From kragen at pobox.com  Mon Aug  6 21:54:15 2007
From: kragen at pobox.com (Kragen Javier Sitaker)
Date: Mon Aug  6 21:54:16 2007
Subject: Magic Bus transmission died
Message-ID: <20070807015415.GA32195@canonical.org>

So we've been back in the SF Bay Area for almost two months now, and
some of that time, we've been driving the 1982 Volkswagen Vanagon that
we lived in when we drove around the US.  Last night, I was dropping off
some friends at their house in San Francisco before going back across
the Bay to Oakland, where we were staying, and I noticed that second
gear was making kind of a funny sound.

It sounded kind of like a circular saw cutting wood, or a Dremel tool or
a grinding wheel cutting metal.  It didn't make the sound all the time,
but it made it every once in a while.  I decided to stop using second
gear and go to a mechanic first thing in the morning.

It was 23:15, and I'd made it almost to the Bay Bridge from San
Francisco to Oakland when I ran into a dead-stopped traffic jam.  I
sighed.  I had run into this traffic jam a week or two earlier ---
during Bay Bridge construction, the entrance onto the bridge funnels
down to one lane, and the traffic is quite slow.  That time, I had spent
80 minutes waiting to get onto the bridge.

But I had thought that construction didn't start until midnight.

I didn't want to spend another 80 minutes waiting, so I got off the
freeway in downtown SF and started trying to make my way to the Highway
92 bridge, about 25 miles to the south.  And then, probably on Fifth
Street, as I shifted from first gear into third, skipping second, the
violent vibrations of the van warned me that the pavement was corrugated
--- the way it is on the edges of freeways to warn you that you've
fallen asleep and are about to go off the road.

I hit the clutch and the brakes to slow down, and the vibration
instantly stopped.  But when I let the clutch back out again, it was
back.  So it wasn't the pavement after all --- it was third gear that
was corrugated.

I couldn't very well drive across the Bay Bridge with just first and
fourth gears, so I found a parking space and called Beatrice.  "I'm not
going to make it tonight," I told her.  "The transmission just died."

I slept in the van (very comfy, as always --- it's a wonderful vehicle
as long as it's not moving) on Brannan at Fifth.  At 6:30 in the
morning, awakening with a very full bladder, I quickly walked a couple
of blocks to the Caltrain station to pee, then bought a one-quart bottle
of Powerade across the street, so I'd have something to pee in if I
needed to pee again later.  

After completing a minor exhaust-system repair that we'd been putting
off (the muffler had come detached again, fairly soon after the last
time Beatrice had reattached it), I drove the van in first gear to a
mechanic, who agreed that the transmission needed rebuilding or
replacing, and quoted US$1100 or so to overhaul it --- plus parts.  Or
US$275 to take the current transmission out and put in a new one --- not
including the cost of the transmission, which they mark up by 20%.

So now we're not really sure what's going to happen with our beloved
Magic Bus.  We weren't planning to keep it --- we wanted to sell it
anyway --- but it hardly seems worth it to spend another $500-$1000
every few months to replace more major parts.  Last year, at the end of
our trip, we spent about $1000 on parts to rebuild the engine, which I
did myself, and then another $2000 on other miscellaneous repairs ---
including some damage that I suspect was incurred while towing it to the
garage.

Tonight we're staying with relatives in Oakland after a few days of
staying with friends in San Francisco.  We're spending the rest of the
week housesitting for an out-of-town friend in SF.