Ah...the joys of owning a car nearly ten years older than I am. My Volkswagen Westfalia, dubbed the Lady Wendy, has been sitting in my driveway not running for nearly 10 months now. Originally, I took it to Jim's VW out in Leeds where he fixed the fuel injection but it was still only running on 3 cylinders. He offered to "patch" it for $1200 but I graciously declined. I got the lady towed back to my house where it sat in the driveway from January until a few days ago. I talked to many people about the possibility of coming by the house and taking a look over the bus to see what sort of undertaking I had ahead of me. I was never able to get a single person to come lend me a hand until the end of July. Through some miracle, a man in Alabaster posted his info on thesamba.com and I e-mailed him a brief story of my situation. Within an hour, he called me back on my cell phone and we talked for the better part of an hour going over what I could do in my driveway, the story of the bus, and learning what he could do for me. I called him several times and got an answer each time with the good advice to go along with it.
A week ago, I sold my Camry that I've had since 2004 and finally had the money to put an overhaul on the engine. I called up my new go-to guy and gave him a run-down. I caught him just in time too, as he is taking a full time job at a Honda repair shop and would not be working on VW's in his driveway anymore. He offered to come up to my house after the weekend and take a good look at my bus to see if he could fix the problem in my driveway. When he got here, the first thing we did was test the battery, which was nearly dead. We drive to the auto parts store and buy a replacement battery (about $100). He hooks up the battery and I hop in the front to fire her up. Voila! She's alive!!! Still running poorly though...I shut her off. We take a look over the engine again, checking all the connections and parts and find one thing unplugged to the fuel injectors. Plug it in. Start the bus. Perfection.
If there was ever a happy camper, it is me and the Lady Wendy. I've been driving her daily since Monday and I am proud to say she is running beautifully. It's time to hit the road, folks.
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