The latest Blog post:
- Gauges and Instrumentation (part 2)
After some months of searching, I finally got an Ebay hit for an ’86-’88 Turbo Quattro Gauge cluster. It’s a fairly specific cluster needed as not all cars had an electronic speedometer/odometer, some models still had a cable driven unit.
Please check out my photography work while you’re here!
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Continue on to read read some other automotive related adventures, pontification on tech related topics, or whatever random thing I decided to write about. May you find some entertaining anecdotes, musings and mishaps within!
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Gauges and Instrumentation (part 2)
After some months of searching, I finally got an Ebay hit for an ’86-’88 Turbo Quattro Gauge cluster. It’s a fairly specific cluster needed as not all cars had an electronic speedometer/odometer, some models still had a cable driven unit.
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Gauges and Instrumentation (part 1)
You’ll note, that “pick up ball bearings and try to insert them into their mangled nylon carrier” is NOT in listed in the procedure above.
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Car-mageddon: Halloween Edition
What follows is the spooky account of alternator belts and cooling systems, which I can only imagine was caused by an automotive poltergeist. October 29th: It was a seemingly normal Saturday evening, two days before Halloween. I did something which many people so on such a Saturday evening, and attended a Halloween Party. On my…
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“To protect the pump”
The second of two major disclosed issues about the Audi, was a “massive” power steering leak, and that the belt had been removed from the power steering pump in order to protect it from damage by running dry. As with with everything so far, this turned out to be a gross understatement. First, on this…
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When it rains…
In addition to the ’88 Audi, we also rock an ’06 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited as a daily driver. While 2006 is rapidly approaching 20 years ago, this model Jeep is an early 90’s design through and through, which, when combined with the Wrangler being a more primitive vehicle generally (no power windows/locks/etc), it feels like…
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Do Brakes by any other name, still stop so short (part 2)?
With the rear of the brake system, holding pressure, it was time to attack the front. The rear ended up taking so long to get together, that by this time, I had received the front-hoses in the mail, and made sure that the bleeders on the front calipers were functional, so this should be smooth…
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Do Brakes by any other name, still stop so short (part 1)?
I figured the work on the brake system should be fairly straight forward. A few hard lines to replace, rubber hoses at each corner and voila, we should have a stopping car. Sadly, this adventure in braking ended up not being nearly so smooth. I started in the right rear, a good place to start…
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Some Initial Diagnosis
Once we got the car home, even before it rolled off the trailer, I had to start checking things out. The first, most obvious thing to check was the leaking brake line in the rear, which was the cause for the no brake situation. It didn’t take long to find the issue: Yep, that rubber…
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The Pickup
There is a curious thing I learned from U-Haul recently. That is that it’s hard to get a car trailer. Sure, we could have rented one up here in Seattle, but I didn’t really feel like dead-heading a trailer for 4 hours down past Portland. I figured, it would be easier to pick one up…
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The Search
Late Winter 2023, we found ourselves in a situation where we needed a second car for family duty. As much as the kids love riding around in the Rx-7, the car can’t hold them both and swapping cars in the middle of day isn’t always convenient depending how many of us need to be where…
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Grand Re-Opening of Mechanicjay’s Blog
Years ago, there was a site at mechanicjay.com, which cataloged various automotive related misadventures. After a decade long hiatus, I’m back doing silly car things. Stay Tuned!