86 Jetta build

[EphinEll]

this has been a good motivational read for me as ive just bought a 86 td. Keep up the good work and look forward to more progress.

[JBG3]

this has been a good motivational read for me as ive just bought a 86 td. Keep up the good work and look forward to more progress.

thanks!
for me these threads always come in useful when you are frustrated with the vehicle.  Always nice to read back and see that you've come a certain distance, and it would be a shame to set it on fire over a tire vibration, or widget of some kind.   

[JBG3]

so a couple updates-

these last two weeks ive been getting my ass handed to me by the rear drum brake on the passenger side.  Seems every 100 miles it starts to drag, then stops completely.  Ive taken it apart 3 times now tweaking and messing with it.  The end result is I need a new backing plate, so ive decided to just upgrade to rotors in the rear instead of getting more drum components.

The combinations of issues was a rusty sticking wheel cylinder, a broken and then subsequently repaired internal bracket that I should have just scrapped first off, and the fact that the shoes can't really move on the surfaces they are designed to slide against as well as other bent and broken stuff.

This last time, my goal was just to get the damn thing from locking up until my rotor and caliper parts arrive, has to last about 8 days from now.

Here is the backing plate and some of the bad components-





on the backing plate, the grooves in the shoe sliding surfaces were really deep and jagged, I was having a peculiar thing happen where I would hear a snapping or loud click from that side and the brake pedal would drop slightly, which I think was the shoes jamming in the groove, then snapping over the lip and hitting the drum when I applied the brake.  Then of course they wouldn't return fully and would remain partially engaged, heating up and stopping the wheel. 

Its been pretty irritating, looking forward to my new lovely rotor parts to arrive!

[JBG3]

some other, more positive updates-

Thanks to the help of 92ecodiesel jetta, who sent me an entire pedal assembly, I have my clutch pedal wobblyness under control. 

I ended up using a bunch of the newer parts off his pedal assembly, and my original pedal which I had some brass bushings pressed into. 

Heres how the pedal finally ended up (before being packed with grease)



I ended up using the newer pin, clip, and spring assembly for pedal tension from ecodiesel, combined with the pedal with the new brass bushing, and its nice and tight now, although the installation was somewhat irritating, as the extreme worn components with the original setup had worn lips and grooves into the bracketry under there, and I had to do some dremeling and filing to get the clip on the new pin to actually seat properly.  Its made a huge difference in pedal feel though, and its quiet, which may not seem like a big deal, but previously, the clutch pedal would make the most amazing racket pushing it down.  More than one passenger has freaked out at the noise it used to make regularly, like a bird being killed. 

[srgtlord]

I had a similar issue with the left rear drum locking up on me, except the  brake friction material  literally peeled themselves off the metal and were just floating in the drum. Drums are nice when they work, and a nightmare when they do not....

[JBG3]

The switch itself does not denote the blower speed. It sends its 12v signal to a resistor on the blower motor itself, where it then depending on which part of the resistor is powered denotes blower speed.

It pulls close to 20a iirc so if you were to direct wire it, heavy guage wire or a relay setup are definitely in order.

Thanks for this post BTW, was very useful in diagnosing what was wrong.

finally got my blower working.  Exciting development actually having heat for the first time in this car, and it works great. 

Ultimate issue was a bad connection on the electrical plug on the back of the climate control lever assembly.  I did end up replacing the blower switch as well just for good measure, the one that was originally on the car was extremely corroded.  The resistor assembly turned out to be good.  I ordered a non A/C resistor assembly as I assumed that I could just switch the resistors since I removed all the A/C components, but that did not end up working properly. 

Once the blower was working, on the non A/C resistor, only high would work, but on the A/C resistor, all three fan speeds were functional.  I have the non A/C one if anyone is looking for one.

I have some pretty good pics of disassembling the entire climate control ill post to the thread later, I ended up using stair treading to recover my climate doors, which so far appears to have worked. 

Now that I have heat, im heading towards hooking up a radio.  Ironically, the car had one speaker on the driver front, and no wiring for front speakers.  It does appear to have intact wiring for the rear speakers, which were gone.  ive been picking my way through the mangled radio wiring, and I have a few question marks if anyone has any advice, id appreciate it.  My issue is I think I have all the radio wiring isolated, but there are a few broken wires and cut harnesses kicking around, that im not sure where they come from, or what system they relate to, so I can follow in the bentley

heres a pic-



for #1

the wiring is-
White/blue
cut Red/grey
cut Brown

for #2

white/blue

and #3  (a complete connector thats not destroyed or cut up)

Black
Yellow/Red
Red/brown

[JBG3]

couple small updates-

its been running like a champ, ive been piling the miles on it.  Some maintenance items on the horizon are that the stub axle seal on the driver side is now leaking, waiting on a kit to repair it, and I ended up sem-permanently fixing the passenger rear drum by just removing the spring loaded shim that wedges against the leading shoe. 
As soon as I did that, it never acted up again, not in the last couple thousand miles.  Now I can wait and search around for a good set of calipers for my rear rotor conversion for later, this arrangement will definitely last the winter. 

