Jay's 1.4SE aka second chance

[Jayw13702]

No, not at all. You could try giving the reluctor rings a good spraying but they are quite well protected. The wear in the bearings could be enough to trigger the ABS warning, just make sure the proper tools are used to remove and fit the bearings. I would methodically work from front to back on the car removing every single wiring connector, cleaning it removing any corrosion and making sure there is no plug or insulation damage. The power steering pump can be exposed to water as it sits low behind the bumper, there is enough CHF in the reservoir? No strange noises or leaks from the steering rack. Track rod ends can have all sorts of strange effects on the steering - they may not be worn but could be rusty. Front struts are serviceable, no broken springs and top mount bearings not seized up?

I’m going to let a local engineering shop do the bearing for me as I don’t have a press and I don’t like messing around when I don’t have the right tools.

Late last year there were new strut top bearings and new springs fitted all the other parts on the front suspension were considered serviceable such as struts, track rod ends etc, and there is no play in any of the suspension components, there is no wheel bearing play but they make a terrible howling noise at speed so they have to go.
Power steering fluid was topped up just before the MOT, there is no leaks or strange noises from the steering, nor are there any error messages within VCDS.

Because of the past history and the amount of work that I’ve done on the car pretty much all of the electrical connections regarding brakes, steering and engine have been apart and thoroughly cleaned and checked.

 

[Jayw13702]

So knowing the work I have planned for other cars in the family I bit the bullet and bought a 12 tonne press…..

The worse bearing was the drivers side, it took all 12 tonnes and a fair bit of heat before the bearing parted from the knuckle with an almighty bang!!

Because of the sheer state of the front suspension I decided to paint the lower arms, front hubs and back plates.

The worst bearing was the drivers side, it was in terrible state

Finally with some paint on the parts

I’ve also put two new abs sensors on the front.

Put it all back together today and took it out for a drive….what a difference, so much smoother and no error messages.
The only thing I have noticed is the steering wheel is now off centre it tracks straight but I will get the tracking sorted next week.

There’s still a couple of jobs need doing, one drop link is a bit loose, I’m still considering what to do with the suspension, I’m thinking of possibly buying some coil overs, hence the reason I didn’t paint the shock absorbers.


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[carbore]

All very impressive, this is turning into a full restoration.

 

[Jayw13702]

It’s certainly gone a lot further than I had planned, however the budget still hasn’t broken £800 and that includes buying it, so in that respect it’s still a bargain

 

[kp 115]

The only code at the moment is intermittent abs signal on the o/s/f.

At parking speeds the steering is really heavy, almost like it has no power assistance.
At speed it gets lighter, at 70 it genuinely feels like there is no connect between the column and rack.
From my ancient knowledge whilst in the garage we had issues like this on variable rate power steering and a lot of the time the abs sensors were to blame.
However this project was sat in a field for a while and I wonder if the abs ring is damaged as well.

The bearings are howling anyway so it’s as good a place to start as any, I know that may sound flippant but it not


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Hi jayw13702,
The ABS rings are integral to the bearing & as such prone to picking up brake dust etc in the recess, this can be cleaned out with a stiff brush (not wire) & brake cleaner quite successfully.
(located on the inner hub/knuckle)
Hope that helps
Keith.
Oh late again,but the abs ring is well & truelly covered in your old bearing picture .

 

[Jayw13702]

Hi jayw13702,
The ABS rings are integral to the bearing & as such prone to picking up brake dust etc in the recess, this can be cleaned out with a stiff brush (not wire) & brake cleaner quite successfully.
(located on the inner hub/knuckle)
Hope that helps
Keith.

Hi Keith,

My bearing was so shot I think that was adding to the issue as well.

Above 40mph it was howling like a banshee, when we took the wheel off and just rotated the hub you could feel the roughness.

That info is worth bearing in mind for the future though


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[kp 115]

Hi Keith,

My bearing was so shot I think that was adding to the issue as well.

Above 40mph it was howling like a banshee, when we took the wheel off and just rotated the hub you could feel the roughness.

That info is worth bearing in mind for the future though


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[Jayw13702]

Ive lost enthusiasm currently. At the moment the car is languishing in the garage with a passenger door that won't open, gear selector tower that needs a new bearing fitted (part is sat in a bag in the garage) and front ABS wiring that needs dealing with and an eml that I cannot diagnose because VCDS won't talk to the ECU

It hasn't moved for a month now and I'm drowning in jobs that my daily needs doing on it, as that earns the money it gets the attention.

 

[kp 115]

Ive lost enthusiasm currently. At the moment the car is languishing in the garage with a passenger door that won't open, gear selector tower that needs a new bearing fitted (part is sat in a bag in the garage) and front ABS wiring that needs dealing with and an eml that I cannot diagnose because VCDS won't talk to the ECU

It hasn't moved for a month now and I'm drowning in jobs that my daily needs doing on it, as that earns the money it gets the attention.

Hi Jayw13702,
Have you tried unlocking the passenger door with the key via the hidden key cap?
Could be an easy fix to a failed lock solenoid.
Hope that helps
Keith.

 

[Jayw13702]

Hi Jayw13702,
Have you tried unlocking the passenger door with the key via the hidden key cap?
Could be an easy fix to a failed lock solenoid.
Hope that helps
Keith.

Sadly there’s no key lock on that side.

This is my own doing, I fitted a new lock, realised that I was missing a loom so whilst waiting for that decided to manually trigger the lock, however I’ve deadlocked it and cannot get it to release no matter what we try.
There is a way of getting the lock to unlock but it involved drilling the door and I’m not keen on that yet


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[kp 115]

Sadly there’s no key lock on that side.

This is my own doing, I fitted a new lock, realised that I was missing a loom so whilst waiting for that decided to manually trigger the lock, however I’ve deadlocked it and cannot get it to release no matter what we try.
There is a way of getting the lock to unlock but it involved drilling the door and I’m not keen on that yet


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Hi Jay,
Look at the door handle it’s hidden under the blank cap where the key slot is on o/s/f
Accessed via a key sized slot on the underside of the cap.

 

[Jayw13702]

Look at the door handle it’s hidden under the blank cap where the key slot is on o/s/f
Accessed via a key sized slot on the underside of the cap.

Mine is just a hole behind the cap, no lock barrel


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[audifan]

Cars that came with remote locking ONLY have a lock barrel in the drivers door. Those without remote came with visible key slots for both front doors. Oh and the blank can not just be levered off.

 

[carbore]

HI, re VCDS not talking to the ECU, I had the same on my car which is idenitcal to yours. You need to try a lower baud rate in the VCDS setup https://www.ross-tech.com/vag-com/issues.html its odd becuase on the default settings it talked to some of the modules in the car like CCU but not all of them, hence you thinks somethings "broken". I set mine low and I can read the EUC codes, clear them etc.

 

[Jayw13702]

HI, re VCDS not talking to the ECU, I had the same on my car which is idenitcal to yours. You need to try a lower baud rate in the VCDS setup https://www.ross-tech.com/vag-com/issues.html its odd becuase on the default settings it talked to some of the modules in the car like CCU but not all of them, hence you thinks somethings "broken". I set mine low and I can read the EUC codes, clear them etc.

I tried that today, took it down in stages to 300mbps, all of it failed to produce any results.

Son finally in a fit of “sod it” I turned the baud rate up to 9600 and it worked!!! The laptop now started talking to all the ecu


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[Bargepower]

I tried that today, took it down in stages to 300mbps, all of it failed to produce any results.

Son finally in a fit of “sod it” I turned the baud rate up to 9600 and it worked!!! The laptop now started talking to all the ecu


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It’s also worth changing the latency in properties for the usb serial port to 1. That improves reliability, I’ve found, as I could never connect to the Hvac block until I did this.

 

[Jayw13702]

Finally after work, a wedding, isolating from a sick family and dealing with my daily driver I managed to spend some time on the car today.

First job was to deal with the passenger door, I needed that sorted in order to tidy the car up and make it useable again.
I didn’t want to drill or butcher the door, this lock had to be released, finally it did.

Behind the red cam is a metal one, by using some brute force and ignorance I was able to trigger that metal cam and so unlock the door.
Finally the door unlocked, the outside handle disconnected and the door panel put back on.

With that done I moved on to the abs issue, VCDS had picked up the O/S abs was intermittent. When I put the nee wheel bearing on I also put genuine abs sensors in and still we had issues.
That left me with only one area that was possible. The wiring, first off I did continuity testing and that came back with no issues.
The connector had been damaged in the past and my feeling was it wasn’t sitting properly on the abs sensor, so I ordered on eBay a couple of connectors to replace the damaged ones

They worked perfectly, connected VCDS, cleared the codes, took it for a spin and no more abs fault codes.

Recently I’ve noticed the car running a bit underpowered, when I finally connected VCDS to the engine ecu it told me it was running lean on bank 1.
The plugs looked normal, the car had been serviced recently so the air filter had been replaced, the only thing I hadn’t replaced was the fuel filter
Easier than I thought it was going to be and suspicions were confirmed, the filter was so old it was blocking and causing fuel starvation….. how old was the filter?

The date stamp on the filter 08/07/00

This isn’t the original filter, but I reckon dealer stock would be no more than 3 years old, so this may have been sold around 2003. So potentially this has been on the car for almost 18 years.
And how dirty was the fuel?

That is the contents of the filter

Cleared the ecu code, took it for a 15 mile spin and the difference was phenomenal, an no more ecu codes.

Hoovered the car out and gave it a general cleaned out and generally felt a bit more positive about it


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[Jayw13702]

been back on the bodywork tody......

the passenger side hasnt received a lot of love, the paintwork was very dull, i originally thought it was badly scratched, it turns out it was just oxodised.
Out came the machine polisher, Scholl S60 black and a couple of red polishing pads.......

A quick 50/50 shot, you can see how bad the paint was

it didnt turn out too bad, i need to touch up the little marks up.

The rear wheel arch is off the car currently, it was scuffed quite badly and had a lot of laquer peel.
About 6 months ago i ordered some paint online, it came and i put it in the box of other parts, got it out today, spent the morning prepping the arch and getting it ready.
On to the main event......

Now one of the things mentioned on the car is that the basecoat will be a matt finish due to it being a pearl finish paint, so at this point i can see its sort of the right colour but im still not convinced, then i check the mix details on the can LZ6W ?, Pine green is LZ6S.
checked my original order email and ive given the right code but the shop have sent me the wrong one, however i should have checked it when it arrived. A quick phone call later and its all sorted, i should have the right colour here next week.

The wheels still need doing....and i still need 3 centre caps

 

[slumdog]

What a lovely read......I love it when an A2 comes back to life.
Anyway your centre caps, Im sure i have a brand new one lying around (yours for free) if you want it (just PM your details). I see Crewe Audi still have brand new ones in stock if your struggling to find another pair.
cheers
Parmjit

 

[carbore]

Hi, nice to see an update on "Pootles twin" (@Jayw13702 and my car are identical). Oddly, or maybe not so oddly, I have that "lean" fault code and just reset it today. I have a fuel filter ready to fit as Id bought one ages ago with my original service set but never go round to it. Now you have given me the confirmation I need to crack on and do it, sadly my worksop has some furniture dumped in it (family) so I need that cleared before I can do it. My daily also distracted me recently with a big bill (Electric handbrake) but fortunately Pootle did a grand job of being the spare car while the Disco was out of order.