easier than writing by hand…

my 401k is fully vested.  now i can quit!!  WOOHOO!!!

so i asked my boss to write me one. naturally, he was a little apprehensive. me being the stellar employee i am, u know with the blogging at work and all. but seriously, he didnt know what kind of recommendation they would be looking for. so i gave him this direct quote from the website

“Submit at least two letters of recommendation that address your ability to complete an advanced degree. Letters of recommendation from supervisors are preferred.”

as i sit here reading that, i was gonna to say it was a kinda silly. i mean, how is an engineering manager going to be able to testify to my ability to attain a graduate degree? i would have thought a former professor or advisor would have been a better choice (and two of mine have been). but i suppose, if i worked in a biotech company or had some experience in a research lab, then maybe it would make sense.

still, my skepticism and his stand. so he has asked me to give him kind of a list of goals, why i’m want to be in the program, what i want to do with the degree, etc. as that sounds suspiciously like the “personal statement” i’m supposed to write. i told him on friday that i would have it for him monday.

a prelude. not the honda, but it does have variable timing.

sit down my friends and prepare yerselves for a rambling tale! a tale of adventure! a tale of discovery! a tale of sweat and tears! a tale with pictures!! many moons ago, in what seems like a previous life, i spent a bit of time in the german capital city of berlin. about 6 months to be exact. during this extended stay in the city of the bear, i lived with a german friend from highschool, took ninjitsu classes, aquired a taste for mineral water, watched the entire 4th season of the x-files in german and, perhaps most importantly, did a 6 month internship at IAV GmbH, an automotive engineering company doing work for the volkswagen group.

in addition to the test bench motor, audi had seen fit to supply IAV with a small fleet of test vehicles. it consisted mostly of a sampling of A4’s, A6’s, A8’s and, i believe, one VW passat wagon. ostensibly these were to be used for data collection and field testing of new fuel maps. however, they often were taken out by employees for “extended weekend testing trips”, where things were tested like, for example, how well the car handled carrying 4 people, a single bed and a couple of bags of laundry from berlin to bremen and back.

there was one car in particular that seemed to be the bitch loaner wagon that i always ended up with on those few times i needed a car. it was a 1998 A4 Quattro Avant, similar to the one above, equipped with quattro AWD and the same 3.0 liter TDI that we were testing. the group called it die lila ku (the purple cow) on account of the weird custom audi color it had been painted which was somewhere between lilac blue and, i dunno, lavender? with a hint of pink? maybe fushia? anyways…

at the time (and maybe even since), it was the fastest car i had ever driven. i had it up over 220kmh (130mph?) on the autobahn before d and roland made me slow down. factory tuned the engine had 233hp 369 ft-lb of torque(!!) and revved to 6k rpm and this was a diesel! it was a blast to drive. you put your foot to the floor and the torque would turn all four wheels to snap your head back with acceleration. i even got two speeding tickets and my license suspended for a month. booyah germany! el chico de arithona marks his territory on another continent!

still, in spite of my vehicular transgressions, i was never fired and i could have stayed on longer and went to school in berlin, but by the end of the semester, danielle was ready to go home and finish her degree. so we left germany behind to go back to the states in time for spring semester 1999 and i never so much as sat in another audi for almost 7 years.

the FC is gone. 3 weeks ago today, i drove it to work and a truck came to take it to a kid in california. i ended up getting $5k for it including shipping to modesto. originally he had offered $5500, and then, with balls the size of grapefruits, came back to me later with an offer of $5k. i thought about countering, but when i realized he had to take out a loan to get it, i just let it go. i figured he needed the $500 more than me. of course the week before i sent it to him, the old girlfriend decided to gimme one last kick to the nuts for old time’s sake and the drivers side window switch assembly finally failed completely. the circuit board was cracked and there was nothing i could do about it. a new one costs $174 from mazda so I spent the next 4 days desperately trying to find a junkyard part but ended up just sending the car as it was and refunding the kid $150. the next day i get an email from a guy on the rx7 boards who has one he’ll sell to me for $30. karma. so as it now stands, with shipping at $650 and the $150 for the switch, i am down to $4200, $50 less than i originally paid for the car.

so the car arrives and all is good. the kid and the truck driver had some trouble getting it started but eventually figured it out and i get an ecstatic call from him talking about how he loves the car (just as i did when i first got it). a few days later, i get an email telling me the car cant pass smog. ironically, of all the problems i expected to hear from him about, this was the last one i ever thought i’d get as the car had passed with flying colors in seattle the year before. next email i get is about how the engine keeps missing like crazy (something i was aware of). so he takes it to two shops to get checked out and despite our hopes, it turns out the rear rotor has low compression. verdict? cracked apex seal. to make a long story short, the old 13B-T is gonna need a rebuild and i’ve sent the kid back another $1k to help with it. so now minus that $1k, i’m down to a grand total payment for selling the car of $3200.

this is less like a breakup and more like a friggin divorce!

now let’s rewind back to about 10 months or so ago. well after i had bought the FC, but well before we got married.

danielle has always wanted to start her own business. probably because of her father, she’s always been semi-obsessed, in a back burner sort of way, with being self-employed and occasionally over the years, business ideas of hers have bubbled up in conversation. one evening about 10 months back, she says to me, “i know what i want to do for a business. i want to start a biodiesel company.”