Also, the GF finally put her foot down and demanded a radio, or she wasn't riding in the car again to any lengthy destinations.  I guess after 4 or 5 three hour trips with the diesel drone and me singing, she was ready to burn the car with me inside, so to preserve our relationship, I finally installed a radio and speakers. 

I also used this as an opportunity to cover up the nasty rear deck with something.

this was the original deck that was stained heavily from soot-



and some aftermarket speakers had at one point been added, so I had to do something about the hole for my basic kenwood cd player and standard speakers to fit-



I made this insert for the space, and covered it with some thick polar fleece material with a sheer back so I would have some additional air filtration and sound deadening-

board-


covered-


Installed, looks pretty good now-



for an antenna, since i had removed and patched the hole on the FL fender, i went with an aftermarket sticky type that mounts inside the back glass and the wiring runs inside the roof panel and down the inside of the A-pillar-



its adequate, though it loses the signal fairly easily, and has an extremely irritating feature of a bright red LED illuminated whenever it has power.  (requires its own power source and ground at mount location)
This is right in the middle of the rear view mirror, so I might glue some kind of tab on to keep that from being visible from the driver seat.  It does work well enough though, so im fairly happy with it

[scrounger]

Nice rebuild. Gives me some ideas on what can go wrong. Like my heater. This is the first winter (of three) with some heat but not much.

[JBG3]

Nice rebuild. Gives me some ideas on what can go wrong. Like my heater. This is the first winter (of three) with some heat but not much.

thanks! 

you probably have the climate control door problem starting.  Worth it to fix, on such a small compartment as the inside of a mk2, it sure gets toasty now.     Another reason is that the corroding doors dumped all kinds of horrible crap in my climate ducting.  Im glad my fan wasnt working, as I was able to basically pour out all the ducting, which would have shot all over the interior first start of the fan. 

I have a bunch of pics of that I meant to post a while back, here they are now though-
The 86 originally had AC, and some helpful fellow had basically twisted off the connections on the firewall, so my intention was to completely remove all AC stuff and just run a heater

my climate doors looked like this-



I removed the dash and uncovered the climate control, just the one bolt with the arrow and some connections (coolant in the engine compartment and vaccum, wiring, ect) had to be removed from the front with it mounted-



from the back side, had 4 bolts through the firewall-


front-


It breaks down into two big chunks if you remove the connecting clips-



with it removed looking into the dash area, I had some rust issues to resolve-



I then broke apart the larger clamshell with the AC equipment in it by removing a large number of clips and removing the fan. 
there was some serious crap inside-



what the helpful a-hole had done to the connections-



Buildup in the AC compartment of crap.  I subsequently got some thin mesh wire screen to cover over the fresh air inlet to prevent this from happening again-



fresh air door had also lost all its foam, scraped it clean and called it a day-




Since I intended to cover over the AC connections on the firewall, I had to break off some of the climate control here to make a flat plate area-

stock-


broken off-


how it looks now with a solid plate from the engine compartment-




Next I moved over to the issues with the climate doors, that clamshell also breaks apart when you remove all the clips (after you remove the heater core)-



 open-


look at all the crap collected inside this airbox and around the heater core from the door foam-



I cleaned up and sanded down the doors before washing them (how they looked removed, notice how much foam is actually left)-



covered them with sticky heavy duty stair treading on both sides and reinstalled in the air box-




I noticed that the doors werent actually redirecting when I played with the cable connection, so I flipped it over and re-zip tied the connection in the right place to get a full redirect.  Its a pretty crappy connection, im not surprised in 30 years that the cable sheathing moved a bit and changed how closed or open the doors are.  This might also be happeing if you have only some heat. 



I then reinstalled the heater core with a new weatherstrip seal on it-

This is what was left of the original, no doubt this foam also added to the crap all inside the climate airbox and ducting, also the heater core was just rattling around in there with no cushion.


new weather strip-


After that, I put it all back together, reinstalled, and now I have nice warm heat for once.   

