I posted this before, but, to cheer up Heather and show VAG isn't always the best solution:
It shouldn't happen to a Golf[/size]
Or
"Don't move on 31st of December!"Just to cheer up Happax, who is having car problems, here is the story of the Golf I bought.
I have learnt several lessons in my life, the most important:
Never buy a car off of my brother!I started work in 1987 and in 1988 I bought a new Ford Escort on finance. In 2000, the interest rates were at their highest point, my brother and I both had good jobs in Southampton, about 20 miles away from where we lived at home with mum, so we looked for a house together.
I had access to a company pool car at the time, as I was on long term assignment, so I sold my Escort and paid off the finance and used part of the rest to put towards my part of the deposit and some basic white goods...
Then I got re-assigned and needed a car in a hurry. My brother had a classic Austin Healey Sprite MkIV and a Golf Diesel MkII... As the new house would be about 200M from his office, he sold me the Golf Diesel.
And so it came to pass, New Year 1990 we moved. On New Years eve, me and a friend set off early (7:30) to go and collect a Ford Transit from a rental company just down the road from the new house in Calmore.
All was going well, radio blaring, cruising at a steady 70mph (no, really, exactly 70mph), when the Golf does a Blues Mobile impression! The motorway in front of me disappeared! All I could see was white smoke coming from under the bonnet, the wipers didn't really help, but I hit them out of instinct.
The revs went through the roof! So I took my foot off the throttle, the engine was still racing. I shifted into neutral, the revs went even higher
I switched off the ignition, no change. I removed the key in panic, quickly followed by panic as I realised I was still doing 70mph, but with no steering!
I slapped the key back in and turned the ignition back on.
I rolled down the window and stuck my head out into the freezing December air, and I managed to see past the smoke and guide the car to the side of the road. We scrambled out and got onto the emergency 'phone and arranged for the AA to come and pick us up and transport us to our destination.
2 hours later, the AA finally showed up and we got the car to the new house, where it was uncerimoniously dumped. We quickly arranged for a taxi to take us to the van rental place and we got there just as the guy was locking up! We managed to get the van.
We headed back out to the motorway, planning to go to Hedge End to pick up the new freezer from Currys. I turned on the radio and the local news was on. A petrol tanker had overturned on the M27 in the dip at Swanage and had ploughed through the central reservation. Because it had spilled its load, the police had closed the motorway in both directions!
We managed to get to Currys, after working our way through 10 miles of tailbacks on the A27! The guy at Currys helped us load the fridge-freezer into the back of the van and we went to set off... No such luck, the battery on the van was dead as a doornail!
So, we called mum and she and my brother came out with jump leads and we finally got the van started and we went back home and started loading the van. We were now 7 hours and 2 trips behind schedule! We loaded the beds and linen into the van and a friend kindly popped round, and we loaded his old Cortina up to the gunwhales with odds and ends as well.
Then we made our one and only trip of the day to the new house, for we were determined to spend our first night as house owners in the new house!
The next day dawned cold, wet and windy, but we managed to make up for lost time and got all of our furniture and boxes moved to the new house.
So, after settling in, it was time to look at the damage to the car. The main VAG dealer was just on the other side of the roundabout, about 200M away, so we pushed the car round to the dealer for them to look at. End result: cracked head and thrown piston
I couldn't afford to do anything then, so we pushed the car into the garage and I took the bus into town to work and we did the shopping in the Austin Healey, which like all good sports cars has a boot about large enough for a packet of Corn Flakes! Getting two 6' plus guys and a weeks shopping into the car was an experience, but we managed it for about 2 months until I got reassigned again and I had access to a pool car again.
Then, the manager called me into his office one morning, about 2.5 months after we had moved in. I was being re-assigned to the Poole office to work on a project for an "extended" period. I took the train down to the new office and the first thing the manager there said to me was "you might think of getting a house in the area, you are going to be here for a long time." This, 2.5 months after forking out for a house!
I had done a project for a guy in the Christchurch office and I knew his son had just started a business servicing and repairing cars, mainly Porsche and Jaguar - although he did a lot of exotica, including Nigel Mansell's Covette.
I phoned John and asked if he could recommend anybody to rebuild a Golf Diesel, he said he'd get his son to look at it... So, a quick call to a friend of ours and we got a car and trailer, loaded the Golf on the back and trundled off to Christchurch...
They started on stripping the car down in the April and I had to give back the company car, so I was relegated to catching the train down to Poole every day and getting a taxi to the office – luckily still on expenses.
A couple of weeks later, I got a ’phone call from the garage. They had found 3 cracks in the head and they were sending it off to be repaired. A week later, the engineering firm doing the repair had found another two cracks! A week later, another two
They admitted that it would have been better in hindsight to have bought a new head.
They had also found out some interesting things about the engine. It was a 1500cc Golf Diesel engine… But the head was from a newer 1600cc VW diesel unit
This meant a couple of things, but the biggest was that the cooling route on the head of the 1600cc was on the opposite side to those on the 1500cc, so the head never got sufficient cooling (a contributing factor to the problem). It had also taken them 2 days to get the head off of the engine. Whoever had done the previous “repair” had fused the wrong head onto the block and had used a sealant, as opposed to using a head gasket.
