Fun times
*** editors note: if you want pics, go here.***
written on the train going home April 13th, 2008
We started up Roxy at around 9 in the morning to start our trip two hours east of Tampa to Sanford, Florida. It was really quite overcast this morning so the lack of AC wasn't a problem at all for us. I was really nervous starting the trip because I have been so used to basically being fucked by this damn MK3 curse of mine.
It all started back in '98. (Bear with me if you have heard this before but I think it suits the current story well.) I had just traded in my Jeep for a bare bones MK3 at a VW dealership all the way in VA as I was still living at home with mom in MD. I remember getting the bug at an exact moment while I was a student at U of Maryland in my second year there. A buddy of mine across the hall had a subscription to Autoweek and there was an article in it that was about the modern hotroder; namely the current generation of kids, the "import tuners" as they were so aptly named. The article was no more than 3 spreads long and in it there was a photo of a kid who was leaning on the hood of his bright yellow '93 honda civic Si hatch. By todays comparison it was probably really tame. No B16a swap. No turbo (turbo on a VTEC was only a dream back then). No nitrous. It was just a dumped Civic Si but the idea was there and thus giving me the bug that hasn't dissipated even to this day.
There was just something about it. Something dangerous. Something new and exciting and it was something that my Jeep just couldn't give me. So for the next year or so I started planning and lamenting almost to an obsessive level. I looked for Si's almost every day and let me tell you, they were as hard to find then as they are today. A year passed, I had since dropped out of Maryland and enrolled into community college for a year in hopes to go to art school the next fall. I still had my jeep and had done as much to it as possible. Shackle lift, 33's, freaking loud-ass stereo (and neon... don't laugh, it was cool back then I swear.)
That summer after comm. college, my mom and I packed up the Jeep and drove 800 miles down south to Savannah. Of course the Jeep didn't have AC so that was one awesome trip in the peak of heat stroke-time down south. The jeep survived a year at art school but after that I was done. I really had my fill of driving big cars. I wanted that hatch something fierce. So as soon as I got home from winter break, mom and I drove out to the Springfield VW dealer and I had my eyes set on a 95 Golf GL hatch. It wasn't A+ but it was perfect for me. I knew what a VR6 was at the time but because of a nervous mom and an undervalued trade in, I was stuck with the 2 liters of fury.
I drove "Dara" (yes, this was the original deal here) down south to be aptly accepted by the VW club down there quite nicely. I was on a students budget so I was pretty much stuck with her bone stock until summer came around and more money came in from lifeguarding. As soon as I had some cash saved up (and trust me, I worked my ass off that summer doing 60 hour weeks and grabbing as much overtime as I could), I was finding myself installing a nice 2" cupkit in the pool parking lot with my dad. It was a great bonding experiment because up until that time, my dad and I were part-time friends at best but it was way awesome looking back at it now. Two guys installing a near full suspension kit on an incline, in a pool parking lot, without proper strut tower bolt tools... using a Haynes manual (ok, we didn't know Robert Bentley back then either haha).
It was all over from there. I rounded out the package with tinted OEM tails, tinted blinkers and a nice eurosport exhaust with DTM tips (told you I was old school). After that I got some plaid GTI seats and a set of wheels. Hockenheims. 16 inches of beauty as 17's were also unheard of back in '99. I was on my way to being totally out of control in my moms eyes. This meant I was doing something right at the time.
A few months later I met a guy named Poppy at the Savanna VW dealer. He was a tech and supposedly knew his shit and also had a spare Passat VR6 laying in his backyard collecting dust. I had big dreams back then so I traded him my entire Jeep stereo for the engine swap and install. And then the curse happened. I took a perfectly fine 2.0 and ruined the entire thing. Poppy had no idea what he was doing and a "simple install" turned into me not having a car to drive for 3 months. 3 months in your last semester of school was a long time so one day, Stoner Dave and I rolled out to his house and pretty much threatened to beat him to a pulp if he didn't swap the 2.0 back. Poppy obliged and put the engine back in without installing the exhaust, coolant lines, AC. Pretty much just threw the engine in and kicked us off his property.
