Glad you're happy with the seats mate, and also glad they have gone to a good home The car looks lovely! I hope to see it in the flesh one day, it might make me pull my finger out and get mine up to this standard lol
Yes, was good to meet you and a few others. Didn't hang around long as I didn't want to push my luck with the better half lol But as it turned out she really enjoyed it! Next time I'll put this on the stand I think, or maybe even try a Show'n'Shine - I looked at some of the ones in the S&S at Inters and thought that mine looked better!
Thanks Dave - yes very happy, they're in amazingly good condition. Just needed a quick clean but came up really well. Still might need some bits off your breaker so if I do I'll come down in this next time rather than the A2.
Thanks. Still haven't found front rainbow trim doorcards though. I'm going to keep looking for a black leather interior though as that's my ideal spec, but I'm not in a rush now these are fitted.
Gear Linkage upgrade I've not updated this for a while so I thought I'd make a start. Even though all of the bushes in the gear linkage had been replaced recently I still wasn't happy amount of play. Since HotGolf was making some more of his lovely shiny linkage kits it seemed a good time to get one. The stuff itself looks great: It wasn't too bad to fit, though as Mart suggests you do need to make sure the little tiny holes in the rod ends are clear in order to get the clips back into them. It was better, but there was still some play in the forward/back movement of the gearshift. Taking a look at the linkage in operation showed that there was some play between the relay shaft ball and the selector lever. Since the ball had already been changed as part of the bush kit, I looked around for other options. I ended up buying a new relay shaft ball and end bushings from MissingLinkz in the US. I fitted the relay shaft ball (actually just a turned piece of PE) onto a spare relay shaft I had: and fitted it into the linkage. A bit of a faff, but nothing too tricky. After a quick realignment the play in the linkage had all but disappeared. Next up, tidying of a few stone chips using ChipEx.
ChipEx repairs My Golf seems to have attracted quite a bit of stone chip damage in the past along the front panel just underneath the windscreen (scuttle panel?) and all along the bottom of the NS door. Also, the wiper arms were badly chipped too. I rubbed down the wiper arms and sprayed them up with some Hammerite satin black - they came up ok, but my spraying technique needs some work I think! I thought I'd give the stone chips - more like roadrash - some ChipEx treatment as the suppliers are just down the road from me so it saved me a bit of money on the carriage. Before After The results aren't perfect, but it's certainly tidied everything up quite nicely. Once the paint has hardened fully I'll go over some areas with a de-nibber and give it all a good polish.
Rainbow Door Cards I finally got sick of looking at my mis-matched doorcards and since I haven't tracked down any decent Rainbow front cards I decided to try and clean up the ones I had a little. They had dirty great holes cut in them for (presumably) some speakers to be fitted, so I searched around for something to cover them up with. Eventually found some speaker grilles the right size, blanked off the hole with a bit of cardboard sprayed black and gave the cards a quick steam clean. The bottoms of the cards are a little weak but not much of a problem. Once the cards were mounted they looked pretty good, you can't really notice the speaker grilles from inside the car. That'll keep me going until I sort out a replacement interior, or I can just leave it like this I guess.
Battery Drain - sorted? Since I've had the car I've had problems with the battery going flat after a few days of it not being used. I finally decided to put some effort into tracing the cause this week. Since I'd already checked the charging voltage of the alternator and it looked ok, I used a meter to find the current draw from the battery with everything off and all the doors closed. This showed a current draw of 180mA and no amount of fuse or relay pulling (or alternator disconnecting) would change it. After much faffing around (as per this thread) I found a mystery relay behind the centre console that was cutting the fuel pump by a hidden switch - presumably some sort of anti-theft system installed by a previous owner. Unfortunately they'd chosen to keep the relay energised in order to make the fuel pump run, which was using 180mA! Tracing the cabling back found it cutting into the power to the fuel pump in the loom that runs along the driver's sill I cut into this and found where the relay loom had been inserted with some horrible twisted wires and a very poor solder joint So I cut that out, cleaned up the original fuel pump feed wire, resoldered it and protected it with some heatshrink Taped up the cut in the loom, put all the trim back and fired up the car to check all was still working - no problem. Checked the current draw with everything off, now 18mA - perfect! Die b**tard wiring loom, die!! Unfortunately I seem to have knackered the Alternator Exciter circuit somewhere in the diagnosis process so the battery/ignition dash light doesn't work but it does still seem to be charging. That's taken the pressure off fixing it right away, but it still needs to be sorted soon.
I realised I haven't updated this thread in 8 months - mainly because I haven't really done anything other than drive it around. And who want's to work on cars when it's cold and wet outside. I've been collecting bits though and now need to get around to fitting them. It's been my daily over winter and has been faultless (apart from running out of petrol once - grrr old petrol gauges ). I fitted a lights-on buzzer using the proper MK3 relay - that's such a simple thing that I missed that I had to have. Fairly easy little job, especially as mine already had the key-in-ignition wiring so the buzzer won't sound if the key's in the ignition. I pulled up my shiny "Golf GTI" sill trims that were fitted when I bought the car and scraped off all the glue that held them in place. and I fitted my (perhaps slightly sad and tacky - I'm not sure yet) fake 1992 tax disc in genuine CGTI holder! I'm halfway through stripping down the doors to re-seal them nicely and fit some electric mirrors I've bought so I'll report back when that's done. I've also tracked down - at last - a black leather interior which I'm collecting this weekend, so that'll complete my main to-do list on this car, other than the engine replacement. More updates soon.
Looking good, what actual one did you buy from missinglinkz? There are so many options on their site.
Yes, not sure how I found it myself.. http://www.4crawler.com/Diesel/ForSale/ShiftLinkage.shtml#A2RelayShaftBallCover labelled "UHMW set - US$25" That's the relay shaft ball cover AND the top and bottom bushes. Made a decent difference, in combination with HotGolf's linkage kit. ** EDIT ** just read your thread and saw the melted relay shaft ball! Maybe the Teflon version would be a better bet for you as it tolerates much higher temperatures (+500 F I think!)
Electric Mirrors Switch repair I've bought some electric mirrors because - well, I just wanted some. I wanted to make sure everything was working before installing them as I didn't want to have to take my door apart if again if the wiring was faulty. I wired them to a 12v power supply on the kitchen table (where else? lol) so I could test everything out of the car. The mirror switch was, at best, intermittent. Like a few other switches in the car, I guessed the internals probably just needed a good clean, so I started dismantling it. There were little mini "dumbell" contacts with tiny springs underneath them, pushing them against the copper tracks of the PCB. After cleaning the contacts up and trying again it was obvious that the springs themselves were just not exerting enough force. In fact, a couple of them had almost disintegrated - I guess moisture must have got into the switch at some point, probably quite common say behind the door cards. I set about sourcing some new springs which proved difficult, but eventually found something similar at an RC model shop online: The ideal size is 1.5mm diameter and 4mm length but these will have to do. I cleaned up the PCB as best I could .. The top half of the switch (the part that rotates to select the left or right mirror) seems particularly fussy about these contacts and in my case caused a very hit-and-miss action where the switch needed to be pushed in quite hard the same time as it was tilted in order to make the mirror move. Replacing the springs solved this straight away. I began to re-assemble the switch by inserting the springs into the tiny guide holes and then carefully balanced the terminals on top. You need a steady hand to reassemble everything back together again but as long as you don't make any quick movements you can snap the case back together. Now the switch worked perfectly in all directions and on both mirrors. Next up, replacing and testing the heated glass.
As part of my electric mirror testing I wanted to make sure that the heating works before fitting everything. The terminals were quite corroded and one of them fell apart before I'd even started: I sourced some 2.8mm female spade crimps and re-terminated the connections. The crimp wasn't very secure so I ended up soldering the cable as well. New terminals fitted: I tested the connections to my new heated mirror glass and it got nice and warm. Unfortunately one mirror glass doesn't quite fit the backing plate so I'm getting it re-cut, so I'll have to wait until that arrives before I can mount the glass to the mirror.
