Dead Puppy

[george mills]

Keep the car Kent. You know what's been done to it at this point, and
it takes a long time for the bodies to rust out, even in saltland. I
was quoted 8 hours for the r&r and it actually came in at 7.5. By the
book it is 5.5 hrs. but that's for the work on a car that has zero
rust. The local most of us use here used to be the shop foreman for an
Audi dealer and when the dealer went down he decided to start up his
own business. If you're working from the ground you have to remember
you're going to run into all kinds of stuck fasteners on an old car,
and you can't go using any heat around a leaky gas tank unless you
really like fireworks...of the close encounter kind :) Be prepared for
some broken fasteners and be ready with the proper tools to fix the
damage. If you have reasonable welding skills you can fix the tank
yourself by cutting out rusty and putting in new. The best price I
could get here in Nova Scotia was 200 Canabucks for repair of the
tank, drop off/pick up. In your part of the world that would be about
US100. Not so bad really. Labour here is ~40-45 Canabucks per hour so
at 7.5 hours it's really not that bad. In my case I couldn't see
myself lying on the frozen ground doing the r&r and I found a refurbed
tank for 400 Canabucks within pick up distance. Summertime, now that's
another matter. See if you can source out a refurbed tank. There is
another audifanatic here in the NS that found one in New York in a
redo factory for ~US250 but I can't remember exactly where. I think it
might have been the last one according to him. It's hard to find used
here as there is so much labour involved in taking the damn things
off. Just make sure the one you put on will *never* have to come off
again :) Oh, if you get it shipped to you be prepared to pay
"hazardous material" fee.

Best regards,
Geo (seeing if I can run the 87 44q until 2007 and beyond)