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 way home from said party, at around 2am Sunday morning, the alternator belt in the Audi started screeching and was having a hard time catching. This shouldn’t be happening as the belt and the tensioner bolt were all new. It was only a couple miles home, so I vowed to check and tighten belt in the morning. Then, a mere two blocks from home, the Battery light Came on, the Voltage check circuit lit up and the lights got dim. Uh-oh. I was already fighting a weird issue with the battery where it wouldn’t reliably hold a charge, leading to random hard/no start issues. As such, I didn’t know how long it could run only on battery power. As we’ve seen in various Star Trek episodes, I took the last resort of diverting power from Life Support, i.e. I shut down the ventilation fan, and the rear defroster. I made it the two blocks home back to Space Dock, with some extra dim headlights.

The next day, we took a family walk and found the alternator belt on the ground in front of a neighbors house, chewed up and crispy. Not a pretty sight.

Deciding that I couldn’t put that one back on the car, I found that I actually had a spare alternator belt in the garage, score! I also found that the brand new whacky looking adjustment bolt had gone missing.

Sadly, the threads which used to inhabit the ear of the alternator, where mostly missing as well. I found a nut and bolt to substitute, got the new belt tensioned up, then had to re-tension the AC compressor belt as well — The Audi has this very bizarre intermediate adjustment bar that goes between the two and influences the tension on both, for some reason. I haven’t looked up the proper procedure for tensioning all the belts as I’m sure its an irritating 15 step process that involves at least two special tools. I have a 13 mm socket and a long screwdriver — good enough.

October 30th: With a repaired car, we made a trip to South Seattle to an architectural thrift shop, to pickup some period correct light fixtures for the Mid-century house we currently call home as well a matching door for one of the bedrooms — and yes the Audi can fit an entire door in the back with the seats down. We get to the place, a good 35 minute drive and find what we need. I go to get the Audi to pull it into a loading bay and — there’s not enough juice in the battery to start the car (again). Thankfully, Lisa bought a little booster box a couple weeks back when this started happening intermittently. With the car started, I pulled it around, left it running, we loaded it up and took off for home.

About 1/2 way home, I got a scary looking alert in the Check Module. A temperature symbol with a big red triangle. The second time in as many days, the self-diagnostics of the car alerted me to something. I interpreted this symbol, as overheat warning…yet the actual temp gauge was normal. We were cooking at about 70 mph, so I slowed down and the warning went off. Sped up, warning on, slow down, off. The temp gauge was steady the entire time. As the gauge and the check circuit are driven by two different sensors, I figured one was either marginal or just straight up lying to me. We made it home without incident, modulo the need to pickup the kids from school on the way without room for them, due to the bedroom door, but that side adventure doesn’t really come into it.

November 1st: Lisa comes home from her class and says, “When I shut the Jeep off, there was a weird gurgling sound. Also when I was getting gas it seemed like there was a of steam coming off the hood, but it was also raining, so wasn’t sure.” I was getting over a cold, so was in no shape to do much about at the moment.

November 2nd: Feeling myself again, before running the kids to school, I popped the hood on the Jeep. A cracked radiator — well, this car ain’t going NO WHERE.

So, I hopped in the Audi, and miraculously it started without the booster box, however the temp warning alert in the check module went off immediately. Okay, everything is stone cold, something doesn’t make sense. On a hunch, I though that maybe the symbol was actually a poor representation for a low coolant level warning, so dropped some water in the reservoir, light went off. Fine, onward, were almost late for school.

It turns out the local NAPA had a radiator and hose kit in stock for the Jeep. Lisa took the Rx-7 to pick it up, then continued on some other errands including taking one of the kids to an appointment on the East Side. Half way there the phone rings, “I’m on the 520 bridge and all the warning lights just came on in the car.”

It was at this point, we figured we’re under a curse this week or something. I said as long as the gauges look good, continue on the to appointment. No reason to stop the car unless the temp gauge spikes.

After she sent me a picture of the dash, I noted that the volt meter was REALLY low. I advised to do as I had done a few days earlier with the other car, “Okay, drive home with no headlight, defrosters, etc — I think you’re running on battery power only. It’ll probably be okay.” I wasn’t as worried as there are no real electronics in the Rx-7 to power, just the ignition coil.

Good News: It was, she made it home, volt meter showing about 10 volts. The two of did the radiator swap on the Jeep later in the afternoon in record time, 90 minutes start to finish!

It was a completely uneventful procedure and was done Just in time for her to go grab the kids form school.

After she left, I popped the hood on the Rx-7.

Yep, that’s the alternator belt, no longer very belt-like, laying across the top of the engine. At least diagnosis was easy.

In 25 years and probably close to million miles worth of driving I’ve never lost or broke a belt — and here we lost two within 5 days.

