Milwaukee to Houston and back to Milwaukee

I need another car like I need another hole in my head, so I bought CharlieT's Audi TT TDI.

Great - I've always loved the TT and this one has a TDI in it, my better half said I wouldn't have to sleep in it if I bought it, now how do I get it home?

Well, I booked a flight from Milwaukee - Dallas - Houston and figured I'd drive back. Have a friend from college in OK that I have not seen in years, It's summer time so I took a few days off work and figured that it would be a nice drive.

Day 1 - 4:30AM
Alarm clock goes off, check my flights and they're all still on time (Tropical Storm Bill had made land about 150 miles south of Houston at noon the day before). Grab my things, the shuttle shows up right on time and I'm on my way to the airport. So far, so good!

7:10AM flight to land at 9:30 in Dallas - we end up taking off 1 hour late because the maintenance was not done on the plane the night before. They said "the engines need some oil added to them"

Ok, land in Dallas at 10:35, my connecting flight takes off at 10:55 so I can just maybe make it (though it's on the diagonally opposite side of DFW airport). As I'm making my way across the airport, they cancel the flight!

They put me on standby on 2 different flights and confirm me on another. The first standby is delayed 3 hours due to mechanical issues with the plane
The confirmed flight was delayed 2 hours due to the incoming plane being late. The 2nd standby flight was booked full and I didn't make it on. They got me on a 3rd standby (was 13th on the list, then get bumped to 35th) and somehow made it on this flight and finally made it into Houston 6 hours late and at a different airport than planned.

Fortunately Charlie was super flexible and made everything very easy - he picked me up at the airport, drove me to his home, we went over the car, did the deal, signed the papers and I was on my way in less than 2 hours! Awesome - I'm on the road just before 8:00PM, the flights were a hassle, but I'm feeling pretty good, the car is great - Let's drive! I wanted to make the north side of Dallas before stopping for the night, which I did, but not without some more fun and excitement .

At this point it's ~11:00, I'm just coming into the south side of Dallas, I'm starting to get tired, need to get stopped for the night soon because I'm losing the ability to keep focus with my eyes, starting to zone out, etc. I check the map and realize that there's no "straight shot" through this city so I'm trying to figure out just where I am and which ring around the rosie I need to take to get on I35 North. So, I'm right in downtown Dallas on I45, (just before I30 I think) and I downshift from 6th to 5th and the shifter goes limp, not connected to anything, trans is in neutral and I'm in the left lane. That lack of focus from being tired is all gone now - laser sharp and wide awake at this point! Dart across a few lanes and take the nearest exit (which was about 100 yards from the initial sphincter tightening and sinking feeling in my stomach0. Right at the end of the exit was a car repair place of all things so I costed into their parking lot and got out to investigate. It wasn't a bad feeling neighborhood, but there was absolutely no signs of anyone around there and I really didn't want to spend the night there.

I pop the hood, run the transmission through all the gears by hand and they all feel like they're there, leave it in neutral and get back in the car, fire it up and the shifter is connected to something again - Hmm, that's strange. I didn't "fix" anything, but hey, it's working so I'm getting the heck out of here. I take a few minutes to study where I am and where I need to go and set off again. I make my way to 635 which will take me to 35E North and am on a 1 lane 270 degree right hand exit ramp when the shifter goes limp again when I downshift. This is starting to get interesting. So, I coast the rest of the way around the exit (and am now underneath the road I just came from and am in the right breakdown lane - the traffic noise is deafening), get out, pop the hood again, the transmission goes into all the gears by hand again just fine, but I didn't want another repeat. I feel that I've been pretty lucky so far with the two failures I've had - no accidents, no cops, no problems other than I can't shift gears.

