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Captain Slow Charging
So, it was the bearing. I got it changed in Lithuania very cheaply along with the other side; the struts had to come off to do them and the place only charged 52 euro for labour. From that point on the trip really got going the way it was supposed to.
No longer having to trundle along to play it safe, we crossed over to Poland and drove to Warsaw without a hitch. In there, we stopped at the old FSO factory, starting the idea that I'd try to "catch" all the crappy Eastern cars on this trip. When we drove from Wroclaw to Dresden, I was able to stop at a Trabant repair and restoration garage!
After that, we drove to Eisenach for the night, and the next morning we visited the Automobilewelt Eisenach museum with all the weird and wonderful Wartburg cars.
From Eisenach, we drove to the Ringmeet campsite via B-roads as I wanted to avoid another boring Autobahn run at 120km/h for hours.
The tires were still not quite balanced, so after asking around, I managed to get the car in at a Porsche garage of all places.
They didn't want any money for their work.
And as the Ring was open on Saturday reasonably well, I wanted to get a lap in. Slow and careful, but a completed Ringlap!
From Ringmeet, we continued north towards Hannover and on Monday we were able to visit the Wolfsburg factory grounds with the Polo.
The Volkswagen historic department people were really excited about the car and how we had managed to bring it back, and along with a factory tour, a museum tour and free Autostadt tickets I received a very official "birth certificate" for the car, detailing its build date and specs. It was a great visit and a great feeling to "return" the car home, inside the gates, even for a short while.
The rest of the trip was all about spending a couple days in Berlin, just taking it easy, letting the Polo rest in the hotel garage. We again caught up with Dr Grip and had a couple leisurely beers along with good Berlin kebab.
On Wednesday night, we fueled up the car again and drove to the Travem?nde ferry. Yesterday morning, we loaded up the Polo with some IKEA supplies and ran into unexpected problems. It wouldn't really run right, it kept bucking and dying on me, and a garage close by tuned the carb richer so it would make the trip home. Halfway up north in Pori it ran the worst it has ever ran, like absolute garbage. At that point it had maybe 15l of fuel in the 42l tank, so I bought 30 eur's worth of 98 ? and immediately fixed all running problems it had. Right off the bat it drove home without issue. So, did the ferry ride release some gunk in the tank? Was the last German tankful of 95 Super somehow bad? What gives?
Anyway, the car is now home in one piece, like we are. An insane drive, but yet so doable.
Now, it's time to empty the trunk of all the beer.
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Must spread some more yaddi yadda...
