Flash Lives again

Well, that was interesting.  Two days after that last post, Flash the Jetta broke.  I'll cover that today, more than anything else.

Putter... sputter... sput
It's funny.  I was looking back on a posting from about a year ago (How Diesel Gets Expensive) when Flash stopped working because of a dangerously low coolant level which led to rebuilding injectors, the IP and a timing belt change.  Back then, the driver of the Jetta was my step-son, and oddly enough when Flash suddenly stopped running on Allen Blvd, it was him again, but again, not his fault.  For the third time in a year, I had to have the Jetta towed home.  Enter a plug for AAA.

Attempts to start the engine were not fruitful.  I checked for codes, and got a P1248 (Injection Start Control Deviation).  Concluding there was a fuel delivery problem, I checked the case relief valve in the IP first.  Since the pump was just done, I didn't expect anything unusual, and it was all together like it should have been.  Sometimes, those valves get gummed up and slip out so the pump can't create pressure.  Not the problem.  Then, I swapped out the fuel filter.  After priming the lines and the filter, it still wouldn't start.  I concluded the timing of the IP was off, like the code was saying.  Enter Justin.

Diagnosis Negative
Justin stopped by mid-week after a regular workday to just peek into the situation.  Inside a minute, he spotted a flash of copper/bronze behind the timing belt tensioner, telling him that the tensioner was trash.  Concerns about the timing were spot on, but the timing of the IP was the least of our immediate concerns; one of the valves could have been struck by a piston, turning my TDI engine into a paperweight.  We got the valve cover off, and after a careful inspection, Justin concluded the valve train and pistons were probably okay.  Still, we needed to do a timing belt job.  He ran that through today.

Belt and Suspenders
Turns out the effort to pull off the old belt, replace the tensioner and put a new belt on is pretty much the same as doing a complete job.  So, while Justin started tearing down Flash, I went digging through my deep files to see what parts were replaced when Johnny did the belt as part of the IP swap-out.  I remember the receipt had all kinds of tings on it, but I never found it.  I did find the receipt for when I got towed into Bay City (Bay City Blues).  Ha.  So, in the interest of being safe, Justin and I agreed that a complete timing belt change was the best plan.  As Justin removed rollers and the coolant pump, it became increasing clear that we'd made the right decision.  Even though we only put 10k miles on the belt, an incorrectly installed belt will prematurely wear the parts it touches.  In a few hours, the belt was on, the timing was set and we'd taken a test drive to set it in.  Flash Lives.

Daily Driving
The broken Flash created a force to try driving Hapy to work.  After suffering a dead battery on the attempt on the first day, he responded very well every day after that.  I even ran errands in him one day this week.  He's been starting right up, idling a little high on the colder days, but settling down into the low 900's for idle after a few minutes.  It has been a great pleasure.  I do need to adjust the shifter a little to left to improve the gear selection in/out of 1st and 2nd.  I hope to find time to do that Sunday (tomorrow).

I think that's it for today.  We now have more working cars than drivers for the first time in months.  So, as I look forward to Monday, I have to make a decision about which TDI to drive to work.  Ha!  Thanks for following along, and for those who like the pictures, I'm sorry I didn't take any photos of Justin's labors.  I'll take pictures of the removed parts and update this posting later.

Couldn't Stand the Weather

Car stuff today.  Brief?  Is it ever?.  Complains about no garage?  No, actually.  I have to remind myself that owning cars that are over 10 years old with more than 150k miles on them requires owner responsibility.  In that spirit, no complaints; just doing.

Silence Canyon at the pull-out.
Note the snow line in the trees

Cold Shot

While I was getting Flash back from Johnny, he pointed out that the he (Flash) still didn't want to start first thing in the morning.  I thought it had something to do with the vacuum lines.  So, I spent the beautiful Saturday afternoon re-running the vacuum lines.  Some folks may not see that as a perfect Saturday, but it was in the low 60's (F), sunny and the birds were out.  I have evidence of that last part on the side of Flash, but I digress.  Some of the vacuum lines were original.  Yikes.  Most seemed okay, but I replaced them anyway.  I needed about 8 feet of 3mm and 7 feet of 5mm line to do the job.  I have a few extra feet of the 3mm after over-buying.  Anyway, the cold-start trouble persists, so I'll be hitting the interweb (read:TDIClub) for clues.  No codes, no smoke (except on that cold start) and Flash runs fantastically otherwise.

