help for few problems

Ive bought a 1989 1.8 clipper as a bit of a project but am currently having a few issues.

Firstly what is the red light with a circled exclamation mark - (!) similar to that?
It comes on but then goes once the revs go over 2-3k? and flickers at idle

Secondly when the car is really cold, i.e first start it takes a couple of attempts to start. Normally fires around 3rd attempt. Then idles okish, but if you put your foot to the floor it just dies. Once it has warmed it revs away happily, but will stall when cold.

Thanks

sounds like it could be something to do with the cold start. If you have the original carb (ie not a weber) The cold start valve is situated in the air hose before the filter, there is a pipe going from the air box doen to the aior pipe which controls the valve via vacuum from the engine. These flap valves can get stuck so if you pull the pip off the airbox end and suck you should hear it move. If not remove and unclip to free the valve.

thanks. i should have mentioned that there is a K&N fitted directly on top of the carb. Would this affect things?

K&N on carb this time of year, would cause problems, as you have no warm air feed to the carb, this will give bad running, commonly known as carb freeze.
I have weber carbs on my golfs, in order to keep the warm air flowing, i bought aplha weber air filters, same as K&N for my standard airbox.
A seller on ebay known as fastroadcars sell thems
Pete :wink:

Firstly what is the red light with a circled exclamation mark - (!) similar to that?
It comes on but then goes once the revs go over 2-3k? and flickers at idle

Is that to the right of the steering wheel? Sounds like the handbrake warning light, should be on when the handbrake is on. Seen this problem in a number of mk1's, usually dodgy wiring/earth and or switch (located beneath the handbrake lever itself).

Cheers

thanks to everyone, light was handbrake ops:  ops:  but at least its nothing to worry about.

Would fitting a standard airbox solve the problem, or is there another alternative?

Ta