Decisions

["mike lowery" <mikel@lowerytech.com>]

Although recent to the list, already I have found the wealth of experience
on the list to be extraordinary.

I am a long time quattro fan.  Till joining the list, innocently just
driving my car & enjoying it.. I had no idea all you people were having so
much fun as well.

A first question to the list: I have an 86 5000cs quattro with 90000 miles
that has had very careful TLC until two weeks ago.  It was stolen from my
mechanics lot by what appear to be joy riders who kept it for one week until
they burned out the clutch and abandoned the car.  (Carefully locked and
left safely on a side street.)  For some reason, they tried to get the
clutch to work by putting transmission fluid in the brake reservoir.  Nicely
nailing the power steering pump, rack & the rest of the steering system.
The interior, body and everything else on the car appears to be fine.
Radio, phone..everything is untouched.  They apparently just didn't know how
to drive a manual transmission.

Decisions to make:

        - Get it repaired or replace it & turn this one over to someone who
enjoys working on quattros.

        - If I do repair it & have the engine partially torn down, what sort
of things should I do to bring it totally up to snuff for a while.  Do some
of the higher mileage experienced folks have an opinion as to whether the
valves should be reworked  (recent high reving was almost a certainty),
transmission seals should be replaced..whatever?  Taking advantage of the
savings on the labor cost of almost anything under the hood might be large
now if it likely to be needed in the reasonably near future anyway.

I'd appreciate any suggestions while I continue to work on simmering down
about the theft.

Regards,

Mike