Today you get to see my first attempt at bringing the interior of the Cabriolet back to life. This video demonstrates 2 different products.
The goo gone worked okay for the price. The Un Do, didn’t really work but I don’t think that is the right application. I would say that neither of these 2 products worked great. Just remember that this is EXTREME! Just because a product doesn’t work here, doesn’t mean it is a bad product.
If you know of any super cool techniques to remove stickers, post them in the comments. I will be more that happy to try them. There is no shortage of places that need work. This video confirmed the work that I have ahead of me.
Remember that you can also connect with me on Facebook, You tube and Twitter. I am all about chatting it up on Facebook or Twitter!
https://humpodcast1.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/15114629/20120511-125754.jpg360481Charleshttps://s3.amazonaws.com/humpodcast1/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/16121050/humble_mechanic_logo_white_200x100.pngCharles2012-05-11 08:46:472012-05-31 20:44:37Removing Adhesive From The Interior Of The Cabriolet
Hey everyone! We got some Shop Shots for ya today! Remember that all of these pictures come to you from behind the scenes of a VW dealer. These are some of the things that an auto mechanic will see from day to day. Some good, some scary, some super gross, but all of them are the real deal Okay, let’s go~
Here is a picture of a catalytic converter on a 2007 GTI. The customer had a performance exhaust installed on his car. At some point, he had an aftermarket catalytic converter welded in. That bright shiny elbow is a cheat. It is a way to trick the cars computer into thinking that the cat is functioning properly. It moves the rear oxygen sensor further away from the flow of exhaust. That reduces the amount of air it sees. This will let someone install a high flow cat, or no cat at all, and the MIL will not come on. I think some stuff like this is really cool. I like when people find a work around. Of course I officially don’t support cheating the system.
This was the very first car I worked on the other morning. The customer was saying that the seat back would not adjust. He very cleverly took some bungee cords and secured a couple of pillows. To be honest, it was a pretty cool setup. I would imagine that it would be super comfortable on a road trip. One thing to consider is that an improperly adjusted seat back can be a safety issue.
If you have ever had a VW, you might have noticed that the seat back adjustment is strange. It has that knob on the side that needs to be turned. I have had lots of folks tell me the knob didn’t work. The trick is to lean forward just a little, and the seat back will move just fine. This setup is suppose to be a safer design than the lever that most cars have.
Oh, this car’s seat worked just fine. I lubed his squeaky door and sent him on his way.
This is another shot from outside the shop. I was visiting a buddy who is restoring a GTI. We were in his garage having a good craft beer, and chatting about his plans for the car. I looked down and this caught my eye. How cool is it to have a 25+ year old car with that logo on it. AWESOME! Yeah, that was just a little VW nerding out on my part
This picture goes along with the video below. This is a CC with about 900 miles on it. The customer slide into a curb and restored the wheel and bent the control arm. That piece should be NOT be bent like that. When you watch the video, you will see what it looks like from the outside of the car. The rumor is the guy was wasted when this happened. I have no way of confirming that!
So, you might have noticed that sweet intro on this video. A good friend of mine built that for me. I can not take any credit for it (I wish I could). This will be on all of the videos going forward. I almost peed my pants when I watched it for the first time. This dude is so damn talented!
Ok, back the video. You can see how close the tire is to the back of the wheel well. The whale noise that you are hearing is the rim scrapping the control arm(the bent part in the pic above). We were really cracking up about the damage.
Well, there you have it, another round of Shop Shots in the books. A quick Cabby update, I drove her home yesterday. She is now safe and sound in my garage. I have to swing by work today and pick up the Passat..
If you think that the intro is totally amazing, mash one of the share buttons! It will help me thank the guy that made it.
Well, as promised, I shot a video of the Cabby last night. After work last night I spent a few hours replacing the clutch. I will dedicate a post solely to that soon. Lets just say it was toast!
As you can see, I have some BIG TIME work a head of me. That is the fun part about the project right? I will say that the car is in pretty darn good condition.
After I test drove it, I found it would not stay running. A vacuum hose came off on the front side of the engine. I fixed that. Then I found the distributor cap and rotor were worn out. I got those coming along with some new spark plugs.
