We inadvertently stayed a few nights extra with George, Sophia, and their 4 children in the small community of La Perla, El Salvador.  I broke the VW while trying to get up the incline and into the driveway of their small 2 room hotel.   The oil filter hit a rock and sheered off.   The 4 quarts of oil dumped out of the engine under pressure in a matter of seconds.  Luckily, the red oil pressure warning light functioned correctly and I was able to get the engine turned off before the cylinders seized up.  We spent the next 2 days coming up with a way to fix the oil system.  The problem was that when the oil filter sheered off, it also took with it about ½ inch of the hollow bolt that it screws into beneath the engine.  We tried in vain to remove the attachment piece with the sheered oil neck, thinking we could get a new one shipped in from the states.  However, to remove this piece you would basically have to take apart much of the engine to get to it, so we needed a different solution.  There was no mechanic in town so it was up to us to fix the van unless we wanted to pay for a costly tow to a mechanic in the larger town of La Libertad about 30 minutes away.  To make a long story short, we figured out we could machine a metal “hockey puck” shaped disk with a series of holes in it and a washer supplied from the busted filter.   I measured the space required for the width of the hockey puck by mashing a tamale into the gap between a new oil filter (I’d brought a few extra ones) and the filter attachment piece.  Ana, my mom, and I rode the chicken bus into La Libertad where there was a machine shop.  After about 10 minutes of discussing what we needed, the shop owner said he could take care of it and an hour and a half later one of his workers had the metal disk made complete to tamale specifications.  We waited another hour to catch a bus back to La Perla, and the next morning we screwed in all of our pieces and added 4 quarts of new oil.  The bus fired right up and has held its oil ever since.

For additional photos click here: Busted VW in La Perla, El Salvador”

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