[92EcoDiesel Jetta]

"I subsequently got some thin mesh wire screen to cover over the fresh air inlet to prevent this from happening again-"

Is this under the rain tray or inside? TDI's have a replaceable pleated cabin air filter under the rain tray. I wonder if one from an early TDI will fit a MK2? It will clean up that crap by a big margin.

[JBG3]

"I subsequently got some thin mesh wire screen to cover over the fresh air inlet to prevent this from happening again-"

Is this under the rain tray or inside? TDI's have a replaceable pleated cabin air filter under the rain tray. I wonder if one from an early TDI will fit a MK2? It will clean up that crap by a big margin.

This was actually your idea.   

Its under the rain tray, the rain tray you gave me has been a huge source of help in all the water issues I was having, but remember how mice had chewed through the screen to the fresh air door on this car?  that was another reason to cover it up. 

There is a lot of space, the screen is up a little bit, I bet you could make something fit there.  what exactly does the early TDI cabin filter look like?  Might be nice to install something like that

[92EcoDiesel Jetta]

"I subsequently got some thin mesh wire screen to cover over the fresh air inlet to prevent this from happening again-"

Is this under the rain tray or inside? TDI's have a replaceable pleated cabin air filter under the rain tray. I wonder if one from an early TDI will fit a MK2? It will clean up that crap by a big margin.

This was actually your idea.   

Its under the rain tray, the rain tray you gave me has been a huge source of help in all the water issues I was having, but remember how mice had chewed through the screen to the fresh air door on this car?  that was another reason to cover it up. 

There is a lot of space, the screen is up a little bit, I bet you could make something fit there.  what exactly does the early TDI cabin filter look like?  Might be nice to install something like that

It looks like a VW air filter except flatter and made with different filter media. There is a separate cabin air filter holder (that can be removed with one bolt) on the B4 that I had. If that holder fits or can be made to fit a MK2 then you can use the TDI filter.

What did you replace the foam seals on the doors with? I wonder what Mercedes used for the doors? Don't remember hearing of any issues with the old Mercedes.

[scrounger]

Thanks for your help. Might make it a separate thread as it is an ongoing problem with these cars as they get to 30 years old. Lots of canucks here; Heat is good.

I had a vacuum hose split near the vacuum pump which prevented anything from working. Also took out the console for a better shot and more room. I thought I had it basically fixed, was summer.  I have maybe 25% heat. If I drive the car for an hour it gets warm enough but for those 6 mile runs it isn't much. There seems to be a door not working or probably like your set up the foam is gone and the flap doors leak like sieves.

I assumed that you just removed the AC evaporator.

What a great resource.

[JBG3]

It looks like a VW air filter except flatter and made with different filter media. There is a separate cabin air filter holder (that can be removed with one bolt) on the B4 that I had. If that holder fits or can be made to fit a MK2 then you can use the TDI filter.

What did you replace the foam seals on the doors with? I wonder what Mercedes used for the doors? Don't remember hearing of any issues with the old Mercedes.

I used stair treading for the center climate control box doors with holes in them, and for the fresh air door which was a solid piece of metal, I just scraped off the foam and left it as is.  There seems to be some leakage from this idea, there is definitely a draft in the passenger footwell from somewhere, which is most likely from the lack of a full seal on that door.  However, with the heat on, it does compensate for any draft issue with redirected heat to the footwell.  For now it will stay as is.  If I took it apart again though, I would definitely recover that fresh air door with something that would give a better seal.  Leaving it uncovered has produced passenger complaints.   

[JBG3]

Thanks for your help. Might make it a separate thread as it is an ongoing problem with these cars as they get to 30 years old. Lots of canucks here; Heat is good.

I had a vacuum hose split near the vacuum pump which prevented anything from working. Also took out the console for a better shot and more room. I thought I had it basically fixed, was summer.  I have maybe 25% heat. If I drive the car for an hour it gets warm enough but for those 6 mile runs it isn't much. There seems to be a door not working or probably like your set up the foam is gone and the flap doors leak like sieves.

I assumed that you just removed the AC evaporator.

What a great resource.

You should be able to get a good look at those doors by just removing the center console and a piece of ducting that connects directly to that airbox.  maybe some other vacuum line is busted or something though, definitely sounds related to the repair over the summer, maybe something pulled free and a vacuum pod is stuck or something? 

yes, I just completely removed the evaporator, sorry, i forgot to add a pic of that removed and the airbox all cleaned out-



here is how the car currently looks on a -10 day with a fine crusting of salt.  Next big job will be paint!  im just waiting for my neighbor to have the time to get to it now, money is all saved up for the job.  The crappy cracked paint it has now is the perfect environment for salt though.  The sooner I paint the whole car, the longer it will last.  I already see new rust starting