Thursday, April 10, 2008

Correction: The Hickups in my GiddyUPs

Things went from dismal to worse.

I should have seen the warning signs.

First the trusty steed, then this morning the deader than a door nail motorcycle. I just replaced the battery last month. Suited up, hopped on - rolled 'er out of the garage only to hear a click click click of a drained 1 month old battery.

Oh but there's more. Much more.

Our lovely Golf has decided to go ass over tea kettle. We found out the long, hard, expensive way that mixing biodiesel and regular diesel wrecks havoc on all gaskets and fuel pump injectors. (CHA CHING).

The prognosis - it's not fixable by replacing the leaky gasket. Nope. We need to send this sucker in to some guy in Portland for $1305.11 plus shipping and tax or replace the fuel injector entirely for $1480. Not to mention it's probably time to replace the timing belt ($1,000 GULP) since they'll be in that area anyways and save us some time on labor.

So I asked the inevitable question - what if we wait till the timing belt breaks? To which both mechanics responded, "do that and you'll be replacing the entire engine."

You might want to cover your ears for this one, SHIT!

That gave me something to really start crying about.

2 comments:

UltraMick said...

Huh? Nobody runs 100% biodiesel. The diesel they sell at Safeway is 20% bio. What kind of mixing were you doing?

JT said...

We would go from B99, to B20, to diesel and then back again. The diesel they sell now is low sulfur b.s. and causes the gaskets to shrink. Bio causes the gaskets to expand. And if you run both types, then the shrinking and expanding compromises the integrity of the head rings, causing leaks. Some are minor - in that they only replace certain rings. But if it goes on for too long - then you can cause major issues. Which is exactly what happened to our little ride. Some guy down in Portland is the only Bosch certified tech who can successfully rebuild the pumps using newer updated parts (Viton seals engineered by Boeing) and improves the function quite a bit, especially if you run a mix. Repair costs about $550, not to mention labor to reinstall and freight. Fun times!