My '88 Scala

[josh2109]

Hi Folks,

Just got myself a new car this weekend, so thought I would come share it with some fellow minded enthusiasts :) Got a 1988 Scirocco Scala running on an EX engine with a Weber conversion. Only paid £300 so she's not the prettiest car in the world, and has a few issues I'll have to sort, but is still a good fun drive! Here she is in all her retro glory




So, good points first - It's a Scirocco :D it's had the Pierburg swapped for a Weber carb (not that Pierburgs are bad carbs outright, they're just incredibly complex - I've spent so many hours trying to sort my Golf's carb). It's had coilovers fitted, although I've not had a chance to check what type they are, I'm hoping not eBay specials! The body is straight bar a few bits of trim, and structurally she seems sound although I guess we'll find out definitively how it's doing come MOT time next month.

And then the bad points - I have the notorious cutting out whilst driving long distances issue :( I had to get the car recovered home as it wasn't safe to drive on the motorway (on Saturday I was involved in an accident on the M23 involving a van from the oncoming carriageway crossing the central reservation on it's side and coming into my lane. Talking to the traffic police whilst giving my statement, if I had of been a few seconds ahead of where I was I wouldn't have had time to swerve out the way - this has made me a little more conscious of safety and taking chances to say the least ). So that added £280 onto what the car owes! Although better that than have an accident :) I'm thinking I have the notorious corrosion in the fuel system problem - I'd check the inline fuel filter, but mine has been removed and replaced with a hard line at some point I also can't shut my bonnet as you can probably see from the pics - I don't know why but last night the catch just decided not to fully latch. The safety latch still works, but still I'd rather have a fully closed bonnet!! Speaking of the bonnet, mine has no heatshield, and has been resprayed at some point. For some reason the heat from the engine has damaged this new paint job. I don't have a complete Scala interior either, as the original seats had to be replaced for an MOT - I've got Corrado seats currently. Other than a few scuffs and scrapes, that's about all the flaws in a nutshell!! Oh apart from the leaking rear windscreen washer jet Lucky I like sorting preblems, eh?

Cheers,
Josh

[GTXTRA]

Welcome Josh - DEFINITELY check the technical areas re specifics - the fuel system thing is as you say not unusual.

Best Mk2 colour IMHO.

[funkydelicdubber]

looks a good base for a project!

[josh2109]

Cheers guys :)

As for it being a base for a project, not sure how far I'll push this one. Got enough projects kicking around atm, pics below! The Rocco is a toy for the time being (at least it will be once I sort the dreaded fuelling problem!). At any rate here's the other motors it's currently competing for my time with :)

My 6th Gen Honda Accord, currently off the road whilst I put a DOHC VTEC lump in it...



My 3rd Gen Honda Accord GSi, my current daily and my pride and joy



My 4th Gen Honda Prelude, needs brakes and ball joints!



My Mk 2 Golf, currently full of water



My Citreon Xsara estate, electrical nightmare and currently used by my girlfriend thankfully!



The neighbours love us

So yeah, the Scirocco was meant to be something to play with, but it turns out I can't help but tinker. Have put a Pierburg 2E2 back on her, as it turns out she wasn't fitted with a Weber, just a manual choke and a stripped down Pierburg - I saw the manual choke and assumed I was rocking a Weber At any rate I'm a bit of a Pierburg fan, I think it's awesome how intricate they are as a mechanical alternative to fuel injection, so I'm keen to get a fully functional one back on there. So far not so good, the spare I fitted idles constantly at about 2,000RPM 3 point unit is functioning fine, and I have a healthy waxstat (albeit not plumbed in, need to get some hose!) so I guess I'll keep trouble shooting... Sticky throttle pedal too after fitting the new carb, so need to break out the lube ;) Keen to get these bits sorted, as once she runs properly I'll go grab an 8v GTi camshaft from the breakers for some cheap giggles - worked wonders on the Golf!

At any rate I'm enjoying the Rocco so far - just hope she gets through her MOT this month!!

[josh2109]

Forgot to leave you all with a pic of my VW's I took yesterday :D Excuse the hood scoop, it was an emergency bonnet that I never got around to replacing!

[josh2109]

Made some progress today :) I had 3 Pierburg 2E2's at home, then picked up another 2 for a fiver yesterday, so with enough spares to have every base hopefully covered it was time to sort out my Rocco's carb. After a bit of tinkering and learning I have managed to get the one I fitted to the car working fairly nicely. After I first fitted it, the car idled constantly at 2,000RPM immediately after starting and didn't slow down upon warming up. The wire earthing the carb was mullered, so I made my own replacent (making sure to put an insulated spade connection half way along for all the times I'll need to remove the carb ). This made all the electrical parts come back to life :) took a newer expansion element from another Pierburg and fitted that, which solved my high idle, it now drops gradually to 1000RPM as the engine warms up. Checked the autochoke function which seems tip top (the most important factor for me - I absolutely hated the manual choke on the car ). Finally, the non return valve on the vacuum line leading to the vacuum reservoir was fitted the wrong way around - turned it around and I got the cold start fast idle function back (that initial few seconds of high revs)

