[Vwdiesel] stranded

[dieseltdi at verizon.net]

Well I am about to head out on my yearly school camping trip to the Rocky Mountains with my college students.  But before I go, I wanted to pass along my stranded stories.  My first car was a 68 beetle.  The summer before I started college, I drove my bug from Grapevine, Tx to Monroe, La where I was going to go to school.  I had never taken the car out on the highway so it was going to be a new experience.  Anyway, I was just 30 minutes into my 5 hour trip when the car began to buck and loose power until it finally stopped on the side of the road.  I got out and did the guy thing, you know, wiggle all the wires, etc.  After about 10 minutes, I got back in the car and it started right up and away I went, for about another 30 miles and the process happened again.  This happened again and again until I finally determined (in my mind at least) that it was the spark plugs.  Ever change the spark plugs on a hot air cooled engine?  Didn't change anything.  The 5 hour trip took me nearly 8 hours.  Interestingly, I drove around Monroe for 2 days with no problems but when I got back on the highway, same thing happened.  After I got home, I took it to my mechanic, a left over hippie named "RED".  It took him two minutes to diagnose the problem and he never even started the car.  It was a bad coil wire.  The wires were made of carbon fibers and apparently they had broken.  As they heated up, the fibers began to open and a gap began to form until the gap was so large the spark couldn't make the jump and the car died.  Changed out the wires and it never happened again.  Years later, I had a Bay window tintop camper with a dual carbed  914 engine in it and the same thing happened on a camping trip.  I had an old extension cord in the camper so I cut it up, stripped the wires on both end and used the coil wire to hold it onto the coil and the distributor.  I drove it over 250 miles that way before I could find a new wire.  
Neither of these were actually strandings I guess but I did have one in a diesel Rabbit.  In the late 80's, I used to buy old diesel rabbits for $400-500 because no one wanted them.  Anyway, the car had the infamous disappearing coolant syndrome.  I thought I had isolated the problem to a cracked coolant tank.  Turns out that the cracked tank was a symptom not the cause it was of course a bad head gasket.  Anyway, I drove to Monroe, La from Dallas, and every time I shut off the car, it was EXTREMELY hard to start.  Should have taken that as  clue.  Anyway on the way back, the car over heated 4 times before I got to Shreveport.  I managed to limp into town to the VW dealership who assured me the could get to the car "any minute"  so I shut the car off.  BIG MISTAKE!  With me standing there, they closed the shop for the day!!!!!  Needless to say, I was #$@%&!  I wasn't able to get the car to start, in fact the engine wouldn't even turn over as the pistons were essentially welded into the cylinders.  My wife had to drive to Shreveport to pick me up.  3 days later, I towed the car back to my house, dropped the engine and replaced it with a used one that I bought for $350.  Eventually I totaled the car and got more from the insurance company than I had paid for the car, including the replacement engine.  
Hayden


"We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that have allowed some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. They sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10% of his salary – and that's crazy. Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the busdriver?  Ronald Reagan

“I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.”  Alexis de Tocqueville


Visit my website at:  http://mysite.verizon.net/resosxp8/mydieselpages/
Proud owner of:
2004 Jetta GL PD TDI
1968 Beetle, my latest project, watch for details
1982 VW Jetta Coupe with GTD turbo diesel transplant (in progress)
And many, many, many VWs; from a 1947 Beetle (13 Beetles total), to Vans (5 - 3 splitties, 2 bay window (both were campers), 1 Vanagon Westy, Rabbits (3), Karmen Ghia (1), Jettas (9), Passats (2), Dasher (1), New Beetle (1), Rabbit Convertible (1) and Rabbit Pickups (3) most now gone but not forgotten.