Project Sipster Part 2 - The Road to Regina
by Dave Coleman
I finally found the second installment of Project Sipster. My only copy was a rough, half-finished early draft, so I had to re-type half of it from some old screen grabs of the original publication. This version is slightly different from the one that was published originally, most notably in its grammatical correctness. My high school English teachers would be so proud...
If none of what you just read makes any sense, go back and read part 1 here.
The whole process of building and documenting Project Sipster was somewhat bizarre. Jared Holstein was living in New York at the time, where TopGear.com America was based. I was in Long Beach, California and had no idea what was happening with the project on a day-to-day basis. Somehow, though, we had to make a new story appear every week on a very strict deadline.
So Jared would spend the week frantically doing something counterproductive to the car, and a day or two before the story was due, his intern, Chris Gifford, would send me some cryptic e-mail describing what was going on. Based on that, I had to crap out something entertaining, reasonably accurate, and simple enough that people who didn't own any wrenches could understand it. The original version was so dumbed down, I had to explain what a Dynojet was. I took this re-edit opportunity to scrub a few of those details out.
Meanwhile, of course, I was working a full-time job with an hour-each-way commute. I learned to love my local coffee shops, and figured out that a peanut butter, banana and oatmeal smoothie was a reasonable substitute for dinner. All of which is nothing compared to what Jared was going through, of course, as you can tell by reading the story:
"Smoke!"
That exclamation is pretty much the last thing you want to hear after finally drifting to sleep against the rattling passenger's window of a Diesel Rabbit running flat-out across some desolate, forgotten corner of Minnesota at 2 AM. Flat-out, foot buried against the firewall, it should be noted, had been good for anything from 50 to 70 mph, depending on prevailing winds, incline, and how well you exploit the wake of passing trucks. It had been good for that speed right up until this moment...
"We're losing power!"
The panic-tinged exclamations are from the mouth of TopGear.com America Executive Producer Jared Holstein to the still semi-conscious ears of Chris Gifford, his trusty, diligent, hard-working, extremely gullible intern. This whole 70-mpg, 7-second, $7,000 project was Jared's idea. Buying a $1,700, 28-year-old Rabbit that couldn't outrun a Vespa and driving it, the very next day, 2,000 miles non-stop to Regina, Saskatchewan in the dead of winter was his idea. Jared made his bed, and now, apparently, he is doomed to lie in it. As consciousness slowly permeates his brain, numbed as it is from the triple-threat of cold, vibration, and heroic sleeplessness, Chris is just starting to recognize that he'll soon be lying in it with him.
Clattering to a stop in the blackness, the two climb out the driver's door (the passenger's door having frozen shut) into the only-slightly-colder night air and start digging under the hood. Pulling the dipstick they find the oil is coal black (normal for a Diesel) and the consistency of pudding (not normal at all). Mix water with oil and agitate well and the result is always pudding. The radiator is nearly empty, but the few puddles of antifreeze hiding in the crevices of the coolant bottle have that balsamic-vinaigrette splattering of pitch-black oil. The commingling of fluids is an unmistakable sign. The head gasket is blown.
From the moment of diagnosis, the engine's demise is preordained. Coolant will continue to leak from the head gasket, draining the radiator and polluting the oil. If they keep filling the radiator, the engine might keep running--though it will make even less power than before. If they stop the engine for too long, the water could fill a cylinder and prevent it from ever starting again. If they keep it running, the water will continue to dilute the oil until it eventually stops being slippery enough. At that point, a bearing will seize, probably encouraging a connecting rod to violently exit the block through a doorway it will make itself. Either path is a time bomb.With 750 miles to go, the best plan is to keep driving, keep adding water, and hope they make it before the time bomb stops ticking. At this very moment, though, that option is off the table. To keep driving, they will need water--liquid water--and at 2 AM on the side of the freeway several miles on the wrong side of Clearwater, Minnesota, the only water they can find could be poured with a hammer.
Waiting for help is their only hope, though cars pass at agonizing hour-long intervals this far from civilization. Even bundling up for warmth is out of the question. The gentle wafting of temperate air from the Rabbit's heater had been no match for the cold drafts form the car's rotted-out door and window seals, so hours ago the two unpacked their luggage and put on every piece of clothing they owned.
By the time help arrives, Jared and Chris are scheming to club a snow leopard with the frozen-solid sweatshirt that has been serving as an impromptu door seal, and cuddle inside its corpse for warmth. They have been stranded, at this point, for eight minutes.
Fortunately, those hearty enough to live in these conditions are also human enough to stop when they see someone in a state of impaired mobility. The first passing car stops and offers up enough liquid water (four 16-oz bottles) to limp to the next gas station where they can stock up on antifreeze that will stay liquid inside the freezing car. With one eye on the temperature gauge and another watching the mirror for the telltale smoke, the two press on with a new, deeply-held understanding of their own mortality.
