Fuel System Clean Up
While filling the car with petrol, I noticed rust inside the fuel filler neck. This is a common problem in the Golf Mk1s as dirt from the road gets stuck between the filler neck and the inner wing and slowly rusts the filler neck away. The rust also falls into your petrol tank, which in turn causes all sorts of issues with fueling.
Mine was a mess and came apart in my hand when removing it 😡
When I fitted the new 16v engine I had the chance to clean up the whole fuel system, which is overly complicated on the old Golfs as they used k-jet fuel injection detailed in the diagram below:
The fuel filter and pressure regulator were all clean and had no rusty flakes. These bits are in the engine bay and are easy to access.
The fuel pump and fuel accumulator are both under the car but accessible. The fuel accumulator and pump brackets are always rusted and falling apart, so replacing these with stainless steel items is a good idea. Crazy Quiffs Mk1 Golf Shop has all the needed parts, but it gets expensive quickly when you start replacing the lines with stainless steel braided ones. I replaced the fuel accumulator, the fuel pump bracket and some of the rubber fuel lines
The rust from the fuel filler neck always ends up in the bottom of the tank. Rather than removing the tank, you can remove the back seat and access the tank by removing the in-tank lifter fuel pump. There is a how-to on the mk1maintenance website that details the process for removing the lifter pump and accessing the inside of the fuel tank.
Once the lifter pump was out of the way, I spotted the rest of the rust from the fuel filler neck. To get the rust out and clean out the funky-looking petrol at the bottom of the tank, I used the pickup hose from a cheap sandblaster kit with my air compressor to suck the tiny bits of rust & fuel out and spit them into a bucket. The sandblaster kit was from Machine Mart for £21.95
I definitely would recommend this method over removing the tank, as I removed the tank from my Mk1 Tin Top and still was unable to remove all the tiny bits of rust and ended up sucking them out with a bit of tube I taped onto the end of my Henry Vac pipe. I had to replace the vacuum as the smell of petrol did not go away even after the bag was swapped out 😁
