MKII Golf problem areas?

In reply to 16vCorey:

Really? I thought the whole dash had to come out. Please explain, I will be forever (ok not forever, but quite a while) in your debt! That makes my find an even better deal!

The dash shell does have to come out, or at least really loose, but they're pretty easy to take apart. Once you can see the black air box, there is a small panel on top of it with two phillips screws (IIRC). Take that panel off and the heater core slides back to clear the firewall, then lifts straight out. The Passat/Corrado TOTALLY F'N SUCK to do. Take the dash all the way out, disconnect the ac, take the heater box all the way out, take the heater box all the way apart, etc. Total suckage.

PubBurgers wrote: The brakes are kind of stiff/grindy, i'm assuming because it sat for so long. Anything I can do to speed their recovery?

Fluid flush, and new discs/drums. Stock ones are cheap. Also, depending on the model year, there's a valve in the rear that reduces pressure back there..A2s are very light in the rear, with a pretty short wheelbase, and running without one will insure you get loose on a downhill tightie. Without em, you end up with 50/50 braking power on a car with 60% of the weight in the front. Not bad for an oval, but stinks like dead animals in the twisties.

http://forums.fourtitude.com/showthread.php?4779852-Leaking-brake-proportioning-valve.&id=4779852&postid=64240570

Remember to "open" that valve when you bleed. I usually put the car on jackstands, and use a floor jack to raise the suspention arm high enough to get the thing to open & let the air out.

PubBurgers wrote: It seems the piece that prevents me from accidentally going into reverse instead of first is missing, making things a bit interesting. Any cheap fixes or a whole new bushing kit in order?

Part of the reason the shifter linkage is so complicated is because when they were new, you had to push the lever "down" to engage reverse. That's why the springs & stuff are there, and also why the bushings, etc. in the linkage are so complicated (look at the pic 16vCorey posted up). Most of us just install the "sport" linkage parts, and remember not to hit reverse. Honestly, in an A2, it ain't that difficult. Reverse is so far to the left of the shift pattern (with good linkage) that even if the "safeguard" is gone, you won't mistake it for 1st unless you've downed an entire fifth of "Wild Turkey".

PubBurgers wrote: Last, there's a bit of a whizzing sound as i slow and come to a stop, i don't think it's drivetrain related but i'm not sure. Sort of sounds like a jumping jack firecracker, only winding down. Any ideas?

Sort the brakes first, and see if the noise is still there afterwards. These cars do have "floating" single piston calipers, and you could have some caliper misalignment because the pins are too dirty for the caliper to move. I still take some steel wool to clean my caliper pins every time I change pads, because I'm so worried about the calipers hanging up when they're supposed to just slide a little closer to the disc..

Damn, I hate it that these cars are so old..IMO, they were the best Golf/Jetta ever.

16vCorey wrote: The dash shell does have to come out, or at least really loose, but they're pretty easy to take apart. Once you can see the black air box, there is a small panel on top of it with two phillips screws (IIRC). Take that panel off and the heater core slides back to clear the firewall, then lifts straight out. The Passat/Corrado TOTALLY F'N SUCK to do. Take the dash all the way out, disconnect the ac, take the heater box all the way out, take the heater box all the way apart, etc. Total suckage.

QFT! When the heater core went on my green Corrado, I actually took it to a shop and paid someone else to do it (good shop, owned by an old SCCA buddy who'd built my first race car & his son..the place is exactly what David Wallens was talking about when he wrote "Trusted Allies" in the magazine)!

I'd seen entirely too many pics of Corrado dash removal over on vwvortex to do that myself. Strange thing..there was actually a NHTSA recall on the cores in the Corrado, the documentation I got when I bought the car showed the recall had been done, but when my buddy's son got the stupid thing out of the car, he noticed that the part number on the thing was the same one as the original. Seems that whoever did the recall work just installed another one of the bad ones, instead of the "new" part.

Solid purchase!

I may be remembering my older VWs wrong, but fifth gear may just be sheared off. My memory tells me that those cars often did not get enough lube in them (you had to jack the car up funny to get it right) which caused fifth to fail. I know this happened on my Scirocco, at least.

Pretty sweet fine, all in all. I'd love an MKII to build into a track car.

robert

Your deceleration whine sounds like the same thing my Scirocco just went through. In my case it was the diff going nuclear and it sounded like a rock crusher near the end, but I had put a couple thousand miles on it between the whine first and the final grinding.

I say start shopping for a cheap trans. They come up on occasion. My Scirocco just got a nice short ratio box for $150, my Jetta before that got another one for $100. Just know most of these are priced that way for a reason. Don't be stupid like me, just throw the trans in and get all butt-hurt when your clutch is slipping 2 months later.