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I have finally arrived!!



Hello All!  (assuming with g-rocco's help I have finally figured this out!)

My name is Eric Marsden 26 yrs old from central new york.  I will shortly be
driving a 88 alpine wite 16v but currently I am still putting her back
together.  Since we get a little thing called lake effect snow up here esp
where I live (right around camden,ny and boonville,ny snow capitals of the
northeast) there is always salt and other car body eating elements on the
road so I eliminated looking locally for a scirocco and went right to ebay.
I was able to purchase this car for under 1000 dollars from CT in "running
order".  I rented a dolly and towed it home with no trouble besides the
trailing having a mind of its own esp when passing 18wheelers at 65mph.
Anyway, got the car home and in the garage.  The next day I began the
teardown.  Before purchasing the car I obviously got a little background on
the vehicle.  The previous owner which from this point on will be refered to
as "she" knew little if nothing about cars and her father was equally
incompetant.  Immediatly I noticed a sensor on the oil cooler (the oil temp
sensor) had been replaced by a bolt which has been sheered off to fit.  Upon
removing the bolt we concluded that the oil pressure light blinked upon
startup and thereafter because the bolt had closed off the line completly
essentially starving the system.  We assume this due to the bolt being bone
dry to the touch, no oil or oil residue on it at all.  Now onto the second
issue with the car.  The head gasket.  Not completly gone but enough to
cause a compression loss and a oil leak on the front side.  So with the help
of my good friend John and my brother Andrew we were able to get that
removed and replaced.  Although to our surprise the vw serevice manual
recomends no plaining of the head AT ALL.  Being that they have worked on
essentially hondas all their life myself included this was a first for us.
So to make a long story short the engine is now in good working order.  Why
am I not driving it yet you ask?  well because the interior was also
completly stripped out minus the dashboard and heater core.  I wont bore you
with details because anyone that goes to the tex has seen and heard plenty
of stories about remvoign interiors and removing sound deadoning.  Anyway
when I took the deadoning up I only had one rust hole about 1inch by 1inch
that I will use a body plug to fill and the paint over it with the
rustbullet which I have applied already to the floor pan.  So this weekend
everything should be going back in...waiting on door cards and under dash
cover panels in the mail..then it should be ready for action...well that was
my shortened version of my intro..I am sure I left things out like pictures
which I will share upon someone telling me how to do that..do we simply
attach them?....again hopefully this finally makes it through to the "list"
and hoping to talk and meet some if not all of you soon!!

-Eric