Hybrid Schmybrid

I found this ad on the back of a 1981 Mother Earth News. Having two old diesels myself, the big print caught my eye. The small print, however, illustrates why I'm not all that excited about new advances in fuel economy. This 1982 Datsun pickup got 33mpg city and 39mpg highway. By way of comparison, none of the three 2007 hybrid trucks got over 21mpg (according to fueleconomy.gov). Granted, the Datsun was a much smaller truck, but I think my point still stands. A small diesel engine can do just about as well as a hybrid and has no the big nasty (hard to dispose of) battery. I guess it's about time I fix my 82 diesel Audi.

Four Wheels, or Two?

The dreaded scenario happened: two old immobile diesels.

Last week the Mercedes sprung a leak near the injector pump. Since fixing the Audi has been on the back burner, I was left with no drivable vehicles and a lot of work to do.

We've been without a working car many times before and it's generally not a big deal. I hardly ever drive to work anyway. Getting the family to church on Sunday morning is about the only time we need a ride.

What's worse than the dreaded scenario? My bike broke halfway through the week. Man, was that hard. I was left with walking or busing to work. I chose to walk. Getting groceries became painful, literally. (and it bugs the heck out of me when people say "literally" and it isn't literal. My hand actually hurt after carrying the heavy bag of food back from the Co-op.) Life without a car was manageable, but life without a bike felt like a real hardship.

On a recommendation from a coworker, I took my good bike to Express Bike Shop. I always modify my bikes to use just a single speed by taking off all the derailleurs, cables, and whatnot, and shortening the chain to accommodate two gears I find to be a useful ratio. Since I'm an urban year-round biker I don't need a lot of gears and having just one means there's far less stuff to go wrong. I had the folks at Express do it the "right" way and actually remove the extraneous cogs and add a special tensioner to the chain (see photo). Since it was the Fourth of July week, I had to wait extra long for it to be done.
All of the walking, besides being good for my prayer life, gave me time to realize what my main vehicle really is. I'd been feeling for a while like I should maybe break down and get a "normal" car like a Camry or something that would be completely boring and dependable (as well as expensive bloody gas consuming). Some might call this responsible, while others would consider it "selling out." It feels more like the latter to me. In any case, realizing that the bike is my main vehicle and cars are only secondary/occasional transportation put a lot of things in perspective. I once told an old bike-guy-friend-coworker from Amore, "I want to have an old car I can work on and basically never drive." I don't think he had any idea what I was talking about, but maybe you do after reading a bit of this post. I love working on cars, but I'm not so big on driving them every day.

Oh, I think I did fix the leak on the Mercedes too. It was a neat little thing by the injector pump that lets you prime the system by hand! (what a cool idea.) It had a worn out rubber seal. I got something from the hardware store that seems to work. I also have a replacement for the little unit if that doesn't do it. The reason why I only "think" I fixed it is I haven't really driven it anywhere since I worked on it, just idled it and looked for dripping. I've been too busy biking to drive it anywhere.

Audi Saga, Becoming Epic

Before I start, I'd like to give a disclaimer. Last time I did an automotive blog I got a few reports that it was boring. If you find mechanical problem solving a bore, don't feel like you have to read this! Believe it or not, some people find sewing and knitting boring too. Who knew?

About a month ago our beautiful '82 Audi diesel started making an unfortunate metallic tapping sound at medium rpms. Fearing valve contact with pistons (bad) I stooped driving it and started to work.

What's the first thing I did? I posted on my trusty VW diesel forum. The amount of expertise about something as obscure as VW diesel engines from the '80's is pretty impressive. I couldn't have replaced my injector pump (big job) without these guys. You can follow my current problem's thread here.

After making sure that nothing was simply rattling under the hood, I checked to make sure that the cam was timed correctly with the pistons. It should have been, since I did that myself last November, but I checked anyway. Next I checked the valve adjustment. Instead of a set screw, this engine uses little shim disks to adjust valve clearances. I needed special tools, which I found on ebay, to take out the old shims and put in the new.

None of this made any difference, so I turned my attention to the injectors. Some folks on the forum had suggested that they can make a pretty loud noise when they're bad. I was made aware of a supposedly amazing product called Diesel Purge that would temporarily relieve injector symptoms and let me know if it really was my injectors that needed help.

Like most things I've needed for this project, I couldn't find it locally and had to order it online. Since it takes the better part of a week to get this or that part or tool,it's been slow going.

What's special about Diesel Purge is the fact that it can be used either as a fuel additive or undiluted. Since I wanted the full effect, I chose the latter. So, armed with a mason jar from the pantry, I disconnected the fuel and return lines and fed them into the jar.

