This is a place I hardly get to anymore. It has been a roller coaster the last couple months. I have over the course of time collected a number of vehicles which I at one time had a lot of interest in. I am seeing my Mortality more and more. So I am trying to unload some of my projects. Step one . 1983 Diesel Rabbit. I told some folks who had been interested in it hoping someone with skill would come along and buy it. Lately it seems that every time try to sell a VW I own (Too Many) I get time wasters, people with no money, (Why should I sell something for Zero money unless I am related to someone or have a serious business relationship with them???) or folks who want to tell me I am asking too much/not enough or want to help me "convert it to french fry oil" or some such other time invasive project... I"m trying to sell, eliminate from my sphere, or otherwise convert my stuff to money. and have it go away. to a new home where it is loved or not.. Not get a new relationship with someone. My life is pretty full now. Enter a buddy of mine. With money. who wants to get a vehicle that gets better mileage than his SUV, with room for his drum kit. I look at his Budget...( he used to live at in my spare room)... and make a deal.. take your budget,.. Buy parts... (Cringe) I'll help you get her back to her former lackluster blandness. I have been running this vehicle on my property for three years, and trying to get time to get it back onto the road.. I will give you the car but you need to buy parts and do most of the actual work.. I know it has a couple issues.. Charging system and Brakes.. so I says.. Lets do a complete brake job , I mean complete.. starting with the brake booster.. which leaks.. I have one in stock.. for semi immediate delivery.. out of a VW Caddy Diesel... Who knew.. So in goes the Booster.. new front pads and wheel-cylinders, brake shoes and turned rotors and drums.. We are really cooking now.. My buddy wants to do service.. Change filters... Oils and stuff. I"m all over it.. lets do it.. at some point we realized that the motor isn't winding up like it should... Hey I thinks.. the filter probably has cruds... This can only help... next thing you know its hardly running at all.. I have spent years on the road working on all sorts of construction equippage so I immediately think.. Lets bleed everything.. I try bleeding with pressure ,,, bleeding with vacuum.. and finally running a line right from a container of clean brandy new fuel into the lift portion of the pump. Still Ick.. and NO return fuel at all.. So I start to call everyone I know who is still doing this stuff.. What did I forget????? Meanwhile I drain the tank.. and put that fuel into the oil-tank for the furnace... (Have I mentioned the part about not having enough money to get the tank filled??? No?? I'll get to that ) and start to use my oil sampling tool (heavy vacuum) to bleed the pump.. I"m getting foam... Foam.. Criminy... the motor still runs the same ... but foam.. You would think that because I am drawing a vacuum I'd be reducing the fuel to the injectors but No difference... I had put some Diesel cleaning stuff into the little tank with the fuel.. not much return .. Foam.. this is driving me round the bend.. (have I mentioned that my Beagle is really sick yet??? No???) anyhow.. I call the guy who owns the car and said.. "You know any active Prayer Warriors???" (Yeah ... I"m one of those whackos) and I went to bed ... Next morning I start seeing tweets from my buddy looking for PW's to help on this.. back to yesterday's ritual.. fill the leetle tank.. Pump vacuum... rinse repeat.. not much change.. But I have not had it idling for this long for a long time.. the electrophonic fan comes on and goes off a few times .. the battery voltage drops.. I shut the car off and take out the solenoid shut down valve... look it over and clean up the components.. put it back in and put my charger on the brand new Walmart battery... go work on the rear brakes.,. finish them up.. and get back under the hood.. (definition of insanity.. try the same thing over and over expecting different results.. ) Start engine , play with starting leever.. no change.. pull vacuum on return line.. foam.. Criminy.. anyhow about an hour later.. I get a txt that folks are praying for this to work.. Start engine ... idle.. do the vroom vroom thing .. still foam in the return and not much RPM... keep the vacuum on it and all of a sudden the leetle jar on the sampling pump is full of FUEL, NOT FOAM... I shut everything off ... put the return line into the tank and check the leetle jar on the sampling pump for goo, fudge, crap, or anything not fuel or FOAM... Nuttin... anyhow.. Start it again. and its like 2005 when I last drove it.. Vroom Vroom plenty of return fuel ... no foam.. no chunks.. NADA.. but its running good.. better in fact... I'm very impressed... Don't see many answers to prayer around here.. The really amazing thing to me??? Folks who are always after me to trust G-d more are trying to come up with a worldly reason for this sudden return to normalcy ... Who knew??? Anyhow.. The guy who owns the car decides that in light of his budget not being wailed just yet he wants new front calipers.. Why not?? Its a good idea ... the car has been sitting... Calipers go right on.. Pads go right on... Start to pressure bleed from the bleeders up.. I always bleed like that.. suck glop out of master cylinder.. bleed rinse repeat.. then fill reservoir.. have someone pump the pedal and bleed conventionally... and air is gone.. put on wheels... take it for a test drive.. and brakes work but not stop on a dime and give change good.. Uh... this really should be better .. Now I"m having mental blockage.. Call another buddy and he suggests drawing a vacuum on the booster.. Sure enough its got a leak... Its been sitting in storage since 2003 probably... we order up a new booster... and an alternator.. (did I mention the phantom battery drain???) A couple days later we have a new brake booster and a new alternator... and My buddy's budget is starting to strain.. So in goes the new Booster.. and check everything brakeage and it seems fine.. I drive up and down my dead end street.. (It still has plates on it.. MassiveChewShits has rules about unregistered cars.). and the brakes seem fine..
