Warning

Ggggggrrrr.....

modern cars with all this computer jiggery pokery, a nice little yellow engine shaped warning lamp burst into life and glowed at me one morning at start up. A frantic scrabble for the handbook revealed nothing more than exhaust gas emission warning or something, so i have now driven with it like this for a couple of weeks with no ill effects so far. With sensors for everything on these cars it might hopefully be just a case of replacement but it might also mean a exhaust system part.
I just found out that Jens-Erich from the workshop has just the diagnostic cable i need to connect TPW to a laptop so i can read off the error code and find the culprit. I was thinking of buying one but they are 150 quid, unfortunately he has lent it to someone else right now so it'll have to wait till the new year.

I did as a, clutching at straws, i need to start taking things apart again just to see how it fits together, i like changing stuff anyhow, kind of way, change the air filter. Now the car was serviced at the local VW stealership just before summer but no sign of this having been replaced. Probably some new fangled 'long life' service item these days - so that would be a filter with bigger holes in it then so it doesn't clog so fast, eh?
When i were a lad and looked over my dads service bills on his car, yes i really did that, the first things on the list were always Air Filter, Oil change + filter, points and plugs. Ah the good old days eh.

grubby and good to change it but a spangly new one didn't stop the light from coming on. PAH. This is probably going to cost money.

OCD cleaning maniac

One carburettor, i daren't dismantle both i case i forget how they should go together again, totally dismantled into a billion pieces some quite big and some teeny tiny. Now this is where the Conibear cleaning OCD really kicks in, lots of grubby carburettor parts needing to be cleaned, I not only cleaned them but polished them too. HA!
6 hours work? totally worth it. Added bonus is that the fellow from the parts store has sent the bits i need to start putting it back together again too ... bonus, hope they will get her in the nest few days. Thanks!

Supremely satisfied with that lot i then decided to take the lid off the steering box which has always leaked it's contents of gear oil onto the floor. Admittedly i only tried filling it up once, now i know why it all leaked out.

anybody spot the problem with the gasket here...?
decidedly crusty gasket, could well be the original judging by the state of it.

A, probably temporary, lovingly hand crafted gasket, a 10 minute Blue Peter job except that i got to use the extremely sharp craft knife all by myself.
Immensely fulfilling doing stuff like this,...
yeah i know.

Not put any more oil back in yet i leave that until next time, you can hardly wait eh.

operation clean carbs

Still not got my act together and bought a welder yet so my idle hands, in tandem with my idle brain, decided it would be a good time to remove the carburettors. I never managed to get the car to idle perfectly now matter how much i tweaked and twiddled the adjusting screws, couldn't get them balanced properly either, so off they jolly well came.

A couple of the securing bolts looked a little bit tricky to get to...

and not so much better even with the air filters removed.

they needed a good clean any way.

lots of swearing and grazed knuckles later they on the operating table.
I bought repair kits for them a while ago but now realised that i also needed some extra bit and bobs, hopefully my trusty parts mule will have them over here for me in January.