I limped home that summer and after the second day home, mom and I drove out to the VW dealer in town together. The cat was clogged by now and choking on it's last breath of life. Every time we came to a stop, the exhaust fumes nearly killed us both. I passed a dubber on the way to the dealer and told him if he followed me to the dealer, he could have my Hocks if he put his stock ones on; dead fair trade. As luck (and sadness) would have it, Dara died as soon as we got on the dealer lot. Like, dead as a doornail, never gonna start again dead. She survived just long enough to get me home from school safely.
I had officially killed my first VW.
I walked in, found my first dealer and said I wanted a brand new 2000 silver VR6. There was no silver so I took black. I didn't even test drive the car, just bought the first one he had coming off the boat and we were on our way. I remember driving off the lot and smiling my ass off at how hard it pulled. I was officially moving on up in the VW world.
Dara #2 was born.
That brings me to where I am today. Sitting on a train with Kate sitting next to me reading her nerd book and Roxy (hopefully) resting comfortably 10 or so cars behind us. I hope she is making friends. It's a little known fact that there is a group of people on the east coast called Snow Birds. They are the old timers of the upper east coast who take the auto train down to Florida in the winter to hide from the cold. Come summer time, they take their Buick Regals back up the east coast to enjoy the milder temperatures. Currently I am surrounded by said old people. Kate and I are the youngest people on this entire train by at least 4 decades. Everyone is cranky and I was nearly trampled at the coffee station about 30 minutes ago.
So, back to the car. A few months ago I paid a fellow dubber a couple hundred bucks to tie Roxy to the back of his trailer and drive her down to Florida. Namely to a place called 1552. Brad Beardow rebuilt her quickly dying heart, slapped a turbo on 'er and when she was done, we flew down to pick her up. My mom has a place down there so I turned it into a nice weekend jaunt with Kate. Flew down on Friday morning, hung out with momma for a fw hours and then made the trip out to Sarasota to pick Roxy up. Easy peasy.
I was nearly peeing myself when I got to the shop. I walked through the door and saw Roxy sitting there calmly behind a half naked MK2. I gleamed. We greeted Brad and then after a few minutes I was looking at her engine bay and admiring the shiny new pipes and what not that made her go fast. Brad pulled her out front and as soon as he turned the key, the 3" exhaust was music to my ears after driving a bone stock 318 for the past 6 weeks. The most ironic thing of the day was the drive home. One would think that given the keys to a car you hadn't driven for damn near 8 weeks which just so happened to have a fairly new and exponentially faster engine under the hood, you can imagine the thoughts running through my head right? Yeah, well keep in mind I drove over with my mom... In a Toyota Corolla rental car... Who had just realized you had no seat belts, airbags or any other safety feature in your car because it was "not needed".
We drove the 50 mile trip back home never going above 65 mph. It was quite possibly the most painful ride of my life. I don't think I hit boost the entire time. So after having dinner, Kate and I took her out again after the sun went down and thats when I really got to appreciate her. I'm new to turbos so the sound of the diverter valve was beautiful to me. The pull of the engine and the nearly gutted car was just pure fun. Plain and simple. And to think, I haven't really even opened her up yet due to not having a working tach. I don't think I have even hit full boost and the smile has yet to fade off my face.
We got to the train station at around noon today (after stopping off at Krystal which was FUCKING AWESOME I might add. Thanks Kate.) I knew there was a height requirement for the autotrain of 4" and as soon as we pulled up to the check in lady who just so happened to have a bar tester that was 4" in length, I nearly crapped myself as I saw her puzzled expression when she got back up from looking at the front of the car. Kate repeatedly saying "oh shit oh shit oh shit" wasn't helping me become any calmer either. I got out and said "I had a feeling this would be an issue... it's sort of lowered." I looked under the car and noticed that the intercooler was maybe 2.5" off the ground. The check in lady called over a guy who looked to be the brains of the operation and after him inspecting the pipe, he said he would try his best to load the car. "We'll just have to go slow with her" he said. I was set at ease as we made it through this check point and he drove her off to the side of the facility.