Couldn't Stand the Weather

Sunday (today) was a day for the bus, and a change in the weather.  I mean that both ways.  The clouds rolled back in, dropping spittle-rain this morning.  After running T over to a youth group meeting in Flash, I decided I'd give the bus a go for the pick-up trip.  Remember, that I hadn't taken a test drive to verify whether I'd actually fixed the leak, but I felt pretty confident that I'd nailed it.  He started on the first try.  No real hesitations, but he was chilly.  The drive over was an exercise in getting the gears all slippery.  Shifting was stiff and he wanted to pop out of second.  I sat with the engine running in the parking lot while waiting for T to appear.  He was out of sight, but apparently heard the rumbly rumbly and tore around the corner, beaming.  e knew exactly what I was driving.  As we pulled out of the parking lot, he asked, "how's he driving?".  I responded with driving the bus like I stole him (well, as much as you can with a microbus).  "Zippy," T said.  At this point, the engine temp finally got high enough to trigger the thermostat and allow coolant to really move through the flange and into the radiator.  The temp climbed to 196* and crawled back down.  It see-sawed from 188* to 194* from then on during the drive home.  We stopped to look at the house we had tried to short-sale purchase last Summer.  We saw a puddle forming under the bus and knew then that the "fix" wasn't.  Back to the condo we went, a little dejected after such a promising start.

germane to nothing, it's a Nutria 

When the House is a-Rockin' Don't Bother Knockin'

As we pulled into the parking lot of the condo complex, I noticed the neighbor walking towards our parking spot.  Now, this neighbor isn't one of the condo folks.  He lives in a house that shares the property line.  In front of his house are parked many cars (some volksies).  They split and sell firewood.  They build and sell picnic tables.  There are always one or two folks out front, and a radio is always playing alternative radio.  Modern hippies?  Maybe.  Anyway, one of the guys who live there walked over and asked if we (T & I) could solve a debate.  Apparently, they heard me drive off, and that sparked a whole debate about whether it had a diesel in it or if it was just tuned crazy.  Big smile.  I pushed back the matress and the engine hatch I cut and watched is eyes bug-out.  LOL.  Made my day. Apparently, he and a bunch of folks he knows are mechanics and they specialize on VW's.... mostly the older ones, but they work at a shop I know if (omitted to protect everybody).  I encouraged any one of them to stop on by if they wanna see the crazy TDI-powered microbus.  I added, "if they wanna elp figure out the coolant leak, I live right there (pointing)".  :-D  I'm no dummy, and I'm tired of trying to isolate the leak.

That's it for today.  I'll revisit the leak next weekend.  Hopefully, I'll have a few extra pairs of hands around, even if they're just there to talk and point and drink beers.  To avoid the questions, I spotted that Nutria in the picture on my way into work as I passed a water hazard / green space.  If you've never seen one before, it was big, like a 16" long body plus a nearly 10" tail, nibbling on the grass.  Sometimes Mother Nature is just plain weird.

That Familiar Feel of Snow

You may be happy to know that my blog hasn't been the only thing I've neglected over the last couple of months.  Today, for the first time in over a month, the family and I hit Mount Hood.  I'll touch on that and the latest page in the saga of my Jetta.  No bus news today.  I was going to test drive him this weekend, but I focused on other things instead.  If I have a dry and uneventful morning this week, I'll drive him to work as a test flight.

Flash Lives

Poor Man's Ramp

First, some context.  The symptoms were simple: little power, hard starting, seemingly no turbo and black exhaust.  For codes, I was getting a P1556: low or inconsistent boost.  Yep, the turbo wasn't kicking in properly.  Now, based on the days when the turbo wasn't kicking in on the bus, I knew the sound of a turbo firing up, but not boosting.  That was the sound I was hearing.  On Saturday, I prepared to get the Jetta (Flash) operating right.  Since I'm without a place to work on it, I set up on the street, using the poor-boy's ramp: the curb.  Once the engine is running, crank the wheel all the way so that the back of the front tire is facing the curb.  Then back-up.  Simple.  I slid under Flash and verified the connections from the turbo to the intercooler were good.  From the top-side, though, things were sideways.  The hard-pipe coming out of the intercooler was loose and grinding against the coolant pump.  We have our problem.  I drove it to Johnny, showed him the evidence, and he fixed it.  He did my rear brake pads too, and didn't charge me for either.  Thanks, Johnny.  Flash runs awesome.  Now, I need a pair of tires, and he's ready for another 40k+ miles.

