Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Disaster averted for Ed!

Yesterday I was driving home on SR-201 when I looked at my speedometer and my oil light was on. I have had that light flicker on me when I get low on oil so I gave Ed a little wiggle and the light stayed on. This means 1 of 2 things in an air-cooled bug. 1. You have lost your generator belt or 2. You have lost oil pressure which usually means no oil. I immediately shut off the engine and coasted over to the side of the road. I was hoping to see the generator belt broke but when I opened the deck lid the belt was still on. I then   pulled the dipstick and found no oil on it. That was not good. I looked under the car and there was a growing puddle of oil coming out my engine. That was actually good because it meant I still had some oil in the engine when I shut it down. I quickly noticed that an oil stud from my sump plate had worked it's way out of the case and eventually fell out. I figured it was no problem because I carry lots of oil in the trunk so I just needed to plug the hole and limp it home. I went to the trunk and opened it up. I had no oil at all. AARRGG. I then remembered that when I changes the front beam out I pulled everything out of the trunk area to get access to the beam. I never did put it all back in. I called Dixie and told her to bring me a case of oil, an earplug and some paper towels. As I waited for her to arrive I decided a stick would be a better option to plug the hole then an earplug would so I whittled down a stick and jammed it into the hole. Dixie came to my rescue with oil in hand and I filled it up, fired it up and drove home. Ed seemed no more worse for wear except the stick sticking out of his sump plate. Here is a few shots of the stick and my handy side of the road repair on Ed.
 Hopefully the stud didn't flip up and hit someones windshield when it came out.

So, now I am at a dilemma. I was going to pull Ed's engine out to do a top end on it and fix some annoying oil leaks over the next winter. I need to decide whether to just pull it now, install Tugger's engine in Ed for the summer and fix it, or I can just fix the stud and drive it the rest of the summer then pull it. I can't really decide at the moment. I will keep thinking about it. Check back to see what I decide. I am really glad that I noticed it early enough not to seize up Ed's engine. It is a really good engine and I would of hate to have burned it up.

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