Honeymoon over? Brake vacuum hose splits..

Running an old VW is not like a modern car. With even the most rudimentary servicing, modern cars happily tick on for thousands of miles with little risk of breakdown. Sure, there are exceptions, but I think that it is fair to say that when you turn the ignition key in a modern car, you assume that it will start, no apprehension.

We had enjoyed 100% reliability with Jasper (excluding the fuel 'issue' of day one), until about a week into ownership. After dinner at a friends, we jumped in for the 6 mile journey home and started the engine. It started up fine, but was very lumpy and not idling at all well.

Upon reaching the first junction, it stalled as soon as the clutch was depressed as we stopped at the give-way line. It started up again, we carried on for 300m or so to a set of traffic lights, depressed the clutch and it stalled again. Only sitting with right foot nudging the revs up alleviated the issue. This carried on for more or less the whole journey home and I arrived back, parked up and felt a little like I'd lost the love.

I hate go to bed thinking about the what, why and where-for of issues, so before hitting the sack I logged on to Club 80-90 and searched through the forum for similar issues. I quickly found a few references to the brake servo vacuum hose in the engine bay. The symptoms that fellow T3 owners described seemed to match perfectly. Confident that this would be the problem, I logged off.

The next day I lifted the engine bay cover and inspected the hose. It was an original VW steel braided rubber hose and looked a little the worse for wear.

You can see it here, marked with the yellow outline and arrow:

A quick browse of the Brickwerks shop found this replacement vacuum hose. It was duly ordered.

Fitting the hose is easy enough, but please take note - WEAR THICK GLOVES WHEN REMOVING OLD HOSE. The hose is braided internally with steel. Over time this will have rusted. When you grab the hose with bare hands and yank, it might slip through your grip and jam shards of sharp, rusty steel into your flesh, tearing it to shreds. How do I know this - I have the scars that prove I learned the hard way!

Once you have the old hose off (it will take some twisting, pulling, swearing) then you can slip the new one on, tighten up the clamps and go make yourself a cup of tea in reward for a job well done.

Here's my new silicon hose installed - I chose the blue one:

This had an immediate and marked improvement on my van and I would suggest that for just over £6, it is worth anyone doing.