Anyway, it seems like I can put it in any gear and it will be fine, so long as I don't try to shift. Well, 3rd gear it is - go go TDI torque . We get started by sacrificing a bit of clutch material and you can do 50-55 MPH at 4000 RPM which is fast enough to be safe at 11:45 PM in downtown Dallas. I make my way to 635, but the only exit I can see is for 35E South so I take it figuring that it will be easier to turn around to get to 35E North than to figure out where I'm at on 635. So I take 35E South, get very lucky to find an exit that I didn't have to stop at to loop around and get on 35E North and I'm on my way (hopefully) out of downtown Dallas, stuck in 3rd gear.

By now, the adrenaline is starting to wear off and the fatigue is setting in hard - I've been up 20+ hours, dealing with all the above travel stress all day and then this so I'm fading fast.

Since I flew in, I had absolutely nothing except my pocket flashlight in terms of tools, so as I'm driving along on 35E North (in 3rd gear at 50 MPH), I'm looking for an exit that has some sort of store with tools I can buy in the morning to see what is going on with this shifter. I spy a Northern Tool store, but can't make the exit in time, but the next exit about a mile down I see a VW dealer on the opposite side of the freeway near some hotels. "Awesome" I think - Hopefully if I need any parts, I can get them there, get this thing fixed and be on my way. So I coast/limp into the EconoLodge, get a room for the night and am glad to have this day over because I'm exhausted. Get into the room and it smells like a wet cat had been holed up in there for about 2 weeks with no ventilation, it's hot, humid and really, really smelly. At this point though, I don't care. I crank the AC, check the bed for "things" and call it a night.

Day 2 - coming tomorrow

Day 2
So a few things I forgot to mention about Day 1

Somewhere south of Dallas, in a construction zone, I ran over something big on the left hand side of the car. I never saw it, but even if I did, there was nowhere I could go. It lifted the whole car up and dropped it back down again. I pulled over and checked things over but didn't see any obvious damage. About 15 minutes later, I start hearing a whistle much more pronounced over 10 psi boost. Sounds like an air hose blowing (not a nice turbo whistle). So, thinking I may have a cracked intercooler from the hit, I limited boost to 10 psi which makes for interesting driving with a GTB2256 on an otherwise stock engine.

I slept for crap even with being exhausted, was up 4-5 times in the night and finally got up at ~6:30. I walked into the service department at Hendrick VW Lewisville when they opened at 7:00 and they were less than helpful, generally rude and didn't have any interest in helping out in any possible way. So, I walked a mile to Northern Tool, waited for them to open at 8:00, bought some tools, walked a mile back to the car and started taking the center console apart in the hotel parking lot. On the plus side of things, I had a nice air conditioned leather upholstered work space so things could have been a lot worse. So, after lots of disassembly I finally see what the problem is.

The front/back cable wasn't connected to the shifter handle anymore. The rubbery/plastic bushing was gone so the ring on the end of the cable came off when I moved the shifter knob to the right. This is all making sense now, but how do I fix it? The shifter box only comes out the bottom which means removing the exhaust and the rear driveshaft which has 12pt internal hex bolts. There's not much access to the bottom of the shifter - I can see in there, but there's no way I'm getting a finger or any tool bigger than a screwdriver in there.

While I was disassembling the interior, the guy in the van next to me was getting himself situated (he was in a wheel chair and living at the hotel for the last 3 weeks since his house burned down - makes my troubles seem pretty trivial). He sees me standing outside the car looking for something and sees the interior in shambles and asks me if he can help. I tell him that I'm looking for a piece of wire so maybe I can hook the shifter cable and pull it back over the peg on the handle. We rummage around a bit and he finds a spiral notebook in his van and I cut about 5 rings out of it, straighten it out, bend a hook on the end and was able to hook the cable and pull it back over the peg on the shifter. From there I bent the wire around the shifter box to keep it pulled in one direction.

This at least allowed me to have 1-4th gears - there wasn't enough flex in the wire to allow me to move the shifter to the right to select 5th/6th. That at least gets me moving again and without killing the clutch. So I drive back to Northern Tool and find some mini bungee cords that have a hook on the end a bit bigger than a fish hook and are about 6" long. 30 for $6.99 so you know they're high quality so I put two on so if one fails, I'm not without a shifter and I have some warning to pull over in a safe place and put another one on. I hooked the other end on the seat rail.

