Hello,
I bought a '93 Golf last weekend with the 2.0 litre ABA engine. At the place I bought it at, it wouldn't start when I first went to check it out, though it did run fine a couple days beforehand when it was driven onto the lot. To fix that, they replaced the cap and rotor along with the wires, and also put
4 new Bosch platinum plugs in. Started and ran fine after that. We got it home, and I did the front brakes since they were worn. I also took the idle air stabilizer off and cleaned it well with brake cleaner because it was dirty. It wouldn't start after doing that. I replaced the wires again, and took the plugs out and gapped them to .28 since they weren't gapped properly.The problem is that it will start sometimes, and the idle is a little rough at the beginning, but then it smooths out once it warms up a bit. I took it to a closeby Napa garage to get a state sticker. They got it started to go into the garage and did a compression test on it. Then they couldn't get it started back up until they replaced the plugs. The tech said the plugs were flooded and the only way to fix it was plug replacement.
The wires and cap/rotor/plugs are all new, any idea what the issue could be? Looks like something is killing the plugs or wires after a few start/stop cycles, but gas is definitely entering the cylinders, so it looks like just a spark issue. Bad ground possibly? I'm new to gas VWs. I've owned 3 VW diesels so far so I'm looking for some advice. I can't really afford to take it to the dealer for diagnosis, and it seems like it could be something simple that might need to be replaced. I don't know if the idle stabilizer valve/idle air control is faulty with the rough idle at first or what. I did get a Bentley manual on Thursday, but haven't had a chance to start testing things. If anyone could advise me on what to check for to resolve this, it would be most appreciated. :) Thanks! Please cc a reply to dslfan at gwi.net if you can help me out.
-Brett