Next up.. make sure the alternator is alternating.. of course My lovely Fluke Mulimeter has died.. just flat out puked.. No leaking 9 volt battery just an abject refusal to operate.. So I take out the trusty Amprobe.. which has a scale almost applicable and search to see if we are getting charging.. I remember a thing about the Old GM alternators where if the idiot light fails the game is over.. So my buddy and I embark upon a web-search looking for information and I call one of the old owners of almost everything VW I have and see if he has any books left with this sort of information.. The two I have are not making themselves obvious.. and My Buddy finds a blurb regarding warning lights and lack of charging... The Old archivist comes up with a book that has a wiring Diaphragm and his text expounds the same thing... I'm going through my collection of Old Simpson Multimeters to see if one might work ... and I get an e-mail with a written procedure online using a test light.. and a jumper lead.. Pisser. Now we are cooking.. the dash is out.. we are testing every lead we can find both ends of and finally we get an open in the wiring harness.. SO to double check it .. I take my handy dandy cable strippers and try to make an uninsulated part on the wire.. it strips but there is NO RESISTANCE TO THE COVER BEING STRIPPED OFF... [ ?? ] turns out .. the wire broke off safely inside the molded rubber plug that goes to the back of the alternator.. We attempt to go into my "storage shed" my very sad 1952 Yellowstone travel trailer which hasn't had any innards since the 90's but is stacked to the gills with bins full of all sorts of car parts.. We get in and I have put 2X6's on strategic places because the floor is getting soft.. Sure enough.. Once we get in there and start gooning stuff around I end up standing on the ground underneath.. with two 235 Chevy six cylinder heads and a 650 BSA crankcase pinning my foot to the ground.. Freakin Ouch.. and Panic.. (did I mention the recent type II diabetes Diagnosis??? No?? F--k it) So My Buddy is freaking out.. and I realize that its only my Shoe that is stuck... so I ask my buddy to try and lift one of the heads and I extract my stocking foot... then I reach down with a Chip hook that was there and retrieve my shoe.. re-install shoe grab bin with VW wiring harness parts and head out into the declining light.. of course No plugs manifestered them selves.. I satisfied the current requirement temporarily, by hack sawing off a part of the plug where at one point the offended terminal was and just crimping on a "new" terminal.. of course all was not immediately well.. we still had to try a few more LED bulbs in the dash to get all of them that this car uses to work and complete the trigger circuit to get the alternator to work... then of course one of the stainless hoeys that hold the headlight bulb decided to break off allowing the bulb to dance around like a dirt bike headlight on a really horrible road.. back to the wiring/electrical bin and out of the seven or eight the previous owner had saved... there was one with three out of the four needed still attached and we had two headlights pointing in more or less the same erection.. another test drive and it seemed like we were ready to get the registration stuff done.. My buddy had the next day off so we parked his soon to be re-assigned car out in the back yard.. (wayyyy back) and I took him round in my van to get rid on my plates and set him up to get HIS new registration,.. Of course HIS insurance company is in Floridia and faxes hadda be faxed and internet stuff had be printed and stuff had to be done to get the paper stuff done none of which happened quickly or correctly.. so .. the old car goes to a tenant where my buddy lives, and he Rides his bike to work a couple days.. Soon everything is looking happy and plates are acquired at the RMV and the Rabbit is ready for its maiden voyage.. Off drives my buddy and I go on to collapse with the beagle.. (remember the Furry Beagle??? It turns out he has cancer cells in his urinary tract and he isn't a happy guy at all) So we veg out on the floor in front of his fan and in about a half hour... a knock comes on the door.. A concerned newly minted Rabbit owner is on my porch with an incredibly worried look upon his countenance.. Hey Woolfey .. can you come look at this??? I get outside and it smells horrible out there like clutch or brakes or something.. the rears on this Bugs Bunny are drums.. and I (mistakenly) figure they are freakin out somehow. BUT, they are cool to the touch .. But the fronts are HOT and so are the centers of the