Rocco tricks (long)

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Hey,

Just figured that since I've asked a lot of questions and gotten a lot of
great (and correct) answers that really helped me from this list I
decided I'd share a few of my own discoveries. Sure, they might be dull
and "uncool", but they could be useful to someone here. This is
mk2-centric, since I don't own an mk1 :(

First of all, when I got my car the dome light came on only when the
passenger side door was opened, not when the driver door was opened. After
I got a Bentley and checked the electrical section, I attributed this to
the missing cucaracha relay and decided that since I wanted dome lights to
work but not the noise, I had to find another way. What I did was really
simple and effective. I got two male quick connects, soldered a short
(1.25") jumper wire between them, and stuck them in pins 4 and 6 (may be
different on your car, check first) of the cucaracha relay socket. These
are the driver door switch and ground. Now my dome light works properly,
and I can save my hearing. The other solution would have been to
permanently short the contacts to the seat belt sensor at the wire harness
under the driver seat, but I figured I could save more weight (ha ha)
and clutter by removing the relay and replacing it with this jumper wire.
In addition, the jumper might come in handy if I need to hotwire my fuel
pump relay if it ever cooks.

One other trick was with my stereo. I've always been impressed with the
treble in cars that have component speakers. However, being that I'm poor
and my existing speakers work fine for midrange, I invested $16 in a pair
of 1.5" dome tweeters from MCM Electronics (www.mcmelectronics.com). I
tried them without installing them and they sound terrific even at high
volumes. Now the problem was where to install them. I sat in my car and
put them in different locations, trying to figure out where would be the
least obtrusive and most stock looking. When I couldn't find any good
places without gourging a hole in my door panels, I set the speaker aside
in the storage tray in the door. Then I got an idea. The tray was the same
width as the diameter of the tweeter, plus or minus a few mm. The tweeters
I bought had a plastic base at an angle so you could point the tweeter
more or less where you wanted the sound to go. Turns out that if I put it
in the front of the tray, its back side touching the edge of the speaker
enclosure, it was pointed right at my head, and from almost the same
distance as the door speaker. I mounted both tweeters in the doors in the
pockets and angled the passenger side one a little bit towards the driver
side so I'd have better stereo imaging than the passenger (bwhahaha!), and
it sounds really good. The tweeters really complement the bass well, and I
didn't have to do any drilling at all to install them. I just used double
sided tape to attach them to the flat plastic piece seperating the speaker
compartment and the door pocket, ran the small wire through the slit into
the speaker compartment and ran wires to my head unit from there. It works
terrific and is very stealty. You can't even see the black tweeters in the
black door panel from outside except from one very small angle looking
down from the outside rear.

I was having trouble with my oil pressure buzzer light and buzzer going
off. I changed the oil and filter, installed new pressure switches,
cleaned the contacts and tested many things but nothing solved the
buzzing. The new switches fixed the light. Finally in frusteration I
simply grounded the buzzer switch wire to permanently silence the buzzer.
Not the best solution, but it kept me from going on a shooting rampage.
I'm convinced my oil pressure is reasonably okay because the buzzer would
only go off at a specific rpm (like 2950), not above and not below. But
once it was triggered it would go and go until I went past that rpm.
Strange. I'm planning on putting in a dealer switch next time i change my
oil and see if that helps.

Running the 4 gauge power wire for my amplifier in my trunk, I needed a
way to get the cable through the firewall. Before when I needed to do this
with smaller wires I simply snaked them through the same grommet as the
hood release cable. Not this time. I ended up drilling a half inch hole to
the left of the two heater pipes, just below and over a little from the
accelerator pedal pivot point. Then I ran the cable up over the brake and
clutch pedal assembly and back from there. In the engine compartment, the
cable went neatly behind the master cylinder, under the coolant resevoir
and airbox, and was visible only at its connection to the battery.
Stealthy enough, and it works great.