So all in all I think that should be all I need to do for the time being with regards to the carb. As a precautionary step I replaced all the vacuum lines whilst the carb was out, as although they looked fine it was a good chance to fit some fresh lines to extend the carb's life. Not had a chance to road test it yet though as I have no tax :(

Next job on my list then is the dreaded rotten fuel filler pipe. I so don't fancy sorting that right now though, I bet it's going to be a ball ache I do have a sticky throttle to sort too, but not too sure how to trouble shoot that - are there any common reasons for the throttle not returning when you release the pedal? I had this on my Golf too after changing a snapped cable, is there something you should do when refitting the cable to prevent it sticking?

[josh2109]

Tonight I decided to sort out the fact that my Scirocco has no stereo. To make matters complicated, a previous owner had hacked the loom up

So, firstly I traced all the wires from the speakers, and wrote them down on the wiring diagram from my Haynes manual. I had to do this as the colours of my wires were different to what the manual said they should be. The remaining few wires were the correct colours fortunately! The next step was to cut off the existing bullet connectors, strip fresh bits of wire and connect some insulated female spade sockets. It sounds simple but the wires for the rear speakers were a nightmare! They were really short so I couldn't get them out the dash to use my crimping tool to strip them, instead I had to use a pair of wire cutters very carefully by poking the wire through the slot into the cubbyhole below.

After the connectors were fitted:


Next step was to split the constant live into 2 wires. This would enable me to connect it to the switched live on my head unit as well as the constant live. To do this I made a tiny loom from 2 bits of wire and three spade connectors:



Couldn't find my red wire so had to use black

I didn't fancy buying a new ISO adapter, so I just cut up a spare Honda one I had. I fitted male spade connectors to all the wires on this so that I could plug it into the Scirocco loom.



Not an awful lot of space in there!!

From here it was simple, just fitted the stereo cage I had, and slotted in a spare head unit :) I somehow made it this far without any injuries, so of course I managed to take a load of skin off my thumb on the cage

Moment of truth:



:D

So I now have a stereo, and I've got to say after the amount of hassle it was to fit it kind of makes me appreciate it more than on the easier installs I've done. Just a shame it's blue and not green!



Whilst I was playing around with the sound system I thought it would be a good chance to fit a leftover set of speakers I had from my Golf, as the parcel shelf speakers in the Golf fit the door cards and parcel shelf of the Scirocco, and my door speakers were in tatters.




Just need speaker covers now for the front and rear, then I can leave it all alone for a bit.

Next up on the list is find out why my windscreen wash function has died again. First time it was a dead pump, which I replaced and it fixed the problem. Now I reckon it's the relay that's let go.

Another small problem I fixed today, and with the help of my lovely girlfriend, was my sticking throttle. A few minutes spent adjusting the cable seems to have sorted everything out :) I now have a Scirocco that starts and drives on a Pierburg 2E2, even in the freezing cold

And on that note I'll leave you all with some icy Scirocco pics

[josh2109]

So, a quick update.

As you may have seen, the Scirocco failed it's MOT :( The CO was out, and I had a snapped anti roll bar linkage



It was put as an advisory that the car was pretty rotten anyway, as you can see



For the time being I'm just going to do the work needed for it's MOT, but as parts are fairly cheap I will work my way around the underneath of the car and replace anything rotten with shiny new bits as and when I have spare money. I'm hoping that should be fairly soon, as I found out the other day that my girflriend has been managing to save over £200 a month from the joint account!!

Anyway, these arrived today



Bought for about £16 on eBay, apparently they're made from stainless steel and so should be more resistant to corrosion than the OEM ones :) Will hopefully fit these over the weekend (although the Prelude is returning home, so no doubt I'll be spending a bit of time on that too )

Cheers,
Josh

[josh2109]

Got the bracket replaced today :) here's the old one next to a new one, completely fubar



Getting the old one out wasn't too bad, one bolt sheared and the other came off without too much trouble. The bracket was corroded on, nothing a lump hammer couldn't solve though the most awkward part was threading the nuts onto the studs of the new bracket. I was lying on my side, trying to hold the anti roll bar and bracket in place with one hand, and thread the nuts with the other... Got there in the end though :)



Will do the other side after the MOT is done, just in case anything goes awry. Next time I reckon I might try jacking the wheel up slightly whilst the car is on stands, in order to save having to squeeze the ARB against the wishbone by hand again whilst I fit the bracket

Just the CO to adjust now and I'll get her in for a retest, I'll be back in my Scirocco in no time hopefully

[josh2109]

Had a result today, the Scirocco passed it's MOT with the new ARB bracket and adjusted idle mixture. The CO was 0.99% this time, so a massive improvement over the previous 5.90%. I wasn't charged a retest fee either, so all in all I was pretty pleased with that :D went and taxed the car straight afterwards, and it's now ready for the role of being the daily commuter :) Still got a few running issues to tackle, but I feel like I'm getting somewhere now!

