Po thing…
WARNING: Automobile Shop talk is contained in the following entry. Feel free to skip it if such matters bore you.
ONWARD THEN
Once again the po bug isn’t feeling too hot. To see the po thing all broken down just hurts me. IT HURTS ME I TELL YOU!!!
This time…
If you remember last week, I was having some issues with a shredded alternator belt. While waiting for a few hours for AAA to pick me up, I found the time to replace it and get on my way back home. The car still wasn’t behaving properly and I attributed it to an almost dead battery.
Since I had some free time today, I though I would roll over to Advance Auto Parts and get the battery charged for free. I unscrewed the bolts and carried it on in only to find that the battery was good!
“Alas,” I thought, ‘it’s some brand new thing now!”
I put the battery back and poked around the engine. I noticed the alternator belt was tighter than it should be, so I replaced it with a different one I had just to see if it would make any difference (much to the delight of the store’s patrons. I was AKA’d out, but I was getting dirty with my car. They were amazed)…
Started the car…let it run for a while and took my foot off the pedal to see if it would run by itself…it seemed like it might hold on so I ran back to look at the engine to see if anything looked out of place.
There was some gas leaking…
And the engine shut off shortly thereafter.
One of the members of my audience suggested that I take the po bug to a Volkswagen shop nearby. He gave me directions and I thought, why not…it doesn’t sound far.
Wrong. WRONG!
That man had me almost out in Union City!
AND I never found the place!
(Mind you, this is still me driving in a car I cannot stop in or else the engine will shut off).
I gave up hope of finding the place once I realized how far out I was and turned around to head back to campus. I managed to keep the car from going idle at stoplights…until…I got back on campus.
I TELL YOU!
Exactly 2 blocks from my parking spot, I slipped up and let the car go idle.
AND THE CAR WOULD NOT START BACK UP FOR ANYTHING!
By the way, BOOOO to Tech students! If I saw a cute car like that with its emergency lights on, I would definitely stop to help! Ten minutes and hundreds of cars went by with me sitting at a light with my emergency lights on and it was a police officer WHO PASSED BY ME AT FIRST…who finally stopped.
I was like…
“…”
We pushed the car to the side of the road and he drove me back to my dorm. This time, I did an online AAA request and got a call within 10 minutes saying the tow truck would be there in 30.
I was thinking, “yeah right, that’s what you said LAST time and it took 3 hours” but I started the walk to the car anyway (it wasn’t far).
Got a few calls to the effect of, “I saw your bug stranded…” LOL…
This time AAA came through. I was only at the car for about five minutes before the truck pulled up. We took it a couple of feet… (okay more like a quarter of a mile) to my parking spot and that was that.
I think the issue is either with the carburetor or the fuel pump as the engine runs with fuel from the accelerator pump, but not when it’s idle. It’s too dark outside to really see what’s going on back there though so I guess I’ll just have to see tomorrow.
Car enthusiasts: any other suggestions as to what may be wrong?
Stats:
Fuel Level: Full
Oil Level: Good
Battery Power: Good
Symptoms:
(1) The car turns over but will not start up
(2) If there is a rare instance in which the car does start up, the driver has to tap the accelerator to keep it running