Well, what do you think? In over my head? I would love to know.;) I hope you all have an awesome weekend. I have some pics of the damaged clutch and some before and afters for everyone. I will post them asap.
If you knew that my first car was red, click one of the buttons below. BTW my first car was red.
https://humpodcast1.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/15114635/20120425-204028.jpg480640Charleshttps://s3.amazonaws.com/humpodcast1/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/16121050/humble_mechanic_logo_white_200x100.pngCharles2012-05-04 12:38:492012-05-31 20:45:27Volkswagen Cabriolet Project, What the Chalk?
Ah Shop Shots, some of my favorite posts are the pictures from the auto shop. Ok, no messing around, lets DO THIS!
If you look close, you can see that the BACK of the car is covered in bug guts. Yep, this brand new car has been traveling at high speeds in reverse. Well, kinda. It just came off the shipping truck. Someone had to back the car onto the TOP level of a shipping truck. That is NUTS to think that someone backed the car onto the truck. I would have a panic attack trying to do that. Now, this is not really a life changing picture, but I swear I crack up every time I see it. Like EVERY time. 😀
HAHAHAHA. WTH?? I am laughing about this still! See I take pictures almost every day. I don’t always use the pictures the same week I take them. I found this one again today. Why the heck do people put this on their car? Do they get paid for it? Are just really be fans of “$weep$take$”? You have actually seen the other side of this Beetle before. It is the wrecked Beetle I posted a few weeks ago. If anyone knows why people do this, please post it in the comments.
I have talked about Volkswagen water leaks in other posts. Here is a Tiguan that had a slight leak. This actually belongs to a buddy of mine. We had been trying to get his car in to be checked. Finally we got the leak fixed. I pulled the carpet up to dry it. I think it came out great. A little shampoo, a little scrubbing, and a lot of fan, the car dried up nicely. If you ever find water on the carpet of your car, understand that the water is probably deeper than you think. The carpet on most VWs sits about 1.5 inches above the body. That means there can be a ton of water standing before it is at the carpet level. If you find you have water, get the carpet pulled and dried. A shop vac will not do the trick.
I think this goes in the “What the heck were they thinking” file. Then again, I bet my Cabriolet does too. 😉 This was sent to me by Steve in Chicago. Thanks Steve! I can’t really comment on what, of why someone did this. I have be be honest, it looks like they put some time into it.. The detail is pretty good. I am sure that Jim LOVES his little pig. HAHA!
Ok, this video is AWESOME! What you are looking at here is called the Leak Detection Pump(LDP). This pump is part of the Evaporative Emissions system on your car. This system controls fuel vapors from your car. Whether it is when your car is being filled with gas, or that hot summer day, it will control the amount of vapors released in the atmosphere. The pump pressurizes your fuel system to check for leaks. When the system fails, your Check Engine Light comes on.
This car came in with a check engine light on. I did a “smoke test” on the system. Basically I charge the system with nitrogen, and add a chemical that smokes. When I unplugged the electrical connector for the LDP, this is what happened. I have seen it before, and I always like to watch it.
Well, another week of Shop Shots is done. There is one more thing that I want to say to everyone. This post is my 100th post. I want to tell each and every one of you THANK YOU! I truly appreciate the fact that you take time out of your day to visit the blog, read the posts, comment and so on. I just cant say THANK YOU enough. Thank you to all everyone that likes the facebook page, or follow on twitter. I appreciate every “share” every “retweet” especially the one that said, “check out this VW blog, sans skinny jeans”. That one might be the funniest. I feel really lucky to get to know all of you and I am really looking forward to the next 100,300,500,1000, and beyond! I hope that you enjoy the site,and get a good laugh all while learning some things about cars.. Seriously, THANK YOU ALL!!!!
I can’t believe that this is the 10th volume of Shop Shots! It seemed like just yesterday that you guys were helping me name this series! As always, you will see pictures of the random things that I see around the shop. AND…..GO
This is a close up of some bearing damage inside a manual transmission. This actually belonged to a great friend of mine Daniel. His concern was a noise, and trouble getting into gear. We decided to replace the transmission, but I really wanted to see what went wrong. There was metal in the fluid, so I knew that it was bad new. I did a really early post when I first started this car blog. In that post you can see the metal chunks on the drain plug. This is one of the few manual transmissions I have had an issue with.