When I first got the car the parking brake was completely busted. I just
went to a junkyard and swapped an identical handle from a vw fox or
something like that in. fit perfect. you gotta love vws for their
interchangable parts. try doing that in a gm from one -year- to another.

Most people here have heard of and done the north american rear fog light
thing where you drill out the unused reflector bulb holder. Well, I did it
and i thought it looked stupid to have two parking lights and one brake
light. So I got a couple tools and popped the connectors out of the wiring
harnesses for the rear light assembly. I cut off the little loopy wire
that was piggybacked from one other wire in the harness and swapped its
connector with the one next to it. Then it was in the position for the
rear fog light bulb. Then I spliced and soldered it into the brake light
wire. Now I have 5 rear brake lights! And at night when I have my
headlights on, the people behind me have no excuse to miss SEVEN red
lights. Its not too bright, but it sure is noticable. Its effective, too.
I haven't been tailgated nearly as much in stop and go traffic because of
people not seeing my brake lights.

One of the first things I did to my car was pull out all the relays and
fuses in the fusebox and clean the contacts on them and their sockets. I
used a dremel tool with a wire brush attachment and a 5mm pencil lead
sized grinding stick. This helped a lot. My headlights, turn signals,
everything was brighter! And some things that didn't work before started
working again. I highly recommend doing this if you have electrical
problems. If you have engine problems, do the same with the connectors
under the hood. The harness pins on my cold start injector valve were
green! Not good! I spent a couple hours cleaning everything up and the car
is running great electrically. Don't forget the OXS sensor wires.

A problem I was having was the (now I know it is classic) problem with the
glowing alternator light. Turned out my alternator regulator had very very
short brushes on it that weren't contacting much at all. I replaced the
alternator with an adjustable one (thanks to Bradley Peet for the
recommendation, oh yeah, and my car :), and now I get 14.0V at the battery
with the engine running. And best of all, it only cost $20, much cheaper
than a new or rebuilt alternator. Diagnosis is everything.

Do your seats rock back and forth or side to side? If so, you're probably
missing some seat parts. There are basically 3 major ones for each seat.
There are two different (!) white/grey plastic clips, one on each side of
the seat rails on the seat itself. These are easy to replace and cheap at
the dealer or a parts place. Arm yourself with the part numbers first as
there are many different kinds and it took me several tries to get the
right ones. The third one is an orange or white squishy thing in the front
of the seat at the "third leg". It serves two purposes: to supress the
seats lateral motion and to make it harder to slide the seat forward and
backward. Once you get all these bushings and pieces in, your seats will
be solid and won't rock at all!

I installed power door locks so I could use my alarm without a hassle, and
it was at first a bit of a challenge in the rocco. After trying to find a
good place to attach the clamp to the factory lock rod, I discovered there
was no way in hell I was going to get the door locks installed without
cutting a hole in my door. So thats exactly what I did. A grinding disc
and a dremel tool to take out the sharp edges, and I was able to see the
locking rods and tighten the screws on the clamp. Installed the door locks
after that in about 2 hours. The clean way would be the way suggested on
either driversfound.com or scirocco.org (cant remember which) which was to
get the plastic piece that are used with the factory power locks, but I
didn't know how easy it was to get dealer parts back then :P

After I bought armor door plates and installed them, I was having trouble
with my door handles binding. When I squeezed them and let go, they stayed
squeezed until I was able to pry them out again with my fingers. I took it
apart, saw where the jamming was occuring, dremeled off the offending
metal, put some grease on it and was good to go. The door handles are now
very easy to open.

Stay away from FRAM oil filters. The dealer filters are maybe a dollar
more and have the correct valves in them for startup operation in your vw.
Not to mention the filter quality is far superior. Think German.

