Type 44 trivia contest

[Dave]

in the interests of full disclosure, particularly now that eric snowden
has revealed much...

the reservoir you uncovered is a part that the germans invented in the
height of the cold war in a top secret programme they hatched with the
cia.  the plan was to put small reservoirs in obscure german cars and
inside each reservoir to put small pieces of unobtanium. this was intended
to provide a homing signal for the 2nd coming of the german engineers who
had been abducted by aliens towards the end of the korean war.  due to
budget constraints experienced by the germans at time, only 2 engineers
were available: hans and klaus.  the aliens were to abduct hans and klaus,
extract their dna, eliminating the (many) recessive genes by using a
process of comparison with a lucas engineer they had abducted earlier, and
to create a new engineer - they were to call him gunter.

the plan was to meet up in area 51 using a homing signal beamed from the
unobtanium with the prototype new german engineer (gunter) who could
(finally) design electrical circuits better than the british.  the cia
agreed that only cars exported from germany to the usa would have the
reservoirs so that gunter would not be confused with Œmerican cars that
actually worked with fuses rated under 50 amps, had door handles that
continued to function after the warranty expiry, and engines which would
continue to work even after a large stiff spring was added to the waste
gate.

alas, the programme failed for 2 reasons: the circuit to to the reservoir
blew as it was paired with the headlight fuse which didn¹t have a relay.
this means that the unobtanium did not send a signal and gunter arrived,
not in area 51 as planned, but beside a shady tree in rural arkansas where
the only working reservoir existed thanks to a local mechanic called
billybob. to make matters worse, gunter had come prepared with the ability
to understand english but was unable to understand bullyboy (to be fair
not many people could).  therefore gunter drifted from arkansas and ended
up designing vote counting machines for the american electrical
commission. 

the second factor, rarely mentioned, was that the owners of these rare
german cars were supposed to recognise the systemic failures of their cars
and sell them quickly to agent provocateurs who would collect the cars so
that the image of german engineering would not be forever tarnished.
unfortunately, the owners of these cars became rather fond of working on
them, grazing knuckles, undoing bolts that required an arm to be broken in
4 places to reach, to putting in ever heavier wastegate springs, and to
spending many hours in the back yard under a shady tree...

dave
¹08 rs6 avant
¹12 vw passat alltrak








On 10/08/14 10:09 am, "quattro-request at audifans.com"
<quattro-request at audifans.com> wrote:

>
>Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2014 17:16:26 -0600
>From: DeWitt Harrison <dewitt635 at gmail.com>
>Subject: Type 44 trivia contest
>
>
>While poking around the trunk of my '88 5KCS, in pursuit of space for rear
>speaker enclosures, I came across a part I could not identify per function
>or even system. It is of interest not only for the sake of pure science
>but
>because I may want to move it and would like to know why it is located
>where it is.
>
>It's a soup can size, hollow black plastic cylinder with one end dome
>shaped and the other flat with a black rubber vacuum line connected to a
>nipple. It is mounted to the rear seat bulkhead, by a metal bracket, near
>the left-rear seat belt reel. The black hose runs forward from there and
>soon after it is forward of the bulkhead, it transitions to a small
>diameter (3mm?), rigid, white plastic tube similar to the tubing used in
>the vacuum controls for the a/c vents, etc.. This tube then runs under the
>rear seat, toward the car center, to the transmission tunnel at which
>point
>it bends frontward again, and runs toward the front of the car, under the
>carpet along the tunnel. It seems this soup can component could have
>easily
>been located under the left passenger seat area.
>
>So far, I have not gone to a lot of effort to find out where it goes once
>it reaches the general vicinity of the center stack of the dashboard.
>Can't
>find it in ETKA so far (no part number search in there I'm aware of) in
>relation to either the central locking system or A/C control. The Audi p/n
>on the part itself is 049-129-808-A.
>
>Major guru points to the person who can identify its function and the
>rationale for its trunk location!
>
>Best,
>
>DeWitt