[s-cars] Thanksgiving Misadventure

[Tom Green]

Keith,

Sorry to hear your family Thanksgiving trip was ruined and hope the  
repairs are not too extensive.  I guess one issue is the car is now  
200 miles from home.  If you don't have the resources or contacts to  
get the car to the place of repair, my suggestion is to contact Chris  
Semple at  <http://www.force5auto.com/>.   He should be positioned to  
be a good choice for transport if not parts and repair as well.

Old fogie Fred  : ) recommended borescope but I suspect you will tear  
down anyway.  I just saw in the Harbor Freight ad for black friday  
this little inspection camera for that kind of job with a much better  
picture of what you are looking at for $69.  I was thinking of picking  
one up to have in the tool box.

Wireless Inspection Camera - Great Deals on Wireless Inspection  
Cameras at Harbor Freight


I hope all goes well.

Tom '95 S6
          '95.5 S6 avant
Knoxville, TN


On Thursday  November 24, 2011, at 4:17 PM, Keith Franchetti <skidfranc at gmail.com 
 > wrote:

> 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.