Quote:
Originally Posted by abaya
Many thanks to lotsofmagnets, as he walked over the other night and took the car for a little spin... we concluded that it must be either a blockage in the fuel line or the exhaust. He recommended a mechanic to me (recommended by another friend), and I made an appointment this morning--magnets, you didn't tell me that the shop was in GRAFARVOGUR!!! Anyway, I took the bus back and left the car there.
The guy just called and said that he found the problem: it's a bad MAF. So he's going to get a used one ($110 here), and then install it... problem is he has to go pick it up at a junkyard, etc... and that's all part of the labor. So total, the whole cost of replacing this damn thing is going to be $320-$380 (including the part). Seeing as everything here costs 2-3 times as much as the US, I guess it makes sense.
We only bought the car for a couple thousand anyway, and we plan to sell it for the same price... so our costs boil down to repairs and maintenance, which will be about a thousand bucks in the end. All fine and good, for a vehicle that is getting 37 mpg, right? (At $10 a gallon, I'll take it.) If it keeps running until we leave--a few more months--it will be worth it, I hope.
So thanks for all the advice, guys!! In the end, it turned out to be the good ol' MAF.
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So the MAF is $110 and he charging over double that for labor? Either he did a ton of troubleshooting to find the problem or the MAF is buried somewhere in the engine compartment. Or of course he's charging you $200 bucks an hour for labor.
Either way it's good to know the problem can and will be solved shortly. I know when I looked around on-line the air flow and vac leaks were highly reported trouble spots on Golfs. Jetta's too since I couldn't keep it straight which car you guys owned.
Sounds like you'll be back to smooth driving shortly and you probably learned a little about engine repair along the way.
On a side note- over the weekend my neighbor came over and said she wanted to drive her car to Cancun this weekend but was going to take the bus because her car wasn't always starting. I went over and looked. The pos. side of her battery was corroded so bad I can't believe it ever started. Little water and baking soda then wire brushed the heck out of it and it started and ran fine. Sometimes it's just some little easily identifiable thing. She thought the engine was probably about done.