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November 1999
Things still not working right:
October 1999 Measured oil level, found that I had lost about 2 1/2 quarts over the span of 1100 miles. When I went to the dealer to have it topped off, they couldn't tell me what kind of oil they had used in April when I got the engine replaced (I wanted the types to match).
I haggled with the so-called "service guy" over the type of oil -- I wanted a VW-only 5w40 synthetic made by Castrol; they claimed that they never have synthetic in the shop (but that's what they told me they used in April!). So I bitched until the so-called "service guy," who had only a mysterious blue can in hand the whole time, came back WITH THE SAME BLUE CAN and said "this is what you want. It's Castrol synthetic." Yeah, right. Then he proceeded to overfill it. Idiot.
And I'm not going to mention the name of the dealership, but the initals are Jennings Volkswagen in Glenview, IL
June 1999 First door ding, passenger side. Don't know when exactly it happened.
May 1999 The difficult to get into first gear thing has been fixed. But now, sometimes it goes forward when put into reverse (I swear; and it's been verified by 3 other people). Also, some dork backed a moving van into the rear drivers side of the car. Took a small chunk out of the rear bumper and shattered the drivers-side taillight.
April 18, 1999 Well, it finally happened. Some jerk imprinted part of their front license plate frame on my back bumper. Wish Illinois didn't mandate front plates. Grr. My car is parallel parked less than 1% of the time. Crap.
April 14, 1999 The car is back! New engine, new name: Jesus. The ABS checked out okay (yeah, right). Time to start yet another break-in period. Also, the courtesy light has been fixed, and I'm told a new stereo will be ordered. We shall see. For some odd reason, it's now difficult to shift into first gear. Hm.
April 6, 1999 In an effort to revive my car, the dealership is replacing the engine (with the so-called "long block"). I have also instructed the repair of the mysterious stereo voltage spike, the sloppy and noisy ABS system, and the finicky driver's side courtesy light.
April 5, 1999 The engine problem has been diagnosed. The dealership admits to a manufacturing problem in the (aluminum) cylinder head. The porous nature of this piece allowed the pink coolant to seep through to the oil and into the injectors. Besides fouling the injectors, it apparently also trashed the rings. Probably explains the loss of power I detected in February, eh?
March 30, 1999 The death of my car. You know, it seems that bad things always happened on the way home from work. My car started shaking, so I pulled over and popped the hood. The engine was trying to dance out of its mount. The service guy at the dealer said he hadn't seen anything like it. Still not sure what happened, but I lost total compression in two injectors, most in the third, and have a coolant leak in the fourth. They think I'll need a new engine. Meanwhile, they rented an Olds for me to drive around in (and told me it would be quite a while). Yuck. My car had about 4800 miles on it when this happened.
February 10, 1999 Strange loss of power. Felt like the turbocharger wasn't working. Weird. Changed the way I drove (specifically, I started shifting into a higher gear at 2000 RPM), and the problem seems to have gone away. I wonder if the turbo is supposed to kick out at too high an RPM. However, it seems that, after it kicked out, it didn't want to work at all. OTOH, it could be something else entirely.
December 2, 1998 I got in my car after work, and the dash lights were out. Drove home, read the fuse assignments in the manual, went back out to pull some fuses and, lo and behold, the dash lights mysteriously worked before I did anything. Now I can't get them to break.
December 1, 1998 While driving to work, behind and one lane over from one of those big trucks whose trailer looks like a gray bathtub and typically hauls rocks and debris, a single rock left the security of its bathtub and gracefully arced through space, smacking my windshield with a horrifying high-pitched "shtwack!" No cracks, but there is a chip taken off the outside layer. Damage estimate pending. The truck's Illinois plate number is 227 185.
November 12, 1998 While parked outside of work at night, the plastic bolt covers were stolen off my alloy wheels. All four. Between 7:30 and 8:15 pm. The replacements cost $80.
November 3, 1998 While driving home from work during a dark and violent storm, I ran over some debris (a whole bunch of rotted wood, including 2x4s and a large sheet of plywood) strewn across three lanes of Western Ave in Chicago. I put a 4" gash in my drivers side rocker panel and dented an undercarriage heat shield. Haven't done anything about the rocker panel yet; heat shield isn't bad enough to do anything about.
Birth date: July 14, 1998 Delivery date: September 15, 1998 Expiration date: March 30, 1999 Rebirth date: April 14, 1999
Pics courtesy of the digital camera of one Chris Fregly. Visit him at www.fregly.com