This is my wife's 1973 2002 in Golf (yellow) which we bought in 2014. She named it after that old meme with the word for butterfly in different languages, where they all sound nice and friendly like Mariposa in Spanish, Papillon in French... until you get to German and the word is SCHMETTERLING.
The car has unfortunately been sitting more often than not lately, for a few reasons:
1.
Very old tires, which came on the E30 Bottlecap wheels I swapped onto it a few years back. When we got the car it had heavy 6-spoke Borbet alloys which didn't fit the vibe very well and were super chonky. When the tires were due for replacement I simply swapped to a different set of wheels, which we like better but which had MIchelins from before the current DOT date code scheme. I think they were about 27 years old.
2.
Pinion bearings in the used replacement differential are getting louder. The wife broke the spider gears in the original diff with an enthusiastic launch, and this used open diff was a stopgap to get it back on the road. Now needs a rebuild.
3.
Front brake dragging, which used to be a minor annoyance but has not fixed itself!
4.
Smoking on decel / overrun, noticed when I was following my wife down a long hill and she was off throttle, engine braking. The minor smoke turned into a full-blown fogging situation at idle, after letting the car sit too long.
Problem #1 was just addressed via a set of new 195/60R14 Falken Azenis RT615k+... easy.
Problem #4 required some troubleshooting. I did a compression test after warming up the engine. Results were 150, 140, 135, 135 psi - really not bad at all for this semi worn out M10 engine. The #2 and #3 plugs however looked awful, just completely fouled and black with oil. In addition to fogging up my driveway with blue smoke from the exahust, the engine was exhibiting massive blowby symptoms - like spraying liquid oil from the dipstick tube and chooching more smoke out of every crankcase orifice. With a leakdown tester I found the blowby from cylinder to crankcase was coming from cylinders 2 & 3 mainly, agreeing with the terrible plugs. In addition the oil was thin, jet black, and smelled of fuel.
I sincerely thought this was all pointing to a full engine rebuild. Using a borescope I could see the cylinders did look glazed and shiny, but no other visible issues showed themselves.
Several friends suggested an oil change with some "special sauce" added in to see if maybe the rings were just stuck from sitting. I do see evidence that rich idling without fully warming up has done some damage, but decided to give it a try anyway. So I fed it some Valvoline VR-1 20W-50 with a pint of Marvel Mystery Oil added in, and a new filter. After some lively warmup and a full-throttle drive, the smoking seems to be largely cured! I do think it might need new valve stem seals, and it definitely needs further tuning up. But maybe we have staved off the rebuild for another few years... maybe.
Best cylinder (throttle open, all plugs removed, battery charged):
Worst cylinder:
Edit with more photos…. Freeze-frames from video clips.
Smoke at idle
Smoke and liquid oil being violently ejected from dipstick tube, before:
After oil change + MMO and a zesty drive:
Brakes are dragging much worse now! I moved the smoke from the tailpipe to the left front wheel.
