Previous owner had smoked side markers- I just got new ones from RockAuto. Like two bucks a pop. Here’s what they looked like before:
The taillights are still smoked. Replacement lenses aren’t cheap, and I’m pretty sure it’s not a tint applied to the factory spec colored lenses that I can just sand/polish off. I’m just going to wait on a parts Golf to show up in one of my local junkyards. I’m now up to 7 RockAuto magnets:
A new dipstick showed up today as well. I ordered the stick, but should have ordered the little funnel bit that had snapped. My mistake. Now I can’t get the remains of the old funnel bit off- worryingly, the part that snapped off was still inside the tube, and when I tried to pull it out with tweezers, it disintegrated and at least one part is now at the bottom of the tube. I don’t want to stick the dipstick in there and push it into the oil pan, but I can’t exactly reach down there to grab the bit(s?), nor do I want to get the oil changed right now. or drive around with some plastic in my pan. I also can’t get the rest of the funnel off, and I can’t see a way to get the tube off, which would be really convenient. So this sucks. I don’t know a ton about oil filtration schemes, and googling was ambiguous. Is it generally the case that oil is filtered before it gets pumped to the engine or is it generally filtered afterwards?
EDIT: Three things. 1, I went for a quick drive and did a walkaround, and the amber sidemarkers look fantastic. So much better than the blacked out ones. 2, I did a final attempt at getting the visible bit of plastic out, to no avail. In my attempt, it fell past the bottom of the tube. It’s bit enough it shouldn’t get through the screen on the pickup tube, but it still worries me. My next oil change should be in about 1000 miles, but I do full synthetic, so it’s not cheap. A shop near my school does full synthetic changes (I think with a student discount) for like $25, so I think I’ll just say whatever and wait a few weeks. I also took another bit of the same plastic and put it in a bowl of 5w40 I keep in the car- it’s more dense, so it’ll float on top. By my math, that oil is a little less dense than the 10w30 I get at the shop. By my reckoning, that means any bits will surely come out of the pan when it’s drained next. Finally, I found out that I have like two bulbs not burnt out in my middle break light of the eight or so that should be lit. These are individual bulbs that just kind of snap in with no connector to the housing. There’s a lot of corrosion on the housing, so I’ll clean it all up before I put it in.
Oh yeah, I also noticed a new sound, a ticking sort of sound, on idle. Dunno if it follows the revs or not, the engine is too loud to tell. So that’s a fun new things to troubleshoot. Hope it’s not a lifter.