Control Pressure Problem

[housecall55 at yahoo.com (Cris Carpenter)]

CIS-E will not run right without the DPR, no matter what you do to compensate for it. It may be okay sometimes at idle or at speed, but not both. The only way you can make a CIS-E car run as a standard CIS is to put all the straight CIS stuff on it, including the fuel distributor and warmup regulator. CIS and CIS-E is very well engineered, but it can't compensate for environmental or other damage, or missing stuff. The machining of the main plunger is so precise that even a little bit of dirt or corrosion will reneder it junk. CIS-E really relies on the DPR, which responds to a ECU that gets info from many sources (O2 sensor, temp sensors, etc.). I got lucky with one CIS-E car I bought that would not run well, especially when cold. Showing no current at the DPR, I chased a lack of power feeding the ECU back to a missing fuse. Whew!
   
  Cris
   
  Message: 3
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 08:07:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: Brendan Doyle <lord_verminaard@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Control Pressure Problem
To: roccit_53@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Gordy Stedman
 <ydrogs@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Scirocco-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx, housecall55@xxxxxxxxx
Message-ID: <20070612150703.98652.qmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ascii

Found (at least I think) the problem with my '81 as well.  I pulled the 
top off of the fuel distributor, and sure enough, the pin was sticky as 
hell.  Also, the little brass nut with the "o" ring on it was 
completely unscrewed from the gland nut!  Not sure how it was even running at 
this point.  The roller pivot on the sensor plate was also really gummed 
up.  Just goes to show, if it looks good on the outside of the part, 
does not mean it's good on the inside.  Pulled the pin out and cleaned 
everything up, re-assembled, and started it- cough cough, sputter, dead.  
No starty.  Ok, fine, pulled the spark plugs, they were wet.  Well 
shit.  While I had the plugs out, I thought, why not pull the valve cover 
and double-check the cam timing.  So I did- and found a few surprises.  
First of all, it had a cam oil baffle on it.  Cool!  I also looked at 
the cam- hmm, it has a "W" stamped on it- it was supposed to be a "G"!  
Well shit, feeling sort of ripped off, I looked at the cam
 some more, and instead of the VW stamp on the other end of it, it had 
"ESTAS".  So it's a re-grind?  I looked at it closer, and wow, the 
lobes are close to the journal- REALLY close.  WTF?  I grabbed my other 
stock cam that was laying around and did a side-by side- (or as close as I 
could check with the cam in the car) the lobes on the stock cam are 
dwarfed compared to this one.  I know the G-cam was not this big either- 
as I really had a hard time noticing any difference from a stock to a 
"g" when they were next to each other.  So what's the biggest cam you can 
put in a JH head without clearancing  the journals?  Cause I can barely 
fit the thinnest feeler gauge I have between the lobe and the journal 
when they are closest to each other.  Maybe that would explain the lack 
of low-end torque?  :P

Dried the plugs, cranked the engine over a few times without the plugs 
in it or the fuel relay on.  I also pulled the DPR off of the fuel 
distributor, and gave the tiny little hex screw on the back of it a 1/4 
turn clockwise, hoping this would also fix my upper-rpm lean problem.  
Re-assembled everything, and cranked it up- had trouble starting and 
idling.  I had to turn the mixture screw about 4 turns away from FULL lean 
before it would run, but it idled well.  My DPR harness broke, so I 
threw it in the trash and tuned it by ear instead.  It still idles pretty 
well rich, just shy of smoking a bit at idle, but if I leaned out the 
idle any more, it would stumble on low-rpm acceleration.  But getting on 
it full-throttle, it stays rich all the way up to 6,000 rpms.  And it 
RUNS.  I can tell the exhaust is holding it back now, it still feels 
like it wants more.

But not all is well.  This morning, I was driving to work, and I felt 
that sinking feeling again, where coming to a stop the idle will drop 
below 900 instead of doing what it normally does, and will idle rough.  
Sure enough, no power again.  No sputtering, no misfire, just NO power.  
I was aggravated, so I shut the car off and re-started it again.  After 
about 10 seconds of idle hunting, it went back to it's familiar purr 
and power was restored.  I really wish I knew what the hell was going on, 
but all I keep thinking about is that nice shiny TDI engine sitting in 
my garage just waiting for some attention.  ;)

I will recommend to whomever buys this engine and tranny combo from me 
to take all of the CIS-E crap and throw it in the trash.  I mean, I 
adore the engineering behind CIS but sometimes it really just makes NO 
sense.

Brendan