Snow

C resting mid-Molly's

I hit Timberline with my boys and Boo today.  She couldn't slide, needing to grade student work unfortunately.  Turned out C had left his boots at his mom's house anyway, so he went in Boo's (they have the same size feet).  The snow was hard-packed with about 1/2 an inch of puff on top.  It was fast, but the crashes were painful.  I only spilled a couple of times (once on my helmet-protected skull, trying to follow C off a jump).  It really was what my mood needed, though.  There is nothing like a day of playing with your kids.

I Know that Feeling
We left the mountain in a bit of a rush.  T & C were due back at their mom's, so they left in the lead car while Boo and I arranged the ski equipment into the larger carry-car.  As we made our way off the mountain, we discovered an ice-patch.  Ahh... I haven't lost traction on slide-y stuff in years.  Funny how the old skills kick in, though.  Total calm, turn into the skid and lightly tap the brakes.  We righted our descent.  No side-rail impacts, no nerves even, really.  Oddly enough, the car behind us didn't hit the ice, nor were they deterred in their close traveling distance.  Bah!

That's it for tonight.  Have a great week, and thanks for following along.  I'll try to get back to this posting with a couple pictures...

What Ever Happened to the Courtesy Wave?

I'll be brief today.  I've been working some crazy hours, and I haven't had my usual sled for almost three weeks, so its been a bit of an awful February.  Here we go...

Flash Returns
So, I got my car back from the mechanic that my wife usually uses.  Her family goes to him, and with Justin unavailable, I thought I'd try him.  In my last post, I lamented all the stuff I had to pay for, but he gave me a fair deal.  Unfortunately, when I got the car back, the turbo doesn't turn on anymore.  I think its a simple case of a vacuum line failing or the N75 going bad.  It just seemed peculiar to me that the turbo was working fine when Flash went into the shop, but now (many dollars later), I still have to do something on it.  Grr...

Traffic Patterns
Over the years, I've driven lots of miles.  From following the Dead around parts of the country, to delivering pizzas to basic commuting, I've driven many miles.  I'll make jokes about how I learned to drive in NY, and that meant you only needed 2 fingers: a middle one to communicate visually and one for the horn.  There's a spark of truth in that, though.  There is a whole means of communicating through your horn that many drivers don't understand.  There's the "hey buddy" short toot, the "wake up" long blast and the repeated medium-length "you're an idiot" honks.  All I hear anymore are the one-shot medium length "I'm pissed because I think you invaded my personal space" honks.  Boo.  Learn more.

Hand Waving
Take away the middle-finger-for-communicating joke, and there are many ways to communicate with just hand gestures.  We "palms up" to show no-harm-meant and wave someone in front of us with varied degrees of condescension: the holier-than-thou single waft over the wheel, the frantic I'm-in-a-big-hurry waving, even a frowny faced one-wave come-hither.  They all effectively say the same thing: I'm letting you in, but I really don't have to.  What has all but disappeared, though, is the response once they have gotten in front: the in-front-of-the-cabin-rear-view-mirror big-arm wave of thanks.  This is perhaps the biggest indication of traffic politeness decay.  When traffic merges, and you slide into a spot that barely fits, you big-arm wave.  Most drivers will give you about 2 seconds to do so before they retort with tailgating, headlight flashes or the poorly-spoken "you're an idiot" medium length honk.  Please make the extra effort and help calm everybody down.  Its not a race...

That's about it for today.  I think I found the true source of the leak on the bus a couple of weeks ago.  I'll post on that individually later.  Thanks for following along...

How Diesel Gets Expensive

No, I'm not going to talk about the geo-political influences on fuel prices, or about the cost of additives or start a flame about US government underwriting of our fuel-driven economy.  Oops, maybe I just did.  I'm talking about how even with a low cost of ownership, sometimes, you still have to fork out a bunch of cash to keep your old diesel-burner on the road.  I'm having one of those realizations now.

Cost per Mile
Car-heads talk about cost-per-mile when referring to their cars.  Its an "easy" way to compare your '85 Toyota pickup to your friend's '06 Nissan Skyline.  I quote easy because everyone needs to calculate it the same way, and that's not easy to do.  In concept, you take everything you spend on the car and divide that by the miles.  Simple.  Cost per mile.  If you have a black car and you live in a dusty climate, you probably wash that car all the time.  That should be part of your calculation, arguably, but if you wash it yourself at home, how do you price the water you use?  This is were it gets blurry, but this is all one long digression.  I call out the cost per mile because that was one of the key reasons I bought the Jetta TDI in the first place.  Promises of 50 mpg, and running at a low cost to 250k miles rang in my head.  So, 8 years ago I bought Flash, a 2000 Jetta TDI.  Since then, I've spent little, and drove him tons.  Its been a very low cost per mile, not that I bothered calculating it.  I might after this...

