The Damage Done

We're pretty happy that Ludwig was able to complete such a long trip (long for us anyway) this Summer--the longest single trip we've ever taken him on--with little in the way of trouble. But he is 40 years old and make no mistake: there was trouble. I'm most definitely a glass-half-empty-type of guy, so here you go:

1. The very first day, all packed up and ready to go, Ludwig wouldn't start
Clunk. Clunk. Nothing. I feared the worst and within minutes had things torn apart that you don't want to have torn apart before leaving on a 2400-mile trip. Just before I was ready to call it--just  before--and put everything in Sylvie (2003 Subaru Baja), on a whim I went to the Idiot Book, the chapter titled "Engine Stops or Won't Start". The first thing Muir says to do assuming you have dash lights (which we did), is to put it in third, push it backwards a few feet, then try the key again.

Sure as shit, it did the trick. (I won't bore anyone with the details about why exactly this worked; rest assured it had nothing to do with positive energy or any muddle-brained woo like that, it had to do with knurling.) Off we went.

2. The sliding door

The sliding door is getting harder and harder to close, and it was already hard to close, ever since McDonald tipped the whole bus over on that side (with me riding shotgun) back in late 1991. 

3. Gas in the vapor recovery system
This wasn't so much a failure on Ludwig's part as it was on mine. I was getting skeptical about how little gas he was taking on at fill-ups, and by the time we got to Stuart Nebraska I'd had enough and topped him off.

Mistake.

When I went around to hop in and get on our way, I smelled raw gas and saw it dripping from behind the rear driver's side tire. Apparently I'd topped the tank all the way into its vapor recovery system (a network of plumbing on top of and above the tank designed to return evaporating gas to the tank and keep it out of the atmosphere) and it was leaking from a fitting high in that side's air intake. An embarrassing trip to the service station across the street for a pan to drain some excess gas into was the fix.

4. Needle valve stuck open
It actually turned out to be this.

5. Odometer gets stuck on the point-9s
On I-80 around Waverly I noticed that either the physical distance between Omaha and Lincoln had diminished considerably since we last lived in Nebraska (2004), or that Ludwig's odometer had stopped working. It was the latter. Authoritative tapping would dislodge it but more often than not it just got stuck on the next .9. Melissa advised that my tapping was likely to lead to greater grief (and was highly annoying besides), so I knocked it off. Eventually. Kind of.

6. Throttle/Choke linkage fell off
During my post-shutdown procedure on our last night, I noticed part no. 40 here...

...had resigned its duties and was lounging on the engine tin along with its associates (no. 54 and another not-pictured washer). It turns out it's not terribly terrible to run without it (it has to do with starting), but Volkswagen (or rather, Solex) didn't put it on there just for fun. A replacement is standing by.

7. Passenger door outside handle kaput
Melissa has long complained that the passenger-side door was hard to open from the outside. Misogynistically chalking it up to the relative weakness of the female form, I didn't do anything about it. During the trip however it got harder and harder and stopped working altogether somewhere in Wyoming. It opens from the inside just fine though.

A more complete accounting of Ludwig's faults is in the works.