rims.. I say.. Buddy Duude guy.. this is way beyond my ability to understand now.. The rabbit has an European diagonal brake layout .. If you lose a circuit you should have one front and one rear on opposite sides.. NOT two overheating fronts and rears that seem to be behaving properly.. I lend him my van to get home with and I start looking at Books and stuff online.. and the Beagle looks at me.. (did I mention he's sick?? and I'm trying to sell cars and stuff to get him Better/Diagnosed??) In the morning I call another of my VW diesel rabbit owning compatriots and ask him what HE thinks of the rectum as a whole.. He seems to think .. and I agreed after he mentioned it .. that something must be keeping the cylinder cups from returning to the rearmost and drain back position.. Made sense to me... So with numbing aches in my left arm and shoulder.. (Neck pinch not heart attack) I take the master cylinder off , its the only thing in the brake system that hasn't been replaced... and I get it onto my bench and put it into the vice.. Long story short.. It had run out of Fluid a year or so ago and brake fluid being Hygroscopic.. built up a ring of rust on the seal that keeps excess brake fluid from getting into the booster.. thus keeping just enough pressure on the fronts to make them drag and get hot while the rears like good little drum brakes behaved honorably like drum brakes on light weight cars do.. My buddies budget by now is hosed and he is riding his bike to work and eating food of his own construction for lunch.. (Did I mention he is single?? ) Enter the next Beagle problem.. He needs an ultrasound.. In the brief seconds I have not been consumed with this car that I just wanted to sell to someone who would take it home and make it real (Velveteen Rabbit reference) .. love it cuddle it and drive it forever.. I have been trying to get the scrap metal I have been hoarding off to my favorite scrap dealer.. I have recently had to move several buckets and what do I find but three buckets of sorted cartridge brass I raked up on a range a couple years ago.. I combined that with a bunch of aluminum and got a couple hundred bucks for Beagle maintenance (not enough for the ultrasound) and I lent my buddy the funds for the masturbatory cylinder.. Incidentally the furry beagle got a medicine change and we all (Beagle, Buddy, Wife, and ME) had to endure him being in pain until we could change his NSAID (Non Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug) meds for his arthritic paw for one that would help his intestinal tract...
Friday Morning came.. I delivered a SECOND load of brass that another friend and I had spent 11 hours sorting out from mud and inappropriate other content , picked up the newly minted Rabbit owner and his new master cylinder and headed out to the abode of too many things outside and ONE sick furry beagle..
I checked the actuation rod on the booster and decided to just screw it in a bit to prevent a mechanical repeat of the previous problem.. And installed it bled it up and down.. and made a license plate bracket.. and found out that the previously effeminate sounding euro horn had deceased.. Ugh.. drove to the next town where my buddy had worked in another branch of the parts dealer he works for in the big city and bought another effeminate Euro wienie horn.. we then checked all the lights, handbrake, horn (again) and double checked the license plate light and went off to my buddies' favorite inspection place.. WHERE we are told his buddy can't do an inspection on this car because it's a diesel.. WTF!! Massachusetts Sucks at registry stuff.. Just plain all out sucks.. Incompetence and aggravation designed to extort its bleating serfs to go and by new stuff they can't afford.. We then drive to the inspection station I use and no problems.. Its about time.. the car has a sticker, and is once again for the first time since 2004 back on the highways and byways of one of the worst states in the union.. Run, incidentally, by an incompetent ex community activist from Chicago.. Who has inflated the budget and just about single handedly sent more jobs out the state than a functioning railroad could have..
Anyhow the Velveteen Edition Volkswagen Diesel Rabbit is back on the road and the Beagle has one less Rabbit to chase around the yard, That is of course if he recovers sufficiently to even want to engage in that sort of gleeful canine behavior.. Oh yeah.. and I didn't mention.. a series of cat scans that I had to endure during this epic struggle shows that my lungs are clear.. No horrible stuff there..
Labels: Velveteen rabbit Beagle Louie VW diesel
