[T3] The road trip blues

Tue Aug 22 21:52:23 PDT 2017

Based on our current level of exhaustion/disappointment I don’t see us waking up in time to get to Madison before 5 or 6 which I think means Thursday AM would be best for diagnosis and work? We’re happy to treat you guys to dinner tomorrow though if it works for you. 

I have to be back in NYC by Saturday, but Jessica can spare a few more days if need be. 

What an oily mess!

> On Aug 22, 2017, at 11:34 PM, Jim Adney <jadney at vwtype3.org> wrote:
> 
> I'm here. I have a new cap, but I don't have quick answers to your 
> problem(s.) Sorry to hear that things have gone downhill. When would 
> you like to arrive?  
> 
> Jim
> 
> On 22 Aug 2017 at 22:53, Daniel Nohejl wrote:
> 
>> This is a long one, so feel free to skip if you don´t like a long tale of woe. Yes, it was one of those days........
>> 
>> My wife, Jessica, and I have been on the road since 7/3 and are headed home. We were supposed to be in a Type 2, but that´s another long story. Instead we´re in our Type 3 and with the exception of a pair of leaky oil cooler seals  that had to be replaced after only 30k miles, we´ve been largely trouble free. Until today. 
>> 
>> Here´s what happened:
>> 
>> #1-We´d been driving for a few hours and were cruising I-29 on our way to Kansas City up a slight grade at 75mph when I thought I felt a miss. A few minutes passed without incident but soon, the motor seemed to loose a slight bit of power and I could only go 70. After a few moments, Jessica thought she smelled something and I soon ntied it too. Of course, I thought the car was on fire, but when we pulled over there was oil leaking onto the muffler. In fact, there was oil everywhere as you can kind of see here:
>> 
>> https://www.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/1683355.jpg
>> 
>> That infernal cap!! We had one that would pop open once or twice a year. We´d take it inside and perform Jim´s trick on it: we´d stick it over the end of an appropriately sized pill bottle and boil it. The cap would have to be tapped in with a mallet and would generally stay put for 6 months until it popped again. Well, this time we were visiting a Type 3 guy in Oregon and he gave us another cap he had of a spare engine. It worked finefor a little whil and then it started popping up every other day or so. Each time, itTMd fit back a little less tightly and now this :(
>> 
>> We have the cap taped down with ultra-high-temp tape and even still it won´t seat all the way. You can imagine that b/w this and the oil everywhere that we´re having quite a smelly drive now: burning oil, oil vapor, etc.
>> 
>> Questions: 
>> 
>> a) I can imagine a correlation b/w a slight loss of power and the opening of the breather cap, but can someone explain it?
>> 
>> b) In the past, when the cap would pop open, there´d be a very slight amount of oil mist in the vicinity of the cap. This time, oil got everywhere. A function of my speed at the time the cap popped? Was it more full of oil than at other times in the past? I´d topped up the oil about 300 miles before this happened. 
>> 
>> c) Is this more than just a bad cap? I haven´t done a compression test in a while, but our oil consumption has been outstanding all summer so I can´t imagine we suddenly have bad 2nd rings (which are Total Seal brand btw). Motor only has 32k miles in total and didn´t leak until this. It also hasn´t leaked in the 100 or so miles since this happened. 
>> 
>> d) Anyone have a breather cap? Jim, if you´re free and aren´t sick of us, we´re only 8 hours away!
>> 
>> #2-We cleaned up as much of the oily mess as we could with limited shop towels and tried to start the car. The starter sounded like it was running backwards and that someone had poured sand in it....in other words it sounded weird, gritty, and shitty. The starter worked twice and since then has failed to do anything other than click. urn the key and the hot start relay clicks and the starter solenoid clicks, but the starter doesnTMt do anything else. We tried bridging the terminals with a screwdriver and thereTMs nothing butclicking. Starter seems to have kicked the bucket. It was a weird one in that sometimes itTMd turn over normally, sometimes it would turn oer hyperactively, and sometimes itTMd turn over sluggishly. Now it doesnTMt turn over at all. 
>> 
>> So there we are bump-starting the car on the shoulder of I-29 but there´s a slight grade and it´s hard to push forward so we try reverse but then it´s hard to hear when the motor catches b/c of the semi traffic so it took forever. We finally got it going and to the next exit a mile away where the motor is idling like crap and stalling. Point gap had gone from .016 to about .010 in only a few thousandmiles. Got it back in sec and retimed it. ItTMd idle great then stall, bump-tart, then stall, then hesitate while driving and then we said oescrew it, letTMs just drive. Getting back on I-29, there was a last bit of hesitation which vanished in a big puff of white smoke out the tail pipe as we headed down the on ramp. Drove 100 mles to and around KC an besides the oil smell, itTMs been more or less back o normal. 
>> 
>> Questions:
>> 
>> a) Anyone in the KC area have a starter?
>> 
>> b) Is it really just bad luck/coincidence that the starter crapped out at the same time as this oil incident?
>> 
>> c) Why do I drive this thing?
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> 
> 
> -- 
> *******************************
> Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
> Madison, Wisconsin, USA
> *******************************
> 
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