[Vwdiesel] occasional stuck cold start cable?

[Gary Shea]

Hi y'all, I've been the happiest camper around with my 'new' 82 diesel
rabbit, what fun.  After a vanagon, it feels like a sports car.  I guess
that's kind of sad...

Question and a story.

Question: sometimes when I am about to start the rabbit, I grab the cold
start cable and pull, it doesn't want to move.  It can be forced, but
it's like it's really really stiff.  The cable feels like it's going to
break, and it can't be pushed back in by hand if I do forcefully pull it
out.  Happens every 20th start or less, I'm guessing.  As soon as the
engine is running, no problem.  Some day I need to take a pump apart,
maybe it's obvious then?

Story: when I first went to look at the rabbit, I noticed that the
driver's side cv bolts were half gone, and the boot had a hole in it...
in the _metal_ part!  Weird, wonder what did that... huh.  Pointed it
out to the owners, the kid who had been driving it mentioned that he'd
replaced that driveshaft.  Ok, that explains the missing bolts, he
didn't tighten them up enough.  A week or so later I'm putting on the
new boot with the whole driveshaft out and I look a little closer...
there's a hole in the side of the transmission right by the cv!  A big
hole, about an inch tall and a quarter inch wide like a grinder was
used.  Well... one pair of cv bolts had the strip of metal you often see
joining each pair, and I guess you see the rest.  Urk.  I took PC7
(gooey fibrous epoxy) and some galvanized window screen, cleaned the
hell out of the transmission housing with mineral spirits, coated the
window screen with a thick layer of PC7 and stuck it on there, spread
the PC7 all over in a big gooey mess.  A few days later, it's still
there.  I try not to think about it...

Have fun!

        Gary