They sent off the pistons and the block for reboring and smoothing, and they had the crank re-worked and all new bearings put in.
Eventually, after a couple of months, I got a ’phone call from the garage saying that they had it all back together and I could pick it up on the Saturday. Come Saturday morning, I head off into town to get the 1,200 to pay for the repairs. On my way back home, I passed my local VW dealer and, erm, there was my car on the forecourt
I rushed into the garage, but the servicing side was closed and the cashier in the shop didn’t know anything about it, so I ran home and rang the garage. “Erm, we decided to give it a final test drive this morning, just to make sure it was okay. When we got it out onto the forecourt, the diesel pump failed and is was spewing out diesel faster than the Amoco Cadiz!”
The main dealer refurbished the diesel pump and the car was taken back to Christchurch, so a week later, I caught the train from Poole to Christchurch at lunchtime to pick up the car. I got in the car, and with trepidation, I made my way back to the office. A mile down the road, I stopped at a junction, and the engine stopped
The engine was too weak to restart, so I called the garage and they came out. By the time they got there, the engine had cooled down a bit and the engine restarted, so I made my way to the office and it didn’t stall again.
After work I drove home. I had to stop at the traffic lights on Gravel Hill. The engine cut out. Not enough battery to restart, not enough battery for the hazard lights. A friendly Sainsburys’ lorry driver helped me push the car up hill to the side of the road. I then went to find a ’phone box and called the AA, they said they would send somebody out to collect me. I wandered back to the car and waited – and had to put up with a barrage of complaints from people saying I should put the lights on, turn on the hazards etc. But with no battery power that wasn’t going to happen
After an hour and a half waiting, I tried the engine and it fired… I quickly drove to the ’phone box and called the AA to let them know that the car had re-started and I was going to try and limp it home. I got onto the Wimborne bypass and made my way back towards Southampton. As I got to the Ringwood turnoff, I changed down from 4th to 3rd and the engine stalled, I jump started it in 3rd, changed down to 2nd, it stalled on the shift, so I coasted it to the side of the road and went in search of a ’phone box. I called the garage that had done the repair and John Jr. came out in the van to have a look.
By the time he turned up, the engine had cooled a bit, although it was still p*****g diesel out of the inlets. John was a little concerned, but said I should drive home and he would follow. All the time the car was running it was fine, although it was running a little rough (down to 3 cylinders). When I went to downchange coming off at Junction 2 of the M27, the engine stopped again, so I pulled over and John had a look and it was spitting diesel from the inlets!
He towed me to the main dealer and we left it there. According to the terms of the guarantee insurance, another garage would have to do the “autopsy” on the engine. It transpired that the company that had done the bearings had used the wrong measurements, transposing 375 into 357 or something meaning that where the bearings were running around the crank, it didn’t have enough clearance, and when the engine warmed up, it was way too tight and had caused the engine to cease, again.
John gave me two options, they could try and rebuild the engine again, or they could look for a second hand replacement engine. After all the problems, I decided to go with the second option and let them source a new engine…
A week later, they ’phoned to say that they had found an engine and it was coming down from London. Two hours later, I got another call. The clutch on the van had failed and it was being towed back to London. The supplier was sending another van to try and intercept the first one and swap the engine over… Another call later, the replacement van had missed the first and the engine was in the first van, locked up in a repair shop for the weekend
On Tuesday, they tried again. The van was repaired and on its way again… The drive shaft failed this time
The driver went to call the office and sat in the café waiting for the replacement van to turn up. The replacement van turned up and picked the first driver up and they went to where the broken down van was parked. It had been stripped, including my new engine!
The dealer said not to worry, he had another engine coming in from Belgium in a couple of days time, he’d have it sent straight down to the garage. Then I got another ’phone call, there was a slight hitch, H.M. Customs was claiming that the dealer had falsified the invoice and the engine was worth more than he claimed, and they had impounded the engine until he paid the difference!
They resolved it eventually and the engine got released from customs – but the driver screwed up, he drove to the dealer in London! Still, the next day the engine finally turned up at the garage and they set about fitting it. They wanted to fit a new clutch. No problem, I thought.
Monday, new clutch delivered and fitted, the return spring snapped when they tested it.
Tuesday, new clutch delivered, but it was for a Metro.
Wednesday, new clutch delivered and fitted, the return spring snapped.
Thursday, new clutch delivered, but it was for a Nissan Bluebird.
Friday, new clutch delivered and fitted, the return spring snapped.
A week later a Volkswagen engineer turned up with a new clutch and watched as the mechanic fitted it, they fitted it correctly and it worked.. The engineer took the faulty clutches back with him. It turned out that the return springs on that batch hadn’t been properly tempered.
So, finally, I got my car back
It worked, although I never trusted it 100%. I did around 60,000 miles in it before I sold it back to my brother, who did about 10,000 miles in it. He then sold it to a friend who did another 200,000 miles in it without any problems with the engine… Alls well that ends well!
An horrendous story, complete nightmare!
