Here’s to Bjorn
On the way back from Davis today, my car finally hit the 200,000 mark! Here’s a picture to prove it:
I bought my car back in May 20th, 2008 with 160258 miles on the clock. I had just
gotten my license and really didn’t have a desire to get a car just because I really didn’t like the look of any of them.
While sifting through the thousands of cheap cars on craigslist I found about three Cabriolets amidst the others. There was practically no information on the internet about these cars, and all of them seemed to be broken. But I had never seen one on the road, and they looked interesting.
I found one that was listed for I believe $1000 that was about 30 minutes away. My dad, brother, and I took a drive out there to look at the car.
What we found was a convertible with a ripped top, no power steering, and a 5 speed manual. I really wanted to learn how to drive a manual car so I persuaded my dad to haggle the guy down to a price we could afford. (the ripped top helped us get it down)
In the end, I bought the car for a cool $800. I borrowing $400 from my dad and emptied my bank account of the $400 savings from working at Safeway in High School. I made payments to my dad until graduation when he decided to forget the loan as my Graduation present.
The first problem I had with the car started appearing about a month or two after I bought it. Sometimes the car would start and run great, but other times it would stall, bog and sputter for seemingly no reason. After dropping $400 at various mechanics, I decided to just deal with it. I posted up a thread in the Cabriolet form on vwvortex,
The car worked fine for another month or two and then on the fateful night of July 28th, the transmission suffered “Self Machining Syndrome”…a common problem with VW transmissions even up to the 2000 model year in which the differential would break free due to a faulty design and would then bore a hole in the casing of the transmission.
Feeling confident from the earlier relay swapping procedure, I decided to try to replace the transmission. I figured why not, the car was already totaled at this point (shops were giving me a $2000 estimate), can’t really make it any worse, right?
After about a month of dealing with working on a car for the first time of my life, I had successfully replaced a transmission, along with most of the parts of the ignition system. After that, I was pretty much hooked on this car. Not only was it fun to drive, it was enjoyable to work on too. I was confident that after dealing with the transmission, this car couldn’t throw anything at me I couldn’t handle.
Life the rest of that summer was great. I took the car on a
Life was good for the next couple of months. Had a couple spats here and there. Finally bought new tires for the thing, replaced the top with one I got from the junkyard and got a proper alignment. That is until January where the car broke down in the first time that I wasn’t able to drive it home.
It picked the worst time to break down too. I had just gone out with my friends to get celebratory "I just fixed my car" (the timing got really messed up, and I had just fixed that) pizza. We were taking the scenic road back when BAM…the fuel pumps decide to die at 10pm in the middle of a creepy country road. We had to wait for 2 hours for the tow truck to finally arrive to take me home. Fuel pumps replaced, life resumed living.
Meanwhile I replaced the suspension, replaced all the brake lines, and just continued picking systems to refurbish to their former glory. The car was getting more and more bearable to drive every day now. The ride became smooth on the freeway, steering became more precise. It started feeling and handling like a real car, rather than an uncontrollable being. After I refurbished a couple of systems, I thought back to how the car used to handle and act, and I can’t imagine I had any kind of feeling of safety in the thing.
Then it was time for the car to throw another transmission related curveball at me. When I had first replaced the transmission after it blew up, I didn’t know anything about the bunch oil seals that meet up down there, just dieing to spill stuff on the clutch. As a result, I didn’t replace them. The rear main oil seal on the engine then decided that it was time to go as I almost rolled backwards on a hill while my oil soaked clutch begged for mercy. Time again to drop the transmission. Luckily I got it out in 3 hours this time, rather than the 2 weeks it took me last time. I then decided to move to a different transmission that had lower mileage on it and got to experience pretty much the most frustrating moments in my life as I tried to change the drive flanges from 90mm to 100mm and cursed at the circlips from hell.
Then this past spring I tried my hand at being a convertible top installer. The junkyard top that I had bought was seeing it’s last days, and it seemed like every time that I folded the top back up I would see a new rip in it. On top of that, whenever it was raining I was forced to strategically place Tupperware underneath a couple problem spots so I wouldn’t come out of the car with a wet butt and a trunk filled with water.
I must say that I think I fared pretty well. I opted to leave the rear window out this time as my previous experience in dealing with rear window leaks made it undesirable.
I replaced the top windshield seal and the top guides got some special treatment from my friend Mr. Hammer. Because of those “adjustments” the car is now somewhat quiet on the freeway. (I use “quiet” loosely, before these adjustments it was actually less loud in the car to have the top open than it was to have it closed)
Another upgrade involved me finally giving in to audio quality and taking out the stock stereo that I hunted so hard for, replacing it with a aftermarket head unit and then throwing two 8 inch subwoofers in there. Now music could be heard while on the freeway with the top down.
In my latest breakthrough, I fixed a melted out fuse block for the AC and got the system recharged so now it has working AC. Just in time for the over 2000 mile road trip through the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico to Colorado.
It seems that the longer I own this car, the better it gets. When I first bought it, getting from Point A to Point B seemed like it could be a challenge. But over the past 2 years, everything that could break due to to PO neglect did, and now I just have a reliable car that I feel confident taking anywhere. I often say that I am going to drive this car until it stops working (or gets crashed up so bad I can’t drive it). I bought the car for $800 two years ago, and have since then, spent about $3000 keeping it going. People can call me crazy, but I love this car.
I can’t say thanks enough to all of the people who helped me get to this point. The people on the vwvortex Cabriolet forum, the mechanics I’ve talked to, Mr. Robert Bentley, and my friends who have put up with sitting in my car driving with me even though it could’ve broken down at any moment.
Here’s to another 200,000 
This entry was posted on Saturday, July 17th, 2010 at 10:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
