November 11th, Veteran’s Day, marked my GTI’s eighth anniversary. I delayed sharing this post because I had just had the fuel tank suction pump recall performed and wanted a chance to include comments about it here. With over 233,000 miles on the odometer, my car is not at a mileage milestone, but I’m getting close to an oddball achievement that I will share soon. For now, I’m going to share what’s been happening with the car over the past year. If you’re looking for a complete list of everything that’s gone wrong since the car was new, I’ll refer you to last year’s 200,000-mile post. I list most items there.
This year, I’m going to focus only on recent projects and road trips. Oddly enough, I don’t have any broken parts to report during the past 12 months, though there is one “maybe” part that I’ll mention. I had been quietly watching an intermittent hot start problem for a while, perhaps for up to a year. There didn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason, but it eventually occurred to me that it may have been associated with refueling events. Although I do not practice “topping off” my tank, or filling it “to the brim,” I did frequently round up to the next half-gallon. It was something kooky that I did for “even math” in my logbook. The hot start problem seemed to have disappeared when I stopped doing that… until it came back, I guess. That day, I had refueled at a dispenser that may have been running a little slow, which can result in a delayed auto-stop. I didn’t overflow the tank, but I may have filled it beyond an ideal point.
That’s about when I shot the video that I linked above. The hot start events seemed to be a mystery to my trusted mechanic. The fuel tank suction pump recall documentation compelled me to study how the evaporative emissions (EVAP) system works, especially the suction pump that I didn’t even know existed! I don’t consider myself to be an expert on its operation, but hard starts appears to be one of the symptoms of a clogged EVAP canister, which can be an expensive repair. Instead of a full clog, which clearly is not my problem since my hot start issues are intermittent, I’m hoping that the recent replacement of the suction pump may prevent future hiccups with hot starts by keeping the EVAP canister dry. Hey, I can dream! 😉 I’ve refueled just twice since the recall. All appears to be going well so far.
UPDATE: The intermittent hot start issue is not resolved. I had a hard start about three-quarters of the way through my third tank after the recall. I’m pondering the possibility of the issue being associated with an intermittent O2 sensor fault.
That was the only possible problem to report! Other than that, I’ve just been driving the car and enjoying 33,000 trouble-free miles over the past year. I made road trips to Orlando, FL for HamCation, Texas for the Solar Eclipse and a round of distant POTA activations, and several smaller voyages in support of some bicycle tours. I didn’t write about most of that here since those activities fall within my ham radio interests. See those entries in my ham radio blog. Ham radio has been my primary hobby during the past few years. So, most of my time and money goes down that drain. 😉
My car mods are almost at a standstill, if you don’t count the ham radio additions. It’s hard to believe that my car is almost exactly as I want it… it’s just about perfect! The only mod that I’ve done lately is the addition of “Reverse Rake” Spacers by EMD Auto. I was contemplating a suspension replacement, which I didn’t do, and opted to raise the rear about 1/2″ to compensate for the extra gear in back. I think the car looks great! Here’s a photo that compares the before and after. The look is very subtle, but appears to level the car perfectly.
Another mod, which is more of a rearrangement, was to swap some things around on the “rear seat delete“ to better accommodate my refrigerator and tool cases. That decision was driven by the addition of a 3000-watt pure sine wave inverter. I’ll admit that 3000 watts is overkill in my tiny car, but you have to go big in order to get a remote control with an inverter. My auxiliary battery setup only supports about 1500 watts, but that’s still plenty of power to run a microwave oven at a remote radio operation site. Of course, the fridge has been operating nearly full-time since 2020. It’s completely changed the way that I travel or even how I visit the grocery store!
My final mod happened in the wake of the suction pump recall. I had to remove my auxiliary battery so that the VW technician could access the fuel tank. Removing everything gave me a chance to rearrange and upgrade some of the wiring. The upgrades support the large inverter and made room to expand into new mobile electronics projects. Keep an eye on my ham radio site if you’re interested. I may share it here, too, if it seems appropriate.
That’s about all I can think of for now. Look for my next milestone soon. It’s not a common celebration, but something nerdy that I think will be cool. I need to work on a photographic creation. Until then…
