On Tuesday, March 4, 2003, at 11:15 PM, Moose wrote:
You appear to ahve some interesting karma, Rob.
Yeah, it's been a life-long thing. That Audi story is actually worse
than that. I had moved to Hollywood to go to school and a friend of my
mother's loaned me the Audi, so it wasn't even my Audi to begin with.
Then it caught on fire on the fourth of July and we pulled into a gas
station and used their extinguisher to put out the back seat. The car
never stopped running and after the fire was out we decided to try to
get home in it, anyway. The stench was unbelievable, but we opened the
sun roof and made two trips home (nobody could or would ride in the
back and we were carrying five) and got everyone back in one piece. The
next day I decided to try to start the car and it fired right up. I was
amazed, but my friend James Bircumshaw and I drove down to the Sunset
Strip to a guitar shop and while we were inside someone stole the Audi.
A beat-up Audi Fox with the back seat burnt to a crisp and someone
stole it. The owner was coming to town the next week and I kept trying
to imagine how I was going to tell him about it, but on the way to L.A.
he got into a knife fight with a hooker in Nevada and was killed, so I
never had to explain the situation to him.
The problem with the Fox and many other VW/Audis can only occur if the
wrong battery is installed, the positive terminal cover is omitted. or
some non-standard positive terminal connector is installed without
insulation.
This thing was a real beater. I'd be surprised if the whole thing
wasn't put together with coat-hangers and bungee cords.
The MGB blew a fuel line, which ran through the back of the dashboard.
Suddenly it started pouring gasoline on my legs. Some must have got
into the engine compartment, too, because about the time I realized I
was drenched in gasoline flames started shooting out from under the
hood. We were leaving a Grateful Dead concert in Atlanta and had made
it about a hundred miles south. We pulled into a gas station and they
had no extinguisher, no running water and no telephone. We just had to
watch it burn in the parking lot.
The Tercel was in Rhode Island. I was headed up to Boston and stopped
in Cranston at a Jiffy Lube. They didn't tighten the drain plug after
the oil change and on the way up to Boston it came out. First all the
instruments went dead. That got my attention. Then fire started pouring
out from under the hood. That really got my attention. That was in '91.
I haven't had any other car fires since then (knocking wood).
-Rob
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