lorry part batters it's way through my sump!

[davidwort 0]

Lovely wet commute down the M1 this morning in bunching traffic then out of the blue something appears on the road in front of me, no time/room to swerve so straddled it and Bang! :shock: like hitting a kerb with both front wheels at 40mph.

No idea what it was but I'd imagine the trucker wandering down the hard shoulder looking for something behind his lorry had something to do with it :bad-words:

 

Next thing I know, the car says STOP low oil pressure, so I managed to coast to the services in the hard shoulder and got it towed to the garage, they tell me that it looks like a piece of railway line has been fired at my lovely alloy sump.

 

Fortunately it's only about 50 quid from VW, which is better than the new engine I was half expecting.

 

Mk4 golf BTW. just glad it wasn't the Corrado, it would have done more damage with the less ground clearance on that I reckon.

[boost monkey 0]

Oh dear! Glad you mentioned it was a Mk4, I was gonna ask about the alloy sump!

 

Is it just gonna be a £50 part plus fitting to fix then?

[davidwort 0]

apparently VW use a special sealant rather than a gasket so there's a bit of that stuff to use, but yep, hopefully it's just the sump, and a very useful father who works at a garage to do the job for me :notworthy: not that he was over impressed when I rang him at work to tow me to his garage in the pouring rain.

[Adz The Rat 0]

Bugger, that is bad!!!

Did you get company name of the side of the truck??

[craigowl 0]

Glad you escaped relatively lightly, davidwort.

 

Off topic, but what do you think of the Mk4 Golf? I ask because you always seem well informed!

[davidwort 0]

didn't really have time to see what the lorry livery was, traffic too heavy and it all happened so quick.

 

craigowl, I only have my 1.6 mk4 to go by really (6 years worth), I've been in a few others but not long enough to compare much.

The smaller engined mk4's were allegedly built in South Africa, if that's true then it might explain some of the less than perfect trim fitting in mine! I've had lots of rattles that have taken a bit of fiddling to sort but generally they feel fairly good quality inside.

One problem with the trim is all the soft touch coated plastics, it's rubbish and scratches and comes off easily making the interiors look a bit shabby on the hard used parts, door pulls etc.

I've had a series of minor things on mine, leaking Power steering hose at 35K and two coilpacks fail, although they were not the recall ones like the 1.8T's had around 2002. Window mechs on pre 2002 cars fail quite quickly, VW do a repair kit with strengthened parts.

The handling on the smaller sized wheel is rubbish, mainly due to the really high sidewalls on the 1.4 and 1.6 cars, make sure you have at least the 15" wheels on them and I have 16's now from a GTI which are loads better but knock fuel consumption a little.

Mine now has a bad knocking from the rear beam, seems like the rear beam bushes don't last long on them and the front ARB bushes had some stupid hard coating from the factory which makes them clonk, a redesigned part is now available.

what else? - water temp sensors seem to die frequently, had 3 on mine. and the felt coating on the outer door opening rubbers sticks shut in the frost if it's rained before, very annoying!

It also nearly wrecked it's own head when one of the timing tensionners started to fail, fortunately I caught it in time, it had only done 50K and sholdn't be replaced until 60, VW have redesigned these bits at least 3 times too!

My dad sees them from time to time at his garage and they're had more than one 1.6 16v break cambelts when the tensionners fail, the TDI's need more fequent changes but seem to hold up OK if they're done to schedule.

The TDI's are great for torque and fuel economy but potentially parts can cost you a fair bit, you need to do a lot of miles to really justify the extra purchase price and servicing costs I reckon.

They're not very characterful cars, but they do feel OK to be in, fairly quiet and feel quite solid, reliability wise though they're not going to beat the likes of toyota, honda etc!

[craigowl 0]

Thanks for that, davidwort.