speeding tickets & dying quattros

[glen <gpowell@acacianet.com>]

>From Autoweek, Jan 13, 1997:

"Montana motorist Donald Williams is acquitted of a speeding ticket by a jury of his peers, who find his speed of 101 MPH reasonable and prudent"

Justice sought and justice served! Fight those tickets - all of 'em!

Quattro content:

On dying quattros and excellent problem diagnosis, I had the cam belt, waterpump and idler pulley replaced as part of my standard preventative maintenance program on the 130,000+ mile 88 5000CSTQ daily-driver. Upon picking the car up I found that it would not restart after the engine was warm. Bummer. Never did this before. No spark at the coil. AAA flatbed back to the shop..... Natch' the quattro started right up after unloading from the flatbed. I left the quattro there for 4-5 days but the problem could no be reproduced, of course. I picked her up again and, of course, it did the same thing after it was good and warm after about an hour or so of 70-80 MPH. This time I had the foresight to shut off the ignition while moving and tried to restart her, no go, no tach action either. I popped the clutch and she started right up, so definite prollum with no spark when cranking. Parked on a hill when I got to my destination, UNH in Durham NH and she started just fine when I returned about 1.5 hours later. After 5 mins of driving she again would not start with the key but fired up right fine by poppin' the clutch while in motion. Back to the shop, this time nice and hot and there wuz no prollum reproducing the failure this time! In 5 minutes they had diagnosed and solved the prollum. The new cam belt altered the crank-to-distributor timing enough when hot that the distributor was out of the allowable window when cranking. A minor tweak to the dist was all it took. Makes me wonder how long it would have taken 'Joe's Garage and Video Rentals' to find this one...... 

My hat's off to the guys at **Eurosport Motorcar** in Merrimack NH!!!


ps  We'll be running the Fundsalo Racing 88TQ with COMSCC at NHIS on Sat March 29th. C'mon by & talk quattros!

Vorsprung durch Technik,

-glen      gpowell@acacianet.com