The good ones break down in your driveway...

[Fisher, Scott]

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Well-known Porsche 356 guru Harry "The Maestro" Pellow often says that the
difference between a Good 356 and a Bad 356 is that a Good 356 will break
down in your driveway, while a Bad 356 will break down in the worst part of
town, in the middle of the night, during a rainstorm.

Apparently, Audis have inherited this tendency from their grandfather's and
uncle's cars, because my wife had exactly this experience with our '93
100CSQ not long ago.  The "battery from the 356" she mentions is the new
Exide gel battery that I recently put in the 356 (which was long ago
converted to 12V from its original 6V) -- highly recommended, but this
particular model was too tall to fit in the Audi.

Here's her account of the Adventure of the Invisible Battery:

ps. my battery? Want to laugh? It died on the morning that Scott left
town. So here I am, dealing with the kids to school thing. Which was OK.
After the girls left, I got Charlie some breakfast, I undertook to
sleuth out the problem. Now, I love my car. I really do. I think she's
terrific. But I opened the hood and HUH? Where's the battery? No
battery? It must be here *somewhere*. I'm not entirely feeble when it
comes to cars, but I sure felt like a dope. Did the stoopid German
engineers disguise it as some other component? Where are all the starter
gizmos?

[Editor's note: on the phone to me, she said she found the alternator and
the starter and reasoned that the battery must be somehow connected to them,
but it wasn't in the engine compartment...--SF]

Here.. that's one...you'd think the battery would be
nearby....nope. Since I used to be known as a British Car Wife Par
Excellence, I remembered that some of our old cars had the battery in
the trunk. So I looked there. I took everything out of the trunk, dug up
the carpet, and fiddled around. PPPhhhbbbbbttt!! While this is going on,
I've got frenzied calls into my friend Jeff, Scott's car buddy. Not
home. Rats! Call Scott on his cell phone. He's in Grants Pass, and
before I could ask him, the phone lost the connection. Went back out and
looked again. Nada. Maybe this car has some sort of magic Teutonic
woobie that starts the car? Nah. Tried Jeff again and played a few
frenzied games of computer solitaire. Try to do google internet searches

[Editor's note: as a special favor to Brett, I had given her the Audifans
URL and told her to search the archives. :-)]

for Audi v-6 engine diagrams. I wasn't getting anywhere, but when Scott
cleared the pass, he calls me up. The battery? Hoo boy. He wasn't sure,
but knew the manual was in the glove box, and he thought perhaps the
battery might just be under the rear passenger seat. WHAT? Under the
seat? What *idiot* thought of THAT??

Sure enough, I had to take out Charlie's car seat that I had just
recently re-installed (they upped the weight limit on five year olds)
unscrew the bottom part of the passenger seat, and take out the bench.
The battery was original (and my car is a '93!) so the poor thing just
plain died of old age, smothered in great fuzzy blue globs of sulfuric
acid. Scott had suggested I take the battery out of the 356 Porsche in
the garage (which used to belong to Jeff!) and I was giving it a whirl,
trying to figure out how to get the hood open on Liebchen (the Porsche)
when I finally reached Jeff, and he came over. Which was a REALLY good
thing, as it seems that if you have never opened the hood on a 356
before, you shouldn't even try, as the hood release is in another mystical
Teutonic location. At least I remembered it was in the front!  We got the
battery out, which unfortunately was the wrong shape. He took Charlie home
with him (as he can't ride in the front seat because of the @#$@#$airbag
and we couldn't put the back seat back in)  I took the old battery to GI
Joes, with the 356 battery temporarily installed. Got a battery
(couldn't buy the $50 one, they were out of it, naturally, and got the
right one for $60 :-p)  Drove over to Jeff's farm and we re-installed
everything.

All I can say, that if I were dead whilst out doing errands with my kids
in the car and this had happened, I'd be hopping rabidly mad. So thanks
to Wocketsip, she pooped out in the home driveway. I'm sure the
ever-efficient German engineers somehow planned on this. You'd *think*.

--Scott Fisher
  Tualatin, Oregon
  '61 356B, '74 Alfa Spider, '83 CGT, '93 100CSQ




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