Purchased:

Oct 29, 2001

Went to purchase this sweet ride. The first thing I noticed was this car had some nice neuspeed wires and an aftermarket turbo. After starting it up it was making a slight tick from a loose (thought to be Stripped~see below) exhaust manifold bolt. This didn't cause much of a problem though. It wasn't until about 2 months after purchase the problems started stacking up.

2/2002 - 5-2002: 

First, the oil feed line had given up and cracked from the heat of the exhaust mani so it was leaking oil all over the mani and smoke was everywhere. This really sucked because I had to take it up to the foothills to get state inspection on VIN and that was not fun with smoke everywhere. After getting the VIN inspection I had to get a oil feed line done-QUICK! It took me a lot of searching to find a shop to make a fabricated oil feed line that ending up working great.

After getting the oil feed line fixed the return line decided to start leaking bad. Luckily I found a guy that was good with fabrication and made me one similar to the feed line out of steal braded hose line and he did the install on that.

5/2002 - 10/2003: 

Had some internal fuel pump issues and a Major Coolant Tank problem where my coolant tanks kept cracking from heat - one after another. This was caused by the turbo feeding hot water directly into the coolant tank and pressure and heat would cause the tanks to crack at the seams. Luckily I found a guy in the local VW newsgroups to help out and found a solution to this on-going problem. We took the hoses that normally went to the oil coolant/xfer pump and just disconnected both those and ran one to feed the turbo water and the other for return. That way the 3-way hose I was using  went back to the block and back to the tank like stock thus- normal temperatures again and no more cracked tanks. Works great and I was very happy for this!  Thanks James! Whew

10/2003

Been doing pretty good and going up BIG Colorado Mountains to take me snowboarding. More updates to come. Hope to get some mods done in 05 Spring!

3/14/2005

Repaired Some turbo hosing and throttle body duct that was lose for tighter airflow going into the turbo. Also managed to fix what I thought for years was a stripped exhaust manifold bolt but was just lose. I took the stud out and re-tapped it so it got rid of that annoying tick. Whew if I only would've known. Now I have one more on the like that on the bottom of the manifold that will be more difficult but I'll do it when its warm.