1992 Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cold Start Video
Hey guys,
welcome to our first cold start video. For this one, we’re featuring a 1992 Mk. 2 Volkswagen Jetta Turbo Diesel. This car is Greg’s, but formally belonged to a friend of his from college also named Mitchell (not to be confused with me!). As talked about in our recent Vlog (published months after this video), Greg is essentially just holding onto this car for storage for an indefinite amount of time. The car has a faulty injection pump that needs replaced, there is no battery in it, and the alternator doesn’t work either. We may feature these repairs in future videos so stay tuned!
Now here at GB Productions, our take on cold start videos will essentially fall into two categories, as detailed below:
- True Cold Start Video – this is where we try and start the car in extremely cold weather. There are thousands of examples of these on the internet and they are much more interesting with diesel vehicles rather than gasoline vehicles as gasoline engines can pretty much start in any temperature above -40 degrees Celsius so long as the oil is viscous enough. Diesel vehicles tend to struggle in cold weather as the fuel will actually gel up. The climate in Southern Ontario where we are based is not cold enough for extreme cold starts but it can get cold enough here to give diesel engines some trouble.
- a “Revival” Video – this is where we try and start the car after it has been left for an extended period of time. These videos are cold start in the sense that the engine hasn’t been run in a long period of time.
On this particular day, January 7th, 2021, the weather wasn’t overly cold in Southern Ontario as we were in the midst of a extremely mild winter this year. In the video, Greg said the temperature was around 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), which isn’t really cold at all. There was a brisk Windchill, but that shouldn’t really affect the ability of the car to start. We are classifying this video as a true cold start video but it’s really more hybrid of both categories. As for the process to get it started, it took over an hour to get it going. I made a editing decision to cut most of the struggle out to get a relatively short video, and there was also the fact that much of the video was mostly just the sound of a generator running in the background (to run the block heater to try and assist in getting the engine going). Perhaps in the future we’ll release a longer cut of the video if there’s interest, so leave a comment down below or on the YouTube watch page to let us know! Since the weather was relatively mild, I suspect the injection pump was the main reason for why the engine struggled to start more so than the ambient temperature.
Anyway, here’s the video! Leave a like, comment, and subscribe to our YouTube channel if you’re new (you can do so from within the embeded player below if you’re logged into YouTube in your browser). Thanks for watching!
*Note: In the title we have called the car a TDI, but the TDI technology was actually introduced with the Mk. 3 Jetta/Golf Diesels. We’re using TDI loosely here to refer to a Volkswagen turbo diesel engine of any kind.
