The Ride Home (very, very long)

[Anthony Pelletier <vwnuts@yahoo.com>]

Hi all,

First off, I'd like to publicly thanks Daun Yaegly for
helping me aquire my new car(1980 Scirocco S).  He was
nice enought to put me up for the weekend and let me
use his garage.  Also special thanks to Ron Pieper
(sp) for helping me install new weelbearings & races. 
We did a good job.  1000 miles and no howling.  I also
discovered the wheels were missing thier hubcentric
rings causing the car to vibrate all over the road.  A
friend from home made a killer suggestion to loosen
the wheels and tighten the lugs 1/4 turn a piece, and
hope the wheels self-center.  It worked, no more
shakes.   

The ride home began pretty uneventful.  Ohio is a very
flat and boring place to drive though.  The first stop
is where the fun began.  I ate lunch at McDonalds just
outside of cleaveland.  When I went to restart the
car, I flooded it.  (the car has a certain way that it
has to be started.  You must turn the key and wait 10
seconds or forget about starting it.)  I spend a good
15 minutes getting it running again.  I drove over to
the gas station next door and I bought a bottle of
washer fluid so I could clean my winshield without
having to pull over(this time not shutting the car
off).  I filled the tank only to find that it wasn't
hooked up to the squirter in the hood.  Rather than
mess with that for an hour, I decided to leave it
alone.  It was while doing this that I noticed that
the alternator belt was really loose.  I tried to
tighten the alternator, but there was some funky pully
set up and if I tightened the belt up any more the fan
blade from the alternator would hit the the braket
that holds the alternator on the block.  So I had no
choice but to drive with it really loose.  I would
have bought a belt and installed it, but it was
definately a non factory set up and the belt going
from the crankshaft to the waster pump had no
adjuster.  This meant that replacing the belts would
require both the crank pulley and the waterpump pulley
to come off.  I really didn't want to do this at a gas
station.    

I got back on the highway, being really careful not to
rev it to high and shoot off that belt.  The highway
between Cleveland and PA was downright brutal
especially on coilovers.  It was here I think I lost
my motorcycle gas cap.  DOH!  It was a nice piece.  I
pressed on and made it to Jim J's by 6:00.  I took a
bio brake and checked out the cabby. Oh and thanks for
the rag that I used as a gas cap!  I was back on the
highway by 7:00.  I was hoping to pull an all nighter
and be home by some time in the early morning.  

It was after I was driving with the headlights on for
awhile, that I noticed the alternator light start to
glow.  Oh shit I am thinking, now its really going to
get ugly.  I deceided to drive till it died, then deal
with finding a battery and a belt.  Compounding the
whole alternator situation, was the fact that the
battery was in the trunk with some very marginal home
wire going from the battery to the alternator.  Can
you say voltage drop?  I kept driving.  I am starting
to get really cold.  I didn't dare to run the heater
because I knew it was a big power user, and it doesn't
work all that well anyway.  Finally around 10:30 tired
and cold, I had to stop and some shit hole hotel 30mi
east of Albany.  I turned in and hit a huge hole and
cracked my front spoiler.  (not seriously, but its
still cracked)  I crashed for the night, checking on
the car hourly to make sure it was OK. 

In the morning the car was really hard to start, but
finally it fired.  I fueled up replaced my sock, I
mean gas cap, and hit the road.  The car was runnig
well and I tried to make up some time.  Unfortunately
it caught up with me on 495 in Mass.  I got a nice
ticket for 81 in a 65.  I get to give the nice people
in MA $135 for driving fast in their state : (  

I was very glad to arrive in Maine around 12:00 on
monday.   Contrary to what this sounds like, I really
do like my new ride.  I can't wait to start working on
it.  Oh and Thanks again to Daun, Ron, and Jim J for
helping me out this weekend.  

Tony
(new scirocco owner)

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices.
http://auctions.yahoo.com/

--
Email LIST problems to: scirocco-l-probs@scirocco.org.
To unsubscibe send "unsubscribe scirocco-l" in the message to majordomo@scirocco.org