From Veeduber@aol.com  Thu Oct 19 20:45:18 1995
msgnum: msg17976
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 1995 21:45:09 -0400
From: Veeduber_at_aol_dot_com
Subject: Getting Grendel Home, 1 of 2 (repost)




                  The Long Run for Home

It wasn't departure, it was flight.  The weather was foul,
Grendel skittish on the steep down grades and sudden curves, the
way walled with trees, shoulders narrow or non-existant.  What
was described as 'freeway' was another example of Puget Sound
Humor, a maze of orange warning barrels and three lanes squeezing
suddenly into one with ominous '20mph' warnings.  But it lead
south and I took the chance.  Too soon, as I would discover.

Crossing a bridge with a metal-grid road-way, the vibration shook
loose my outside mirror and it flopped down.  I caught it before
it fell off the bar but there was no way to fix it without
stopping and no place to stop just then.  When there was room to
stop, there was still the rain.  I was less than two hours into
my trip, about to be halted by a clumsily installed mirror.  I
held it in my lap, evidence should I be stopped by the police.  I
would leap out brandishing the mirror, an act that would get you
shot in San Diego.  Maybe I would tell him my tale and plead
insanity.  One of those.

South of Tacoma I ran out of the rain and stopped for fuel, more
worried with the mirror and dirty windows than the vehicle.  It
was a stable ride, the engine as faithful as a beating heart.  I
was annoyed with spatters of oil on the rear glass, used Bon Ami
to remove them to the amusement of others buying gas.

Oil on the REAR glass?  I hunkered down, opened the engine
compartment.  All okay.  Peeked underneath to see if the flapper
valve had come off the road-draft tube.  Saw the pool of oil,
rich and green, another drop descending as I watched.  Grendel
was bleeding.

I pulled over near the pay-phones, sat weighing my options.  The
smart move was to turn back, pull the engine, find out what was
leaking.  While thinking about it I repaired the mirror clamp
using a longer 1/4-20 bolt, lock- and flat-washers, made a proper
job of it.  I didn't even know if it was engine oil or tranny
lube.  I checked the engine oil.  It was up to the mark. 
Grendel's new tires put her belly too low to the road to allow me
to squirm under.  I got out the floor jack, used a block of wood
under the rear jacking point, raised her up, made up a stand of
wood blocks to fit under the lower shock mount.  She was still
dripping, the drops coming from the axle rearward.  I thought it
must have blown the near tranny seal I'd installed at Shelton
before installing the engine.  I got the tools, crawled under,
wiping her down, getting gear lube all over me.  Pulled the
filler plug, poked in a finger.  No oil.  Squirmed out, sat
thinking of ways to get oil into the tranny without a lube pump. 
My solution was to rig a baby bottle.  A plastic talcum powder
container from my shower bag provided the bottle, the thumb off
one of my gloves the nipple.  Filled the bottle, wired on the
leather nipple, squirmed under, got the nipple into the filler
hole and some of the oil inside.  It wasn't a very big bottle and
the shape of it prevented the entire contents from being used. 
It took three refills, about half of it going into the tranny,
most of the rest all over me and the tranny, a very messy job. 
Cleaned up with waterless handcleaner before inflicting myself on
the gas station restroom.  Washed up, changed my shirt, still
confounded as to which of my options was best.

How bad was the leak?  How long had it been it leaking?  WHAT was
leaking?  Was the tranny cracked?  If the seal was blown, why did
I still have a clutch?  

I bought a newspaper, spead it out over Grendel's shame, reading
the headlines and an agony column while the sports section soaked
up the oil.  It really is a small planet and with no spares in
sight I tend to tread softly.

South was joy.  North was defeat.  I tweaked the faithful heart,
snicked into gear, worried the brakes as I got back onto the
highway, headed south.

I needed to know how bad a leak I was dealing with.  The
Volkswagen tranny holds exactly the same quantity of lubricant as
the engine: eighty-five fluid ounces.  5.3 pints.  Not a bunch.

It was Friday, a day of mixed clouds and sun, the highway
thronged with RV's and logging trucks, all blasting past me at a
rate of knots.  I was running 55 indicated, about 51 actual. 
Making good time.  I pulled off at the next town of any size,
hunted up an auto-parts store, bought a lube pump.  Checked my
receipt from the gas station, calculated the distance I'd
traveled, continued until I'd racked up 100 miles, pulled off at
the next cross-over offering services, parked in a corner of a
restaurant's parking lot, went through the routine with the jack
and blocks and tranny wrench, discovered the hose of the oil pump
would slip out unless held in place.  It took seventeen strokes
of the pump before the tranny overflowed and the oil ran down my
arm.  I'd forgotten to change into my dirty shirt.

Lube oil pumps deliver about one fluid ounce per stroke.  I don't
know if that's a standard but that's what I measured during a
bout of insatiable curiosity.  One stroke, one ounce.  And a
pint's a pound the world 'round, according to Miss Rose Segetti,
my Fourth Grade teacher.  That's for water, of course.  But had I
asked I'm sure Miss Segetti could have told me how much a pint of
90 weight tranny lube weighs.  Miss Segetti knew everything. 
I've still got a lot to learn and Grendel was about to teach me a
lesson I'll never forget.

Running at an indicated 55 miles per hour, Grendel was leaking
about a pint of oil every hundred miles.  And I thought I was
hearing some sounds from the tranny.  I buttoned things up,
cleaned up, put on my last clean shirt and headed south, this
time at 45mph indicated, about 43mph actual.  I did the tranny
lube trick once more before leaving the Evergreen State.  Eleven
ounces.  Slower was better and this time I'd remembered to wear
one of the soiled shirts.  I continued south feeling smug.  I
could get home.  I would spew a gallon of tranny lube over the
next thousand miles of road, and since each refill took about
twenty mintues, my average speed would drop to about 37 mph.  I
was about 1000 miles from home.  It was a do-able thing.  I kept
heading south.

