Sparkle Pony has Black Death - Time to see Dr. A

Hundreds of years ago a devastating illness swept across Europe, taking out large swaths of the population, and turning everything black.  It did this by loosening the fuel injector hold down bolt and allowing exhaust gases to escape from the cylinder. The gases spray across the top of the cylinder head and, over time, accumulate into a crispy, deep fried, chicken-waffle that envelopes all the fuel injectors.  Unbeknownst to most people, the Black Death is still alive and viciously attacks engines of Dodge Sprinters.

And it was unbeknownst to us too until we removed the cylinder head cover, peered inside with our curious little noses, and saw the devastation.  Our fuel injectors were under a thick coating of crispy, deep fried, chicken-waffles.  Dan suggested we simply eat the chicken-waffles, which is his solution for most things, but Delilah threw that idea straight out of his noggen with a firm bonk.

The black chicken-waffles encrusted all over the fuel injectors

Dan is not pleased with his sooty thumb

 It was time to call Dr. A.

For those of you that have not heard about Dr. A let me inform you.  Dr. A is a mechanic of German descent who was born into the world with a wrench in one hand and a mop of fantastic hair in the other - which he promptly wrenched onto his head and still sports to this day.  At age 3, his parents returned home to see their Volkswagen in pieces in the yard and Dr. A with a grease smudged nose, sipping a glass of chocolate milk atop the engine block. At age 5, he fixed a flat tire just by looking at it.  And at age 12, he was contracted by Q himself to build an invisible, indestructible, flying car for the British.

So it was quite clear that this was the man we had to see.  Luckily, Dr. A resides in Pittsburgh, a short 3 hour drive from Baltimore, and so one sunny Saturday we scooted on up to see him.  As we pulled up, he ambled over to us with his fantastic blond mop of surfer hair, cut-off sweatpants, and the premier mechanic footwear sought after around the globe - Crocs.  We popped the hood, he grabbed the wrench that was welded to his hand at birth, and went to work.  2 of our injectors were leaking we had spent around a baker's dozen hours carefully excavating the injectors with screwdrivers, toothbrushes, toothpicks, and other dental hygiene instruments before we left. They were now far from clean and shiny, but at least not caked with chicken-waffles.  With one fell swoop (what is a fell swoop?) Dr. A simultaneously removed the old injectors and installed the new ones.  After a celebratory pizza party of the world's best Feta-Spinach-Onion pizza (possibly the only thing in this post that is not exaggerated) we shook hands with the world's most renowned Sprinter mechanic and his family and headed back to Baltimore with an engine that did not sputter like an old boat and did not smell like a flatulent skunk. It was a happy day for us all.

For the factoids among us:    Black Death is really a term used by Sprinter enthusiasts to describe fuel injector leakage.   Dr. A  is a real man, named Andy Bittenbinder, that knows more about Sprinters than likely anyone else alive.

In other news...we did this today!