[V8] Warning from the Audigods!

[Roger Woodbury]

I had parked the V8 in the garage after my last trip to Portland on the 17th
of July.  I knew that I really needed new front shocks before I could drive
the car again, and had too many other things to do before I could even think
of tackling that project so I just parked the car.  Working on this house to
get it ready to show and sell meant that we were not going to be doing a lot
of driving and what driving there was really suited to either the truck or
my wife's station wagon.  The V8 could rest a bit, safe and secure in the
garage.  The registration expired on June 30th.

Well, the struts got replaced which I dutifully wrote about here. And on
Thursday I went to town office and paid my exise tax and registration fee.
Yesterday my wife and I went for a little vacation ride down the coast.  It
was a beautiful day and it was a pleasure to get the V8 out and on the road
once again.

As we got closer to Camden the traffic thickened and there was a fair amount
of slow driving. The car seemed less happy and it seemed that the throttles
or the transmission torque converter was confused about locking and
unlocking...when I would try to feather the throttle the car would jerk and
there was a perceptible feeling of being gently kicked in the ass....on and
off again until say forty miles per hour was reached.

Finally the torque converter failed to lock up at all.  Then I was obviously
in "Limp" mode.  At a stop light, I turned off the engine and restarted.
Problem solved for a while, but it returned.  Again in "Limp" mode, the
transmission stuck in third.

Restarted.  Problem was gone for a while and returned.

We were late starting so we never really reached our destination.  I had
wanted to go to the preview day for the annual auto auction at Owls Head
Transportation Museum, but it's been a number of years since I have been
down there, and I got lost. We had an interesting drive through portions of
Cushing and Thomaston that I have never seen before, but as it was getting
later in the afternoon, we decided to just call it quits.

I was at a stop sign in Rockport about to turn onto Route One for the final
return portion of the trip, and while we waiting for a fool female in some
sort of Chebbie to figure out which way she wanted to turn, I put the car
into Park and turned off the engine.  Turned the key and restarted again.