After 125k miles, my fuel injector o-rings (both sets) were brittle and
hard. For a couple of bucks and several hours of grunting, I replaced them
and it seems to have made a small difference, like getting rid of a vacuum
leak. The trick to getting them out is to pull out, -straight out-. Don't
pull on the fuel lines or the metal pipe part either. I used a pair of
pliers with a ( ) at the end to grab the base of the injector below the
hex part and lever against the valve cover. After a few tries I became a
pro and popped the remainder out in under a minute. I carefully cut the
old rings off, except for the small black outer ring, which came off
easily. When you buy the big rings, buy 6 or 7, not 4. You will probably
rip at least one of them trying to get it on over the sharp metal piece.
If you do damage one and get it all the way on. Take it off and start
over. You don't want to pull the injector out later to replace it again
when you discover your car now runs like crap.

My sunroof was getting pretty tough to turn so I invested a couple bucks
in a spray can of silicone lubricant. I simply rolled the sunroof open,
cleaned up all the moving parts as best as I could with rough paper
towels, and coated the engine assembly with a layer of silicone. Opened
and closed the sunroof about 10 times to spread it around, reapplying it
every 3 or 4 times, and pretty soon the it felt like it was opening and
closing on its own. Very smooth, and now I don't worry about snapping the
cables from pounding on the crank.

The fold-away mirrors on Mk2 Sciroccos are a good idea, but mine were
acting strange. They'd go "thump" and move around a little when I pushed
or pulled on them. I simply folded them towards the rear of the car,
scrubbed off all the gunk on the part of the mirror that touches the base,
sprayed silicone lubricant all over the moving parts, and now the
fold-away thing works great. Like on a new car.

One thing you should do when you get your car is replace all the vacuum
tubing, unless it looks brand new. I did this because my hoses were
frayed, and in the process I discovered several disconnected vacuum hoses
and other leaks that I was able to cap and stop the leaks. The idle sounds
soooo much better. It feels like the difference between a sick car and a
car in great shape. I never knew the fuel mixture could make such a
difference in the way the car sounds.

If your clutch cable needs replacement, don't hesitate. The job is very
easy. Just buy the cable and jack up the car about 6 inches so you can
slither underneath it. Then you can get under the car and push up on the
clutch release lever (you'll know it when you see it, its the only big,
obvious lever on the transmission with a cable attached to it) enough to
remove the three retaining parts holding the cable to the lever. Push the
cable end through the lever hole and get back out from underneath the car.
Then just reach up and unhook the cable from the top of the clutch pedal.
Now you'll want to hook a piece of wire to the end that you just unhooked
and pull it through. Take off the old cable and tie the wire back on to
the new one. Pull it through again, hook it to the pedal, then route all
the stuff back through again, reattach it to the clutch lever, reinstall
the retaining pieces and adjust it by turning the white disc at the base
of the clutch cable until the play at the lever under the car is 1/4 inch
or so. Then tighten the locknut above the adjusting disc and you're set to
go. Only a couple hour job for the beginner or 15-30 minutes for people
who know where the parts are.

One other electrical thing to check is the resistance between the two
sides of the ground strap from the ignition coil to the intake manifold.
If its more than 0.2 ohms or so, you should replace the wire or at least
clean the contacts and see if that helps. I replaced this wire and it
really helped the ignition. I think I was not having complete ignition
of the fuel in the cylinders before because replacing this wire with a 10
gauge wire really helped the power my engine put out, especially when
cold.

Having just fixed my cooling problem this weekend, I can vouch for the
effectiveness of a lower temp cooling fan switch. I had to replace the
switch as well as the coolant level sensor in the overflow tank, which was
cracked and causing coolant loss. After everything got straightened out,
my car runs cool at a millimeter below the halfway point on the
temperature gauge!

I hope these tips help someone or give you an idea. Heh, i guess my
fingers just felt like typing :P  Feel free to tack on your own ideas and
tips, just delete mine in followups if you're not replying to them
specifically.

later,

-Toby

--
'87 Flash Silver Metallic Scirocco 16V

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