[V8] of Fords, Audis, and chinese junk

[D Morralee]

Oh Dave that was a good funny email, it made me LOL in the office. I still have the original fender blinkers after I put after market ones on.if you want those I can ship them out.  On ebay they sell for about 2O dollars. Superdave
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-----Original Message-----
From: d a v e s a a d gm <dsaadgm at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2012 18:52:35 
To: <v8 at audifans.com>
Subject: [V8] of Fords, Audis, and chinese junk


First off - I really hate it when I go to an autoparts house and the only
parts available are cheapass chinese junk.

At 150K miles on the explorer, I decided to change the water pump just
because they wear out, and I was planning a long road trip. It was just
preventive maintenance - the old OEM pump had somewhat loose bearings but
was not leaking or noisy.  All went well, but I noticed the new pump just
looked crappy compared to the OEM part.  Sure enough, it failed about 40K
miles later.  Lucky for me I got the lifetime warranty.  Put the next pump
on less than a year ago and it just failed - after about 10K miles. I went
back to an OEM pump this time.  In the process of repairing the pump, I
noticed that the thermostat was sticking.  The temp gage would go close to
the red line - then open, continuing to sort of oscillate between normal
temp and just short of overheating.  You have to watch the gage for a long
time to really notice this.  This thermostat was also replaced about 50K
miles ago with chinese crap. Since the dealer was closed when I had it
apart, I had to install yet another crappy chinese thermostat.

While doing this work, I noticed that the front brakes were pretty thin.
They still had some life in them, but they are only two years old.  Again
- chinese crap with a lifetime warranty.  I put new pads on under the
warranty.  Next up, the engine was running a little ratty. On the bright
side, what I thought was a timing chain rattle was only the crappy chinese
water pump. That problem solved. I removed a spark plug to inspect and
found that it had no center electrode.  A review of receipts showed that
the plugs had over 130K miles on them.  The gap had grown to over .1 inch.
 All in all it was surprising how well it ran - considering.  So off to
the parts store again for some plugs.  After carefully setting the gap,
applying anti-seize, die-electric grease, and going through the
considerable effort necessary to get to all six plugs I fired it up to
discover a bad miss.  A diagnostic revealed that #1 cylinder was missing.
I assumed that I broke a wire somehow - but after shocking the beejezus
outa me (unplugging a wire at the coil causes the spark to jump over two
inches - and it prefers to travel through human flesh whenever possible) I
tried reinstalling one of the old plugs in the #1 hole.  It smoothed right
down. Bad new plug right out of the box -  Autolite - made in china.  I
went back to the store for a new one and the store manager (the one with
the alcohol on his breath) grumpily explained that spark plugs have no
warranty and so no refund. I directed him to read the box he was holding
in his hand which read - and I quote - "Guarenteed for three years" in
nice big print. I got the new plug, reset the codes and the engine is back
to running great.
Hopefully I am good for another 200K miles now...

And for the Audi part of this - a while ago I asked if anyone had a extra
side turn signal light - the one in the middle of the fender by the door.
The general consensus was that it was still available at the dealer so I
went there. No such luck. So - if anyone still has some used ones for sale
I would like to buy them. Or if you can point me to a source for new ones
that works as well.

Dave
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