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re: first cars



You guts will get a kick out of this.

My first car was a 1975 Volvo 245 station wagon given to me by my parents.
Its worth noting that a didn't take possesion of it as my own until 1986.
At this time it had 150,000 plus miles on it and had been seeing regular
duty as a firewood hauler.  I spent 2 days cleaning the 1/2" of wood chips
from the storage tray & spare tire holder. 

This was my college car so the mechanicals were given a good once over &
any trouble spots were taken care of.  The outside was so oxidized that
merely laying your hand on the hood resulted in a powder green palm.  It
took many hours of hand rubbing by hand (whats a buffer?) to semi restore
the dark british green paint.  It was old, and it was a little rough, but
it was my car and I loved it (please refrain from telling me how sick I was).

I continued to restore this car through my college years.  This was a
little tough to do on a students budjet, so many hours at the boneyards
were required.  One of the most treasured parts I managed to scavenge was
an original in dash vovlo tachometer.  It fit right in the gauge console
and it was so cool!!  Armed with my new gauge I was now able to tell that
my trusty 245 wagon ran out of steam at only 3750 rpm!

A few years later in rush hour I had to pull into very heavy traffic, so
naturally i revved the hell out of it.  4500 rpm and bang!  It started to
backfire and run very poorly.  What makes this even better was that I was
on my way to an appointment at very exclusive local country club.  By the
time I pulled into their lot it was spewing black smoke and backfiring on
raw fuel in the exhaust.  The clubs lot was filed with rare and exotic
cars, stuff like Aston Martins, a few Ferrari's and ton's of Porshes.  This
was by far one of the most embarrising moments of my automotive history.

I sold the car to mechainic the next week and replaced it with my first VW.

It wasn't until a few years later that I realized the tach was out of a 6
cylinder and I had revved my pushrod & rocker arm engine with 225,000 miles
on it to 1/3 more than indicated, or 6750 rpm!!  No wonder it blew up!

Alan
87 16V Scirocco (driver)
84 8V Scirocco (racer)
83 GTI (sold to my roomate)
83 8V Scirocco (sold to co-worker)
87 Jetta GL (long since gone)






 

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