Twenty minutes later I saw him climb in (which was a site in itself seeing a 60 y/o man hop into a severely modded VW) and drove her in through the bottom of the train and scraping the exhaust in doing so. I could live with that.
She was safe. I was relived.
So here I am. Somewhere on the east coast going northbound. The sun is still fairly bright out, Kate's still knee deep in her nerd fantasy book and my ass is falling asleep. Every bounce we go over I am wondering if Roxy is safe. I really hope she doesn't come out looking like she just went 12 rounds with a boxing champ. We have dinner at seven and National Treasure 2 is showing at 9 so my night is fairly set. We get in at 9:30 tomorrow and they said it takes close to two hours to get every single car out so this entry could take a dark turn once it's finally published on the blog.
I'm still waiting for the MK3 curse of mine to rear it's ugly head. I mean, she made it the whole weekend without blowing up. She made it through racing it up and down US 19 this weekend and she made it through the 2 hour drive through Orlando, past the seven Lancer Evo's who were going to show and fairly intent on showing me just how fast they were and finally through the inspection to get on the train. Surely something is going to remind me of the curse right?
I guess we'll see soon enough. *crosses fingers
written on the train going home April 13th, 2008
We started up Roxy at around 9 in the morning to start our trip two hours east of Tampa to Sanford, Florida. It was really quite overcast this morning so the lack of AC wasn't a problem at all for us. I was really nervous starting the trip because I have been so used to basically being fucked by this damn MK3 curse of mine.
It all started back in '98. (Bear with me if you have heard this before but I think it suits the current story well.) I had just traded in my Jeep for a bare bones MK3 at a VW dealership all the way in VA as I was still living at home with mom in MD. I remember getting the bug at an exact moment while I was a student at U of Maryland in my second year there. A buddy of mine across the hall had a subscription to Autoweek and there was an article in it that was about the modern hotroder; namely the current generation of kids, the "import tuners" as they were so aptly named. The article was no more than 3 spreads long and in it there was a photo of a kid who was leaning on the hood of his bright yellow '93 honda civic Si hatch. By todays comparison it was probably really tame. No B16a swap. No turbo (turbo on a VTEC was only a dream back then). No nitrous. It was just a dumped Civic Si but the idea was there and thus giving me the bug that hasn't dissipated even to this day.
There was just something about it. Something dangerous. Something new and exciting and it was something that my Jeep just couldn't give me. So for the next year or so I started planning and lamenting almost to an obsessive level. I looked for Si's almost every day and let me tell you, they were as hard to find then as they are today. A year passed, I had since dropped out of Maryland and enrolled into community college for a year in hopes to go to art school the next fall. I still had my jeep and had done as much to it as possible. Shackle lift, 33's, freaking loud-ass stereo (and neon... don't laugh, it was cool back then I swear.)
That summer after comm. college, my mom and I packed up the Jeep and drove 800 miles down south to Savannah. Of course the Jeep didn't have AC so that was one awesome trip in the peak of heat stroke-time down south. The jeep survived a year at art school but after that I was done. I really had my fill of driving big cars. I wanted that hatch something fierce. So as soon as I got home from winter break, mom and I drove out to the Springfield VW dealer and I had my eyes set on a 95 Golf GL hatch. It wasn't A+ but it was perfect for me. I knew what a VR6 was at the time but because of a nervous mom and an undervalued trade in, I was stuck with the 2 liters of fury.
