[tobluforu]

I made it! So here are some things that happened or did not happen. When I got to the garage, I placed the charger on her and went to bed. Went to start her in the morning and heard noises I have never heard before while cranking. I about crapped myself thinking that the car locked up on me and seized. Turns out that since x-mas the starter decided to kind of freeze up. The noises were downright scary, but after I figured it was not internal, she fired and off I went for a test run in the rain. 5 minutes later, off goes the driver’s side wiper. I was able to pull over and fetch it off the road. Came home and tuned her up. I also replaced all the gas lines in the engine compartment, and fired her up for another test run. "What's that smell?" It's gas you dummy!. All lines in engine bay were fine but one of the lines attached to the fuel pump was spitting gas all over. Great! Jack car up with Porsche jack-what fun, remove wheel and remove fuel pump. Snipped off about a 1\4 inch of each line, and placed pump back in. Off I went and we are good to go, except the throttle felt funny. I unattached all the linkage and re-adjusted some of the rod lengths which I thought were just fine, but the last time I did this was 5 years ago. There is a rod that attaches to a pivot point on the tranny; this rod then goes through the fire wall and attaches to another pivot point on the back side of the MFI (left bank of cyl’s.). Well low and behold it looks like the bushing has disappeared, but the car still accelerates fine, if not a tad hard.
The next day I’m off to Chicago and it’s still sprinkling a bit which was a bummer because all I was thinking about was that damn wiper. I started off at around 60mph, the rain stopped about 1 hour later and before I knew it I was doing around 85-90 the whole way. Top speed on trip was over 120mph and the car ran like a top!
Things we/I take for granted.
1. Reclining seats! My car has a fixed racing seat which is probably the cheapest piece of crap ever made. It’s a corbeau, forza from over 10 years ago. Thank god I stole a pillow from the in-laws as it help beyond belief. Just bought some A4’s which will be going in a few weeks from now.
2. Suspension! It sure is nice driving a car everyday that does not have the suspension this car has. Not only is the car dropped, it has koni shocks (I think the fronts have had it) set on the firmest position, monoballs, 22mm SB's, 22 and 28 torsion bars and it has zero toe. It was almost impossible to reach behind me at 80mph without being in the next lane in a split second. I spent most of time dodging ruts in the road which was kind of fun, and made the drive go faster. It’s funny how small these cars are because I could dodge them all for the most part. The car is like a go-cart as there is no way I could do this in my other cars.
3. Seat belts! Having a 4 point harness-enough said.
4. Music-The cd player I have in there did not want to play any cd’s. Too damn rough of a ride I guess.
5. Visors- That’s right, I don’t have any, but thank god it was over cast most of the time.
6. Exhaust-I think you all know what I’m talking about? Pull over to get gas, get out of car and wonder what that ringing in my ears is from?
7. Wind noise. Wow!
8. Heat! Half way through the trip it got a tad cold and I realized that the passenger vents were not putting out any heat. Oh well, I had a coat.
9. Tranny-What’s that whine in fifth gear? Oh yeah, it’s always been there.
10. Cruise control. Its one thing driving this car to get coffee, it’s another keeping the pedal in one place for 5 hours. The other cars I have are drive by wire; I can’t believe how much force I had to keep on the pedal.
BUT, it was a blast and I can’t believe how fast it went. Good old tobluforu was a champ.
God the roads suck in Chicago.