New Owner from California

Hey folks!

Greetings from the Bay Area in California. I recently purchased a 1982 Rabbit Convertible that only has 60k miles on it, and I'm excited to get it back on the road! I felt a little silly buying a non-working car considering the state of my daily driver (can be seen in the background of the last picture- an old minivan with no rear bumper) but as I'm sure you can all relate to I just couldn't pass it up. 

It had been sitting in a garage since 2002 and needed a lot of work despite the low mileage. The previous owner was really shady and completely ruined the electrical system somehow. I have almost all of this working again and I've also replaced the door handles, tires, speedo cable, timing belt, and a few other small things. The good news is that it has good compression (150 each I believe) and not a speck of rust to be found. Paid $5k for it and I'm well over 10 now with the new fuel system, parts, and towing it around. 

I've redone the whole fuel system: new tank (was rusted) new filter & pump, rebuilt distributor, and new injectors. I had a local shop do most of that as I don't have things like an exhaust gas analyzer, but they didn't do a great job (still idles really rough) so I'll probably be doing more myself coming up.

It currently runs well except for a few issues. Known fixes:

- Leaky waterpump (new one coming today)
- Alternator doesn't charge (new one also coming today)
- Valve cover leaking oil (single-piece rubber gasket just arrived)

And finally, the unknown fixes that I'm sure you'll see posts about after I take a crack at them:

- Very high oil pressure (6-7 bar on startup, revs to over 10 bar! Doesn't get below 4-5 when hot. This is with new 20W50 oil and new Wix filter. Probably just gummed up from sitting for 20 years so I'm hoping the new oil will help un-block passages if I let it run for a while)
- Runs a little hot (could be poor waterpump performance, and I have yet to do a coolant system flush so it's possible it just has 20 years of gunk in it)
- Tachometer doesn't work (I grabbed an oscilloscope from work, going to check out the ignition coil output next. As a side note, if anyone knows the voltage level/pulse width these put out, an easier way to check the tach would be with a function generator but I don't want to guess and fry it!)
- High vibrations at idle (motor mounts are original, maybe replacing these will help, but also with the tach broken I can't verify the idle is even set correctly)


Thanks for reading and any input is appreciated!





 

Welcome    get some pics up for us all please

Thank you! Whoops let me try again:

That looks extremely tidy    and at least you have the weather to put the top down unlike over here.