While we are on the subject of transmissions, here is the guts of an automatic transmission. This comes from when I was at training for Routan transmissions. This is about 1/4 of the parts that make up the rings, clutches, gears, seals and so on. Automatic transmissions are really an engineering marvel. Actually, all transmissions are pretty awesome.
This is leaves, pine needles, and dirt built up on the cowl of a Jetta. On the surface it just looks bad, but it is actually a big deal. I have seen countless cars get water leaks due to leaves building up on the cowl and around the windshield. The get stuck in the water drains and that water will go somewhere. The crappy part is that somewhere is inside the car. I actually totaled 2 cars due to water leaks caused by this exact thing! One was a Touareg that was had mold everywhere. The estimate I wrote was for about $42,000 in repairs. Take a minute and make sure you don’t this happening.
Last but not least, this is a quick video of a crazy noise. This car was whistling when it was sitting at idle. When I revved it up, it would stop, but as soon as I let off the gas, it would make this noise. I remember the first time I heard this I thought, “What the hell, this is not gonna be fun to fix”. It turns out it is a really easy fix. There is a check valve that only lets air flow one way. Well it gets stuck and causes this noise. WARNING– this noise is loud, I recommend turning down the volume!
Well, that wraps up another volume of Shop Shots. I am always looking for new post topics, if you have a suggestion, just contact me, or post up in the comments. Also, don’t forget to swing by Humble Mechanic on Facebook and say hi!
I sometimes feel like the world is against Volkswagen. People are always saying “I hear VW has tons of electrical problems”. Well, I don’t really agree with that, but I will save how I really feel for another post. This is about a REAL problem I found on a Jetta.
The customer comes in and says “Sometimes my door buttons do not work”. After a conversationwith the customer, I find out that her driver’s door is not working all the time. There are times when we have to extract the right information from a customer.
When I got in the car, I checked the door. Big surprise, everything worked just fine. I pressed every button on the door, they all worked like a charm. I pressed the auto-down button for the window, and opened the door. When the door got about half way open, the window stopped, all the lights went out on the door, and the instrument cluster started beeping funny. Well you can check it out in the video.
Strange isn’t it? It turns out that the ground wire in the boot between the body of the car and the door was broken. It would make contact with the door shut, but open when the door was open. I am really glad I was able to capture it on video. Usually the strange electrical problems are so sporadic, there is no chance of catching it.
So I did a little rapid fire Q&A session. I got some really good feed back. If you have a question or a topic, article that you would like me to talk about, just contact me or post it in the comments section. I kinda liked doing it, so post it up!
Real quick, I just want to take a second and thank each and every one of you that have read my blog, liked the FB page, chatted with me on twitter, posted and comment and so on. It really mean a lot to me. The success of this site is thanks to all of you! Our little community is growing every day, and I am really excited for the things to come. Also, that you to everyone that has shared this site, that is the best way for us to grow! You folks are truly awesome!
This is inside the boot between the door and the body of the car. The wire that is broken is the main ground(negative) wire. With out it, nothing will work.
Ok, to some of you this might be a really simple thing. Lets remember that at some point ALL of us had to learn this.
I shot this video after a conversation with a customer. Like I said in the video, a customer brought her car in because the 12v outlet was not working. This is actually something that happens a lot. I replaced the fuse and pulled the car around. I put a couple of extra fuses in her ashtray so that if this happened again, she could just replace it, and save a trip in to the dealer.
When I showed her the fuse that needed to be replaced, she looked at me like I was stupid(a look I know very well) 😉 Well I showed her exactly how to replace the fuse. It really hit me and made me fell like an ass. I mean, its just fuse right. Well, there was a time when I had no idea what that meant. So here is how you check a fuse with a test light. This is not the only way to check fuses, but it is one the of fastest, and I think, the easiest.
Oh, that is not the test light I use at work. I have that for use at the house.I also recommend keeping a few extra fuses in your car just in case.
Hey, if you have not checked out Pinterest, it is a pretty cool site. It has replaced my bookmarking on my computer. If you need an invite, let me know, I will hook it up! I hope you guys have an awesome weekend! I will be fighting my allergies all weekend!
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