So I paid a visit to the cats at Autosports Unlimited. I have only one thing to say about them. If you own a Euro car and live anywhere on the west side of Michigan, please PLEASE give these guys some business! They did me soooo right. I got the cooler, a new filter, some oil, and a quick lesson on Veedub AT’s… all just for making the trip. Curt over there is a great guy. I will be returning very soon to buy some other things for the Audi (the CD Changer needs replacement). So this weekend, I’ll be replacing the cooler and flushing out the tranny and coolant system.
I’ll post pics as I work on it.
Umm… yeah, so I talked to Curt from Autosports again. This time, telling him what I found. I felt a bit like a jackass because I didn’t understand how the cooler worked, but he enlightened me into the ways of cooling a VW AT and now I am wiser than I was when I started. Apparently, there is a cooler on top of the tranny. If you look at the following picture, it’s the pill shaped thing with a couple of bolts in it. The coolant hooks up there. Transmission fluid flows up from the tranny into this cooler where coolant comes from the cooling system. This is, according to Curt, the only place where the two could possible mix. Sounds reasonable to me. Curt offered to give me a cooler to fix my problem, so I’m going to head over to Zealand sometime this week and pick it up. He also offered to give me a quick tour around the VW transmission. That’s cool.
So it turns out that the problem was the transmission all along. Let’s start the story from the beginning though. I went out this morning to take a gander at the shift linkage. To check that it was in fact in park. I disconnected the linkage from the arm. Pulling the arm toward the front of the car, it clicked three times. Bingo! That -was- the problem with it thinking it was in drive when I had it in park. So I fixed that…
Once I got it back together and started the car, I put it in drive and it was mad slipping… rev to 3500 rpm and it would start to catch in 1st. So at this point, I was pissed. I rechecked everything again to make sure it was ok. When I opened the resevoir cap, DAMNIT, there was that tan muck again… the resevoir was completely full of it. I check the motor oil dipstick and even checked the top of the engine by opening the oil cap on the head cover. Nothing… completely clean motor oil.
I decided at this point to check the transmission fluid. I tried this the other day, but I think my “wick” wasn’t long enough. I got a napkin from in the house and rolled it into a 12″ or so long “wick”. I snapped the red collar off of the transmission fill tube and removed the plug. I snaked my homemade dipstick down the fill tube until it wouldn’t go any further. When I pulled it back out, there was about an inch of the very muck that is floating on top of the coolant resevoir!
Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that something is foul with the transmission.
So I guess I’m calling the folks who did the tranny rebuild in the morning and see what they can do to help me. Thankfully, there’s a warranty on it, but I’m not sure how much that’s gonna cover.
So much for “forgetting about it”. I took the car for a spin after I was 90% certain that I’d cleaned out most of the muck from the cooling system. At this point, I’m not even sure that what I’ve done “did it”. I got the car close to home and it began the squeal. I figured I’d stop and get it in the driveway to try to figure out what it was. When I put the car in reverse, it went no where. Now it won’t start because it doesn’t think it’s in park.
Talked with my dad and he advised checking the gear selector linkage. I’ll do this in the morning when there’s more light. If that isn’t the problem, I don’t know what I’m going to to.
The saga continues… 
One flush wasn’t enough for the old veedub. I’ve flushed it a couple of times now and there’s still a small amount of muck that shows up in the resevoir. I flushed it clean one time and added the Bars Leak. Now we go through a whole ballet to get the stuff to work properly. Currently, we are on “run engine for 30 minutes” number two (out of three). After the last run, there is only the tiniest bit of muck floating in the resevoir.
When I first cut the heater hose, a liquid that looked an aweful lot like motor oil came spilling out. I suspect at this point that there is a gasket leak (though the oil level in the engine has not gone down yet). Maybe I’ll get lucky, it’s small, and the Bars Leak will do the job. I’ll have some photos in the photo gallery soon.
Speaking of photos, I also snapped a pic of the new knife block, so you can see what I’m talking about. I’m still in awe at the engineering of this thing. We’ll see how long it lasts, but it sure seems like a good idea.