I drove "Dara" (yes, this was the original deal here) down south to be aptly accepted by the VW club down there quite nicely. I was on a students budget so I was pretty much stuck with her bone stock until summer came around and more money came in from lifeguarding. As soon as I had some cash saved up (and trust me, I worked my ass off that summer doing 60 hour weeks and grabbing as much overtime as I could), I was finding myself installing a nice 2" cupkit in the pool parking lot with my dad. It was a great bonding experiment because up until that time, my dad and I were part-time friends at best but it was way awesome looking back at it now. Two guys installing a near full suspension kit on an incline, in a pool parking lot, without proper strut tower bolt tools... using a Haynes manual (ok, we didn't know Robert Bentley back then either haha).
It was all over from there. I rounded out the package with tinted OEM tails, tinted blinkers and a nice eurosport exhaust with DTM tips (told you I was old school). After that I got some plaid GTI seats and a set of wheels. Hockenheims. 16 inches of beauty as 17's were also unheard of back in '99. I was on my way to being totally out of control in my moms eyes. This meant I was doing something right at the time.
A few months later I met a guy named Poppy at the Savanna VW dealer. He was a tech and supposedly knew his shit and also had a spare Passat VR6 laying in his backyard collecting dust. I had big dreams back then so I traded him my entire Jeep stereo for the engine swap and install. And then the curse happened. I took a perfectly fine 2.0 and ruined the entire thing. Poppy had no idea what he was doing and a "simple install" turned into me not having a car to drive for 3 months. 3 months in your last semester of school was a long time so one day, Stoner Dave and I rolled out to his house and pretty much threatened to beat him to a pulp if he didn't swap the 2.0 back. Poppy obliged and put the engine back in without installing the exhaust, coolant lines, AC. Pretty much just threw the engine in and kicked us off his property.
I limped home that summer and after the second day home, mom and I drove out to the VW dealer in town together. The cat was clogged by now and choking on it's last breath of life. Every time we came to a stop, the exhaust fumes nearly killed us both. I passed a dubber on the way to the dealer and told him if he followed me to the dealer, he could have my Hocks if he put his stock ones on; dead fair trade. As luck (and sadness) would have it, Dara died as soon as we got on the dealer lot. Like, dead as a doornail, never gonna start again dead. She survived just long enough to get me home from school safely.
I had officially killed my first VW.
I walked in, found my first dealer and said I wanted a brand new 2000 silver VR6. There was no silver so I took black. I didn't even test drive the car, just bought the first one he had coming off the boat and we were on our way. I remember driving off the lot and smiling my ass off at how hard it pulled. I was officially moving on up in the VW world.
Dara #2 was born.
That brings me to where I am today. Sitting on a train with Kate sitting next to me reading her nerd book and Roxy (hopefully) resting comfortably 10 or so cars behind us. I hope she is making friends. It's a little known fact that there is a group of people on the east coast called Snow Birds. They are the old timers of the upper east coast who take the auto train down to Florida in the winter to hide from the cold. Come summer time, they take their Buick Regals back up the east coast to enjoy the milder temperatures. Currently I am surrounded by said old people. Kate and I are the youngest people on this entire train by at least 4 decades. Everyone is cranky and I was nearly trampled at the coffee station about 30 minutes ago.
So, back to the car. A few months ago I paid a fellow dubber a couple hundred bucks to tie Roxy to the back of his trailer and drive her down to Florida. Namely to a place called 1552. Brad Beardow rebuilt her quickly dying heart, slapped a turbo on 'er and when she was done, we flew down to pick her up. My mom has a place down there so I turned it into a nice weekend jaunt with Kate. Flew down on Friday morning, hung out with momma for a fw hours and then made the trip out to Sarasota to pick Roxy up. Easy peasy.
