Mk4 Golf diesel machine
Discussion
Gallons Per Mile said:
A new job with a somewhat longer drive to site meant the previous Puma needed to be replaced with something equally good value for money but better on fuel. I set about searching Ebay of course and settled on a Mk4 Golf 1.9 GT TDI.
This particular car came up only 10 minutes away from me in the exact spec I was looking for - 3 doors
Why do you want a 3 door car?This particular car came up only 10 minutes away from me in the exact spec I was looking for - 3 doors
The Mad Monk said:
Gallons Per Mile said:
A new job with a somewhat longer drive to site meant the previous Puma needed to be replaced with something equally good value for money but better on fuel. I set about searching Ebay of course and settled on a Mk4 Golf 1.9 GT TDI.
This particular car came up only 10 minutes away from me in the exact spec I was looking for - 3 doors
Why do you want a 3 door car?This particular car came up only 10 minutes away from me in the exact spec I was looking for - 3 doors
Also being a commuter you sit alone in it 90% of the time and maybe 8% of the time with only one passenger.
Why carry around 2 additional doors that don't look good?
Almost all 3 door hatch variants look better than their 5 door counterparts, but this is especially true with the mk4 Golf!
Yes I know 5 doors are more practical, even if you are alone just to put something behind the driver seats, etc...
Also the front doors on the 3 door variants are bigger and as such its harder to get out in small spaces.
But still, they do look better!!
greenarrow said:
These cars were really quick for their time in a real world 30-80 sense.
Yep, mid range is really nice. It doesn't seem much effort accellerating away from a roundabout and suddenly I'm up to NSL.greenarrow said:
For under a grand its a bargain and I wouldn't be wasting loads of money on suspension upgrades, accept it for what it is.
I understand your point. But if the suspension's done 130k and is worn out then I've got a great excuse for tinkering... greenarrow said:
Don't see many PD 150s any more, but overall, I think the MK4 Golf is wearing very well. Seems to be pretty rust proof after nearly 20 years.
Mine has zero rust that I can find. There's even a small dent and scrape in the nearside sill - one small part of the scrape has gone down to the metal and yet it's just not really rusting at all. Must've been there a while too. You do see the odd one that looks a bit tatty though, but they seem to be the exception. Front wings rust badly if the arch liners wear the paint through on the inside. That's about the worst that happens though it would seem.Surprised you're not a fan of the handling! I can hustle my W reg Bora along pretty much better than anything else i've ever owned... and that does include some far more exotic machinery! A lot of love for the mk4 platform, easy to fix, maintain.. 60mpg at 55mph over decent length journeys... Whole lot of love for it!
Oh and its soon to break the 170k barrier, 70k of which are in my ownership... only wear, tear and service items replaced, not one single non service part... hell of a car!
Oh and its soon to break the 170k barrier, 70k of which are in my ownership... only wear, tear and service items replaced, not one single non service part... hell of a car!
Coming from a Puma, even one with tired suspension, will make most hatchbacks feel wobbly!
My previous reply was mostly in jest to be honest - I keep trying to find something wrong with the Jag so that I can spend some money on it and wield the spanners! I'm pretty sure all the brakes will need an overhaul soon...
My previous reply was mostly in jest to be honest - I keep trying to find something wrong with the Jag so that I can spend some money on it and wield the spanners! I'm pretty sure all the brakes will need an overhaul soon...
viciousj377o said:
Surprised you're not a fan of the handling! I can hustle my W reg Bora along pretty much better than anything else i've ever owned... and that does include some far more exotic machinery! A lot of love for the mk4 platform, easy to fix, maintain.. 60mpg at 55mph over decent length journeys... Whole lot of love for it!
Oh and its soon to break the 170k barrier, 70k of which are in my ownership... only wear, tear and service items replaced, not one single non service part... hell of a car!
