Charging problems aka Scirocco-a-no-go aka stop me from strangling myself with the exciter wire...

[The Igneous Faction]

Ahem...

So after a seriously unfortunate day I awoke to an even more unfortunate day. Because of some lack of sense on my part, my 8v ended up getting towed to a yard. I went to go pay my fine, pick it up, and leave and, lo and behold, it won't run!

Here's the deal; on the first try it fired and stalled almost immediately. I thought nothing of it; cold day, etc... after the third and fourth firings followed by an immediate stall I got concerned. An old, grizzled towtruck driver managed to get it to fire up and idle, but it was barely hanging on. I looked at the vdo voltmeter to see only a measly 11v or so coming off the charging system. And the alt. light is on. But if I so much as touch the throttle the car dies immediately.

So I pull the voltage regulator and see that it has no brush left to it, essentially. Okay, problem solved, right? Wrong! I threw on a good regulator from my brother's GTI and the condition doesn't change. hmmmm. I throw in a charged, working battery, no change in condition... HMMMMM.

Cliff's:
-Car will start and immediately die or cling to a weak idle and die a minute later.
-Voltage regulator toast.
-When idling, voltmeter reads only 11v output.
-When hooked up to a known good battery or jumped, the condition doesn't change.

Any ideas? Jim was very helpful over the phone, which was good, but taking the alternator out of the equation doesn't seem to make any difference to the problem.

Keep in mind that the car was running fine the day before. So what changed?

Oh, and I followed the exciter wire to the firewall and it seemed to be in okay condition. For whatever that's worth.

[ziggirocco]

Try pulling the plugs and see if they are fouled up, may also be crap in the tank that got disturbed when it got towed and may be clogging the fuel distributor or something.


Misspelled by my iPhone using Slaptalk!

[Chris16vRocco]

Perhaps you have a big vacuum leak somewhere that's preventing it from running?

[sciroccojim]

Sorry you're still struggling with this. I do suggest you start with the basics. Is there anything else that was moved or changed before this happened? The dying when you blip the throttle is typically a sign of either (a) too much air or (b) not enough gas, which will happen is the intake hose between the throttle body and airmeter is disconnected or has a hole it in. With the throttle body butterflies closed and the airmeter in the idle position, you're running off of the idle CO (fuel delivery) setting of the airmeter and the car will idle (maybe a bit lean). As soon as those butterflies open....boom...tons of air and no negative pressure (vacuum) to pull up on the sensor plate.

Maybe that's what's happening....nothing at all to do with your alternator. Spray some brake cleaner around the boot, especially on the underside of the short bellows nearest the throttle body. Have a fire extinguisher handy just in case.

[TBerk]

Just a quick thought:

If you can get a car running and have a strong battery the output of the Alt is almost incidental to that 'one good quick run' to get it back to the house.

In other words, w/ all accessories like heater fan, radio, and headlights off there should be plenty of power draining out of a strong battery to run the motor.

Two parting ponderments:

1) Sometime during the hook up and tow your car was drug along at a strange angle, and was handled by unloving hands who might have been a bit rough. Look up under the car for the obvious "that wasn't like that before" esp w/ the Starter motor's hot cable, etc.

2) There might have been an on coming but not yet chronic symptom (low voltage output) that is not the actual problem but is what you are focusing on now.
It might not be the real trouble as to why you car wont rev past an idle and is hard to start.


These are Sciroccos, its not unheard of to have them multi-task in the headache causing department...

[BluDemon]

You might have hit on something. The alternator charging cable runs from the alternator to the starter then the starter wire carries it back to the battery.

Have you checked at the alternator what it's putting out. Use a hand held volt meter and see. Should be around 13-13.5v. Then go from there.

I had charging issues a year or so ago where the battery would just die and it was a combination of a bad battery and battery cables. Once nicely grounded I picked up about 0.5 volts going back to the battery at idle.

[The Igneous Faction]

Yeah, it seems like the charging issue may be only one aspect of my problem. Ever since I've owned the car it's had the symptoms of a dying voltage regulator (no alt charge until the engine is revved up a bit) or is that an exciter wire problem? Either way I know the vr needs to be replaced. I suppose the alt and battery should be tested as well.

Anyway, cutting out the alternator from the equation does nothing to get the car to run suggesting, as Jim said, a lack of fuel or an overabundance of air. I will carefully examine the vac lines and boots later today.

If it is a fueling issue, would it die that quickly? Merely brushing the throttle causes it to die instantly. I suppose I should pull an injector or two and check the fuel spray? I assume common clog points are the fuel filter and the in-tank fuel pickup.

[sciroccojim]

Like I had said and TBerk wrote, sounds like two separate issue.

An airmeter problem would cause it to die when you blip the throttle, as the rush of intake air with no fuel would cause it to die.

You could do a fuel delivery test, but I'd check the boot first. It's probably ripped by the throttle body.

As check the cap and rotor, making sure everything is in place.

[richhuff]

Cold, wet conditions? Water kicked up into engine compartment from Tow truck? Creating a moist environment to comprimise your distributor cap and rotor. Your car ran fine the day before. Check the distributor cap and rotor. Replace with new or known good.

[sciroccohal]

Your Scirocco won't run if the ground got yanked or is bad.
Use a jumper cable to 'add' to the ground circuit and see if that helps.

[punchbug]

1. I totally LOVE the subject of this thread! I was in blue wire hell this summer.

2. Just in case....did you really examine the connection of the connectors on that blue wire? Mine had a clean connector and seemingly intact wire but was actually hanging by one strand in the crimp on the connector.... until that strand gave out. And the wire failed in a bunch of places after that. So don't rule that wire out after ruling it out. never trust a Scirocco.

