark asked the stupid question, and he was right... I was out of gas ;(

Put in a couple of gallons of 92octane and she started with just a few tries. Still running rough, but the timing was still good. No glowing cats, but we didn't run her up as much, and definately didn't dump as much unspent fuel. Tracked down an annoying oil leak to the back side of the valve cover gasket, hope that does it. Noted oil smelled like gas, but a sop-and-fire test proved there wasn't much gas in the oil.

Still getting a lot of low RPM vibration, and oil buzzers over 2500 RPM. I want to think it is just all the new gear needing to be broken in, but it may very well be the one oil sensor I didn't replace, some assembly trash clogging the oil filter or the oil passages. I really don't want to waste 5 quarts of new oil to find out, but I guess if I'm clean and filter it I could reuse it.

_________________
-A. Dub
1992 MkII Jetta GL 8V

(I like playing with forums)
Vortex Posts