It feels rather soft compared to the Puma, which was on rails and loved lift-off oversteer!Oh and its soon to break the 170k barrier, 70k of which are in my ownership... only wear, tear and service items replaced, not one single non service part... hell of a car!
My friend had a PD150 with 250k on the clock and still going strong. He sold it on and it's still out there somewhere!
Squishey said:
Coming from a Puma, even one with tired suspension, will make most hatchbacks feel wobbly!
My previous reply was mostly in jest to be honest - I keep trying to find something wrong with the Jag so that I can spend some money on it and wield the spanners! I'm pretty sure all the brakes will need an overhaul soon...
If you want a hand with the brakes then let me know My previous reply was mostly in jest to be honest - I keep trying to find something wrong with the Jag so that I can spend some money on it and wield the spanners! I'm pretty sure all the brakes will need an overhaul soon...
Small update on the diesel machine. It's munching miles extremely well and keeps coming back for more! MOT was passed with no problems, and I've added a set of Nexen tyres to the mix as the Michelins on the front were worn out. They seem reasonable for the money and I've not yet woken up dead from fitting cheaper tyres to my car... It came with brand new Goodyears on the rear, so I've got plenty of miles to do before needing more tyres!
I'm pretty much up to scratch with all service items and there aren't any faults apart from the cloth inserts in the door cards coming away from the rest of the doorcard - some plastic rivets have been broken and a hot glue gun worked only temporarily, so I'll just live with it. I'm still undecided on whether to change the cam belt so I've not bought the kit yet, and the only other things that might need doing are coolant and brake fluid flushes. Both of which don't look desperate, so I'll do them as and when. With this hot weather I'm considering spending money on an air-con regas as it's not blowing as cold as it could do!
With not much spannering to do I had a go at the cosmetics. I'm working at the end of a mile long dusty track some of the time, and a building site sometimes too. Going anywhere near either of these means the car gets instantly filthy:
As you can see, I'd not really bothered washing it for a few weeks. The car always looked ok with a wash and brush up but the laquer was pretty badly scratched when you looked closer. You can just about see what I'm on about on the front wing. The whole car has deep scratches like that, as well as swirl marks over the top:
I presume the previous owners just used a car wash constantly. This is clearly not good enough for a dieselly shed so I set about it with my MOP and some compound:
It looks a lot better now! A much deeper shine, a fair amount of the scratching has gone and the paint feels smooth to the touch. I've put wax on top to protect the paint too. I couldn't get really close up pics because it's too sunny at the mo, but I'll try to get some better pics at a later date. It's far from perfect but definitely prettier than it was. You can see the multi shades of blue more clearly where someone 'smart' repaired it in the past
Not bothered really. Looks ok for a cat S with no paint or bodywork done since the incident 
I've made a few holograms in the paintwork too from the MOP so I'll have to have another go around the car at some point. I didn't have great light conditions when I was doing the polishing one evening on the drive!
Value for money wise, it's still early days, but I'm running at around 28p/mile @ 4500 miles in to my ownership. To make this car as ridiculously cheap as the previous Puma I'd have to do nearly another 40k miles @ next to £0 spent. Sounds like a challenge!!
I'm pretty much up to scratch with all service items and there aren't any faults apart from the cloth inserts in the door cards coming away from the rest of the doorcard - some plastic rivets have been broken and a hot glue gun worked only temporarily, so I'll just live with it. I'm still undecided on whether to change the cam belt so I've not bought the kit yet, and the only other things that might need doing are coolant and brake fluid flushes. Both of which don't look desperate, so I'll do them as and when. With this hot weather I'm considering spending money on an air-con regas as it's not blowing as cold as it could do!
