1998 Volkswagen Jetta

TDI Sedan

1.9L 4 Cylinder Diesel Fuel Turbocharged

Manual

3vwrf81h5wm248059

Front Wheel Drive

Diesel

Vehicle Anti-Theft System

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Well maintained and treated with love. Regular oil changes. Comes with a log book of repairs and maintenance work going back to mile 25,000. Never been in an accident. No major body damage, just dents and scrapes from fellow parallel parkers. Windscreen has a spiderweb crack; you will want to replace it. Check Engine Light has been going on and off the entire time I've owned the car, returning code P1550. (See www.tdiclub.com for more info on this CEL code. As far as I can tell, this is a minor, emissions-related fault, and it certainly did not prevent me from putting over 100,000 miles on this car in 4 years, including many wonderful, incident-free cross-country roadtrips.) Undercarriage has some rust, but not visible unless you are looking for it. Interior is pretty good: one small (1-inch long) tear on the back seat from folding it down on a long road trip. This car achieves about 45mpg on both veg oil and diesel. I have a 100 mile/day commute and generally only fill up the diesel tank once per month. Save the planet and your wallet by burning free vegetable oil instead of $4.50/gallon diesel. Car has been converted to run on waste vegetable oil. I have driven over 100,000 miles since converting the car with a Frybrid WVO kit, which is one of the best on the market due to its engine-protecting safety features. The main safety feature is automatic switchover from diesel to vegetable oil once the oil has come to the proper temperature. Car has two tanks: one is the stock diesel tank, the other is a 15-gallon veg oil tank mounted in the trunk. Run both biodiesel and veg oil to completely eliminate petroleum products from your fuel! For more information about the WVO system, see www.frybrid.com. I did the conversion work myself, I’ve helped others convert their cars, I have a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering, and I am willing to help you troubleshoot and to become acquainted with WVO via email/skype/phone for the lifetime of the car. I will be your veg oil buddy. If you wish, I will include everything you need to collect, filter, and clean WVO. The entire system! Engine runs great. I expect another 100,000 miles from this car with no problems. This car is a BEAST. Recent major repairs mile 292k: new front brake pads/rotorsmile 290k: glow plugs replacedmile 286k: new timing belt, water pump, valve cover gasketmile 285k: four new tiresmile 272k: injection pump re-sealedlikely next repairs: suspension tune-up, new windshield Great sound system with MP3/CD player that reads a USB flash drive! The decal on the rear window is transparent from inside the car. I am happy to remove the decal at the buyer's request. On May-17-11 at 08:59:26 PDT, seller added the following information: I am so sorry to sell this great car, but I’m leaving the country soon and need to give it a good home. 328k miles. 5-speed, manual transmission. Black w/ tan interior. Power locks. Manual windows. Selling as-is. I am happy to transfer the car and title to you any time after June 18, 2011. As the fuel is free, I am willing to drive a pretty long distance to make the sale. We can work it out around your schedule: contact me to set something up. Well maintained and treated with love. Regular oil changes. Comes with a log book of repairs and maintenance work going back to mile 25,000. Never been in an accident. No major body damage, just dents and scrapes from fellow parallel parkers. Windscreen has a spiderweb crack; you will want to replace it. Check Engine Light has been going on and off the entire time I've owned the car, returning code P1550. (See www.tdiclub.com for more info on this CEL code. As far as I can tell, this is a minor, emissions-related fault, and it certainly did not prevent me from putting over 100,000 miles on this car in 4 years, including many wonderful, incident-free cross-country roadtrips.) Undercarriage has some rust, but not visible unless you are looking for it. Interior is pretty good: one small (1-inch long) tear on the back seat from folding it down on a long road trip. This car achieves about 45mpg on both veg oil and diesel. I have a 100 mile/day commute and generally only fill up the diesel tank once per month. Save the planet and your wallet by burning free vegetable oil instead of $4.50/gallon diesel. Car has been converted to run on waste vegetable oil. I have driven over 100,000 miles since converting the car with a Frybrid WVO kit, which is one of the best on the market due to its engine-protecting safety features. The main safety feature is automatic switchover from diesel to vegetable oil once the oil has come to the proper temperature. Car has two tanks: one is the stock diesel tank, the other is a 15-gallon veg oil tank mounted in the trunk. Run both biodiesel and veg oil to completely eliminate petroleum products from your fuel! For more information about the WVO system, see www.frybrid.com. I did the conversion work myself, I’ve helped others convert their cars, I have a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering, and I am willing to help you troubleshoot and to become acquainted with WVO via email/skype/phone for the lifetime of the car. I will be your veg oil buddy. If you wish, I will include everything you need to collect, filter, and clean WVO. The entire system! Engine