Another neat thing about this engine, it has no fuel pump. The injection pump (a form of mechanical fuel injection) sucks the fuel all the way from the tank. This means that I could disconnect the fuel line from the filter and not worry about spraying diesel all over the place.

I let my engine suck down almost the whole jar of Purge while varying the engine speed. Things generally did get smoother, but my noise didn't diminish or go away. I stopped before the jar was empty because I realized that I'd set it against some coolant hoses and thought that it wasn't a great idea to heat up a volatile chemical too much. Also, the Purge had changed color. It started out a colorless clear liquid and had become murky and green by the end. I don't know what that means exactly, but maybe someone on the forum will. I also don't know exactly what to try next. Hopefully I'll get some suggestions about that too!

There and Back Again

I always wondered with the "S" stood for on my 1982 Audi 4000S Diesel. Apparently it stands for Sisyphus. I spent a few hours tearing doors apart the other day and wound up exactly where I started.

I like the car for what's on the inside: a VW 1.6L Diesel engine which is very efficient and, if I ever get around to it, will be able to eat left-over deep-frying grease. The body is a little tougher to love. VW's aren't known for good electrical systems from this era, and the door handles keep breaking... which leads me to this post. Over the course of the winter both rear doors became inaccessible from the outside. Try to open them and this happens:
The handle comes partly out of the door and there's no way you can get it open. Both handles are broken and need to be replaced. I also can only unlock the passenger door with my key, so last fall I ordered a new driver's side handle-with-lock so that I could unlock the car from the driver's side. Thanks to Steve, the previous owner, included in my complimentary spare parts was another front-type handle.

My plan for the day was to take the existing front handle and replace it with the new one and see if the old front handle would work for the driver's side rear door. As I already hinted, things didn't go according to plan.
Problem #1: The front and rear handles are sufficiently different to prevent them from being interchangeable. The picture above shows both. The wide, flat metal part on the top one is what engages the rear door latch. There's a stub on the bottom example from the front just isn't quite situated right to do that job. Dang.

Problem #2: My keys work perfectly in the driver's front lock mechanism. Yes, that's a problem. I thought that replacing the lock was what needed to be done in order to get it to unlock from the outside. No, the lock works fine, but the shaft that connects the lock in the handle to the locking mechanism in the latch is completely missing. (I checked the bottom of the door cavity and everything. It's gone.)

Problem #3/Tangent: It's been an added annoyance that the driver's door won't let me lock it, then shut the door. The door has to be shut first, meaning that I have to either reach around from the back or climb through the passenger side to lock it. I thought that while I had the door apart I might as well try to fix that problem.

I took the lock/latch mechanism off and examined it. I lubricated it and poked around for any parts that could have slipped out of place. The more I studied it, the more confused I got. It appeared that it wasn't physically possible for the lock to work the way I wanted it to. I couldn't figure out what could have gone wrong with it.

Then I took off the passenger side lock/latch and had a look. To my frustration, it didn't seem to work the same way. (I also noticed it was made in Germany, and the other in France.) After thinking, and thinking, I realized I'd wasted the last hour. There was nothing wrong with the lock. It was designed to not let the driver lock the door before shutting it in order to prevent locking the keys in the car.

Possible Solution #1: It turns out that with the rear handle off it's really easy to reach in and unlatch the door with a finger. Here's a picture of the little lever in the hole where the door handle goes:
Just press down and the door opens. I considered leaving the rear handles off, but decided against it. A lot of rain could get in that way; plus it's only slightly harder to unlock the door through the hole than it is to just open the door.

Possible Solution #2: At this point I'm getting desperate. I've taken close to an hour more than I told Libby I would need to work on the car and it's about twenty minutes of assembly away from usable. The boys are getting restless. Nothing's working. I decided to make my front handle fit on the back. Luckily I'm working in my father-in-law's garage. There's hardware-a-plenty if I can just find it. I ended up modifying the front handle with a screw, some nuts, and sheet metal. It was a desperate attempt, and of course didn't work. It's the lower of the two below. I screwed it on anyway just to plug up the hole.
I gave up. Audi 1. Paul 0.

That's not really true. I've fixed a lot of stuff on this car already, including replacing the injector pump (a complex, precision job). That's the nature of tinkering. Sometimes everything works and in an hour I've rewired an electric window or successfully fixed the dashboard lights, and sometimes I've gone to change the oil and ended up finding out my plug is cross-threaded and spent a whole afternoon looking for the right after-marked gadget to make it work (all true stories).
I wouldn't have it any other way. I love fixing things. Hopefully I'll have a more successful Audi blog post before too long.