[Tim_R]

work on getting the MOT, now you will have a whole list of teething troubles that will keep growing as you start to use the car daily!

Looks like you have a good selection of projects there although i reckon the Xsara could do with a VTS/GTI6 engine conversion to become a stealth battlewagon! Another 5 door Mk2 golf owner a well although if your's works you are doing better than me!

[josh2109]

So, progress for today - I found out what this part of my autochoke should do and how it should be connected:



Apparently this a thermo-pneumatic valve, and it controls whether or not the the secondary stage of the throttle can activate. It's connected up via the green hoses in the below diagram:



Below 28 degrees the valve is open, which means the secondary stage throttle can't activate as no vacuum can be held. Once the valve heats up above 28 degrees it closes, the secondary throttle stage system can now activate as vacuum can be held. Apparently this valve was only fitted to 1.6 litre manual and 1.8 litre automatic cars built after 1984, but I'm kind of hoping it may help solve the problem of my car cutting out when the engine is cold and the throttle is opened up. Only time will tell I guess! Failing that my Golf is a 1.6, so I can just swap the auochokes over Credit to Rubjonny's excellent Prierburg guide for the above information btw, as that's where I read up on this :)

work on getting the MOT, now you will have a whole list of teething troubles that will keep growing as you start to use the car daily!

Looks like you have a good selection of projects there although i reckon the Xsara could do with a VTS/GTI6 engine conversion to become a stealth battlewagon! Another 5 door Mk2 golf owner a well although if your's works you are doing better than me!

Cheers, yeah the small jobs have already started unfortunately I noticed he Scirocco was idling at around 400rpm when hot, so I've just been out for a blast to get the car up to temp, then adjusted the 3 point unit to correct my idle up to about 750-800rpm. I'll be interested to see if this has an effect on how the car performs starting from cold as a result of this, as currently it won't idle initially, you have to hold the throttle down I'm wondering if adjusting the 3 point unit may improve this and raise the cold idle.

Haha my girlfriend would go nuts if I swapped out the lump in the Xsara, it's about the only car we have that's friendly to the wallet! I'll definitely get it lowered at some point though, and put some nice wheels on - I think some split rims would look nice. Long term plan is to swap the Xsara for an imported Accord SiR Wagon though so will probably end up saving my pennies for that

And as for the Golf - it works! But the bodywork is very tatty and the cabin keeps filling with water I've sorted out most of the Pierburg woes on it though, so it's worth the effort to save it. It's currently stripped out and I'm just waiting for some better weather before I start getting serious with the work on it.

[josh2109]

It's been a while since I've last updated this! Although thats mainly because it's been a while since I worked on or drove the Scirocco :( I didn't have anywhere to work on my cars, so it was parked on the next street along, and sat there for weeks :(

But then we upped sticks and moved :) bye bye 2 bed terrace with a shared parking area, hello 3 bed detached house with off road parking for 5 cars No points for guessing what made me fall in love with the house, and luckily my girlfriend loved the extra space and the bigger kitchen (I'd like to add, that's not a terrible bout of sexism from me there, she genuinely loves cooking ). The garden was larger and more secluded too, and with a Labrador who thinks he's a guard dog, that sealed the deal really!



Home sweet home :) the rest of the drive is blocked from view by Laura's Xsara there's also space for a car behind where I was standing too! So I set about retrieving all my other cars as well as the Scirocco, and bringing them to their new home:



So we come to the only catch with the house - a previous occupant had turned the garage into a playroom :o

I rectified this in the first week!






Job done

Right, that brings me up to the beginning of last month - more to follow shortly :)

[josh2109]

So, it took a while to settle in (still not properly unpacked!) and the Scirocco was laid up whilst I ran my Accord as my daily. The battery inevitably went flat, so I charged her up the other weekend and went to catch some sun:





Shame about the bonnet though :( at any rate, I was hoping a blast through the countryside would sort the battery out, but no, later that eve it wouldn't start again. So on the drive it stayed again... Gave me a chance to check the fuel tank out though




Not as bad as I expected, but not exactly great. To be fair though my cutting out has stopped recently so not sure what's going on anymore

At any rate, today a new battery arrived, and I also bought new fuel hose clips :) I promptly fitted the battery & clips, and got out on the road to go to my Dad's house after being drafted in to fix one of his MX5's. The traffic was light and seeing as the car had been sat for a while I gave it a bit of welly to blow out the cobwebs... This used to result in losing power and rolling to a halt, but today it was fine :)

So that's about all I've achieved up until today I'm changing my car rota though, and using my Scirocco for work this week. The goal is to rotate it so all the cars get a go, but usually I'm a bit too lazy to stick with the plan

Next on the list: fit my 3 series fuel filler neck. You never know, I might even do it this weekend!