The Noise began suddenly, as Grendel and I were passing
Government Island in the middle of the Colombia River.  I
immediately reduced speed and the Noise went away.  I wanted to
stop but I was on I-205, by-passing Portland.  Traffic was a mess
compounded my our slow speed and the fact I was a stranger to the
road.  I hung in there up several painful grades, reached a park-
like section and pulled off.  The noise continued with the
vehicle at rest.  It had to be the mainshaft.  I tried the
clutch.  There was only a minor change in the sound.  Which meant
it couldn't be the mainshaft.  I was confused.  Then the Noise
became quieter, almost stopped.  Cautiously, I eased back onto
the highway, my mind shuffling through everything I knew of
tranny noises like a card sharp looking for a missing ace.  I
didn't find it.  I was playing with a deck of 51.  The result was
near panic.

Crawling across Oregon I again witnessed a customer being
verbally abused by an imbecilic gas-station attendant while his
co-worker cheered him on.  The customer was from Washington, had
tried to pump his own gas.  Smart-mouthing out-of-staters appears
to be a common sport at Oregon gas stations.  The man got back
into his car and went to the BP station across the street.  The
incident occured at the Chevron station on the east side of I-5
just south of Eugene.

The Noise came and went, sometimes loud, something not but never
completely silent.  Each time I thought I had it figured out it
would present some new data that failed the test of logic.  My
panic mounted as the Noise became unmistakably louder.  One of
the data elements was Grendel's variable appitite, one time
taking only eight ounces, the next gulping twenty-four.  The oil
was coming from both side plates which argued for a problem with
the differential bearings.  But they they are the largest and
most robust bearings in the entire vehicle, and make a bold
ballsy sound when they fail.  The Noise was higher pitched, more
intermittant, different from any tranny noise I'd ever heard yet
strangely familiar.  

Approaching Grant's Pass, 566 miles from my starting point, the
Noise rose to a shriek.  I dove off the freeway and discovered my
faultering brakes were virtually non-existant.  I whipped into
the first motel I saw, came to a stop by ramming the wheels into
the curb and, thankfully, not jumping it and crashing into a
brick wall.

If you have to break down you could do a lot worse than Grant's
Pass.  It's a nice town with friendly people in the only Oregon
county named for a woman, Josephine County.  I know these things
because Grant's Pass, Oregon owes much of its history to men who
followed the sea, although they left it quickly enough to search
for gold in country of the Rogue River.

But it wasn't a good spot for me to break down, which I was doing
in every respect.  My money had run out, the past month had
already tried the limits of my physical endurance, today's
fourteen hours of driving had pushed me over the edge.  After
registering I feel asleep while taking a tub bath, hoping to warm
my ice cold feet.  

Grendel was breaking down in a way I would probably be unable to
repair since it was doubtful that I could find a replacement
tranny I could afford, or that I would have the strength to
install it.  And the brakes.  I wasn't even sure I could get out
of the motel parking lot without crashing into something, and
because of the slight slope, I couldn't jack up Grendel and
adjust the brakes where she was parked, I needed level ground,
rare stuff in Grant's Pass where the main drag zips downhill to
the Rogue River.

Despite my exhaustion I slept poorly, awakened about 3 am by a
nightmare.  I was laying in a pool of sweat, the bedding sodden
even to the pillow.  I got up and took a long shower, trying to
come up with a solution to my dilemma, going so far as to look
for other Hoovers in the phone book, thinking of surprising them
with a 3 am call from their long-lost Cousin Bob.

I lay down, aching with fatigue but unable to sleep.  The night
was perfectly quiet, even the steady train of logging trucks
having abandoned the neaby freeway.  I may have dozed because it
was 5:20 when I suddenly realized the night was TOTALLY quiet, no
traffic at all.  I leapt up, dressed, threw my stuff together and
dashed out to Grendel.  No cars meant no traffic!  No traffic
meant I didn't really need brakes!

The temperature was in the low thirties, Grendel's windows dewed
but not frosted.  I used the slope to get Grendel out of her
parking slot, nudged her toward the street with my shoulder,
jumped in as we rolled silently down 6th Street, popped the
clutch to shock Grendel's faithful heart alive.

I was looking for a parking lot, somewhere to adjust my brakes
and give Grendel another shot of tranny lube.  My nearest haven
was the home of my son in Modesto, nearly 500 miles to the south. 
I doubted I could make it that far but Redding meant Bus Boys and
possible help while Sacramento meant Thom, who would surely be
willing to loan me the tranny from his Porsche.  But if Grendel
crashed, she crashed.  I was out of ideas and money.  My ace in
the hole was knowing I could call my son, who would drive up and
help me salvage what I could from Grendel before abandoning her
to her fate, which may or may not include the possibility of
future salvage.  

Just down 6th from the motel was a hospital, the extensive
parking lots empty.  Despite harsh warning signs aimed at people
like me, I pulled in, found a discrete and level corner and
prepared to adjust Grendel's brakes.

My floor jack accepted the first half-dozen strokes reluctantly. 
When the weight of Grendel's haunches came on the pump, it blew
its seal, shooting a thread of icy hydraulic fluid onto my levis. 
I'd forgotten that the cold effects hydraulics even more than it
does people.  Unable to raise Grendel's weight off her wheels, I
was unable to adjust her brakes.  And without a suitable jack any
extensive tranny repair was out of the question.  My options had
dwindled to two: Quit or go on.  I slumped down on the damp
tarmac and stared at the useless jack, savoring the foul taste of
defeat.