With not much spannering to do I had a go at the cosmetics. I'm working at the end of a mile long dusty track some of the time, and a building site sometimes too. Going anywhere near either of these means the car gets instantly filthy:
As you can see, I'd not really bothered washing it for a few weeks. The car always looked ok with a wash and brush up but the laquer was pretty badly scratched when you looked closer. You can just about see what I'm on about on the front wing. The whole car has deep scratches like that, as well as swirl marks over the top:
I presume the previous owners just used a car wash constantly. This is clearly not good enough for a dieselly shed so I set about it with my MOP and some compound:
It looks a lot better now! A much deeper shine, a fair amount of the scratching has gone and the paint feels smooth to the touch. I've put wax on top to protect the paint too. I couldn't get really close up pics because it's too sunny at the mo, but I'll try to get some better pics at a later date. It's far from perfect but definitely prettier than it was. You can see the multi shades of blue more clearly where someone 'smart' repaired it in the past
Not bothered really. Looks ok for a cat S with no paint or bodywork done since the incident I've made a few holograms in the paintwork too from the MOP so I'll have to have another go around the car at some point. I didn't have great light conditions when I was doing the polishing one evening on the drive!
Value for money wise, it's still early days, but I'm running at around 28p/mile @ 4500 miles in to my ownership. To make this car as ridiculously cheap as the previous Puma I'd have to do nearly another 40k miles @ next to £0 spent. Sounds like a challenge!!
Superchickenn said:
Id highly recommend the EGR delete, I done this to mine too, id also whist you do that do the Vac simplification mod.. only costs about £5 and makes things a lot more simple when looking under the engine bay.
Interesting... any more details on the vac simplification mod? There do seem to be rather a lot of vac pipes under there, but it's the same on any VAG product I've been near! It's not got any vacuum problems but might be nice to have it apart and check/simplify- *****
https://uk-mkivs.net/topic/50427-pd-vac-line-simpl...
Great car, Too nice to play water pump lottery with it though!
I’ve gotta Puma that’s just been rebushed including the rear beam, as said before most hatches will feel sloppy in comparison. I think refreshing worn out suspension on the Golf is a great idea, mapping these with great results is very cheap but I’m with you on potentially leaving it alone. A cheap map can all too often mean chasing drive shaft/clutch/gearbox problems on an older car with some miles under its belt, especially with the PD150’s lump of torque.
Wish you the best of luck!
I’ve gotta Puma that’s just been rebushed including the rear beam, as said before most hatches will feel sloppy in comparison. I think refreshing worn out suspension on the Golf is a great idea, mapping these with great results is very cheap but I’m with you on potentially leaving it alone. A cheap map can all too often mean chasing drive shaft/clutch/gearbox problems on an older car with some miles under its belt, especially with the PD150’s lump of torque.
Wish you the best of luck!
Gallons Per Mile said:
This thread may end up going the way of the man with the 'shedding properly' Passat but I'm hoping it goes somewhere inbetween my bargain basement Puma and 'shedding properly'!
That'll be me.I cannot edit the title of that thread, if I could I'd change it to...
"Shedding wrongly, the expensive way"
or
"Way over the top shedding"
or
"Shedding, but not as we know it"
But within that now pictureless thread both my Passat and the Wife's 130hp TDI MK4 are very well sorted and in the two years since most of that work was done, only very minor servicing has been done (oil and filter changes). With the level of work I did, I reckon they are both good to go for another ten years.
Of both cars, the Passat was virtually rust free, but a bit younger only needing some spot welds buzzing off and paint dabbing over them. On the MK4 which is a 2001 car, there was just a little bit starting to creep in at the sill ends. Take the arch liners out, clean the mud out and have a good look on yours.
Keep up the good work.
exgtt said:
Great car, Too nice to play water pump lottery with it though!
I’ve gotta Puma that’s just been rebushed including the rear beam, as said before most hatches will feel sloppy in comparison. I think refreshing worn out suspension on the Golf is a great idea, mapping these with great results is very cheap but I’m with you on potentially leaving it alone. A cheap map can all too often mean chasing drive shaft/clutch/gearbox problems on an older car with some miles under its belt, especially with the PD150’s lump of torque.
