A Lesson in Humility

Heading back from the store in downtown Cleveland Heights, I pulled up to a traffic light and the car died. I regarded that as unusual of course, it wasn't especially cold (mid 30's), the car was warmed up fully and had been running fine just a moment before. I cranked the engine with the key, it ran briefly, and then it died again. The light turned green and the older couple in the conversion van behind me began to honk their horn. I tried the starter again a couple of times, then jumped out of the car and pushed it into the right hand lane. No parking. Run it up to the light (luckily it's a slight downhill grade here) and of course it goes red. Jump in and hit the brakes, get out again and wait for the signal. I must have looked quite comical, sitting there in moderately heavy downtown traffic ready to push my car, waiting for the light.

It's green! I took my right leg out of the car (it had been on the brake) and gave 'er all I had. Traffic was such that I could keep up just a little bit behind the car in front of me, we're talking about a Volkswagen Beetle with a very weak "engine" (that would be me). I'm happy I could lighten up everyone's day as they gawked at me running across the intersection with my car, ha ha, yeah right. About another ten yards from the intersection was a parking lot so I turned the wheel and went in there. Then I kind of wondered what the hell I was going to do.

Oh, did I not mention all of my in-the-car tools and parts, 89 pounds of them that I kept in the car at all times, were in a largish box on their way to Georgia at this time?? Yeah, that's what I said too. It was dark and I had absolutely no tools. I did what I could, I checked the gas gauge and the needle was a little bit below the reserve line. I ran around to the back and checked the idle-cutoff solenoid, it clicked back and forth merrily when I disconnected the wire. All the wires were where they should be (I checked), nothing appeared out of the ordinary. No demons either. As usual I blamed the damned carburetor for clogging up, which over half the time was what happened to stop Zero in her travels. She had a rusty gas tank that I had never gotten around to replacing. The symptoms indicated a problem somewhere with fuel delivery. I called my friend Jim who lived very near where I happened to have broken down and he towed me to his place in his '78 bus. Those fuel injected 2.0L engines got some pull to 'em, they do! Due to my lack of tools and parts Jim said he'd get the car running so that the dude who was buying it from me could put it on his trailer. Imagine that, my Zero a trailer queen for a day!

Dave (the guy I sold my car to) and I did the paperwork down at Case and drove to Jim's place. I had received an email from Jim earlier in the day saying that the car was running again. He gave no indication of what had been wrong with the car in the email so I was very curious. I asked him what had been wrong with it when I arrived. Jim walks out with this big grin on his face.

"So what was wrong with it? Clogged carburetor?"

"No."

"Um, ignition coil? Distributor?"

"I don't think you really want to know!" he said, still grinning like a cat in an aquarium.

I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach, must be something seriously wrong with it. Then I was just a little puzzled -- the car was running. Must mean I did something dumb.

"Come on, what was wrong with it?" I was begging him to tell me so I could avoid future recurrences of stupidity. I was really clueless about what it might be though.

"You ran out of gas."

There was a brief pause while I tried to discover if he was joking with me or not. I asked and he said he wasn't.

Ran out of gas.

That was pretty dumb! But...how? The gauge told me I still had a little less than a gallon, and from experience I should have had a little less than two gallons! I guess Zero had wanted to spend a little more quality time with me, that or it was pissed off at having been sold to finance work on my bus Misato. Either way, I gained a measure more respect for the little Volkswagen, and also decided from now on to fix things if they were funky at all. The sender was probably sticking in the gas tank or out of adjustment. I also decided not to ship my damned tools until the car was gone.

We joked about my forgetfulness as the car was loaded onto the trailer. We said our goodbyes and Dave drove off down the street, took a left at the corner...and my Zero, my first car ever and my first VW, the car that served me through high school and took me to college, the car I learned how to wrench on VWs with, the car carrying the 1600DP engine that I had rebuilt that had carried me between Georgia and Ohio four times, was gone.

Andrew W. 2/6/99

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