Cold start stalling?

[Rocco_Lisa]

Two days after spending £500 to change the knackered gear box in my 1.8 1990 GTII a new problem developed!

The car will start fine, revs up, revs down and stalls. I can restart but have to rev the bejebbers off it (3-4,000 revs) to keep it going and sometimes it dies again anyway. This ends up being repeated several times to get off the drive and then at the first couple of junctions until the car has started to warm up at which point it runs perfectly. In general the colder it is the harder it is to keep going.

A week after this started one night it also started to stall at junctions / traffic lights until it just refused to start again. I don't know if this related to the above though since the rotor arm, HT leads, all filters, spark plugs have been changed and some vacuum hoses have been replaced, and it hasn't refused to start again or had the warm stalling problem again.

But each time I've had some work done it seems to behave well for a couple of days and then the cold start stalling happens again.

Is this likely to be a sticking choke? How easy is that to sort out?

[the edmundator]

Is it still running on the original Pierburg with the auto-choke?

In the long-term, you will find your life is made much simpler by replacing it with a Weber with a manual choke. Very few garages these days understand the Pierburg well enough to get it running properly. It's a perfectly decent carb when it's running properly, but you'll probably have far fewer headaches with a Weber. £200 from eBay, brand new.

[ianaudia4]

There is a great old school ex VAG mechanic near Chelmsford that is a wizz with Pierburgs. The place is called AJ Motors 01245 464800,the bloke is called Alan and he is very reasonable with his prices.

[Nate]

definately sounds like a choke problem

[bensspares]

plus 1 with the choke, sounds like its not closing hence bad runnig when cold and ok when warm.

[hiltow]

Definitely sounds like your carburettor. Sorting it is swings and roundabouts really. You could go for the new Weber for the £200 + fitting and have a new carb but go back to manual choke and get slightly less mpg.

The problem with the Pierburg is that it's quite an advanced (complicated) bit of kit and there aren't many places around that still have the staff with knowledge of them gained from back in the day. Fixing your Pierburg may be cheaper than going the new carb route - no component likely to be at fault for the Pierburg is likely to cost you more than £100 (and will probably be less than that - £40 for a choke pull-down unit for example).

Northampton Motorsport are knowledgeable on Pierburg carbs and would be able to repair your it for you on or off the car. They fully rebuilt mine and made a superb job of it. They also deal in Weber Carbs too.

[Rocco_Lisa]

Thanks all.

It's an auto-choke so assume it's the original Pierburg. Unfortunately I've had to spend about a grand in the last couple of months on the car and it's crippled me so I need the cheapest option available at the moment.

I will give Chelmsford Alan a ring as I go out that way regularly and if no joy the Northampton option so cheers for those.

[ianaudia4]

Mention my name to Alan, he did the timing/fueling on my white Scala, it's been spot on since.

[Rocco_Lisa]

Mention my name to Alan, he did the timing/fueling on my white Scala, it's been spot on since.

Will do. :)