92 Golf engine gone insane

Hey john, this isn't the red 92 you bought from me is it (in Kanata)? I'll let you in on a little secret- my car has been doing the exact same thing,

Seems to be a battery or charging probem, when it gets cold the battery drops low, really low. If I charge the battery for a while the problem goes away. Once I take the car out for a 1/2 drive it starts again, up and down, up and down. I suspect my battery is bad as the other day it just clicked a who bunch of times trying to start. I attribute it to low power being supplied to the electronics of the car and as we all know, these injection systems don't react well to bad batteries. Take it to your local crappy liar and have them check the battery.

Brad

Throttle switches on the intake often go bad and present with similar symptoms. Possibly the blue temperature sensor; replace it for ~$20 at the dealer. If that doesn't work, disconnect the O2 sensor and see what happens. If there's an immediate improvement, replace the O2 sensor. It's a Digifant, right? If so, bad grounds to the driverside of the cylinder head? Tune-up items all good? If not, replace cap, rotor, plugs, air filter. If the car hasn't been tuned lately, take it to the dealer or even Canadian tire (they just don't know the car like VW) and have them set timing/exhaust gases.

My money is on the throttle switches or O2 sensor.

Haynes is $15-20 at Canadian Tire but I hope you have a garage. Just replaced my thermostat on my '89 today (it was a mild -10C in Kitchener).

Darryl.

tested my temp sensor and it's bang on and it didn't do it until the cold snap here in ottawa. Couldn't a bad battery cause the eletronics to act up especially in the cold?

Does the car turnover slowly? Are there any other signs that the batter is dying? I doubt the battery is the problem but take it to Canadian Tire and have them perform a load test on it (for free).

Check the throttle switches, IIRC, there should be no resistance across the terminals and disconnect the O2 sensor seeing that the blue sender is OK.

I had the same problem with my 89 until this weekend. I changed the air filter. The original was full of grime and crap.

Now it fires up just fine and idles like a champ. Apparently it was starved for air.

John Wayne wrote:

Hey now,

I don't miss that Ottawa winter. My '89 GLi 16V did the nutty rpm thing in the fall when it was warm, and the tach would sometimes keep jumping around even after the engine stalled. This happen to yours? My problem was corrosion on the coil terminals and connecting wires. This is common. Happened to my '86 Carat during an Ottawa winter. Coil wire had turned to blue salt. Check the coil connections, all of them.

Theo

"Mustangbrad" wrote in news:ZznMb.97259$ snipped-for-privacy@news04.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com:

Hahaha ya it is the exact same one, it's a great car by the way, small world eh. I'm gonna check out the battery like you suggested, cause this problem is definetly ambiant temp related, like i said it runs perfect after sittin in my garage for a few hours.

Thanks for all the responses from everyone, I'm gonna try the battery, O2 sensor, and i guess if all else fails ill take it to the dealer man and have him gimme an opinion on whats gone haywire.

Thanks all, Peter

It's all good, sorry to hear it's acting weird on you , mine is doing it too. If you need my manual come over and get some stuff off of it , we can scan whatever you need before you go out and start replacing sensors without testing them first, you know my name and where I live.

Well here's the thing.

The motor was just rebuilt and installed and everything was checked prior to it being fired up. All sensors were used off of the old engine and it didn't do it with the old motor. The car was left outside for a month and a hald between dec 1st and Jan 8th at which time it didn't get charged. When the motor was installed the car wouldn't turn over so I put the charger on it for a few hours. Once charged it fired right up. We ran it for about an hour at idle outside and then it started this wild rpm crap. We brought it in from outside and revved it up in the garage. It started missing and then would eventualy die. We put the charger back on the motor and checked the voltage once it started up 13.3v at the battery. We also checked the voltage at crack 9.5V which to me indicates a weak battery. This is why we think it was idling weird. It did it once after a long drive to the country at which point I put the charger on the battery and it was fine after that.

Hey Brad, thanks for the offer but I just bought the manual so its all good, thanks anyway. What you suggested about the battery may have been just what I needed, I replaced the old one and it works great, starts in this weather without bein plugged in even :). However I probably wont know if its fixed until it happens again. I do have another question however. Theres a sensor/switch that I cant identify, the casing is rusted through so when I was workin on the battery, I touched it and it fell off (car still runs though, but the engine temp is kinda screwy). I was wondering if you know what it might be, it's screwed into the right side of the block, if im looking at it from the front of the car (beside cylinder 4). This is hard to explain :(. Its a rubber casing, that was attached to a metal threaded part, thats where it came apart. The metal part has a little skinny button in the middle of it that i can press into the block, its only about half a centimeter. The rubber casing has a little spring in it. It's a terrible explanation, I know, but maybe you have an idea of what it is. I think its somehow related to the cooling system, cause by being in the side of the block it should have access to the collant in the block. Also like I said something is screwy with the coolant temp. Anyway I've tried and tried but I cant find it in the book, mostly cause I have no idea what its purpose is. Actually, do these cars have more then one collant temp sensor? Like maybe one for the electrical systems and one for the guage inside the car? Cause the guage works, the cars works, but the thermostat seems to be stuck open right now.

Thanks Peter

P.S. I almost forgot, if yours is still acting up, I'll tell you what I did that seems to have fixed it. First I let it sit in the garage, if u can warm it up somehow then I think thats better. I also took the distributor cap off, cleaned all the connectors, pulled the plugs, cleaned them, and replaced the battery. I didnt really do anyhting to it, but like I said it seems to be alright now. The battery problem actually makes the most sense right now cause it ran fine with the old battery after the car warmed up in the garage for a few hours. Also, I'm keeping the gas tank above 1/4 right now.

I hope some of this helps Peter