[V8] The Christmas Grinch drives an Audi!

[Roger M. Woodbury]

On Christmas eve I drove to Rockland to do a few errands. Rockland is 
ten miles away and I wanted to go to Home Depot and recycle the cans and 
bottles.  When I came out of the grocery store after recycling the 
returnables, the 1994 Audi Avant started, and in drive, jerked a few 
feet and died.  It refused to restart. After sitting in the parking lot 
for half an hour, periodically trying to start the car, I decided that 
it was most likely the car had suffered the more or less anticipated 
fuel pump failure.  (205,00 miles)  Last August the car had failed to 
start in my driveway after returning from a ten mile drive to town.  The 
diagnosis then was "most likely" the fuel pump, but it could still have 
been a cam position sensor.  After the first failure warning shot, I 
motored on thinking that maybe, just MAYBE I'd luck out for a while. 
Well, on Christmas Eve I was done!

I did not then have a cell phone.  Although I do own one, it is of the 
prepaid minutes variety and in August of 2012 I realized that I was out 
of days of use while still having more than 35 minutes of time 
available.  Since we have zero cell phone coverage here at home, I just 
let the service lapse and since then had no use nor need for the thing.  
Of course there in the shopping center in Rockland the only pay phone 
was outside the grocery store.  Inside the store I was told the phone 
had been shut off by the supermarket company since it was never used. 
Obviously this had inconvenienced at least one person other than myself 
because when I looked at the phone, I noted that someone had slammed 
down the receiver so hard that it had broken the thing and the moutpiece 
was dangling by a thread.

Eventually, I got the nice lady in Staples to make a call for me to the 
wrecker which came and hauled my Audi back to their shop twenty miles 
distant, dropping me off in my driveway.

All of this is a preamble to say that my V8 is now back on the road.  
The day after Christmas I called my insurance company and put liability 
insurance back on the car. My V8 has most sat in the garage since August 
2013 because it really wasn't needed, the station wagon being the 
vehicle of choice and the vehicle most capable of doing what was 
needed.  The V8 has spent quite a bit of two summers out beneath the 
large sugar maple in the front yard though. There were several months 
when I needed the whole garage to use as a work shop while building my 
wife's new kitchen and a dozen other antique house restoration projects. 
Nevertheless, the V8 fired right up and on Saturday after Christmas I 
went to town hall to register the poor dear.

And it was GREAT to be driving the V8 once again.  That first day was 
bright and sunny and I went off to run a couple of errands to the 
village center, ten miles away.  Lovely, lovely mild day for late 
December and the car was great!  Smooth and quiet as it should be.  
Still less than 100,000 miles, so relatively young as things go.

After loading up in the grocery store, I headed back up Route 3 which is 
the main state route between Belfast and Augusta. Ten miles up that 
smooth, open two lane road is the turn that takes one the three miles to 
my driveway.

I was about three miles from the grocery store. The road in front of me 
was open, although traffic that morning had been slight for a Saturday 
morning anyway.  I decided to let the car have its head for a mile since 
I had clear view that length before me, and I pressed on the 
accelerator.  It seemed a bit stiff at first. At about a quarter 
throttle, the accelerator felt just as though it had met the "kick down" 
detent....so I pressed harder.......and suddenly the throttle was wide 
open with no return pressure on the throttle at all.  I snapped off the 
ignition and coasted to the side of the road, dead as a doornail.

Of course I knew exactly what the problem was. I have a certain list of 
BTDT with my Audis and I even had considered the possibility of this 
happening as I backed the car out of the garage. But I was so excited to 
actually have an excuse to drive the V8 again, that I just dismissed 
that little voice in the back of my head that said, "You really SHOULD 
do......"

The car had spent part of two summers outside and during those months 
there had been a fair amount of rain.  What can happen in such exposures 
is the throttle cable can get corroded where it is exposed.  I had this 
happen once before and the cure is to remove the airbox and filter, the 
spray the exposed throttle cable, working it free, where it will remain 
easy working I guess forever, although this simple procedure, one that 
takes abotu ten minutes to do, probably should be repeated a couple of 
times per year.

Naturally, I had to have the V8 picked up.  Of course I was three miles 
from other than some private homes, but a passing Sheriff's deputy 
stopped and called the wrecker for me.  Fixed again, the V8 roared back 
into service.

.....well almost.  Three days into the next week, the discharge warning 
signal flicked on and I knew I was in trouble. Fortunately I got the car 
home and back into the garage that night.  The next morning though it 
was dead as a doornail once again. I recharged the battery and then 
drove to the wrench's shop. They tested the alternator and found it was 
charging down around eleven amps or so.  Up in the air it was clear that 
the alternator connections were badly corroded, so......Let's just say 
I've done a bunch of biz with Bosch over Christmas!

Oh, and one question for anyone who has suffered through this story 
(believe me:  living it was MUCH worse!).  I have intermittant 
speedometer syndrome.  My speedometer was rebuilt just after I bought 
the car and the rebuilt speedo has about ten thousand on it since 
rebuild.  More and more though it suffers from intermittant operation 
and I think this is primarily related to temperature:  when the car is 
very cold, the speedometer will often not work for perhaps ten or even 
fifteen miles before coming to life. Sometimes it will come to life 
earlier then drop off before resuming.  I suspect this might well be a 
ground issue that is temperature sensitive.  This is the only failure in 
the instrument cluster, so it is a speedometer failure/ground problem 
alone. When the speedometer stops working so does the trip computer, but 
I suspect the failure is in the speedo.  Any ideas or comments?

Roger