Automobilwiederherstellung

Lola's dash lights now work. The potentiometer wasn't working, and my temporary fix was to wire the terminals together. It's nice being able to tell exactly how fast I'm going at night, rather than making an educated guess. I also fixed the odometer with a little bit of blue Locktite. No luck on the clock (I don't want to bend the bezel) or the gear indicator (I'm beginning to think I don't have the indicator cable). Progress is progress, though.

Last weekend I picked up my old Mercedes, which I've dubbed "Lola," from Santa Cruz. It was getting some work done at a shop down there and living in my friend Chuck's carport. After a tune up and some transmission work, she's running like a dream.

I got four new tires put on yesterday, and continued my quest to remove the instrument panel to fix the speedometer, clock, shift indicator, and replace the dash lights. Late last night, I finally got the damn knurled nut that holds the panel in place by squeezing my hands way up behind the dash and barely getting enough purchase to unscrew the nut. Finding it took, conservatively, two hours of probing around and feeling for the nut.

Thanks to the good folks at the Vintage Mercedes forum, I've got enough info to take on a lot of these repairs myself.

After this, I'll move on to refinishing the wood trim around the doors and figuring out a better sound system. I'll eventually have it repainted and reupholstered, but that's a ways away.

I filled up my Jetta today with a tank of B100 biodiesel, a diesel fuel made without petroleum. It's made from vegetable oils, usually soybean. A commercial fueling station in San Jose started selling B100 a couple months ago, and I wanted to give it a shot.

The drive home was uneventful, and I couldn't tell the difference. The exhaust supposedly smells like french fries. I'll have to check next time. It was pricey compared to regular diesel (around $2.70 a gallon), but it's not as polluting, and nobody's fought a war over soybean farmland yet.

My older sister got in to an accident back in January on the 101 down in L.A. that left her with a totalled car, but thankfully no significant injuries. She needed a new car, and liked driving my RAV, so I sold it to her.

I had been thinking about selling the RAV for a little while, and was casually noting other cars to buy. Since I bought Lola, my sky blue 1973 Mercedes 280SE 4.5, I felt I should get a more environmentally friendly car for commuting. Lola is a V8 that gets maybe 13 or 14 mpg. It looks snazzy, though.

I was considering the new hybrids from Toyota and Honda, but was a little worried about the long-term reliability of such a new and different car. I also wasn't exactly crazy about the looks of either the Prius or Insight.

In the process of reading about high-mileage cars, I came across the Volkswagen TDI, a modern diesel engine with a turbo charger and direct fuel injection. Yesterday, I bought a new VW Jetta GLS TDI in silver, which gets 40-50 mpg and is a lot of fun to drive.

The engine doesn't have a lot of horsepower (90), but does have a lot of torque, so it feels agile and zippy. It has good passing power, but I won't be hauling a large trailer full of lead any time soon with it. The interior is very nice, with comfortable seats, an instrument panel that lights up in purple and red at night, and a nice stereo.

All of the problems with diesel cars from the past have been fixed: no bad smells when the car starts up, no rattling at idle, and no black smoke from the exhaust. Since diesel fuel doesn't need to be as heavily refined and contains more energy than unleaded fuel, there are some real environmental advantages to using a diesel engine. Diesel engines also produce less CO2 than gas engines. I can also use biodiesel fuel with no modifications should it become more widespread. Biodiesel is made from plants, and apparently gives off a pleasant french fry/popcorn odor when burned.

There are some drawbacks, though. The quality of diesel fuel in the US is far lower than in Europe, where almost half of all cars are diesel. There's a lot of sulpher in US diesel, which helps contribute to acid rain, although California has stricter diesel fuel regulations than other states, and in 2006 all diesel fuel in the US must be ultra-low sulpher. Diesel also produces more particulate matter than gasoline, and while the engines and catalytic converters in modern diesels make this much less of a gap, it's there nonetheless.

Even with these qualifications, though, I still think the benefits are clear. I'll burn 4 or 5 times less gas than a typical SUV per mile, and 2 times less than a typical car on the highway. The impact on the environment will be lessened when ultra-low sulpher gas becomes widespread by 2006, and even more so when biodiesel is available in my area. The car itself is stylish, fun to drive, and economical.