The Car

So, a while back we were lucky enough to get a car from my wife’s parents. They bought a new car (Toyota Prius) and were planning on disposing of the old one. Luckily they offered it to us first.

It’s a 1995 Volkswagen Jetta (Vento in Japan). Done around 45,000kms and is in relatively good condition. We flew all the way from Chiba to Wakayama to pick it up and drive it home. The drive was about 8 hours long.

A few days afterwards I noticed the front passenger footwell was soaking wet. Upon removal of the foot mat I was surprised to discover a  large mold patch.

Not sure where the water was coming from I spent the next few days researching the problem online.  The forum at vwvortex was pretty helpful. It seemed to come down to three possible causes. One: The heater core was leaking, Two: Rainwater was leaking in through the drain for the windscreen or Three: The air conditioner drain pipe was blocked.

Long story short, I never did figure out which one was causing the problem, but I did double check the air conditioner pipe was clean, then sealed the area where the pipe goes through the firewall. I also ran sealant along the base of the windscreen. Hasn’t leaked since. The heater core is most likely fine as the water level in the radiator hasn’t dropped.

So after ‘fixing’ the problem, we spend a weekend removing the seats and carpet from the car, replacing the base mat where there was mold, shampooing the carpet and replacing it. Obviously it would have been better to replace the carpet entirely, but for an older car that we will only use for three or so years, its not really worth the effort.

What is worth the effort though is the sound system. I will write about what I have installed in a future post.

Oh, and for those of you who own Volkswagen cars in Chiba – The Chiba-Kita Volkswagen people are really nice. They have reset the car computer, shown me where the air conditioning drain is and checked a few other things for me for free.