16V WOES ... HELP!!

[alves at email.unc.edu (Carlos Alves)]

Hey guys,

This is my first posting on this message board. I am a student at UNC 
Chapel Hill who lives in Jersey, and i have an 87 16v with roughly 
113k on the odo. Up until about 2 weeks ago, I absolutely loved this 
car, I bought it with 87k, and it generally served me very well for 
the past 2 years, with only minimal repairs and breakdowns occuring 
because either coolant hoses broke or because the thermostat went.

When it comes to working on cars, I am generally a beginner, only 
having done small things on various other cars. I am becoming 
painfully aware, however, that owning a 16v necessitates doing most of 
the repair work yourself, or forking over a LOT of cash to the damn vw 
stelaership, Which brings me to my next point.

2 weeks ago, my car started sputtering and stalling at various RPM's. 
It would sputter and die down on the highway, for instance, and I'd 
have to drop it down into 4th and let the cluth out, and the car would 
start back up. Then it would proceed to function normally. 
Dumbfounded, I checked the car out and couldnt find anything wrong, so 
i took it to the VW dealer. They found some vacuum leaks on the car, 
which they fixed, cleaned out some "gunk" on the throttle body, and 
reset the fuel mixture, and said the problem was fixed. I drove the 
car home, and while home, it commenced sputtering again. So I resolved 
to drive the car back down to school when the time came and try to get 
it fixed by an expert on the 16v cars that I know near my college. 

Sunday, I leave, and go to my brothers place. I start smelling gas, 
open the hood, and see that the fuel filter is leaking a little 
fuel ... so I resolve to change it. Swapped a new one in, no leakage, 
and the car seemed to have stopped the sputtering problem. So, I 
leave, and roughly 30 miles later, my car breaks down, on the side of 
the highway. This time the problem seems different, almost as if the 
car is running out of gas, where the engine just dies down and i cooly 
pull off.  THe gas gauge reads 1/4, but I am thinking it is rust in 
the gas tank. 

My bro  comes, we put about 2 gallons of fuel in the car, and it 
drives fine for the next 30 miles, to the VW dealer. 5 miles before, 
it started dying down again, once again leading me to believe that 
rust is the culprit, seeing as how with about 2 gallons, the car would 
be good to go for roughly 40 miles before rust concentration builds up 
causing the car to die down. I put 5 dollars of gass in, and drop the 
car off.

Today the VW dealer calls me back. THe problems they found, as they 
quoted, are as follows:

Fuel distributor has a lot of carbon buildup. Needs to be cleaned.
Throttle body has carbon buildup. Needs cleaning.
O2 Sensor is sending error codes, possibly faulty..
Spark plug wires need to be replaced.
Distributor cap and rotor show signs of corrosion.

And the grand total, $2500 for all of this work, and THEN they will 
check the car out again to see if rust in the gas tank is the actual 
culprit. Needless to say, I will NOT spend 2500 on a car I bought for 
1500. My course of action is to try to get the car down to NC and do 
most of the work myself in my free time. 

So, some questions are, is rust buildup in the sciroccos common? How 
dfficult would it be for someone with a beginners spin on mechanics to 
do most of the work required by the dealer? I Would of course purchase 
the Bentley manual and consult it to the finest detail. Are those 
parts expensive in it of themselves? Difficult to install?
>From your professional opininos, does it seem as if the dealer quoted 
problems are the actual culprit? IT seems as if the leaky fuel pump 
fixed most of the sputtering problems, and the car only started acting 
up when the tank (in my opinion) neared empty and the rust  
concentration build up.

Any help you guys could give me would be greatly appreciated. In your 
opinions, does it seem as if all those "carbon" infested mechanical 
parts are the reason the car is failing me? 

My guess is I will probably be consulting this list more frequently as 
I start to do the work on the car. I love the car, and am not willing 
to see it go without a mechanical fight. I just hope I can learn 
enough about the car so that I can fix it properly. Thanks.