runs great. I expect another 100,000 miles from this car with no problems. This car is a BEAST. Recent major repairs mile 292k: new front brake pads/rotorsmile 290k: glow plugs replacedmile 286k: new timing belt, water pump, valve cover gasketmile 285k: four new tiresmile 272k: injection pump re-sealedlikely next repairs: suspension tune-up, new windshield Great sound system with MP3/CD player that reads a USB flash drive! The decal on the rear window is transparent from inside the car. I am happy to remove the decal at the buyer's request. Regarding the filtration set-up If you are willing to transport the filtering set-up, you're more than welcome to have it.I have a very simple filtering set-up, but it produces great oil. I have two 55-gallon barrels. The first is a settling tank. Oil passes through a funnel with a course pre-filter screen and through a PVC pipe to the bottom of the barrel (so that the dirtiest oil is always being introduced at the bottom of the barrel.) A hand-operated barrel pump is used to move settled oil (drawn from the middle height of the oil column) through a fine filter made from blue jeans to the second barrel, which is used for dewatering. The 2nd barrel contains a hot water heater element mounted inside a PVC pipe, at the bottom of the barrel. A heavy duty extension cord wired to the heating element is just plugged in to an outlet, and the barrel is left to heat for ~12 hours. During this time the oil gets very hot and water boils out of the oil. When the heater is unplugged, the oil slowly cools, and most debris and water particles settle to the bottom of the barrel. A 2nd hand-operated pump is used to pump this dewatered oil through a 10-micron (supposedly the same level of filtering provided at the gas station) goldenrod fuel filter and into the car or a storage jug. The goldenrod filter costs about $12 to replace, and I only use them at a rate of about once per yearRegarding car maintenance/standard operation The WVO fuel filter on the car is a disposable, screw-on type that costs $4 from www.fleetfilter.com. Generally I get around 10,000 miles of driving before the filter clogs. The filter is in an easily accessible place (just in front of the passenger side front wheel) and takes 5-10 min to replace by hand.Time to switchover depends on the outside temp. In the summer, starting on the highway, as little as 5 min, and in the winter, 10 min or so. I have actually pre-run a wire from the battery to the trunk, so you could install an auxiliary electric heater for faster switchover.On May-18-11 at 18:17:36 PDT, seller added the following information: Maintenance time Oil collection/filtration/refueling generally takes only about 1 hour per week. Your results may vary, depending on where you find your oil source and how often you go to pick up. Fuel savings This car is a steal. Depending on how many miles you drive per year, the free fuel will pay for the car relatively quickly. For example, over the last 4 years, I drove over 100,000 miles. 100,000 miles / (45 miles/gallon) = 2222 gallons of diesel not purchased 2222 gallons x ($3.00/gallon) = $6666. Or, using a more current diesel price: 2222 gallons x ($4.00/gallon) = $8889 saved over just 4 years, which represents a major profit for me. Diesel prices are only going up; how much will you save? On May-18-11 at 20:35:01 PDT, seller added the following information: Question from bidder: I am curious, you say you need to run the diesel for about 5-10 minutes before you can switch over to the veg. oil. I assume you need to switch back to the diesel before you stop the vehicle. About how long would you need to be back on diesel before you stop the vehicle? Thanks for the great question. By the way, you always have the option to just use your diesel tank by flipping the veg oil system power switch to OFF. This would be if you don't have any WVO in the trunk tank, or if you just don't want to use it, like on a short trip around town. When you do use veg oil, you must always purge the engine/fuel lines of veg oil before turning off the car and letting it cool down. To do this, you simply press the purge button (It's visible below the red/green/yellow lights in the picture that shows the WVO tank fuel gauge to the left of the steering wheel.) and rev the engine until the yellow light turns to red. The timer is set to ~25 seconds at the moment. This can be adjusted pretty easily as you wish, but for me it was a safe number when setting up the system. During those 25 seconds, the engine is drawing diesel from the diesel tank and returning excess fuel (veg oil) to the veg oil tank in the trunk. Then, when you shut off the car and let it sit over night in the blizzard, the car starts on nice, fresh diesel rather than cold, viscous veg oil. On May-19-11 at 09:36:38 PDT, seller added the following information: Question from bidder: What are the consequences if I would forget to purge the lines before turning the car off? Another good question. If you remove the key from the ignition before purging the lines (green light is still on), a loud, high-pitched buzzer will go off to remind you. If you still ignore it, eventually the car will cool off enough to switch back to diesel mode, and next time you start the car, whatever oil is left in the lines will be returned to the diesel tank. This is not terrible, but starting the car on cold, thick veg oil is not good for the engine. Hypothetically, eventually it could lead to injection pump failure and engine trouble due to