Here at FCP Euro, we like to take care of everyone, especially those who are a part of the family. One of those family members is our resident photographer Ralph Rodriguez who has been with us since Sept 2015. Minutes before leaving for vacation Ralph’s VW Rabbit had a minor mishap, his Rabbit would not start.
As the rabbit is a manual transmission vehicle he managed to roll start the vehicle and traveled about a ¼ mile before his second mishap, the timing belt snapped. Some words to describe Ralph at this point include frustrated, anxious, disappointed and the thought of selling the car crossed his mind more than once. As you can already tell, Ralph has phenomenal luck with cars.
In most instances a snapped timing belt means catastrophic engine failure as the engine's pistons contact the valves and bend them killing compression. That engine design is referred to as an interference engine. The ABA engine in Ralph’s Rabbit happens to be a non-interference design.
A small FCP Euro crew took it upon themselves to get the car back up and running, however we didn’t want the car to just run we wanted him to come back to something truly special. We’re expanding our headquarters into a new content creation space and local pickup center, which we were fortunate enough to be able to use for the surprise.
The first hurdle was the trying to determine the source of the timing belt failure. Our investigation revealed the timing cover had been modified in order to swap in the ABA engine and the cover was rubbing on the belt causing it to fail. Jason our resident Volvo doctor (a closet VW enthusiast) happened to have a 2.0 timing tensioner tool in his arsenal and Jess our resident Rabbit enthusiast guided us through the ins and out of the procedure and provided her Bentley manuals. We elected to install the timing belt sans timing cover, this dealt with the interference issue and had the added benefit of “cool factor.” Seeing some of the internals at work while the engine is running is certainly akin to a watch with exposed running gear.
With the car moving under its own power again the team moved on to fixing some of the additional issues we noticed. The car lacked a safe battery bracket, an exhaust system and to put it bluntly it was filthy. Some sheet steel, threaded rod and a cutting wheel remedied the battery bracket situation pretty quickly. It’s far from pretty however it’s safe. We also took the liberty of upgrading his battery terminals while we were in there. The car was obnoxiously loud, the kind of loud that attracts the wrong attention as it consisted of a cherry bomb with a 3 inch downturn. Nate got out the welder and installed a more appropriate diameter Techtonics Tuning exhaust featuring a resonator and a Magnaflow muffler.
The car is now safe, sounds fantastic and runs. On to the cosmetics, Jess attacked the interior with Goo Gone, not normally used on an interior however it was the only product that would remove the random sticky patches of who knows what that was scattered across his interior. She also vacuumed the carpets, cleaned the glass, and used a plastic restorer on the plastic and vinyl trim. I then cut and buffed some of the sketchiest single stage paint I have ever worked with to bring the shine back to Ralph’s wonderful machine.
Thank you to everyone for keeping it a secret from Ralph. Also, huge shout out to everyone who stuck around, took photos and videos, supervised, cleaned, vacuumed, welded, and ultimately wrenched on Ralph's car to get it up and running before his return!
