Huh? Err? What the heck is this guy talking about? Well, I’ll put it in perspective for you… in the last 2 days I’ve clocked over 400 miles delivering parts to various race shops to get different projects together for the race car.
First, was a trip to the most god-forsaken place I could ever think to venture to, the local VW Dealership. I have not set foot in that place in 2 years… have I ever mentioned how much I despise going there? Perhaps a story for another time… but the punchline ends “…like a whore in church!” — so we’ll just leave it at that.
The goal was to take advantage and spend some recently awarded VW TDI “clean diesel” bribe money on various new OEM parts for the 1.8T. Needlesstosay, I cross referenced ETKA and ECS and put together quite a long list. The parts guy’s eyes widened until he realized I wasn’t really paying for them. (haha!) My parts included things like a shiny new exhaust cam, timing chain, all sorts of tensioners, bolts of varying size and shape… and seals. Mostly components related to the crankshaft and its rotating mass. — Spent the house’s money (check).
Autofab!
Next was a trip to Autofab (formerly Coleman Brothers Racing) to drop off my engine block (seen in a past post) to have it cleaned, checked and blueprinted. Meanwhile, with all of the “rotating mass” parts together they also offered to balance and assemble the bottom end. — Time Savings (check).
New German Performance (NGP)
Then a trip to NGP (in Aberdeen) to deliver the doner 2.slow 4:24 trans we picked up this summer from Jeff at StripSearchVW and a new Peloquin differential, 1.8T selector shaft as well as other components so that they could begin to assemble my new trans for next season. — Rocket out of the Pocket (check).
A return trip to that place that shall not be named (aka “the Dealership”) to pick up all the ordered parts. I was amazed everything made it in two days, and nothing had to come “red lined” – better known as 2 weeks by boat – from the Dark Forest, which included the Canadian serpentine belt designed for non-AC cars. — A/C 255 (check).
Another stopover at Autofab to drop off the flywheel, main pulley and the missing parts from the VW dealer *cough* Voldemort order.
One final trip will be to “Uncle Sparky’s” to see if we can salvage my ailing K04 (turbo). Fingers-Crossed (check)
So what am I really complaining about? A butterfly in the Amazon died because I polluted the entire time with my “clean diesel” clocking in a pathetic 47 mpg… nah?
This is the first time, in a long time, that I’ve broken my cardinal rule of “built not bought…” and it’s really bugging me. So far: Cylinder Head >> Performance Engineering; Bottom-End >> Autofab; Transmission >> NGP. I’m not really sure how I feel about this? Maybe I just need a cold shower, or maybe I should visit a church and confess my sins, or maybe I should just suck it up and get over it…
