Thursday night I loaded the Coupe quattro project up on a trailer. The car has all the paperwork lost by the P.O., so it was down to the border on friday morning to reimport the car. Sometimes the best/easiest solution is to simply pay the taxes and duties a second time. Since it was now mobile, took it in for an out-of-province inspection and then an alignment. Still working out the title issues with ICBC, but things look positive for licensing the car this week. In the meantime, we decided the seat mounts needed to change for more adjustment, so those were pulled out. Modified, re-welded, and popped back into the car. Traced down a boost leak, worked on some minor electrical bits and patched up a steering system weep. The car is now my best friend's, and once we've got plates and I've done a bit of testing on it, will be his 100%. Caught myself looking for another Coupe in Vancouver Friday, but the asking price was astronomical so I'm not at risk for buying one anytime soon.
Just finished a 6300km road trip in the Rally Bug, of which the last 160km had some pretty rough-running on the idle jets. It wasn't a clogged jet, wasn't an exhaust leak, but _something_ was wrong. Arrived home to discover the 3/4 intake was a tiny bit loose, almost imperceptible. Started tightening it up and snap! one of the intake studs broke off. Looking at the break, it had been cracked through 90% of the stud for a while (rusty) and tightening the nut finally did it in. I had some studs that would work, and turns out they were about 5mm longer which was much better. I use a long brass nut on the intakes, and the longer stud means more thread engagement. So I opted to swap out all four.
I suspect I also need to address a 'problem' with my crank case breathing. Pulled 700ml of oil out of the catch cans after 6300km. Normally I don't see that over a whole summer. Could simply be from when I overfilled the oil system (gotta remember how much the level changes when hot!), or I could have an interesting new issue to trace down.
...always fun!
-Dave