Replacing a Fuel Filter on my mates 2002 VW Golf mk4

Earlier this year my mate lent me his car, because he decided to go travelling for a year.

It’s a decent little run around, and has been great to get myself and friends off on little holidays throughout the year.

Well last week the car decided it just didn’t want to start 🤦‍♂️
And as luck would have it, we had a holiday booked 2 days later.

So there’s me stuck in the Co-Op car park, wondering how I’m gunna sort it out.
First off, I got a helping hand to try jump start it with jumper cables, but no luck - I was pretty sure it wasn’t anything to do with the battery, because everything appeared and sounded normal when trying to start it. So with some extra help, we tried push starting it … and nothing 🙁

It got to the point where I just had to bite the bullet and call the AA.
He turned up and tinkered with it for about an hour, but couldn’t figure out what was wrong (he suspected either a faulty immobiliser or a compression issue 🤷‍♂️).
It ended up having to be towed to a garage, which unfortunately wasn’t actually open because it was quite late - so they just left it there for the morning.

The next day I was waiting around for a phone call, in the hope that they would be able to find the fault and repair it quickly and cheaply. But it got to the afternoon, so gave them a call, only to find out there was a 2-3 week wait … And that’s when I realised I’m just going to have to figure it out and fix it myself if I wanted to have it working in time for my holiday.

After some intense and stressful Google searches, I’d narrowed down the most likely issue to be the fuel pump. My luck started to turn, as I found a new fuel pump for £45 (I probably wouldn’t have paid much more for something I wasn’t sure would actually fix it 😬)

The repair itself was actually pretty easy too, mostly thanks to a great YouTube video from someone that had repaired theirs: https://youtu.be/EaFK5OP4n3M.
It was a different model, but the steps to repair were the same 👍

When the fuel pump arrived the next day, I took a stroll down to the garage, tools in hand, hoping that it would be as easy as it looked.
I was thinking of every possible thing that could go wrong - from accidentally breaking the cap that holds it in place, to the possibility of dropping my phone in the fuel tank 🫢

Luckily neither of those happened and I’d successfully got the new one fitted.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to hear a car start 🙌

But, the universe had other ideas … and after about 15miles of driving, the engine started misfiring.

After a little more intense Googling, I bought myself an ODR reader to see what the issue was - and it told me ‘Cylinder 1 misfire’.
With some help from the internet, I decided to try replacing the ignition coil (which was only £25, so it was worth a go).
And finally, it was driving normal again 🙂

After all the stress and repairs, I was feeling a little proud of myself for managing to get it fixed - and was a lot happier knowing that I could get us to our holiday!