been-a-scrapyard-hunting

[Tom Nas <tnas@euronet.nl>]

Hi listers,

Well, yesterday I visited the Netherlands' largest scrapyard- or should I
say 'used parts dealer' in Oldenzaal. It's an incredible place, a huge
warehouse where every part is carefully removed, cleaned and marked, before
being put in its appropriate place. The price- 50% below the usual- seemed
to be reflected in the large number of Polish and German people around the
place- the Polish traders seem to buy every accident-damaged car in
Holland, and get the parts in Oldenzaal. They even had the twin xenon
lights for the new Mercedes E-class, Porsche Boxster headlights, taillights
for the new Corolla (introduced less than 6 months ago) and the A3.

Unfortunately, the problem with finding used headlights for Audis exists
even here. I didn't get any lights for my car, nor could I find a pair of
anything that would be interesting for any of you. They had single used
headlights- a couple of righthand A4 ones, a single S6 xenon unit, some old
80 lights, and other miscellaneous stuff. Customers usually aren't allowed
in their warehouse, but the guy let me rummage through their stock after a
chat.

Even though it's a 300 km round trip for me, I wouldn't hesitate to go
there again if they had something I needed. The fact that it was on a
Saturday made for less traffic on the roads, and the roads in those parts
(Oldenzaal is in the lesser-populated parts of Holland) made for almost
empty roads. I took full advantage of that and drove at 100mph for quite a
long time. At those speeds, my car still feels extremely safe and solid and
it's really quiet (even though the original front struts have long ago
given up the unequal struggle). Very impressive for 214k km- 133k miles.

Coming home, I noticed that my car was running much sweeter than it had
been doing for months, even though it's way overdue for a service. Then I
noticed that the malfunctioning speedo hadn't played up the whole trip,
which it had been all week long... When I drove down to my brother's place
later that evening, I noticed that _all_ my dash lights were working again
(I'd already bought some new bulbs for a round of replacements) and that
the car seemed to have more power- at about half-throttle there seemed to
be an additional 'kick' like a small turbo jumping in, resulting in much
faster acceleration and a more pleasant feeling. Hmmm... voodoo? Was my car
pining for the open road? Had all the short trips (I work only 10 miles
from where I live) made it 'coke up' a bit?

Planning for a trip to Germany soon...

Tom

 _______________________________________________________________________
 Tom Nas                                          Zeist, The Netherlands
 tnas@euronet.nl
1988 Audi 80 1.8S, mostly Tizianrot metallic, 214,000km

     Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had
    years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet,
       make some of the worst movies in the history of the world.

						-- Dave Barry