Anyway… the pics of the car in the gallery are from after the initial flush (before the application of Bars Leak). Don’t get too alarmed yet. It looks much the same as the previous shots, only the muck in the drain pan is darker (making me really think that it’s motor oil). After the final flush and fill, we’ll see how screwed up it is. I fear this is going to take a while. The Bars Leak stuff says to let the car completely cool (1-2 hours) between each run. This sucks, but I want the thing fixed and I don’t have the cash to replace a main seal or head gasket. *crosses fingers*
After this is done, I’m going to find myself some fine alcoholic beverage and sit on the porch and try to forget about it. Freakin’ nightmare…
I talked with Curt from Autosports Unlimited this morning. As has been my experience with the whole staff there, Curt was extremely helpful and willing to answer all my questions about what I am seeing. His quick over-the-phone diagnosis was that most probably there has been mixing of orange and green type anti-freezes and that’s why I’m seeing the “muck” that I am. I’m going to flush the whole system and see if I can get most of it out. He said that there isn’t really a way for tranny fluid to make it into the coolant, but gave me a way to check the level of the tranny fluid to be sure.
Curt also gave me some great info on how the adaptive tranny works. It looks like the shifting pattern is set once you hit 25 key-on/key-offs (which I haven’t) and it is adjusted to your driving style. He said it is likely that the person who had the car before me wasn’t a very aggressive driver and that’s why the shift pattern was so shallow. He also said that resetting the computer is as simple as disconnecting the battery (postive and negative) and hooking the two leads together to drain the capacitors. He said leave it this way for 24 hours or so and the whole system will reset.
So… I’ll be grabbing a flush kit for the car after work today. I guess I need to get some of the orange antifreeze as VW doesn’t recommend the green stuff. I’ll write more as time allows.
back to the grind…
So my co-worker lent me his air compressor (thanks Steve!) and I rode the bike to work for the first time since December. This makes me happy. The bike is running well (for the moment). The can of Sea Foam split between the gas tank and the crankcase seems to have helped it through the winter. The battery was still fine and it started right up. I took it around the block last night and rode in the rain to work this morning.
Now for the veedub. Tomorrow morning I will be on a quest to find a device into which I can drain the coolant. Why, you ask? Well… the coolant in the multi-colored wonder is a wonderful shade of off-tan (indicating the STRONG possiblility that a massive amount of oil has found it’s way into my cooling system). Thankfully, the oil is not the same color.
I’ve been doing some more work on the new eastowners site. I found an acceptable guestbook application and have been collecting musical things to put on the music page. Expect some new pictures of the veedub (in disrepair) coming soon.
Hi all. It’s been a while and I just wanted to drop a quick note
to let you know that I was still alive. Things have been pretty
busy lately and I just haven’t had much extra energy to make entries
into this thing. Hopefully soon, we will be moving this site to a
better connected hosting provider, so performance should go up for
those of you downloading pictures and such. I’m also planning on
actually getting around to putting up a music section that will contain
MP3s of things I’ve been a part of over the years. None of it is
in MP3 yet, otherwise it would have been up a long time ago.
It’s summer again! I’ve now ridden the bike to work for two weeks
straight. Yeah… every day! Construction on one of the
streets that is on my normal route to work has caused my ride to almost
double (from 5 minutes to 10). Oh, darn… 
Basically, I’m really happy that summer is here and my general
disposition has gotten sunnier because of it. Hopefully, life
will get better and my outlook on things will get better with it.
Anyway… too much doom and gloom makes for a depressed guy…
next week is Domestic Problems and Hello Dave at Club Soda in Kzoo…
if that doesn’t put me in a good mood, I might as well be declared
dead. cya’ll later. Hope this mail finds everyone
enjoying the beautiful weather and doing well.
Peace.
Woot! I got it started today! It doesn’t idle, but the beast literally roared to life this morning, filling my garage with some really rank smelling exhaust. After a few starts and keeping it running by holding the throttle at about 3500RPM, it mostly cleared out. I have taken the carbs back off and ordered some very fine drill bits to clean out the idler jets. I also think there’s something wrong with the needle jet in carb 4 because it’s overflowing gas. There are more pictures in the gallery. My goal is to have this beast in running condition next summer.
