Lucky Me!

[George Selby]

I was at work last night, driving the Audi 80, and all of a sudden a cloud 
of steam erupted from under my hood.  I opened the hood and discovered the 
hose from the WP to the cylinder head area had a 3 inch long split in it.

After work (2 am,) I called a friend to see if I could get a ride home, or 
maybe some duct tape for a temporary repair.  He wasn't at home, but was at 
another friend's house, who happens to live only one block from where I 
work.  So I drove to his house, and that friends roommates are these, and 
there is a little beer drinking going on, so I stay for 
awhile.  Conversation works around, and eventually one of the roommates 
asks if I want to buy his Jetta, which is sitting outside (needs an 
alternator, is ~88~ model with 127k miles, auto tranny, he wants $500, I 
think I'll take it if I can make it run, it is very nice inside, no rust, 
appear to have no body damage.)  I tell him maybe, I'll go look at it in a 
few minutes, after I finish this beer.

So I go outside and look at the Jetta.  As I'm looking under the hood, I 
notice that even though the engine in a Jetta sits sideways as compared to 
an Audi's the one hose that will interchange between the two is the one 
that happened to bust in my Audi.  So we remove the hose from the Jetta 
(what a pain, it had spring clamps you could hardly reach with a set of 
pliers - took like an hour to get the hose off the Jetta, took 10 minutes 
to get the hose off and on the Audi with regular German screwdriver type 
hose clamps) and replaced the hose on my Audi with it, fits perfectly!  I 
drove home no problem.

George Selby
gselby4x4 at earthlink.net