build-up of residue inside the valves and pistons, etc. The automatic switchover & alarm safety features included in the Frybrid system are to prevent start-up on cold oil, which is the main issue people have with running veg oil. On May-19-11 at 11:23:47 PDT, seller added the following information: Question from bidder: How easy is it to fill up when you're out there in nowhere land? It's not totally simple. You need to contact someone else with clean oil before the trip so that they are ready to fill you up when you arrive. Many other WVO users all over the country, in both rural and urban areas, can be found on online message boards. Otherwise you can carry the clean oil with you. I have done a ton of long road trips in this car, and could fairly easily carry enough oil to go about 2000 miles before needing to find more oil! On May-20-11 at 10:55:22 PDT, seller added the following information: Question from bidder: I am interested to know if all the electronics in the car work like they are supposed to, like the lights, wipers, dash instruments, etc. Any strange noises coming from the engine or transmission? All the electronics work just fine. Dashboard lights up, wiring is all fine, etc. The odometer reads ~28,000. This is because 1998 VW odometers reset at 300,000 miles. Interesting fact! Transmission is fine -- very smooth. I have had comments about how easily it shifts. No strange sounds from shifting gears -- well maybe a little bit of friction when going into reverse, but my mechanic has never mentioned working on it. The engine doesn't have any weird knocking or anything, just that familiar diesel purr. Question from bidder: I'm curious as to why you would sign the title over only after the 18th of June 2011, if I am to be expected to make payment in full within 10 days of winning the auction? Will I still be able to come pick the vehicle up before the 18th of June? The reason for the strange date with the title is that I am going to be traveling (vacation) out of the country from May 30 to June 18. So basically I need to do the transaction between when I return when I move to Europe ~July 1, although I would delay this departure a bit to sell the car. I understand your concern about paying in full before actually getting the title. That would not be fair. I would expect a substantial downpayment upon winning the auction, but we could do the transfer of the rest of the purchase when you actually get the car and title. On May-21-11 at 16:30:51 PDT, seller added the following information: Question from bidder: I have a question about the appearance of the vehicle. The paint looks good apart from the minor scrape on the door. Is the clear coat peeling any? Also the rust on the undercarriage you talked about, is it just minor surface rust or has it penetrated the frame, floor pans, sills etc. Thanks again. The clear coat is not peeling. The paint is actually in great condition excluding the spots where it is scraped by other drivers. The rust is pretty minor. I looked just now at the undercarriage and could only spot rust on a small area under the driver's seat and a raised side skirt that goes along both sides of the vehicle. The side skirt is used as the jack position for changing a tire, so the rust got started because the protective coating has been worn away from many changed tires. This rust does not affect the frame at all. See the last two pictures in the gallery. One picture shows the rusty spot under the driver's seat. Those black gaskets are about 1-inch in diameter. The other picture shows what the rest of the undercarriage looks like: smooth and gray from the protective foam coating. It actually looks pretty good under there! There are absolutely no holes in the undercarriage from rust -- it is not nearly that bad! On May-22-11 at 01:59:26 PDT, seller added the following information: 1. Question from bidder: Is the rust on the undercarriage just surface rust or is the damage critical? and the other dents on the car, anything major? and is there rust around the dents? I hope I answered this to your satisfaction in the auction description. See the last question from a buyer at the end of the item description and also the 2 photos. The one dent with rust is on the driver's side door, and there is a photo of this damage. 2. Question from bidder: For the veg converter, does the oil need to be filtered or prepared in a certain way in order for it to work? Actually the kit will run on any oil or diesel or oil/diesel blend. But this is highly discouraged! WVO needs to be dewatered and filtered. If it's not filtered, your fuel filter will clog very quickly, and the oil also very likely contains water. If it's not dewatered, the oil will damage your injection pump, which is a very expensive ($1000+) repair when it finally goes out. Water in your oil will also likely damage the engine. Fortunately dewatering and filtering oil is pretty simple (and not expensive to set up a filtering station). You will need a covered space in your backyard to store and filter oil. See frybrid.com for more info on what's required to filter oil. There is a simple stovetop check to see water in the oil called the "hot pan test." 3. Question from bidder: Is the car inspected? The car has not been inspected within the last 2 years. I believe that it would not pass Maryland's inspection only because the check engine light is on, but Maryland has one of the toughest inspections of all the states. Also one of the tail light bulbs needs to be replaced.