The bungee cords allowed there to be constant pull on the shifter cable to hold it on the peg of the shifter handle when I moved the shifter left/right (the notebook wire didn't flex that much).





Finally, back on the road, with all 6 gears, but I had forgotten about the boost leak so 10 psi was the limit for a while - I needed to get some miles behind me. Up I35 I go and stop for fuel in Ardmore OK. Look over the car, under the hood, etc for a boost leak, damaged inercooler, etc but find no signs of any damage or leakage. Fingers crossed the turbo isn't going out - the sound isn't getting worse which is a good sign for that. Get back on I35 in Ardmore, go 1 exit and I35 is closed. What? Closed? Yep - on the county roads we all go. 3 hours and 12 miles later, traffic is completely stopped so I'm out walking around on the road and get talking to this trucker asking him if he knows what's going on. He said the detour involves a one lane bridge with a stoplight! No wonder we're going nowhere fast. Another hour later we get about another 1/2 mile up the road and they finally start splitting the cars/trucks to take a couple different routes and spread out the traffic. The route I'm on is detoured 3 more times due to high water before I finally get back on I35.

Down the road I go and get to my friends house north of OKC. Get a delicious home cooked meal, find and fix my boost leak (hose started to pull out from under a clamp up by the intake manifold) and I was on my way with my bungee cords holding my shifter together .
From here on out, the trip went pretty well. Got a decent hotel in Kansas and a good nights sleep and had an uneventful rest of the trip - even did a couple hundred miles with the top down!

That's my trip - some hassles along the way, but overall went well in the big picture.
Now to fix my shifter. If anyone knows where to get one of the shifter bushings, let me know!

Here's a picture after I got the shifter box out of the car - easy to see what happened and how I got it back on the road both with the wire and the bungee cords.

FUB---Good read, glad you got it figured out and got back, now get some rest this weekend.

Nice that you made it home.
Beware of construction zones.
My last trip from Monroe La. to Long Island Jan 2015, was fine until
Staten Island Expressway pot hole blew out my front tire.

AlanTDI - I almost had that same thing. I think this happened somewhere in southern OK, but I didn't find it until Missouri when I filled up for fuel



Kind of sucks because the tires are in really good shape otherwise and these are not made anymore so no luck getting a single.

And an awesome service shout out to Jim at DieselGeek for having the parts I need to fix the shifter! I spent a few hours looking for something like this with no luck. I e-mailed Jim on a hope that maybe he knew where to find something like this and he replied in minutes (late at night!) with the perfect solution.

Thanks Jim!!

http://www.dieselgeek.com/Replacement_shift_cable_bushings_for_VW_Audi_p/shift-cablebushings.htm

Matt,

Really glad you got my baby home ok ! I cannot believe that shifter story ! So sorry, I can honestly say I never touched or even removed the shifter box, so had no idea it was like that, or could fail like that.

Your solution was ingenious (what else would I expect from you?!)

Sounds like a fun trip, but I'm having a hard time believing the part about you driving at 4000rpm

Desperate times call for desperate measures

A GTB2260 on an otherwise stock BEW that does not smoke at all isn't exactly what you'd call "torquey" anyway.

Quite the interesting story on bringing the Audi TT TDI back to WI.

What is it with bringing modified TDI's back from TX to WI?

Now there is another AWD TDI in WI.

Hopefully you can make the September 12th dyno day and we can see what both cars are putting down.

Again congrats on the purchase and besides the dyno day you'll have to take it to Road America with me on October 3rd or 4th to see what it can do on a road course.
http://www.mvptracktime.com/

Here is a fix for your shifter.
http://www.usrallyteam.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13_75&products_id=1748

Looking forward to seeing the progress.