MOT failure on corroded sills and major oil leak - worth repairing?

[MonketWaiter]

Hi there. New to this forum as I've just been given a 02 TDI 115 galaxy Ghia with 118k on clock. It's failed its MOT today on the following:

Supplementary restraint system warning lamp indicates a fault (7.1.6 (a))
Oil leaking excessively from engine (8.4.1 (a) (i))
Nearside Front Lower Suspension component mounting prescribed area excessively corroded significantly reducing structural strength (5.3.6 (a) (i))

Plus various electrical faults, a water leak in the passenger footwell, drivers side windows not working, and some other minor things.

My question is: do you think this car is worth repairing? The garage couldn't give me a price on the welding required so I'm unsure on total cost... My worry is that the corrosion is quite bad and so possibly even if patched the rot has maybe set in.

Thanks in advance

[Mirez]

Only you can really make that call.

What I can tell you is that the TDI hasn't even done delivery mileage on 118K These will merrily go to 500K with basic servicing and generally the engines are solid. The autobox isn't the most sophisticated in the world but again, can cover good mileage if looked after. Change the autobox oil!! As long as its maintained you'll have no issues and with parts for these getting cheaper and cheaper you should be able to repair those issues for next to nothing

1) SRS is likely the clockspring unit, easy enough to change but the light is latching for all faults so will need to cleared once the issues resolved
2) Would guess at sump, the plug is steal into aluminium so easy to strip the threads. New sumps are Ã,£25 delivered on ebay.
3) Unusual tbh. These aren't known to be rot boxes, the only exception being the out rigger box section (which is near to the area described but nearly always called as such. Welding is fairly cheap these days, a lot of mobile welders advertise on facebook at the like so it's unlikely to be very expensive.

Everything else you've mentioned are common faults, all of which are covered in the KB's on this site, and all cheap and easy.

Welcome to the group

[MonketWaiter]

Thanks for the reply! Sounds like maybe not as terminal as I first thought. Will see if I can get someone to look at the welding needed

[brianh]

The usual bit that rots is the bit mentioned above, photo of mine as an example so you know if what your looking for is the usual suspect.

The only other welding I've had to do on mine was the front bumper bracket - the bit that holds the bumper to the car had rotted away in the middle of the plate so was attached to the bumper but not the car.

Electrical faults with anything on the doors tends to be broken wires in the door gaiters - much info on here about it, same with the crappy rear window washer deciding to water the carpet from the joint that never should have been put where it is. Easy to fix that with some improvement of the awful design (I've used fuel line clips to hold mine together and its been fine since)

Depends where your oil leak is really - As Mirez says clockspring is the likely cause, and VCDS will confirm (which you will need to reset the error as well, so may as well get hold of it just in case its one of the other bits that can bring it on. Free version and a cheap cable from ebay is good enough to deal with the clockspring).