[Vwdiesel] Found 1989 Diesel Jetta

[Matt Alkire]

The alert is the 'your door is open' alarm.  It actually was working properly.  I know in the mk3, it sounds like a mexican ambulance or something.  Not sure about the mk2.

That thing sounds like a time capsule!  I'm glad it went to you instead of someone who would mod it and make it useless.

-Matt

On Jun 11, 2010, at 6:43 PM, Doyt W. Echelberger wrote:

> Yesterday I brought home a 1989 Jetta n.a. diesel 5 speed, showing 99k 
> miles. The owner decided to sell his house and most of his belongings and 
> go live in Arizona in his motor home, so he bought a new Ford Focus to pull 
> behind the motor home, and sold me the Jetta that the Focus replaced.  I 
> think he wanted a car with a new air conditioning system, to survive the 
> Arizona summers.
> 
> In the glove box I found the entire maintenance record with dealer stamps 
> going back to 1989. It went 20k in 1989-90 and then went to Florida and did 
> 2 or 3k per year down there until 2002. Then it came back to Ohio and 
> became a spare car that they towed behind a big motor home. Still has the 
> towing fittings and electrical connections in the front bumper (Not pretty, 
> but professionally done).
> 
> Runs good, nothing wrong with it except AC isn't very chilly. Original 
> Heidelberg radio with cassette player. Interior, headliners and seats are 
> like new, door cards, steering wheel and dash flawless, the grey paint is 
> shiny, and the PO put new tires, brakes and exhaust system on it about a 
> year or two ago. Doesn't have a sun roof.
> 
> The underside of the car has zero rust. It looks new. To a guy like me who 
> lives in Ohio (heart of the rust belt) this is amazing in a 21 year old 
> car. The color coat is in good shape, and seems to be applied over a very 
> thick undercoat of what looks like white epoxy. I'm just guessing at the 
> epoxy part, but I never noticed such thick armor plate paint on any of my 
> other VWs. Probably a millimeter thick.
> 
> I'm cleaning it up and checking every detail in the process, by touching 
> everything, and so far have discovered an unsettling feature....when I open 
> the driver door, a relay on the fuse board plays an alert that doesn't stop 
> until I close the door. I think it is associated with a seat belt buckle-up 
> warning, but I think in theory it should be quiet when there is no weight 
> in the seat. Gotta trace that down. To stop the annoyance, I just unplugged 
> the relay.
> 
> PO said he got 40-50 miles per gallon, and the speedometer is 10 mph 
> slow....he checked it against a GPS. Starts easily, no smoke, certainly not 
> a hot rod, but I'm having lots of fun puttering around with my new toy. It 
> replaces my 1985 Jetta TD, which I parked last fall when it developed an 
> exhaust gas leak into the coolant.
> So, now I can consider the 85 a parts car. Anybody know of any 
> incompatibilities between 85 and 89, other than hydraulic lifters vs 
> solid?  Do the door handles swap? I think the 85 has front vent windows and 
> the 89 doesn't.
> 
> I may even swap the turbo and exhaust from the 85 to the n.a. 89, and put 
> in an exhaust gas temperature sensor like Loren mentioned earlier.  I would 
> have to swap the air intake components also, because the 89 has the air 
> filter above the valve cover, and the turbo has it very close to the 
> passenger headlight. And I think the oil filter assembly and the oil pan 
> also have to be swapped. Loren mentioned I could probably get by using the 
> N.A. injection pump, with some fine tuning.
> 
> So, I'm sort of excited about diesels again.
> 
> Doyt Echelberger
> 
> 
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