Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Fixin' the car....

Well, I've had a small oil leak for the past 2 years....but I just recently found out where it was coming from and got up the energy to fix it. Apparently its a pretty common problem in VW's. I always feel so proud of myself when I fix stuff, so I thought I'd brag.


I replaced the valve cover gasket. Oil was seeping out of the side where the gasket had worn out.

Took off the intake and valve cover, cleaned it all nice. Yes, that's the camshaft....pretty cool, eh?

I put some Ultra Gray RTV on the corners to seal it up nice and good and to help me sleep better at night.

Stupid crappy old gasket! I hate you.

Put everything back together (along with a new intake manifold gasket) and torqued it down to spec.

So far no more oil leaks! Hooray! The parts cost me about $17. This costs around $150 at the dealer. If it weren't for my trusty bentley factory repair manual and http://forums.vwvortex.com/ I would have never had the courage to do this.

After I finished, I came inside and told Katie that I fixed the car. She responded, "Didn't you fix the car last week?" Yes.....yes, I did. This is what happens when your car is assembled in Mexico and is 13 years old. Things just start wearing out. The monthly repairs are no where near a car payment and hopefully I can keep it that way till I'm done with school.

6 comments:

Courtney said...

*Yawn*

Cheryl said...

I'm impressed. Even when you were small, you liked to take things apart and put them back together. Mechanical engineer seems like a perfect fit.

neil said...

Yeah, I'm pretty impressed too. I'm not so much frightened by my car as I just hate getting dirty for poking around and not actually doing anything because I don't know what's wrong. Seriously, with all the sensors and whatnot in my car, you'd think it'd say something a little more helpful than "check engine soon."

Unknown said...

wah wah. I think I fell asleep like 6 times in the first paragraph hehe

Unknown said...

Haha I was going to leave a comment about how I thought you were a nerd and that I got kinda bored reading this.... then I saw that I already read it and fell asleep that time too. :)

ryan g said...

thank you sarah...i feel so loved. :)