[The Igneous Faction]

Your Scirocco won't run if the ground got yanked or is bad.
Use a jumper cable to 'add' to the ground circuit and see if that helps.

I checked the engine grounds and I think I got them all. They're ugly, but intact. I checked the intake boots and vac lines this afternoon... no cracks or out of place lines. Next up, a fuel delivery test.

[The Igneous Faction]

never trust a Scirocco.

haha, never trust previous owners/mechanics/yourself either!

[sciroccojim]

Many years ago, Timbo and I went to buy a car that "wouldn't stay running", which was part of the reason why the owner was selling it and for a reasonable price. While Timbo and the owner watched, I pulled the boot from over the airmeter sensor plate, put one hand on the throttle body lever and grabbed the sensor plate bolt with the other. I asked Tim to crank the car.

It fired up and I was able to freely rev the motor by synchronizing the opening of the throttle body primary with the sensor plate, thus manually metering fuel to the injectors. Someone could have driven the car if I was willing to sit on the motor and work the "throttle."

I pulled the boots, found a (hidden) tear, fixed the hole and drove the car from MD to NJ with no issues.

[The Igneous Faction]

Many years ago, Timbo and I went to buy a car that "wouldn't stay running", which was part of the reason why the owner was selling it and for a reasonable price. While Timbo and the owner watched, I pulled the boot from over the airmeter sensor plate, put one hand on the throttle body lever and grabbed the sensor plate bolt with the other. I asked Tim to crank the car.

It fired up and I was able to freely rev the motor by synchronizing the opening of the throttle body primary with the sensor plate, thus manually metering fuel to the injectors. Someone could have driven the car if I was willing to sit on the motor and work the "throttle."

I pulled the boots, found a (hidden) tear, fixed the hole and drove the car from MD to NJ with no issues.

I have to go back to NYC tomorrow, so I won't get to work on it again until next weekend, but the first thing I'll do is check this stuff.

Also:

[The Igneous Faction]

So I only had about 20 minutes to look at the car today and here's what I found...

I had just opened the hood and was taking in the sight of my engine when I started looking critically at the distributor. I noticed that the vacuum advance thing was facing as far to the left as it could; ie, the distributor was rotated all the way counter-clockwise. I thought that was kind of odd, if the car had been properly timed. Usually they face front-ish. So I popped the cap off and looked at the rotor. Everything appeared to be in good order. I pulled the #1 spark plug, rotated the piston to TDC and took a look. Lo and behold, the rotor was 45* past the mark on the housing.

At this point I broke for a quick Jim-consult which was fruitful. We brainstormed for a bit and I went back to it. With #1 at TDC and the notch on the flywheel centered in the timing hole, the rotor is 45* off the mark... Looks like my car was timed poorly at some point in the past. So tomorrow I'll pull the distributor, re-time with everything where it should be. Then I'll start diagnosing a-fresh.

[TBerk]

I once pulled all the plugs, wires, and distributer stuff on a Ghia during a tune up and "1-4-3-2", I had the firing order in my head...


But it would only Idle or run at 50MPH, anything else was Hell.

Turns out I was 180 degrees out of phase.

I plugged them in right, but I went the wrong direction, clockwise/anticlockwise like.

[The Igneous Faction]

So it rained all day today and I didn't get a chance to pull the distributor... too bad.

I have no idea how this car was running at all; not only is the rotor misaligned, the plug wires are set in the wrong order so, with #1 at TDC, the the rotor points to plug 4 and the firing order is currently 4-3-2-1...

WTF?

[Chris16vRocco]

Sounds like the previous owner timed it to cylinder #4. Were they into Hondas at all? A lot of Hondas have the engine mounted the other way around (motor on the drivers side, trans on the passenger side), maybe they thought the cylinders were oriented in reverse of how they actually are.

[The Igneous Faction]

Sounds like the previous owner timed it to cylinder #4. Were they into Hondas at all? A lot of Hondas have the engine mounted the other way around (motor on the drivers side, trans on the passenger side), maybe they thought the cylinders were oriented in reverse of how they actually are.

Yeah it looks like it. I got some time today to go out and pull the distributor. I set the engine to TDC again using the dowel in the spark hole and flywheel notch as guidelines. Put the distributor back in lined up as it should be and tried to turn it over. Now the car does not fire AT ALL, leading me to believe that it was timed haphazardly previously in a way that was incorrect but allowed the car to run. I haven't removed the belt cover to see if the if the cam is lining up at TDC or not... who knows?

Regardless, I may have bigger fish to fry; I pulled the #1 injector today and tried to run the basic injector test per the Bentley. With the fpr jumped and the airmeter pulled through it's entire range of motion I didn't get even a dribble of fuel out of the injector. The distributor was buzzing so I know it was at least trying.

So, either I ran the test wrong somehow, or I have a serious clog and/or fuel delivery issue somewhere down the line. The plot thickens. It got pretty cold and snowy all of a sudden, so I didn't test the other three or the cold-start injector, but those will be tested in due time.

[The Igneous Faction]

LOL timed it 180* out

Then I cut myself accidentally unrelated to the car and called it a day before trying to turn it over. I did jump the fuel pump again to confirm that it runs and confirmed that fuel is going back into the tank via the return line, so fingers crossed for tomorrow.

[TBerk]

It might not seem like it at the moment but you are making progress, Hang in there!