We’re getting to that time of year where car news worth reporting on becomes scarce. Rather than attempt to dig up sales reports or talk about whatever Elon is doing to piss people off this week, I’m opening it up to you. If you saw something, broke everything, or did anything even remotely car related (or not) this week, sound off in the comments. Hopefully something interesting will happen next week.
Have a good weekend.
About
So the nav system in the 3 hadn’t worked since I had the CMU replaced. Also the clock was occasionally goofy.
Took it to the dealer early Tuesday morning to get it sorted, not especially happy about the whole situation. You spend $985 for a replacement onboard computer, you expect it to work correctly.
45 minutes after I arrive and apparently 15 minutes after the tech shows up, the here’s-what’s-going-on video pops up in my messages while I’m sitting in the waiting area off to the side of the showroom:
Turns out that on the nav’s SIM card there is a lockout switch that disables everything. Somehow, over the course of trying to diagnose the issues with the CMU, the switch was slid to the “off” position.
Cars are too complicated.
Number one son dispatched me to check out a 78 Suburban recently dragged from the woods of Eastern Oregon as a replacement for 96 with incipient bearing failure. This truck was educational since it was the first time I had driven something with a carburetor since 1994. It was also very cranky, wouldn’t shift right and was rejected as too much project. On the plus side it had very little rust and the 350 V8 ran very well, too bad the TH350 was flaky.
In local news, I am preparing for winter with the Blizzaks and a Sno-Park pass on the CX-5 and sandbags in the truck.
I’ll be so rude and repost yesterday’s link about the new Czech EV, a converted UAZ 469, called the Spartan. A 50 year old classic fused with a silent 600 Nm powertrain. It’s just too much hooniversal spirit for anyone to miss. The force is strong with this one:
https://spartan.mwmotors.cz/ev-traditional/
My time is now spent in the woods, trying to procure next year’s firewood. Over the last 10 years, I harvested all the easy trees on my patch here. Now it’s all about tricking trees over the fjord and from the very steepest drops into neat spots to cut them up. It takes ridiculous amounts of time, but…I love it. Wildy difficult, unreasonably dangerous job, but it’s very rewarding.
Dropping a tree is one heck of a rush. I’ve only been cutting wood for about 5 years now, and it’s taken until this year to really feel (confident is the wrong word) ok about my technique for dropping, but generally if it’s not an easy drop, we look for another tree.
I understand your cautiousness! Before I felt confident enough to do this, I had to hit the telephone line in “my” forest a couple of times (there’s 1 user a few kilometers out). There are still occasions when I am baffled by a tree falling in a different direction than planned, but, luckily, none of them surprised me so far this season. I also feel more confident now that I have bought a bigger chainsaw and am better at sharpening the chain.
I don’t mean to be forward, but, how big is your bar? I’ve got a Stihl MS 391 with a 20″ bar, and it can get fatigueing, especially if you’re trying to hold it parallel to the ground. As far as chains, I think I have 5 chains now, and just swap them out when they dull. The local hardware place only charges $8/ea to sharpen.
I had to drop 3 trees to make room for the barn. They were around 16″-18″ in diameter and I had a 12″ Ryobi 18v brushless saw. (It’s a fantastic saw.)
First one went quite well, but I seriously misjudged the second one. Thankfully I had the sense to quit and bring in a friend when things started looking dicey. With his help we,managed to not drop it on my fence. The humility that situation provided meant that #3 went much more smoothly.
I bought this chain sharpening tool, which works fantastically. I love a good purpose built tool.
https://www.pferd.com/us-en/products/new-products-and-innovations/chain-sharp-cs-x/
Wow, that’s a monster! I use a 261C, it weighs about 1.5kg less than the 391 and has 3000W power compared to yours at 3300W. Currently, I work with a 18” Oregon Speedcut bar, but I alternate with a 13” Stihl bar sometimes. I use a similar sharpening tool as @Salguod and I sharpen it after every 3h use – minimum. Norwegian prices won’t allow me to just switch chains that often; I use them up until it’s only triangles left… 😀 Anyway, it’s rare I work more than 2h in one go because that’s just about as long as I can keep up 100% concentration.
So….subscription services in cars. My 2019 5 Series has them. At first I was displeased as BMW intended to charge me $80 a year for Apple CarPlay, starting year two of the lease. TheHeck with that. I ain’t payin’. BMW finally backed down on that one and now it’s free. So after that I really didn’t care since I lease and the lease comes with three year subscriptions to all the apps and consequently subscriptions became a distinction that makes no difference to me.
Until… A few weeks ago while traveling, my Nav system essentially quit working. I called BMW, using the button on the screen for service, and asked: Why? The guy on the phone explained that my subscription was el deado and if ya wanna know where you are and how to get home, well, fifty bucks buddy, and right now. So I paid, and nothing happened. @#$&! Man, it was like 1970 or something, except you can’t buy a map these days. Lost mu weather, my news, and a couple of other apps too. Two more calls later… nuthin. Finally called my salesman who had a tech look at it and nuthin, except I should not have been charged. Great but still nothing worked and no $50 either. Finally, after four calls and a dealer visit I told my salesman to make me an appointment five days hence with the Service Manager and to warn him to be prepared to keep the car until they fixed it, and to expect a damn poor service rating (they hate those). That finally got someone’s ass kicked hard enough to fix my subscription status (remotely) and get my money back.
