inadvertent snow day

Today! Yes!

Well there was the dentist appointment today. Got the car dug out and she started RIGHT UP! Well after the glow plugs cycled off boom instant diesel rumble.

Got it shoveled out (only a few patches of stubborn ice mounds to deal with) and managed to get the kid picked up, for a very long appointment. Took much longer than anticipated/usual. Once the kid was returned, and seeing how I prepared well enough to leave my work stuff at home (keys, card to open doors and what not) well by the time I got home, ate some food, get back in - being there for a few hours seemed kind of pointless, and with nothing on the calendar today and craziness starting tomorrow? Choice was made for me. Simple as can be.

We added another two inches of snow here today. Not to bad but enough to warrant a shoveling.

A painful clunking coming from the left rear of the passat motivated me to take the EZ-up out of the back, and clean up some of the season long accumulation. Maybe the bottle left over from the delicious home brew Paul gave me at Plymouth Day 2 was the culprit. Or the tent itself, or the bottles of anti-freeze in the secret compartment. Hell maybe I should check the spare under the carpet in the back too. Hmmm. Well it got cleaned up anyway.

Before heading to the dentist I fired up the ancient laptop. A Dell Lattitude 486DX I think. Lattitude anyway, the serial and model numbers have long since worn off the back.

Wouldn't you know? No problem starting up Win95 (installed using a parallel zip disk mind you - nice cracked and trimmed down to 95 meg version). Or starting the diag software.

So after getting it all cleaned out I climbed in with the 'puter plugged her in and noticed the inverter light was flickering. Ah damn. It was the cig lighter adapter causing the phantom power issues. Simplest answer is often the correct one.

Timing? Bang the fuck on right in the middle. No difference in sound from the engine when switching to basic mode (a good sign). And the fault code was exactly as I suspected 00575 MAP intermittent. So time for new vacuum/boost hoses, when it warms up.

Hopefully the clunk will go away and I can put off doing the rear struts for a while. It isn't so much the cost as the daunting task of completely taking every last bit of brittle plastic out of the interior to get at the strut tower mounts. Probably will take a bit of a bottle of MAP gas to get some of the hardware apart too.

Not something I want to do in frozen temps with slush and snow everywhere, ice frozen into nooks and crannies you'd never expect.

And now that the snow has stopped falling and lunch has been eating - car dealt with, maybe it is time for a walk with the dog. Temps are warm. But then she looks so comfortable sleeping on the couch right now. A nap sounds almost like a better idea.

Now to get the commuting beast ready for tomorrow's ride in, aka trainer wheel from last night removed.

Be safe out there
heddwch
G