“brilliant!” i think! this is a great idea for a whole lot of reason. danielle is a chemist, diesel’s are more fuel efficient, biofuels are the way of the future, zero carbon footprint, help the environment, save local farms, and on and on… finally here’s an opportunity for a job where we could make a difference and go out on our own!

of course, the way my mind works when i get excited about something, i begin immediately to expand on the original idea. there’s an old filling station at the corner of 145th and aurora, just off the freeway. if we did this thing, we should set up shop there. it has garages as well, so we could start a double business. producing and selling fuel and converting older cars to run biodiesel! “do you know how to do that?” she asks. well, no, but i could learn. what we need is a test car for ourselves that we can tinker with and try running our lives with biodiesel for a while. but it has to be as fast as the FC. it should be like the A4 we drove in germany. i want to build a proof of concept car! a high performance diesel autocrosser! yes! that’s it! but where do i start?

in the intervening time, her interest began to wane and it became apparent after a while that it was just a fleeting fancy. well, maybe just not a top priority. it was an idea that ultimately, for her, succumbed to other more immediate concerns, like how would we finance such an endeavor and the fact that we weren’t going to be quick enough to catch the industry at the beginning around here. it’s not that she lost interest per se, it’s just that the plan would have to be shelved for a while.

i, on the other hand, refused to let this one die. i grabbed onto it with a ferver that i think caught d off guard and i’m still holding it with a death grip, grasping it like a fish in an eagle’s talons. this is like the ring to me. i want to finish it. i want to make it real. i now have a mission.

back to the present. the FC is gone. the money has gone to pay for credit card debt accumulated in upgrading, maintaining and feeding it premium gasoline at $3.68/gal and 14mpg. we’re now back to two cars. two cars that run well, offer flexibility in hauling and ppl transport, and are reasonably fuel efficient. we have house projects that demand money. now is probably not the time to be looking for another race car. riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

pretty much as soon as i posted the FC for sale, i was already looking for diesel car to start the project or for a shell that i could do an engine swap on. my primary candidate for this was the mk 1 volkswagen diesel rabbit, mainly because it fit (sort of) within my price range, but also because they’re light, “sporty” cars compared to the mercedes 240D and 300D’s that are also popular. the NW, and seattle in particular, is biodiesel crazy right now. old diesel cars like volkswagen and mercedes are selling for $2-$5k more than their gasoline counterparts and diesel compact pick-ups from the early 80’s can cost more than a fullsize. unfortunately, the rule was, i couldnt buy anything until i sold the FC, so i had to pass on some promising cars while i waited for the california deal to go thru, but in the meantime, i made contacts and educated myself. even after i sold the FC, i still had trouble finding a car that wasn’t horribly overprice or didnt have crazy amounts of rust.

daily (hell hourly) searches of craiglist for “diesel” and “GTI” (for a shell) yielded nothing for about 2 months. either the car was too far away to look at before it was sold, or the ones i saw weren’t suitable. i almost bought a mk1 gas powered GTI for $2k from a kid in tacoma, but we never were able to get together. then one day, i got lucky and found this.

a 1982 A1 jetta diesel 2-dr with the 1.6l 4-cylinder engine and, to my surprise, a 5 speed transmission. a rare find indeed. the guy who had posted it, had misspelled diesel (“deisel”) in the ad, and had consequently probably missed out on a lot of business. i found it with a GTI search because he had listed it as having GTI seats (which turned out to be corbeaus, not recaros). they were advertising it for $500.

nothing, and i mean NOTHING with a diesel engine in this town goes for less that $1500 and that’s if it’s sitting in somebody’s yard with a blown motor gathering moss. i called the guy that morning and drove down to federal way at lunch to check it out. sure it wasnt exactly what i was looking for (a rabbit round-eye swallowtail), but the price sure as hell was right, and for $500, i may as well take a look. i was the first person to actually show up to check out the car. they told me they were getting rid of it because they needed the money and because, after having driven it for the last 8 months, it had suddenly lost a lot of it’s power and gotten noisier. ok, so it would need some work. i was thinking head gasket. but the body was straight and there were only a few specks of rust near the trunk release button, so i took it for a drive anyways.

a mile and a half from their apartment the engine just stopped. just completely stopped and shut down, right at the top of the gear range in 3rd gear. i coasted down the hill, tried to start it again a few times and finally just left it in the parking lot and jogged back up the hill to give back the keys. they were absolutely cool about it and were probably expecting something like that to happen. they asked if i still wanted the car if they dropped the price to $400 and i told them…

“the one rule i have been given is that i’m not allowed to bring home any cars i cant drive away from the house. no metal boulders.” that was thursday two weeks ago. less than a week after the FC had left seattle.

two days later, i handed over $400 and became the proud new owner of a large, green metal boulder. due to a ridiculous car-dolly rental policy at U-haul, which i wont bother to detail here, i didnt pick up the jetta (hence forth to be known as the A1) until that sunday.

part of the deal here of course, is that, while i am indeed the owner of a shiny green metal boulder, i’m not allowed to park it in front of the house. before i bought it, i approached the two guys at dieselHead.net about doing the engine work for me at their shop in north seattle. when i stopped in to talk to them on that friday, i was told that they were so damn busy that they didnt have time to work on it, but that i was more than welcome to use their garage to do the repairs myself. mind you this is when i thought it just had a blown head gasket and maybe a broken timing belt. an easy one-day fix, reg told me. since then dan and i have discovered that the engine is in fact, completely seized.

that means engine rebuild. or, possibly an engine swap. hell, most likely an engine swap. and now, just like before, my mind has started to expand on the idea. what if i put a bigger engine in it? what about a turbo? what if i got a modern 1.9l TDI to put in it instead of one of the older stock engines it came with? hmmmmm…. a post for next week, perhaps?

“but zane!” you say. “you still havent completed the circle! seriously, where the hell were u going with all that audi stuff at the beginning?” ah… well… here’s the thing. if this works out, the next one may be something bigger. something like an audi. something like an A4. something like a (dare i say it?) V6 3.0l TDI engine swap?

but for now, i have the A1 and for better or for worse, this is going to be the test vehicle i had talked about earlier. it’s gonna be a fun summer.