Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Treg maintenance

I will be changing out the rear tires and changing oil and filter this weekend.  I will give an update this weekend.  I am doing this before I dig into the bus more to investigate a pretty bad oil leak.  I may be that I tear down the motor to fix (possible cracked case).  So I will do this Treg maintenance before I have my bus in the garage taking up all the space.

I changed the oil and filter on 3-1-10.  All went well.  I used Mobile One 0w-40 and bought the filter, o-rings and new washers for the drain plugs on line from ECS tuning.  Good prices and lots of parts for the Egg.

On 3-19-10, one of the ignition coil packs failed on the egg again.  First time was the #2 and this time was #5.  It cost about $150 at the dealer to get it replaced.

So I started investigating a Vag-Com scan tool for the Egg.  Ross Tech is the one to get but it runs on windows and I have a Mac.  I don't want to run windows on the Mac.  In my investigation, I found a VAD system that uses a Palm pda.  You buy the software and cable from VAD for about $250 and download the software onto the Palm pda and then you can use this to scan your vehicle as the Ross Tech software.  I am going to go the VAD route.  I have bought a pda off of ebay for $30 and should have it in a few days.  I will be purchasing the VAD software once I get the pda in my hands.

If this pda works with the software and I can successfully scan and update the electronics on the Egg, I should be able to see what cylinder has a defective coil pack and replace if for $20 rather than the $150 at the dealer.  The coil pack puller cost about $20 and coil packs themselves are about $20 also.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Over nighter in McCain Valley

Since the bus is running ok, we are going to attempt a one night trip to McCain Valley.  McCain Valley is about an 80 mile trip one way.  Not really far but there are some mountains to get up to get there.  I will drive the bus every day to work this week and see how it does.  As long as no serious problems, we're going.

Well, we never went camping this past weekend.  I had foot surgery the day before and thought that it would be ok for camping the next day (doc said I could do whatever I wanted the next day).  But my feet were too sore for camping. Maybe in two weeks we will try again.  However, we will be taking the Treg rather than the bus.