Drip Drip Drip

TDI Injection Pump.
re-man: $1000

Since moving in with, and then marrying Boo, Flash has been driven more by others than by me.  This has left me a little blind to the steady deterioration of things.  A few weeks ago, I noticed that there was a diesel fuel smell and a corresponding leak near the injection pump (IP).  "Well, that's not good," I thought, and looked up some solutions.  The TDIClub had a many postings on this issue, and there are even YouTube videos of guys doing in-situ re-gasketing of an injection pump.  "wow, that's neat".  Of course, no garage, tools in storage and an ever-watchful home-owners association at the condo complex had my hands tied.  My job had me really busy, and I wasn't driving him, so I wasn't thinking about the problem every day.  Boo (the regular driver) started complaining of headaches and I didn't immediately realize that it was fumes from the leak that was causing them.  She hasn't driven him in a few days and the headaches seem to have passed, so I think we may have found cause.  It wasn't until K drove him and told me after that the temperature warning light had started flashing and a buzzer was going off that I remembered Flash was ill.  Simple rule: when your idiot lights start to flash and warning buzzers go off, pull over and turn the engine off.

So that's the Sound of Money Pouring out of my Wallet

Diesel Injector
Set of 4: $1000

The temp flashing red and buzzer mean the coolant bottle is empty, threatening the consistent cooling of your engine.  Basically, the water level is low enough that your head is no longer getting cooled.  Badness will ensue.  I filled the bottle, started the engine, and filled it again.  And again.  Yikes, he was low.  Wile the engine was running, I could see drips under the engine, so I scheduled time with Boo's mechanic.  Justin (my friend and TDI guru) is working on other things these days, so I went another direction.  Johnny is a good man, knows diesels (knows gassers better), and wants my car to last a long time, just like I do.  He works on Boo's car, Boo's mom's and friends' cars too, so he's a good egg.  He looked Flash over, and concluded that the diesel leak at the injector pump lead to the premature aging of the coolant line that runs beneath it, eventually putting a hole in the line.  Others are similarly threatened.  Cost for the hose: $200 (w/labor, new coolant, etc), but solving the leaking IP was another story.  He conferred with a fellow VW mechanic and they agreed that at over 150k miles on the original IP, it was probably at its end-state.  Removing the IP includes removing the timing belt, so our simple hose leak had now blossomed into a $1.2k or more job (as we're doing a timing belt replacement now, too).  The IP was sent to Diesel Fuel Injection Service for a look-see.  The important steel bits inside were all okay, but they are going to re-man it anyway with Viton (Bio-Diesel tolerant) seals moving it to better-than-new condition.  Before Johnny sent it to them, we talked about verifying the health of the injectors too.  Why bother getting the pump right, if your injectors are fouled.... Yep, 3 of the 4 were bad or really bad, and the 4th one was leaky.  Neat.  Add another $600 to the job to get all four rebuilt with good German Bosch pintles and other bits.

(Not) Bringing it Home
Added to the costs of the work are things like living without a car for almost 2 weeks.  Yes, that's right.  The IP and injectors need to be rebuilt, and that kind of craftsmanship can't be rushed.  Some of the parts need to be sourced from the East Coast, etc.  So, added to the trauma of not having a car are little things like looking for a rental, bumming rides, cancelling events and asking your MIL to borrow her car.  Its been a de-lightful week.  Flash will be back next Saturday, and his throttle response should be better than it was the day I bought him (used).  Johnny is going to clean-up and match my glowplugs to rid a code, wrapping up the work for around $2200.  Considering a re-man IP runs $1k and new injectors do too, a timing belt job usually runs over $600 and the original hose leak is getting done, its a more-than-fair deal.  Still hurts like mad, though.  Consider that the front end still clunks, and I'm pretty sure the struts need replacing, but that will have to wait until after taxes.  Sigh.  How long til Summer?

Remember: Get and Use Stanadyne in your semi-modern (pre-2006) diesel engine'd cars and trucks.  Since the US pumps have low-sulfer fuel in them, older systems require lubrication through a fuel additive.  Omitting a lubricant will shorten the life of your system, and you will have a $2k problem to solve.  Just like I did.