Questions and Answers

Jetta Slalom Won't Turn Over Q. Hi Vincent and thank you for the service you provide. Two questions really... Second question: I replaced the fuel filter and now the car won't turn. There IS power and I can hear the humming of (I think) the fuel pump for a few seconds, but no turning at all since I re-plugged the 12th relay and reconnected the battery's (-) terminal.

Unfortunately my memory wasn't working correctly during the repair and I switched the order of doing things! Specifically, FIRST I disconnected the in and out hoses to the old filter and THEN I disconnected the relay and the battery.

I don't know what that did to the fuel pump and the de-pressurizing of the fuel lines and whether THAT is the reason for NOT TURNING after having replaced the filter and added fuel to the tank!!! Any advice as to what to do next?

If the effectiveness of the relay is in question and I need to bypass it to check it please advise exact procedure (which terminals get jumped?). Also, my terminology of parts is not that good; in your suggesting of doing this and that to a part please give a description of the part and it's whereabouts.

Changing the fuel filter was performed under the advice of a friend as a possible fix to my original problem, which brings us to...

First Question: The car had started losing power and sometimes stalling while driving or when coming to a stop for the whole of last year. Initially I thought it happened only on humid/rainy days so I replaced the distributor cables and spark plugs but the problem did not go away. This summer the problem became more and more evident to the point that the car wouldn't start properly.

It would turn (right away), the tachometer would sky rocketed and then it would die and stall as soon as switching to gear. It would take 15 minutes of turning it and pumping gas before the car would spin away at high revving speeds. Stoping the car became hard in those instances as it was revving at 3,500 RPM.

I thought of improper fuel mixing/delivery. My friend told me about the fuel pump and filter as well. Since the fuel filter hadn't been changed (as far as I knew) I decided to start there.

Provided that I can get out of the mess I got myself into (question 2) and the stalling/high revving problem still exists, what are the most likely culprits and how do I fix them. If hard, I'd take it to a service garage but I'd still like to know what's wrong so that they don't start replacing parts left and right on me.

• 1988 Jetta Slalom (Canadian model)
• 1.8 liter 4 cylinder
• Automatic transmission :
• broken odometer - approximately 200,000 kilometers
• Fuel Injection

Thank you very much,
DM

A. The fuel pump fuse or relay won't keep the engine from turning over. That is most likely a starter or starter system problem. What you need to do is check for power at the red/black wire at the starter with the key in the START position.

If you have power there with the key in the START position, you have a bad starter. If you don't have power there then you have to work back to the ignition switch.

At the ignition switch you should have power at the red/black wire at the starter with the key in the START position. If not, you have a bad ignition switch. If there is power there, you have a broken wire from the ignitions switch to the starter.