Hi boys and girls, new Mk4 GTI owner in Brisbane

[Major Tom]

Hi everyone,

My name is Tom and I'm a 20 year old uni student (UQ) & bike mechanic (Planet Cycles) living in Brisbane.

I'm originally from Tassie but felt it was time to change my surroundings and explore another part of this great country of ours! I'm enjoying Brisbane so far but of course being new I don't have much of a social network yet. I'm studying Exercise and Sports Science at UQ, St Lucia. There seems to be a fair few decent VW's kicking around campus (mostly Mk5 TDIs or Polo TSIs it seems), so it'd be good to meet any fellow Vdubbers on campus.

Anyway, onto the car.

I picked up a stock 1999 Golf GTI (jazz blue) just recently, and am slowly restoring and improving its condition where I am able (read, financially).

I love driving it, especially with the roof open at night My first turbo car so its a bit of a jet for me.

I bought it unregistered and it had a few little niggles, but for $5800 and knowing what needed to be fixed I jumped at it.

I've done a lot of little jobs so far, but there are others that still need doing. New CV boot and A/C compressor install to name a couple.

Couple of mystery issues that I thought I would mention though.

1. Idle: Rough feeling idle at ~850rpm, then it will spaz out and almost stall. Basically it drops to ~500rpm then catches itself and pops back up to ~1200 before settling at 850 again. After this happens the idle feels rougher, like its slightly misfiring.
So far I have cleaned the throttle body (cable throttle, AGU btw), MAF, ignition sensor (on air box, not sure if thats the right name for it), spark plugs (which looked ok), and run some injector cleaner through it but hasn't seemed to get much better. As a random side note it seems slightly worse when I'm running BP Ultimate than Shell V-Power, but this might be coincidence. Coil packs may be a problem, I don't know. It has black ones with white Audi/VW labelling and the coils have a rubber shield over them.
Any thoughts?

2. Passenger tail light: I noticed the passenger side DRL (i.e. second click out on euroswitch) wasn't working to I examined further, and noticed that the passenger side tail light was wired differently and only had 5 wires compared to the driver's sides 6 (all lights work fine..). Now here's the weird part. Somehow after I'd had a fiddle with the lights, I'm finding that when indicating left the light is less bright than the driver's side. AND when indicating left and the brake is applied (foot brake), the indicator goes off and the brake light starts flashing rapidly!
Anyway so I frigged around with changing bulbs and examining wiring and I feel it may have something to do with the missing wire (if there are supposed to be 6) or a poor ground. Or whoever spliced the wires to connect a trailer wiring lead screwed something up. The investigation continues...


Also, if anyone in Brisbane who has a Vag-com setup would be happy to scan/clear the codes on my car I'll happily buy you a coffee or beer! I don't have the $ to buy it just now, student life

Feel free to introduce yourselves if you ever see me around, I'm always happy to make new friends

Thanks for reading!

Tom

[h100vw]

Hey Tom welcome to the forum. Jazz Blue is pretty rare and cheap too.

I have VCDS and could be in Ferny Hills tomorrow.

The item in the airbox is the ignition amplifier, they fail more often than coilpacks in my experience. I would be looking for airleaks, the small Vacuum pipes are always shagged.

There's no fog light on the passenger side, which why you have one wire less. I'll hazard a guess that you have a bad bulb somewhere.

PM me a number and I'll call you if I make it over that way tomorrow arvo.

Gavin

[team_v]

Welcome to the forums Tom.
Hope you can get it running perfectly and out to some of our events.

[Major Tom]

Hey Gavin,

Thanks for the pointers. I'll have a scout around with a mist sprayer or some carb cleaner and see what I come up with!

And I'll run the multimeter over the bulbs and board. I was thinking it might be worth re-grounding the tail light wires somewhere closer (the brown ground wire seems to run down and then around the side of the car), worth doing if I'm still having issues?

PM on its way

---------- Post added at 09:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:25 PM ----------

Thanks team_v

Thats the plan for sure man! There are definitely some sweet VWs around Brisbane I'd be keen to check out.

Cheers!

[dylan8]

Welcome.
Love the Jazz blue

[Major Tom]

Cheers Dylan

I love the jazz blue too - especially once I had given it a proper wash/polish/wax it scrubbed up nicely!