I was nearly peeing myself when I got to the shop. I walked through the door and saw Roxy sitting there calmly behind a half naked MK2. I gleamed. We greeted Brad and then after a few minutes I was looking at her engine bay and admiring the shiny new pipes and what not that made her go fast. Brad pulled her out front and as soon as he turned the key, the 3" exhaust was music to my ears after driving a bone stock 318 for the past 6 weeks. The most ironic thing of the day was the drive home. One would think that given the keys to a car you hadn't driven for damn near 8 weeks which just so happened to have a fairly new and exponentially faster engine under the hood, you can imagine the thoughts running through my head right? Yeah, well keep in mind I drove over with my mom... In a Toyota Corolla rental car... Who had just realized you had no seat belts, airbags or any other safety feature in your car because it was "not needed".
We drove the 50 mile trip back home never going above 65 mph. It was quite possibly the most painful ride of my life. I don't think I hit boost the entire time. So after having dinner, Kate and I took her out again after the sun went down and thats when I really got to appreciate her. I'm new to turbos so the sound of the diverter valve was beautiful to me. The pull of the engine and the nearly gutted car was just pure fun. Plain and simple. And to think, I haven't really even opened her up yet due to not having a working tach. I don't think I have even hit full boost and the smile has yet to fade off my face.
We got to the train station at around noon today (after stopping off at Krystal which was FUCKING AWESOME I might add. Thanks Kate.) I knew there was a height requirement for the autotrain of 4" and as soon as we pulled up to the check in lady who just so happened to have a bar tester that was 4" in length, I nearly crapped myself as I saw her puzzled expression when she got back up from looking at the front of the car. Kate repeatedly saying "oh shit oh shit oh shit" wasn't helping me become any calmer either. I got out and said "I had a feeling this would be an issue... it's sort of lowered." I looked under the car and noticed that the intercooler was maybe 2.5" off the ground. The check in lady called over a guy who looked to be the brains of the operation and after him inspecting the pipe, he said he would try his best to load the car. "We'll just have to go slow with her" he said. I was set at ease as we made it through this check point and he drove her off to the side of the facility.
Twenty minutes later I saw him climb in (which was a site in itself seeing a 60 y/o man hop into a severely modded VW) and drove her in through the bottom of the train and scraping the exhaust in doing so. I could live with that.
She was safe. I was relived.
So here I am. Somewhere on the east coast going northbound. The sun is still fairly bright out, Kate's still knee deep in her nerd fantasy book and my ass is falling asleep. Every bounce we go over I am wondering if Roxy is safe. I really hope she doesn't come out looking like she just went 12 rounds with a boxing champ. We have dinner at seven and National Treasure 2 is showing at 9 so my night is fairly set. We get in at 9:30 tomorrow and they said it takes close to two hours to get every single car out so this entry could take a dark turn once it's finally published on the blog.
I'm still waiting for the MK3 curse of mine to rear it's ugly head. I mean, she made it the whole weekend without blowing up. She made it through racing it up and down US 19 this weekend and she made it through the 2 hour drive through Orlando, past the seven Lancer Evo's who were going to show and fairly intent on showing me just how fast they were and finally through the inspection to get on the train. Surely something is going to remind me of the curse right?
I guess we'll see soon enough. *crosses fingers
- Monday, April 14, 2008 at 3:30 PM
- Posted by JKREW
- 2 Comments
i feel your pain. my first mk3 started with a bad clutch, replaced it then 2 weeks later tranny blows. then i sold it for 800 and lost a lot. Bought my mk3 jetta with 43k in mint condition, by 52k my chains are rattling. i have them replaced and another 2k worth of tranny work done at the same time. then control arm bushings go, while doing those a friend decides to hammer one so i have to tighten it every 3-4 weeks for the rest of the cars life. then my steering rack goes, as well as the t-stat. i just installed a turbo and then BOOM. but thankfully it was electronic and since i have it down in FL im having another 1.2k in work done...I LOVE MK3's though...wat can i say.
you gonna LOVE that turboz. and those evos aint got shit anymore :D
FYI, DAMN did it take a hot minute to read that story. well written though i must say...