[Vwdiesel] Diesel Cabby's first long trip, report

[David Cook]

Hey all-

Last night I returned from Diesel Cabby's first long
road trip.  Since it was spring break and I didn't
have to drive a school bus, I decided to go further
away from Manhattan to do some long-distance
recruiting for Manhattan Christian College.

I left Manhattan Kansas on Monday and drove to St.
Louis, where I met with a youth minister briefly and
stayed the night.  Tuesday, I headed to Odon, Indiana
where I met with another youth minister and later his
youth group.  That night, I headed up to Indianapolis,
where I stayed until Friday, meeting with more youth
ministers and kids.  After a lunch appointment, I
headed to Bloomington/Normal Illinois to spend the
weekend with a friend.  Yesterday after church (and
Easter lunch!), I headed back to Manhattan. 

Overall, she performed very well.  I had no issues
with the engine, and no breakdowns.  I do have some
sort of rattle in the front suspension which I thought
was a CV joint, so I had a new one installed at one
point, but that wasn't the problem.  I'll be checking
into suspension parts in the new future.

I don't have much in the way of accurate fuel mileage
figures other than one tank that got 42 MPG (with a
good amount of in-town driving in Indianapolis) and
another 43 (all highway on the way home--most of the
time I was doing 80ish--gotta love keeping up with
traffic).

I'd have more accurate mpg figures, except when I hit
the odometer reset after topping in Kansas City on the
way out, the odometer stopped working!!

So, in St. Louis at a motel room, I disassembled the
instrument cluster and fixed the odometer.  Luckily I
had looked over a website in the past and knew that
there are a couple gears that tend to get loose on the
piece they are attached to, so some superglue and
white grease for fresh lube was all it took.  I even
guesstimated the elapsed mileage since it broke and
rolled it forward.

Tuesday morning, I had to get up early and retorque
the head bolts, as the trip to St. Louis took me right
to the 1000 mile mark since I replaced the gasket.  It
seems to be holding up rather nicely.

It was a good thing I had used some black RTV silicone
and plastic wrap to seal some of the rubber leaks in
the top, since it rained for the whole stinkin' week! 
I didn't get to put the top down one time on the whole
trip!  (I do still have a couple small leaks to get,
but they were greatly reduced by the RTV.

Other than that, the trip was pretty good, and it was
fun to really see what the Cabby could do.  I was
happy at its ability to hold 80 MPH on all except the
steeptest Kansas hills near Manhattan, and then it was
still at 70.  I know what nearly all of you are
thinking...  "Wait a minute, What hills?  Isn't Kansas
flat as a pancake?"   And it is true that, in fact,
Kansas is flatter than a pancake when you measure
relative distances in elevation, but in the eastern
half of the state, we have some real nice hills.

I just thought some of you might be interested.

David

David Cook
Red '86 Cabriolet Diesel Powered
Red '90 g60 Corrado 
Brown and White '78 Westy Campmobile "Bear"
and others in various states of disrepair
Pictures here: community.webshots.com/user/superdave5599


	
		
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