November 5th: I brought the brand new battery for the Audi back to the store to for a warranty replacement. It’s only 6 months old and it just won’t hold a charge right. The car produces a solid 13 volts regardless of how many electrical accessories you turn on, hence it’s not the car. I knew I was in trouble at the store as soon as they brought out their battery tester. It is, of course, one of those new fangled electronic units, which perform a “Simulated Load Test”. We had a lot of issues with these when I worked at the BMW shop. It turns out that you can have a Lead Acid battery that holds a surface charge for a little while, but then will experience a voltage drop and doesn’t have the Amperage it needs to actually start the car, but that surface charge will fool the simulate load tester.

Of course, the test procedure for these is, Step 1: Charge battery. Step 2: perform the simulated load test. In the old days, we had a test machine that would induce a true load on the battery, and you could see how it would recovery from a load — or not. Anyway, not surprisingly, after the parts store insisted on charging the battery for two hours before testing….it passed!

I lamented to the guy how we used to get this all the time in the BMW shop and relayed the following experience. That we used to see the same symptoms, battery randomly doesn’t have enough juice to start the car. We’d charge it, we’d do a draw test to be sure there were no parasitic drains, and the new (at the time) tester would always pass the battery. And the customers would always come back, pissed off because their car didn’t start the next morning. He swapped the battery, thanks man!

The part I didn’t tell him, is that in the shop, I figured out how to “cheat the test” in order to get BMW to pay for a new battery. I’d turn on a bunch of accessories, then run the “Simulated Load Test”. By pulling a little bit of that sweet sweet surface charge off the battery, it was enough to get it to fail. I believe it’s been long enough, that information is no longer actionable in a court of law.

Anyway, we’ll see what the coming week brings with regards to the Audi’s battery.

One Week Recap:
2 – Alternator Belts
2 – Low coolant situations
1 – Blown radiator
? – Random no starts
1 – New Battery

That’s quite enough for me for a while.

Update: A week later, and the intermittent no-start in the Audi seems solved. The starter spins the engine with gusto every morning!

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 on whatever day. Also, as it’s low-mileage survivor, I’m a bit wary of piling the miles on it. So we started looking around for a second family car.

Of course, I immediately started searching for unique and fun family haulers, even if they trended toward the slightly ridiculous. “Here’s a ’68 Plymouth Fury Wagon! Oooh, a not rotten Wagoneer! Wow, an original Ford SHO! A MAZDA RX3 WAGON!!!” Lisa gave me a few basic parameters which helped me focus a bit:

1. Wagon
2. Manual Transmission
3. Head Rests/Shoulder belts in the rear
4. Fun to drive
5. Better Gas Mileage than the Wrangler
6. AWD (optional)

With that, we focused our search around E46, E34 and E39 BMWs and Saab 9-5s. Before you say, what about Subaru’s or VWs? We’ve driven some Subarus and have never found them terribly engaging .

We’d had a manual B5 VW Passat a couple years prior. While it was a pretty okay car, the 1.8t really struggled with launches up the Hills of Seattle. But we kinda felt that we’d been there and done that. In years past we also been fortunate enough to have a Saab 93 and an E32 BMW in the stable and count those as among our favorite cars we’ve ever had, so were kinda looking to return to one of those brands. We test drove a few different cars and ended up passing on them for a variety of reasons (Poor maintenance, questionably repaired accident damage, etc).

It was about now that I actually stumbled across a car I’ve always wanted (don’t ask why):

A 1982 AMC Eagle, with a 5 speed manual. Holy Shmokes! I’m sorry to say, as much as I tried to never mind away requirement #3, Lisa remained unimpressed. My dear brother, my stalwart Comrade in Arms in all things automotive buried the idea for good with a single quip to Lisa, “You think you hate it now, just wait ’till you drive it!” C’est la vie…the search continued.

If we travel back in time a couple years, my brother and I were sitting around his kitchen table late one night BSing about cars, which is our standard mode of operation.

I said, “One of the neatest cars in the world is probably an Audi 5000 wagon”
“I know a guy with one,” said he.
“Manual?” I asked.
“Yeah, ” He replied.
“Quattro?” My voice raising half an octave.
“YES.”
“For Sale!?” Almost too loudly.
“Almost certainly. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

As it turns out, the car in question didn’t currently run and was on the wrong end of the country. For that and some other unrelated life reasons, the timing just wasn’t right and some other lucky person picked it up. It was red too. Oh well. So as I was searching night after night on Craigslist and FaceBook Marketplace, wouldn’t you know what popped up?

That’s right, a 1988 Audi 5000CS Turbo Quattro Avant! As I gazed as it’s totally silly 80’s angles and dreamed about it’s powerful and smooth turbo 5 cylinder engine I was reminded of the time spent in the back seat of my friend’s parents Audi 5000s when I was in grade school. They had matching his and hers Audi 5000s, in white. His was a 5 speed and I assume turbo, though I don’t know for sure.

But I digress, this car was about 4 hours away, the listing had been active for 3 months. It needed work, but seemed fairly priced given the disclosed issues. With a 3 month old listing I figured it was gone, but I reached out anyway, because you never know. Almost immediately I got a response back, “Still available!” A long phone call the next day ensued where I got more details. After a lot of discussion between Lisa and myself, I put together a project budget, borrowed a truck, rented a trailer and one rainy PNW Saturday, we went for a ride….