[Vwdiesel] K'pla!

[lbaird119 at aol.com]

Hooray!
  It's getting to a point where older cars are becoming a bane almost more than a blessing.  OLD enough and it's mostly metal other than upholstery.  As we go along, we see more and more plastic (and electronics) that make older cars difficult to maintain.


I rolled the '85 4K Quattro into the shop a week or so ago.  It had a dropped driver's window so I figured the lifter bracket had broken like it had on a couple Rabbits in the last couple years.  Easy fix...  Nope.  Broken regulator.  Half an afternoon on the web yielded a universal one for about $150 and a rebuilt unit for about $450 plus $50 (or was it $150?) core charge.  UGH! 
  Apparently I've been watching too many car restoration shows on Velocity.  I reluctantly decided I could just fix the old one.  A bit of measuring, checking every small cable on McMaster Carr and a lot of overthinking a simple device finally led to a repair!


  Overall a fairly simple fix except for the crimp ends being more of a challenge than expected.  McMaster sells crimp sleeves but I didn't need 50 of them.  In retrospect it would've been simpler and still reasonably cheap.  I managed to find some locally that sufficed but I had to braze the cable tip to be sure it'd hold.  The piece that rides in the lifter is actually a splice for two cables.  I had the silly notion I could drill the cable out of the old crimp pieces...  Nope.  I made a new splice/connector from a piece of square stock that I center drilled.
  
  All that and cleaning wasn't bad, then the right epoxy fixed a broken spring/slidey/end stop piece.  Paranoia of winding the cables the right way on the spool, the right tension against the stop springs, having the cables the right length and the splice in the right spot relative to spool position took WAY more time than actually doing most any of it!


  All said and done, it works!  It moves very well and it even is wound and wired correctly!  Les than $20 and 3 half days has it done, lubed and ready to put back.  A second one would be MUCH faster with knowing it's hard to actually muck it up and that cable stops can't be reused without a carbide cutter (maybe).


  Next is a missing piece of main power wire (battery ate it) and apparently some Flex Seal coating over the water deflector under the cowl.  Those are getting hard to find and if available they seem to be easily over $100 for that piece of plastic.  Also need a couple obsolete clips for the door beltline weather strip, the black trim strip around the windshield and rear glas, which s has shrunk an amazing amount (about $120+ for each set of 4 pieces).  The seat piping has all frayed and would need replaced along with a couple seat panels and the sunroof seal.  A paint job and it will look great then!  It needs door handles, trunk struts, etc but we actually have those already.  Oh, and the plastic water shield, behind the door panel is shot too.  More plastic...
    Loren