Happy St. Patrick's Day

[CalAltaDubber]

Top O' the morning to you.

Have a happy St. Paddy's day.

[Briano1234]

Why thank you. I have about 20Lbs of corned beef slowly roasting in the oven, and a few bottle of Sharps in the fridge.......

[Calimus]

Indeed happy St. Patty's day. Have a bunch of veggies on slow simmer for the day and will cook up the corned beef a little later today.

[CalAltaDubber]

Me, I just have plenty of Guiness

[Briano1234]

Have 12 folks over for dinner cook 20 pounds of Corned Beef, and the wife says sure take some home.... I get up, and there isn't any left for my Reuban I tell you it is a travesty. What unmitigated gall......................................... I guess that old Irish axiom is truthful 'A man and his Corned Beef are soon departed'.

Oh the Humanity.....Oh the Humanity of it all...............................


Ok there was really about 3lbs left...... but just saying.

[Calimus]

3lbs is enough for a ruben or two, stop yer fussin.

I on the other hand had something to fuss about. Watched the cabbage, carrots, potatoes and corn beef simmer all day, making sure it didn't dry out. Cleared up the headlights on the A6 while that was going on (sanding and polishing). Picked up the living room, vacuumed and took the trash out. I took care of all this since Cristine was working at the office yesterday. So she pulls up in the driveway, I go to greet her and she drops a land mine on me. The beetle was stuck in 4th gear and the shifter flops around like a limp noodle. She's all sad because she broke the car. I tell her I'll figure out what it is and for her to attend to the food since my mother was coming over for dinner.

I tear the air box out grab hold of the shift mechanism at the tranny (MKIV cars are all cable shift) and am able to get it moving through the gears but I'm hearing some clunking from inside the cabin of the car. A sigh of relief since I now know the tranny is fine and it's something with the shift box. Said enough for now, time for dinner.

Got back to it after dinner and found that indeed the cable that controlled forward and back shifter movement had come off the shift lever, but no way to get at it without dropping the shift box out the bottom of the car. It can wait till morning. Get up this morning and tear into it. Drop the exhaust, heat shielding and shiftbox. Get that open and find the culprit. A bushing used with that cable slit and allowed the cable to pop off. All the bushing pieces are there and as I put them together it looks a lot like the one of the bushings used on our A1's. Light bulb goes on. I grab one of my bushing kits and find one that's close enough. I check the fitting, yup, this should work. An hour later and everything is back in the car with good old A1 parts and it all works.

During all this I found that the normal solution to all this is to replace the entire shifter assym which runs about $300, or see if they dealer carry's just that cable for around $170 (that's what the 5-speed cables go for, but I couldn't find 6-speed cables listed anywhere). So I'm glad my solution worked since I'd be waiting till at the very least, mid-week before I could have gotten any of the parts in. I do however feel like I went a few round with Mike Tyson as working in and under that damn beetle requires a contortionist and my fat ass certainly isn't in that league.