New 88 Idle / Acceleration problems

Hey Everyone,
New to the forum and the golf so I'm excited. I manage to take a red cabrio 88 1.8 which is in need of tlc off the hands of a client. Got it free as he was going to scrap it! Other than a huge clean, a new door handle, widow handle etc etc etc lol, I'm having issues with idle / acceleration.

So on a cold start it will hold idle for around 5 seconds and fade out. After a few starts it'll eventually hold idle. When warm it's drivable but seems to have little acceleration for a 1.8 and is very jumpy upto 2.5 revs. With higher revs it seems to smoothen out.

The local mechanic says it's the fuel regulator which seems about right, what do you guys think? I know they can sometimes be hard to find but he said he can get one in a few days.

Is there anything else that could be causing these problems?

Thanks in advance. Looking forward to working on her at the weekends.
 

what engine has it got, carb or injection? if its the one in your avatar it looks to be a US spec motor?

yeah, i'm in california so I'm thinking I'm right. It's a 1.8 manual. I can't see in the manual / docs I have anything that would help me determine which.

Sure there's an obviously way to determine by just looking at the thing but i'm showing myself up by not knowing  

UK Fuel injection engine looks like this.


Carb engine look like the one in this post I've goggled, its the first picture of the engine near the top of the page.
http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?2342102-My-78-Golf-MK1-Resto-project-Lot-s-of-pic-s/page4

oh, so i'm thinking then it's a uk fuel injection…

as my engine looks like this

looks pretty much like a euro spec engine, unusual over there especially california as you have a lot of strict emissions laws over there and often the california spec cars injection system was different even than the usual american spec!

anyway to start with go over all of the vacuum system carefully checking all the pipes and in the folds of the metering head boots. the pipes in particular look a bit ropey in places and it looks liek there may be a T piece open to air on the side of the metering head?

once all that is sorted give it a full ignition service with plugs, leads and cap + arm then have a read thru this thread:

you can ignore all the special 16v stuff such as isv etc, just concentrate on the basic kjet tests. also for the belt timing its the same pretty much except for the cam sprocket the punch mark is on the inside and lines up to the cylinder head surface with rocker cover and seal removed. For ignition timing this is set at idle with the vac line to dizzy disconnected and plugged, and for idle/co this is just done at idle. If you have a cat you need to find the sniffer port in the manifold, but I cant see any evidence of the extra wiring and control unit you need to run a cat and lambda probe?

after all that ideally you need to get some fuel pressure gauges hooked up to check the fuel pump, system and control pressures otherwise its a case of take your best guess and swap things till you stumble upon the problem

thanks for all the info!!

Sorry, did I miss the link to the post you were referencing?

oops sorry, here:
http://www.vwgolfmk2.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=25972