"racing-iron" shows her jealousy

["Eric Renneisen" <renneie@hlthsrc.com>]

It began innocent enough. I found what is probably the only 
running ur-q in the city (Joe, is yours on the road yet?). It was 
parked a couple of blocks from my house, and my wife spotted it 
on her way to class (ain't she great?!). I hovered around it 
until the owner came out. "Is this your car?" I asked. "Yes, but 
it could be yours," he said. My heart leaped.

I finally went to check it out thoroughly on Sunday night. Even 
before I got there, my CQ caught the wandering idle, something 
she hasn't done for months. After shooting the bull with the 
owner for a while, I got down to business. The car is Port Rose 
Metallic (I kinda like it, actually) with 125K mi. The interior 
was in pretty good shape for its age, but the exterior screamed 
that this was a northern car. Pittsburgh to be exact. Just about 
every body panel had spots of bubbling rust. The passenger side 
edge under the hood was severely deteriorated. I looked up her 
skirt, and suddenly thought that doing the same to Roseanne Barr 
might have been less painful. Every inch of every control arm was 
orange and white. Even the fuel filter was barely recognizable 
(obviously hadn't been changed in the several years since this 
car had migrated south).

I got in for the test drive, and noticed a quckie-lube sticker on 
the windshield. Oh, the horror! The significant cloud of smoke 
upon startup didn't bother me much. The turbo would need to be 
replaced in favor of a water cooled one anyway, maybe a hyd. 
lifter head, too. On the road she could still waltz like royalty. 
The bald no-name tires couldn't subdue this ballerina while the 
engine and gearbox provided smooth music and rhythm. I was 
smitten.

I asked about the price, and the guy says, "well, you'll just 
have to make me an offer I can't refuse." Great. So I proceed to 
list off all the faults to him (too many to list here), then, as 
if I hadn't listened to a word I just said, I offered him $3200 
for what was basically a running parts car. He said nothing. "Am 
I even close?" I asked. "It would take significantly more," he 
replied. This guy must really love his car -- unfortunately he 
doesn't take care of it.

We chatted a bit more before I left. At one point he half-
jokingly suggested that I could sell the CQ and use the money to 
completely restore the ur-q. I should have pimp-slapped him on 
the spot, but I laughed it off saying, "it would take _at_least_ 
that much money to get your car back to original condition." She 
heard him.

So, I left. The idle problems continued; she even stalled a few 
times. Last night I start to diagnose her by pulling the fault 
codes. 2114 = Distributor out of adjustment. Great, that's 
probably the cause of the sluggish cold running I've noticed 
since I had the timing belt changed (I'll do it myself next 
time). Any tips for aligning the dist. without the special tool 
are appreciated. Rather than dig into that, I choose to check out 
the exhaust. It sounds like I've got a pinhole leak (showed up 
the day after looking at the ur-q). Instead of finding the leak, 
I found that my cat has developed a pretty good rattle. I went to 
bed.

I'm afraid to see what happens next. "racing-iron" is definitely 
not happy. Maybe it's because the money I was going to use for 
the ur-q purchase would've meant no turbo transplant for her. I'm 
still smitten, though. Anybody know of any ur-q in good condition 
for sale? Location doesn't matter, but 5-figure price tags need 
not apply. (No, I haven't given up on the homemade S2 yet.)

Thanks for the BW.

Eric Renneisen
'90 CQ 20V  -  my 'jealous-iron'  ;^)
Chattanooga, TN