[Vwdiesel] 1983 Rabbit Turbo Diesel w/200K miles

[William D. Hamblen]

Hi,

Anybody want one? I'm ready to let go.  My Dad bought it new.  I learned 
to drive on it; it became mine when I graduated from college (1989).  I 
dearly love the car but it's time to admit that I'm not going to get 
around to fixing it up right anytime soon.  Two small kids seem to suck 
up all my free time and I barely have time to work on the daily drivers.

I drove the Rabbit regularly up until 2.5 years ago, sporadically until 
2 years ago when the right front strut mount rusted out (where the 
bottom of the spring rests).  Thank goodness it happened in the 
driveway.  I pulled out the spring and strut with the intention of 
fixing but it's been on jackstands in the garage ever since.

The good: head rebuilt 25K miles ago, engine ran great, had regular oil 
changes and much TLC.  In general the body is in good shape for a car of 
this vintage (but see driver's door comments below) with not much rust. 
Of course many other parts have been replaced over the years as needed.

The bad: headliner needs replacing, driver's door sags (need to lift up 
strongly when closing), can't drive it without replacing the strut 
mount, needs a new cable from the heater control to the valve under the 
hood, fuel pump end of the cold start cable fell off.  Battery is 
probably very suspect at this point (though it did start the engine last 
spring).  Don't know about the tires.  They are quite old in years, but 
probably not in tread wear.  Fuel tank is no longer regulation capacity 
- it shrank to 9 gallons about 10 years ago.  I'm guessing the vent got 
plugged and the fuel pump pulled a vacuum on it.  I blew into it and 
managed to reinflate the tank to about 10 gal capacity.  No problems 
since.  That's a strange story that I just wanted to share with people 
who might care. :-)  Also the odometer reads short by exactly 5% and has 
since mid 90K miles (so the odo shows less than 200K).

Some/most of that stuff is trivial to fix.  I'm just trying to get the 
ball rolling here with as honest an appraisal as I can manage while I 
sit here at work.  I have better maintenance records at home.  I could 
take pictures if people wanted.

I'm located in Quechee VT (8 minutes from the junction of I-91 and 
I-89).  If someone wanted to tow it away I'd probably let it go for 
nothing.  I'm reluctant to part it out (as I say there is an emotional 
attachment here and it's also work I don't have time for) but if there 
were enough people lined up for enough parts, maybe I could be 
convinced.

If someone was *really* interested in trying to drive it away (and was 
willing to pay a reasonable amount for this once in a lifetime rare 
opportunity to buy a collectible car!) I might be convinced to fix the 
strut, replace the fuel with fresh, and get it running.  But if I did 
all that I might want to keep it. Did I mention the emotional 
attachment?  :-)

Bottom line: my wife wants that half of the garage back and I can't say 
I really blame her.

Anybody interested?

  - Bill