Weird friction noise

[begemoth]

Hi,

My van is a '89 petrol. I noticed not long ago that it makes a sort of friction sound which seems to be more audible whent I open the hatch at the back. Here is a video of it https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxqnJC ... sp=sharing, the sound quality is not great. I am pretty sure that it did not do that before but I might be mistaken. The noise is a cross between boiling water and something begging to be oiled.

Other symptoms - which could be unrelated : the coolant level seems to drop (but I was told that it did not matter too much as long as the main tank still had enough in it), it uses more fuel than before and does not start as well as it used to. Apart from that, all good thanks!

As you've probably worked out I am not technical at all I'll take the van to my garage but was wondering if someone had an idea of what the problem could be. Am also definitely getting paranoid with it - it seems to have constantly something wrong.

Thanks

Ju

[kevtherev]

Could be the water pump about to fail.
take the belt off and run the engine for a couple of mins.
If the noise disappears then it's either the water pump or the alternator, but probably the former not the latter.

link does nothing

[begemoth]

Thanks Kev. Will give it a try. Could that explain or be related to the other symtoms mentioned?

The link to the video works for me with Chrome even in incognito mode, not sure why it did not work for you

[kevtherev]

When pumps fail they leak.
Or it could be coincidental.

If it was my van I would be eliminating things to find the leak
As your not technical, I guess you have to pay for investigation/elimination by the garage.?
Or will you be trying yourself, as VW intended.?

[begemoth]

As your not technical, I guess you have to pay for investigation/elimination by the garage.?
Or will you be trying yourself, as VW intended.?

Both. Am not going to understand the beast better if I don't try.

I'll still take it to the garage though : the pump issue is probably unrelated to the other problems I am having with stalling and excessive consumption (overfuelling?)

The annoying thing is that the previous problem I had was with a sticky choke and it has pretty much the same symptoms...

As for the coolant leaking, I had mentioned it to the garage but they did not find anything.

[kevtherev]

I'm not going to second guess where your garage looked for the leak, or any leak, there are ways and means to spot exterior leaks.
As for the other issues.
Taking off the pancake duct is all you have to do to check the choke operation.
closed when cold, open when hot.
There are many many posts here regarding the pierburg carb and it's auto choke
They may not be in regard to your issues, but reading them will enlighten your understanding of how it works.
and it's pretty simple stuff really.
There's a spring, which uncoils as it gets hot, the spring moves a lever which rotates the choke flap, and that's about it.
There's a mechanism to increase the rpm when the choke is on and the engine is going through it's 6 min warm up.

If you're sure the timing is correct and there's a healthy spark, and there's fuel present, it should fire.
So.. timing... spark...fuel
if any are wrong it will struggle to fire, simple.

Timing will require a timing gun
Spark will require your eyes
Fuel will require some application of learned wisdom, and the pump to pump fuel when the engine turns, and that the carburettor is clean. etc
I could go into fuel/air ratio's , but a simple check is looking at the choke flap, if it does not fully open you will use more fuel than you should, if the flap is floppy then that won't work either.

any help?

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Verdict : it was the water pump indeed. The people at the garage also gave the van a good service. Not certain changing a water pump should take 4 hours but here we go...

Thanks again for your help @kev. Will bite the bullet one day and have a look at how the choke works. BTW Would be fab to find somewhere to learn some basic stuff for the T25. Do you know anyone running a workshop like that?

[kevtherev]

Verdict : it was the water pump indeed. The people at the garage also gave the van a good service. Not certain changing a water pump should take 4 hours but here we go...

Thanks again for your help @kev. Will bite the bullet one day and have a look at how the choke works. BTW Would be fab to find somewhere to learn some basic stuff for the T25. Do you know anyone running a workshop like that?

No, but if you want to do something simple your self... like changing a waterpump in a couple of hours.
We can take you through it with pictures step by step

oh wait, you already did that

but you get my drift

Further more, if you are letting some body else do things I sure hope you're buying the best quality items for them to fit...and not letting them buy crap and fitting it to your van.
At least take some control