Edmonton: The Pooka Strikes Back

Damanta stopped into Edmonton to say hi to the Yates' and to play the Irish Session on Tuesday July 23 at O'Byrne's Pub on Whyte Avenue. What happened next was unexpected but uplifting just the same...

The Pooka began to stuggle as we slowly advanced towards Alberta's capital along Stony Plain road. This was alarming for two reasons: 1)we needed it in top shape for our tour to the east coast and back to break even and 2) we'd just had it tuned up and adjusted 5 days previous in Vancouver. We'd lost power, it was stalling on idle and everything pointed to a return of the previous symptoms. Bad news all around.

Outside a tea shop on Whyte Ave, Elegwen was searching out VW mechanics in the area on the internet while Jon and I called Ed at the Bug Shop and trouble-shot the things he asked us to. No simple adjustments changed performance and we were stumped. Little did we know that our saviour had already seen us and was on our way.

Westphalia James was driving home from work when he saw us and decided to ride back on his bike to see if he could help. One of the great thing about riding in a Westy is the community of users who feels all your joys and pains and will do anything to improve your experience. I suppose it is like joining some kind of church and when you find religion in your own VW you want to make sure others feel the same power from their own experience. James was there for us when we need him and we'll have to return the favour in the future for another VW owner.

He rode back to Whyte Ave check on us and we were still in dire straits. When he saw we had the Haynes Manual as our repair guide he tut-tutted and said we needed the Jon Muir guide. He then rode back home (25min each way) to get his van and tools. We went to a park down by the river and he trouble shot the distributor, the spark plugs and finally the cylinders. Cylinder 3 had no compression. If you don't know what I am talking about you haven't own an air cooled VW, have you? Don't worry, a week before I didn't know any of this stuff either. While he worked I tried to absorb as much as possible from both him and Muir's book, "How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive". I took a break from my study of mechanics to move our gear (which had to be taken out for James to acess the rear-mount engine) into James' van to protect it from a vicisious thunderstorm that broke as he was perfrming the compression test.

James' opinion was we needed a new distributor wire and a vlave clearance adjustment. However, we might need a new cylinder head which would be a 8-10 hour job costing at least a thousand dollars... He said we should do it at his favourite garage and that he'd call them in the morning to see if they could fit us in. He'd just done 5 hours work for us and was now offering to make calls for us in the morning. We had no choice but to take him for beers.

In the morning, James called me to say the garage was sorry but the guy who works on VW vans was away for two weeks. We had to go to plan B, The Auto Haus. We wanted to avoid the AH because it is a VW dealership and dealerships charge >$100 per hour for labour. However when we got there, Vince listened to our problems, checked it out and agreed to take it on the hoist at the end of the day. We went to do a coffee and pie review at a local restaurant and cross our fingers while he worked and when we returned he said we owed a little more than $100 and were good to go. Vince, you rule.

We took the van straight to O'Byrnes and it felt like a new vehicle. At the session I met up with James and told him the good news. He wished us luck and gave us one of his extra copies of "How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive" before heading home early because he had work in the morning and was up late the previous night (checking our van).

After the session, the folks at O'Byrnes let us put on an impromptu set for our friends the Yates' and their friends. We sold a few CD's and got an offer to come back in September. I can't wait.
Back at the Yates place afterwards the jamming continued into the wee hours. As usual, I took some stick for heading to bed early but I can't help it; that's how I am wired.

We left Edmonton for Canmore in the morning and everything appeared to be going our way. Elegwen told me later that (St.) James bought the compression tester just to help us out! It's amazing what happens to keep you going sometimes...
JO