Roadtrip Blog from Timbo's 84 Scirocco
Replaced the ignition switch, and added foglights to iRox’s Cabriolet. Her cat decided my car was a very nice place to lay.
iRox donated a lot of money to me! Thank you so much!!
iRox and I went down to Colorado Springs to visit the salvage yard to find some parts for her Cabriolet. Found some interesting cars there, but not the parts we needed.
We started back up to Woodland Park, and the serpentine belt on her 2004 Jetta 1.8T broke. It took out the tensioner pulley as well. We eventually determined that the tensioner was installed incorrectly, with a black bracket on the wrong side of the tensioner bolts – causing the wheel to drag on the timing cover. One belt, and one tensioner later, we were back on the road.
Eddie and I met up with Karl and Otto in Erie, Colorado to go to Andy Maass’s cool salvage yard. It had not only all kinds of VWs, there were helicopters and planes there too!!
Thanks to both Karl and Otto who donated some money, fuel and food!
Some pictures from yesterday…
First oil change at 5,000 miles. One down, two to go.
Bwahahahah! This yard is a U-Pull-and-Pay in Aurora, near Zeno and Colfax.
This yard didn’t have too much. Two Cabriolets, a bunch of Mk2 Jettas, two aircooled VWs, and a Toyota “Audi 5000” 😀
I installed a newer radiator fan from a 1992 Jetta in the salvage yard. The newer fan has a more powerful motor, more blades, and instead of a resistor, it actually has dual power connections to the windings instead of one. I got a plug from the salvage yard, and I made a VERY simple harness for the fan. Power goes from the stock radiator connector to the radiator thermoswitch, where two wires come out, and go to the high/low pins of the fan connector. The ground goes from the fan to the stock wire connector. No relay – it is not required, and a relay will not make the fan faster in this case.
Trying to fix the Dasher’s megasquirt problems. After a day of tinkering, it does run… Not perfect yet though.
Today we went to a salvage yard in North Denver. Lots of good stuff!
We pulled the LONG battery cables out of two different e30 BMWs – and there were more there.
We got an oil cooler setup from a Volvo turbo.
There were a few interesting VAG cars there, including many Audis – even an Audi V8.
Here’s a few pics from my swap to Polar Silver doors from an 82 Scirocco.
I found that my mom saved these speakers – they run on 12v like many kinds of Computer speakers. Now they are a Scirocco Stereo!! FOR FREE.
You may be wondering why I am doing this trip now, when prices for gasoline are at record highs. Why? Well, it’s not going to go down! Americans have traveled far less this year as fuel prices have gone up. The great American roadtrip is fading away.
This site is an effort of many people to experience the roadtrip. All of our money together will make filling up the tank easy. I’ll take pictures of everywhere. I’ll write about the capitals. It will all be here as it happens.
My car can get 35 mpg reliably. I got 39.1 mpg on my last leg from Dayton, OH to Philadelphia in early June. The highest I have attained ever was 46 mpg. The trip is so far 14,719 miles. At 35mpg, that is 420.5 gallons of gas.
Here is the Department of Energy website on fuel prices: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/gdu/gasdiesel.asp
That says that as of this post fuel is an average of 4.08 per gallon across the nation. 420.5 times 4.08 is $1,715.81 estimated exact fuel costs. Now this does not include driving in cities, getting lost finding the capital buildings, and it does not include several side trips I’m going to take to see landmarks.
But it shows that taking a trip like this is not as expensive as you’d think – even with the crazy fuel prices.
Check out www.fueleconomy.gov – it has the old and new EPA ratings for the MPG your car gets.
Here’s mine: (The oldest it gets is 1985 – mine is 1984, but 85 has the same JH 8v motor)
That’s EPA economy. Most of you who own Sciroccos know that it’s easy to get above that number.
Because of the modifications I’ve done, I can get far better MPG. I count on 35MPG reliably. I have a 10.1 gallon fuel tank, so have a range of 350 miles between fillups. I generally fill up at 300 though. I have gotten above 40 MPG before, with the best-ever MPG at 46.1 miles per gallon.
Modifications I’ve done for better economy:
This car did not come from the factory with power steering or air conditioning – but if it did – I would have removed both!