Wish you the best of luck!
The water pump is the least of my worries! I really shouldn't play cam belt roulette with this one, but time is short at the moment. However, I will change it sometime this year (probably!).I’ve gotta Puma that’s just been rebushed including the rear beam, as said before most hatches will feel sloppy in comparison. I think refreshing worn out suspension on the Golf is a great idea, mapping these with great results is very cheap but I’m with you on potentially leaving it alone. A cheap map can all too often mean chasing drive shaft/clutch/gearbox problems on an older car with some miles under its belt, especially with the PD150’s lump of torque.
Wish you the best of luck!
I'm slightly envious now that you say you've got a sorted Puma. Mine was the most fun I've ever had just by driving to work - certainly on par with my E46 M3, which was a different kind of fun. Please go and explore lift-off oversteer, you'll absolutely love it. I made mine look like it was RWD a few times coming off roundabouts
colin_p said:
That'll be me.
colin_p said:
Take the arch liners out, clean the mud out and have a good look on yours.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks, I'll have a look at that when time allows and update on here!Keep up the good work.
You'll be pleased to know that I actually checked the oil level for the first time since I serviced it the other day. About 5k miles ago...
All is well though, it appears to have used virtually nothing. Which is nice.I've had some free time this weekend, so an update is due!
I knew one of my CV boots was starting to split so I bought a universal one and got cracking. I also wanted to check out the 'mud behind the wheel arch liner' situation. So that's where we'll start:
Hmm, quite a lot actually!
All clean and tidy. No rust either:
Ok, well just a tiny bit:
Other side was just as bad. Didn't bother with a 'before' picture, so here's the 'after':
At this point, I forgot about using my phone to take pictures and changed the CV boot. It's a messy job - CV grease always gets everywhere, but I knew this and prepared with an old sacrificial bed sheet. The CV joints are easy to remove on this car. Just bash them with a hammer (carefully) and they pop off the end of the shaft, rather than having to find a C clip in the grease and then splay it apart to remove the joint.
One shiny new outer CV boot. Perfect fit, came with fresh grease and new clips too:
I'm pretty happy with that. A couple of jobs ticked off, but I've got a couple more now! I noticed that the passenger side inner CV boot is looking pretty perished, so that'll need doing sometime in the future. Also, my radiator fans don't appear to be working - they don't come on with the air con, so it warms up when you're sitting in traffic and then cools down once you're on the move and have air flow over the condenser. The car doesn't overheat though, so either it's not getting hot enough to need the fans at the moment or they are working but on high speed only. More investigation is needed.
I knew one of my CV boots was starting to split so I bought a universal one and got cracking. I also wanted to check out the 'mud behind the wheel arch liner' situation. So that's where we'll start:
Hmm, quite a lot actually!
All clean and tidy. No rust either:
Ok, well just a tiny bit:
Other side was just as bad. Didn't bother with a 'before' picture, so here's the 'after':
At this point, I forgot about using my phone to take pictures and changed the CV boot. It's a messy job - CV grease always gets everywhere, but I knew this and prepared with an old sacrificial bed sheet. The CV joints are easy to remove on this car. Just bash them with a hammer (carefully) and they pop off the end of the shaft, rather than having to find a C clip in the grease and then splay it apart to remove the joint.
One shiny new outer CV boot. Perfect fit, came with fresh grease and new clips too:
I'm pretty happy with that. A couple of jobs ticked off, but I've got a couple more now! I noticed that the passenger side inner CV boot is looking pretty perished, so that'll need doing sometime in the future. Also, my radiator fans don't appear to be working - they don't come on with the air con, so it warms up when you're sitting in traffic and then cools down once you're on the move and have air flow over the condenser. The car doesn't overheat though, so either it's not getting hot enough to need the fans at the moment or they are working but on high speed only. More investigation is needed.