It takes the perspective of their desperate mid-trip straits to see the optimism with which the trip started. Only two days earlier the pair answered a craigslist ad for a remarkably clean-looking 1981 Rabbit Diesel--$2,500. Any Diesel Rabbit still running is inevitably in that state through the heroic actions of a string of truly odd people. Three owners ago, someone in Ohio decided to run the poor car on old french fry oil. This is theoretically possible and frequently successful, but still not as simple as pulling up to McDonald's and answering emphatically when they ask, "Do you want fries with that?"
The french-fry experiment ended in failure, and the dead Rabbit traded hands for $0 to the owner of a New Jersey body shop. He rebuilt the engine before selling it to an employee for $400, letting him use the shop tools to rebuild it. Even with a fresh engine and fresh paint, the proud new owner claimed the car had simply turned out not to be his style. A quick test drive suggested this might be because his style involved driving more than 29 mph.
The Diesel engine's stubbornly inaccurate reputation as smelly, rattly and tragically underpowered was cemented in America's collective memory in large part by the Diesel Rabbit. However great they may seem with the tint of nostalgia and the amnesia of time, they were, in reality, pretty awful. But even judged by the exceedingly low standards of its original performance, this particular example was utterly pathetic. Pedestrians could beat it across an intersection at full throttle, and nothing short of driving off a cliff would convince it to break 30. Love is a funny thing, though. Its chiseled Bondo physique and shiny Lago Blue paint blinded Jared to the car's mechanical reality, and after a brief negotiation the car was his for $1,700.
This would be a good time to point out a very important detail about our quest to build this 7-second, 70-mph car for only $7,000: We're not going to pull it off. Oh, we'll beat 7 seconds to 60 mph, and we're pretty sure we can do that 70-mpg thing, but remember, this is the first time we, or to the best of our knowledge, ANYBODY, has done this. We will make mistakes along the way, like paying $1,700 for a car that was worth $0 a few months ago. So there will be two tallies being kept on this car: one for what we actually spend, and another for what you could spend if you were smart enough to learn from our mistakes. In column A, then, $1,700. In column B, the $0 you could find this car for if you spend more than one day shopping.
But back to the proud father and his malformed little German baby. At 30 mph, the drive to Regina would take nearly three days, not counting stops for pee and burgers. When Jared called ahead to say he'd be late, Cam Waugh (owner of CWS Tuning and our mechanical hero who said our upcoming engine swap would be easy) did the math a different way. Twenty-eight years old + death by french fry = a fuel filter full of potatoes. Twelve dollars later, the car was roaring down the freeway at more than double its original top speed.
Again, perspective is key to understanding how fast the car is now. In its original state, the Chrysler Sebring Convertible rental car our dynamic duo took Rabbit shopping could outrun the Rabbit simply by shifting into Drive and letting off the brake. Faster than an idling rental, then, suddenly felt neck-snapping. With 0-60 in the car's performance envelope for the first time in years, the boys decided it was time for some cold, hard numbers to give perspective to our 7-second goal. Pulling over to the side of the nearest level road, Chris grabbed the stopwatch and Jared buried the, uh, Diesel pedal. Twenty-two seconds later, the needle finally quivered past the big 6-0.
Science dictated turning around and running the other way to eliminate the effects of wind and whatever subtle incline they may not have noticed, but seriously, would it matter if it was really 21 seconds? Instead, they kept the hammer down all the way to Brooklyn, stopping only when they reached Ralph and John and Sons Auto Repair. The shop's Dynojet would offer all the science needed at this point. As home of several pavement-melting Mustang drag cars, these guys don't flinch when a car makes 700 hp, but they had never seen a dyno number like this. When the computer was done crunching our Rabbit's run, it spit out a peak of 33 hp. After Ralph and John and a few of the sons removed the air filter, it made 34. But, again, does it really matter?Back to that long drive to Regina: Against all odds, and with the last 400 miles gingerly driven on 2-inch-thick sheets of ice, the boys clatter up to CWS Tuning just before sunset, still traveling under their own power. The dying engine has consumed nearly a gallon of oil and a gallon of antifreeze. In preparation for their next breakdown, Jared had memorized a prioritized list of objects close at hand and the order in which he would burn them to stay warm. Chris, thankfully, was near the bottom of that list.
From here on out, we're in the very capable hands of Cam Waugh. In the days leading up to their unlikely arrival, Cam had purchased a 2003 1.9-liter TDI engine from a Jetta and an 02A five-speed transmission from a '98 TDI (the '98s had taller gearing that will help with our mileage goals) and had test-fit them in a rusted-out European-spec 1980 Rabbit GTI. So all the engine mounts, plumbing, axles and wiring are already ready. Time to bust out the wrenches and get dirty.
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