still having engine trouble

[vinski203]

I'm still having some trouble with my Golf, 8v, digi 2. The problem seems electrical, but I'm not sure. This could be a combination of different problems, IDK. Generally the car will start when it's cold. While driving it runs ok, usually gets me where i need to go. Once it stalled at a traffic light, restarted, drove one block, turned the car off for about 5 minutes, and then it wouldn't restart.

Then it ran ok for about a week or two. Today, it drove fine to work. Started it this afternoon to go to lunch, ran ok. Sitting in the drive-thru it stalled and took about 2 minutes to get restarted(seemed like hours when there's a line of cars behind you). F'n with the gas pedal i was able to finally restart it. Kept my foot on the gas, got my food, then it stalled again, almost completely blocking the exit of McD's. This time it wouldn't restart... until... I had to do the same thing I did a couple weeks ago. I tapped a ground pulse to the fuel injector wire to open them up a few times... car started. I kept my foot on the gas because it was going to stall if i didn't. By the time i made it back to work it was idling ok, but the longer it sat there running the worse it got until it finally stalled again.

So to me it seems like heat and a lack of fuel are my common points. Anyone have any suggestions, besides my ignition switch?

[vinski203]

Drove home without incident last night. Car ran almost perfect. I was hoping someone could give me some ideas about what makes this motor run, or not run.

Seems people who read and post in the GolfII forum need pictures to look at so that's why I posted here in the technical forum. I thought maybe there would be people who are mechanically inclined reading these post. Is there really no one savay enough to know what I can check or what might cause the car to suddenly die and/or not stay running? And why would opening the fuel injectors to dump a little fuel seem to make the car run again? I did notice (since I ran the jumper wires to the fuel injectors inside the car) that when I tap a ground to the fuel injector pulse wire I hear a click inside the car, from a realy I suppose. Not sure which one.

[vinski203]

I am revisiting this because it's possible that the information might be useful to someone searching for trouble with
poor idle , stalling , no start , electrical issues , or any other issue that would cause their car to become almost undrivable.

After many months of suffering with this problem I think I have finally tracked it down and repaired it. This has been one of the most difficult cars to diagnose a problem like this- even more difficult when there is little if any support from the forum. A stalling problem or no start problem can be caused by several things and all give the same symptom. It didn't make sense to me to start replacing things like the air flow sensor, fuel pressure regulator, fuel pumps, ECM, etc... if I had taken the forums' advice and bought new parts to replace what they thought was wrong, I would have easily spent over a $1000 and still wouldn't have cured my trouble.

So my dilignce and trouble shooting prevailed. Here's what it turned out to be:


See the contact just below the printed "2", that's a bad solder joint inside my #32 relay- the one that controls power to the ECM. I resoldered it and put it back in and haven't had any trouble since. I'm going to buy a backup relay to keep in the car now, maybe a few other too just in case.