Gallons Per Mile said:
I've had some free time this weekend, so an update is due!
I knew one of my CV boots was starting to split so I bought a universal one and got cracking. I also wanted to check out the 'mud behind the wheel arch liner' situation. So that's where we'll start:
Hmm, quite a lot actually!
All clean and tidy. No rust either:
I wish manufacturers paid more attention to such mud traps. I took the rear arch liners off the MPS the other week....and stuck a finger through the ends of the sills where the mud had collected and rusted them through. I knew one of my CV boots was starting to split so I bought a universal one and got cracking. I also wanted to check out the 'mud behind the wheel arch liner' situation. So that's where we'll start:
Hmm, quite a lot actually!
All clean and tidy. No rust either:
colin_p said:
You now know what I was on about with having a looky behind the arch liners.
As for the CV's, you can get a pair of new complete driveshafts from J&R for less than £50, cleaner, quicker and easier.
Yep. Cheers for the tip As for the CV's, you can get a pair of new complete driveshafts from J&R for less than £50, cleaner, quicker and easier.
Wow! I just had a look at J&R's site. A pair of complete shafts for my car is under £54. That's insane!
Fastdruid said:
I wish manufacturers paid more attention to such mud traps. I took the rear arch liners off the MPS the other week....and stuck a finger through the ends of the sills where the mud had collected and rusted them through.
OUCH! That's not good. I'm rather glad my car doesn't look like that... Hope you get it sorted out.paultownsend said:
We had issues with our 1.8t fans just before selling. Look the fuse board above the battery. Ours had, as I remember burnt out. A cheap fix from the famous auction site and all was good in the world.
I checked last night actually, after doing a bit of reading on the subject. Can you tell what the problem is:
Relevant auction site has been raided and two new strip fuses are on their way. Two, just in case there's a problem with a fan or the control module and it blows as soon as I fit a new one...
Gallons Per Mile said:
Wow! I just had a look at J&R's site. A pair of complete shafts for my car is under £54. That's insane!
I checked last night actually, after doing a bit of reading on the subject. Can you tell what the problem is:
Relevant auction site has been raided and two new strip fuses are on their way. Two, just in case there's a problem with a fan or the control module and it blows as soon as I fit a new one...
The shafts have gone up a bit, but still cheap at twice the price at £54! When you think of it that x2 driveshafts and x4 CV joints with all their gubbins for £54, amazing.I checked last night actually, after doing a bit of reading on the subject. Can you tell what the problem is:
Relevant auction site has been raided and two new strip fuses are on their way. Two, just in case there's a problem with a fan or the control module and it blows as soon as I fit a new one...
As for the fan problem, my understanding is that the fan resistors fry so they won't work on the low speeds but will pulse on and off at full tilt. I'd be interested in the e-bay fix as well? Would it be some big arcol or similar resistors?
colin_p said:
The shafts have gone up a bit, but still cheap at twice the price at £54! When you think of it that x2 driveshafts and x4 CV joints with all their gubbins for £54, amazing.
As for the fan problem, my understanding is that the fan resistors fry so they won't work on the low speeds but will pulse on and off at full tilt. I'd be interested in the e-bay fix as well? Would it be some big arcol or similar resistors?
Yes, exactly, that's a great price and I'll probably order some soon just so I don't need to replace the other CV boots. I'll have shiny shafts and new CV's thrown in too!As for the fan problem, my understanding is that the fan resistors fry so they won't work on the low speeds but will pulse on and off at full tilt. I'd be interested in the e-bay fix as well? Would it be some big arcol or similar resistors?
There's no magical Ebay fix that I'm aware of. I've bought a couple of strip fuses to replace the blown one. If the new one blows straight away then I have either a fan or a fan controller problem. I'll do some diagnosis if the simple fuse replacement doesn't work.
I've heard the same about the resistors on the fans for the low speed operation. I'll see what happens when I plug the new fuse in.
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