We made a second attempt at getting the bus up to the VW shop – this time, Success! I’m taking the bus to Midwest Autosavers, about 35 miles north, and I’ve been wanting to get it up there to get a thorough mechanical inspection and body work estimate.
We set off around 8am – the bus started up like a charm – and Noelle followed behind. I made it easily past the spot where we had to turn around last time, made it through the harrowing Rt. 59 / I88 interchange, and trundled on up the road. After the first couple of red light stops I had pretty much figured out how to get the thing to shift from 1st to 2nd and up to 3rd smoothly without hesitation or backfiring – yay! Eventually, I got up the nerve to accelerate and shift up to 4th gear – press the gas, get the speedo to read about 40MPH, press the in clutch, lift off the gas, pull the shifter to 4th, let out the clutch while reapplying the gas – yeah I’m that good! The bus felt most at home running in 4th gear at what the speedometer said was between 40 and 45mph. Anything over that and the steering started to feel a little wild, or maybe it was the fact that I was hurtling headfirst down a road in a frickin bouncy tin can.
In fact, the bus kind of felt like it was bouncing all over the place with every bump in the road – and with the Illinois roads in as bad a shape as they are, sometimes I wondered if anything would break! We did have one (well actually two) mishaps. After hitting one particularly nasty bump in the road, I thought I heard a metal clanging noise – a minute later Noelle called me on the phone: “Do you realize you just lost another hubcap” I’m like “WTF another one?? Why didn’t you call me after the first one?!” Turns out the first one fell off early on, Noelle just stopped in the road and picked it up – I kept trundling on in the bus completely clueless (its loud in there ok). The second hubcap went flying into the trees on the side of the road, so we parked the bus and circled back to retrieve our precious escapees.
With that being the only real problem, I’m calling this trip an extreme success – the bus ran well in all gears, I have learned how to drive it, and the engine performed beautifully. We’ve got it to the shop, and I’m looking forward to getting a professional opinion on how much this baby is going to cost!
Also check out this sweet action shot; yeah, I’m way too cool for school:
