Your basic 'God Damn it'

[Aleksander Mierzwa]

At 13:07 01-05-04 -0700, agaidos at got.net wrote:

> I sent my wife's '91 200q 20vt to a local shop to fix the ignition switch
and
>parking brake. I could fix this stuff myself but I've got enough on my plate.
>So the guy calls me and tells me he would have a very difficult time with the
>parking brake because the adjuster is rusted beyond repair as are the cables.
>Furthermore, to replace these things requires dropping the exhaust and 
>(finishing the sentence for him) it is too rusty to remove.
> Knowing after the fact of buying it that it is from New York none of this 
>surprised me in the least. From there he recommended, after finding a 
>suspension mounting point corroded to the point of near failure he spend an 
>hour writing up a safety inspection.

My '87 5KT is originally from Connecticut and since 7 years it is here in
Poland, where we have serious winters with lots of salt on the road. The
only serious corrosion problem I had was with oil lines, which were
promptly replaced with aftermarket units of much better quality. Other than
that, the car proved to be a miracle of rust protection and I generally
regard any body rust found on post-86 44 chassis Audi as a proof of past
accident repair. I'm not surprised to hear your parking brake cables are
corroded (that's common failure and they're not that expensive), a corroded
exhaust is nothing new as well. I assume it is original - use the
opportunity to replace it with either a good aftermarket performance system
or listen to Phil Payne's advice and go with the OEM
(Eberspaecher/Leistritz) system which will be good for at least another 5
years. What I actually am surprised to hear is that your mechanic found a
"suspension mounting point corroded to the point of near failure" - this
should never happen. Both the chassis and the subframe on these cars are so
well protected you shouldn't find any rust on them, or at least not one
that serious.

--
Aleksander Mierzwa
Warsaw, Poland
87 5KT