[s-cars] Thanksgiving Misadventure

[Keith Franchetti]

Wow. This is a doozy. Thanksgiving Day.  We are generally keeping our sense of humor about this, but it's requiring some effort. I guess you'd say this was a kind of inaugural family trip in the new (to us) car. (This is Bill Perron's former car, the '95.5 Silver Avant, which we just bought in September.) I've put a few thousand miles on it for my work, but nothing too far from home. Today, wife and daughter and I were all loaded up and heading from Burlington,VT to W. Boxford, MA--about 210 miles. Car ran strong first 90 miles. I had just been telling my wife how nice it is that we were giving this car a little more use than it had been getting with Abe (the car's most recent owner, my friend and neighbor, and a member of this list), who only had a three mile commute and who favored his Passatt for family driving. "This car begs to be DRIVEN," I was saying to my wife. Which to her was, "Blah, blah, blah, Audi, blah, blah, Audi, blah." 

About 10 or 12 miles into NH, I suddenly noticed a strong steady vibration. Coasting, it disappeared, reappearing anytime I got back on the gas.  Seemed pretty clear it was only hitting on 4 cylinders. I limped downhill, fortunately, to the exit. Got out to take a look-see, car idling, but not smoothly. First I thought I'd blown a gasket, as there was visible blown oily mist on the firewall, and more was coming. When I pulled the coil cover, the problem was clear. The rear-most spark plug came right up hanging from the melted, FUBAR coil. A look down in confirmed disaster. The spark plug receptacle wasn't even round anymore. And who knows how much debris from the wrecked plug and coil went down and bounced around on top of the piston?

No rental cars or service stations open today. Cancelled on family. So here we've been sitting, eating the salad and drinking the beer we were bringing to dinner, in the car, waiting for the bus to take us back to Burlington, VT.