“Gaia” - 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit

Build list coming - stay tuned!

I credit “Gaia” with being the car that changed my life, and turned me into a mechanic.

In the winter of 2006, (halfway through college) I packed up all my stuff and left on a cross-country road trip of an undetermined length to cleanse my gypsy wanderess soul and redefine what I wanted out of life.

Backstory:

Halfway through college, I had fallen quite out of love with academia. I felt lost and miserable, deeply misunderstood by my peers and faculty. I had recently read the nonfiction book Into the Wild, and despite its tragic ending, the idea of a solo road trip began calling to me. So, I dropped all of my classes, emptied my savings account to buy an old GTI, and embarked on a cross-country road trip. I had no destination in mind outside of the vague idea of heading to Alaska, no phone to keep me connected to friends or family back east, a shitty Walmart tent in my trunk, and a bicycle (my mobility device plan B) on my roof rack. But for the first time in a long time, I felt happy. I felt free.

My intention was to head up to Alaska, but something stopped me. I've been traveling for a while and the fuel crisis was starting to happen. Gas was $6 a gallon, and my V6 sports car was a guzzler at 22-25 MPGs. I stopped in the Portland area to visit a friend, (where, coincidentally I had my first mechanical issue and was able to borrow tools and resolve it - my truly first mechanical undertaking ever!) and find a short term job to get the fuel funds back up. It was then that I accidentally happened upon an 'alternative fuels club' meeting.

I assimilated into the bohemian Portland culture and soon found myself attending the regular meet-ups of the alternative fuels club on a weekly basis. There was an ongoing fuel crisis at the time, and as a broke semi-college-student, I thought free gas was the coolest concept I’d ever heard of.

It was around that time that I sold my GTI to buy a genuine piece of junk that a club member helped me find: a VW Rabbit with a 1.5 NA diesel engine. She was a total lemon, but with the help of the club members, I converted it to run on waste vegetable oil. It was my first big automotive engineering project, and the hands-on creative problem-solving left me feeling more inspired, invigorated, and generally fulfilled than I’d felt in years. Perhaps ever. 

"Gaia" is a 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit powered by a 1.5 liter naturally aspirated diesel engine paired to a four-speed manual transmission. The exterior was white with a baby blue vinyl interior. She lacked many of the creature comforts that I had enjoyed on my ‘96 GTI: no air conditioning, no power door locks, no power windows, no CD player, and in the heat of the summer, the seats stuck to your bare legs. She was perfect. So, I sold my reliable, cute, sporty, rare 2-door blackish purple GTI with only 120k miles with perfect maintenance history for this old hunk of junk with over 300k on the clock. I made a little money on the deal, which I needed because the Rabbit instantly broke down as I drove it away.

Yes, that's right - I'm on the other side of the country, I know NO ONE, have no job, my family is over 2,500 miles away, and I bought a piece of junk to drive home in (if I ever decided to return) good life choices, Faye!

Well, it actually was, because that car constantly breaking down changed my life.

I couldn't afford for someone else to fix it, but I could afford tools and the car came with a basic repair manual, and that car literally taught me to be a mechanic. It was my first real hands-on experience. Many people think that I grew up in a repair shop or that I went to school for automotive, but in reality, the first time I held a wrench was in late 2006, when I replaced a starter motor on my GTI. So almost everything I was learning for the first time - on this car.

As that summer in Portland came to an end, so did my online courses. If I still wanted any hope of finishing my degree, I needed to head back east and return to campus. I loaded my trunk with jugs of filtered waste vegetable oil and embarked on the return voyage, promising myself that I would return to Portland one day. 

The fact that my Rabbit made the 2,500-plus mile trip back to New England is a minor miracle. My automotive knowledge at the time was so limited, I had no understanding of how broken that vehicle was, let alone how to diagnose or fix her myriad problems. By the time I pulled into my mom’s driveway to pick up everything that she’d been storing for me, the car was emitting some epic rod knock, had no power brakes, a leaking injection pump, a timing belt that was surely about to go, not to mention a leaking wheel cylinder, blown struts, and a sketchily rigged up electric fan. To say that the car was running on hopes and dreams might be the understatement of the century. But, given the state she was in, she was also the perfect learning tool. Her engine blew as I pulled into a student parking spot back on campus.

That led to my first ever engine rebuild, after I found a local VW shop by chance, found a mentor, and accidentally happened upon the best apprenticeship of my life.

If you haven't ever experienced it, there is NOTHING like driving a vehicle powered by an engine that you built. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Eventually, I also swapped the 4-speed for a 5-speed transmission, and ended up blowing up the little 1.5l diesel again (they're known lemons) and completed my first engine swap (I chose the very easy drop-in ABA 2.0 engine - found one complete with harness and ECU for $300 locally!!) to bring her to the powerplant that she’s still rockin' to this day. While people best know me now for my Supras, I'll always be a VW enthusiast at heart. This car changed my life, and led me to the best career I could have ever asked for. Hers was the first VIN, and first vehicle portrait that I have tattooed on my body. I will never ever sell her!✨