My yearly engine/tranny rebuild saga... long

[llutman@hotmail.com (Lisa Lutman)]

A bit of background info for those of you who haven't been following 
along... A year ago, just before ND 2001 actually, I blew up my tranny. I 
decided that at this time, it was a good time to put in a 2.0L and the shop 
I took the car to was only too happy to oblige. Fast-forward a year later...

About 7 weeks ago, my motor started to knock... mmm... rod knock. I'm 
finally experiencing the 16v woes I think. I decide to take the spare motor 
I have laying around to Momentum to have rebuilt. I call the previous shop 
that did the work on the car and the owner says "Wow, that's some bad luck 
you're having. Have a nice day." Ummm... thanks. My spare motor also 
coincidentally came from this shop in a round about way. The machine shop 
discovers that this supposedly fine low mileage spare motor I have has a bad 
rod and 3 stuck rings. Thank God I sent to be rebuilt. The supposedly fine 
used head that I have from a friend also needs work they tell me. Bent 
valves aren't good apparently.

So, I'm driving a fair distance from my house when my knocking finally 
becomes a distinct clackety-clunk-knock and I have the car towed home at a 
cost of $260 cdn. Frig. Serves me right I suppose. Thanks to 16volt for 
rescuing me.

My motor came out of my car yesterday so I went to Momentum and we opened it 
up and although I'm not super mechanic, I know that those bronze coloured 
shavings in the oil can't be good. #1 rod and bearing are toast. Same with 
the crank - toast. In the head, the valves are bent (saved you the valves 
and the bearing for your collection 16volt). To make this whole experience 
really fun, my tranny is also leaking from every seal ever put in it and the 
2nd and reverse syncros are in need of replacement (and they'll throw a bolt 
kit in there).

On the bright side, I'll finally get the headwork done that I wanted, I'll 
have a tight bottom end, another new clutch and a really strong tranny. 
We'll also do some other small performance mods too, although limited, since 
my budget is long since blown.

Well, if you made it this far, thanks for reading!


Lisa
Vancouver, BC
87 2.0L 16V Scirocco


_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com