Now I am not so indifferent to the subscription idea. I was actually thinking Lexus for my next lease, but this morning I read that Toyota is going to start a subscription plan of their own.
I am not amused: there may be a UAZ 469 in my future…unless they have subscription services too.. Then what?
Ugh. I would be pretty pissed about that. As far as I’m aware, none of my features on the new one are subscription based, but, who knows what they’ll cook up.
There are some elements to what is being sold as “progress” that just make me shake my head. Several car companies are touting “software” as a future income stream. I guess this opens the market for simpler offerings, indeed. Our 2012 Leaf has a SIM card that is paramount to make the app work. In the first year, we couldn’t get this to run, as the 2nd owners in a then 7 year old car. Later, I read at the EV forums that Nissan had hired a new employee that fixed these issues swiftly. Shoutout to Yvonne who miraculously brought our app back to life, at no cost.
Hopefully something interesting will happen next week.
X3 is still in the air. I only had about one hour to muck around with it (trying to get a set of ball joints out of the front steering knuckles). I tried additional pounding, and a crappy air chisel with no success. It’s had pb blaster liberally applied two weeks ago. Next step is to try some heat, and a new chisel I ordered. If that doesn’t work, I’ll need to pull the axles and get a proper air hammer to come at it from above. At that point, I’ll likely button it back up and drive it to a shop, cause as much as I like wrenching on things, the fun has gone out of this job for me.
It wasn’t until I started wrenching on my old project car after I retired that I realized that FIRE! and a BF hammer are legitimate mechanic’s tools. While probably not applicable in your situation, I will offer the perspective of a friend of mine who had just had enough of a big old rusted, rounded bolt.
As he up his torch to a fine blue needle he said,
“Can’t be stuck if it’s liquid”
Just a thought…
Haha. That’s solid. ?
I got the new fender on the BMW last weekend. The swap was pretty simple, with a minor scare where I thought I had stripped the head of one of the torx under hood screws.
I had driven 5 hours round trip to get a color matched fender. The trip cos more than the fender, which was $75, but it was cheaper than paint.
I knew that getting a perfect match was unlikely, but what I hadn’t counted on was the fender having had paint blend work. The rear is a very good match, but the bumper evidently was replaced on the donor car and the hood and fenders blended. The front is much more gray or purple. Still, unwrinkled is better than wrinkled, so I’m calling it a win.
Is your colleague still buying it or is the deal off? I think it turned out great.
We talked last week and he’s not sure. I’m not sure it was the accident, he’s a single guy who lives in an apartment with a single garage bay. He’s got an S2000 and dailies a 2019 Accord 2.0 with a six speed. I think he’s rethinking if he needs a 3rd car.
I cleaned it up this weekend and took a bunch of pictures. I’m thinking I’m going to try to list it on Cars and Bids if he doesn’t take it.
I like his choice of vehicles. If he wants to sell the Accord, I’d find a way to get to wherever you are!!
It’s a lease and he was planning on buying it after, but then he hit a deer. Not sure his plan at this point. Considering it’s likely one of the last ones made, I imagine he’ll still buy it.
Oh, a Hondeer. I have one of those. They’re rare, like to find one but if I don’t go Mustang then I’ll probably go Integra (basically between a Civic and Accord).
Still working on my truck today. I got the billet aluminum door handles yesterday and started the installation. On the factory plastic door handles the lock is retained by a C-clip of sorts (which is why they are easy to punch in) and these use a bolt instead. The problem is that the washer just barely caught the edge of the cylinder. The lock also stuck out a bit past the body so when it was tightened down the lock sat at a bit of an angle. So it was off to the hardware store where I got some more small washers, a fender washer and a longer bolt. That made it much more secure.
The other problem is that the replacement lock cylinders were assembled incorrectly. There is a Right and a Left arm. Both arms have an offset too them. Installed the direction they came the offset is to the front instead of the back, it was a very tight fit but seemed to work. Before moving on to the passenger side I put all the driver’s side pieces back together and realized that the arm’s offset should be the opposite direction. So today is pull the driver’s side apart again and swap the arms with each other. Otherwise they are nice heavy duty handles and the new locks operate so much smoother than the old worn out ones that sometimes needed a bit of a wiggle to operate.
My wife’s car is due for inspection this month, and not long ago a CEL illuminated. I ran the codes and determined an O2 sensor was appropriate.
I got the old one out of the upstream exhaust pretty easily, save for a knuckle bashing. It was the electrical side that was problematic, due to the location. I could touch it with my left hand, but not my right, and couldn’t see the connector. So it was too much of a chore to one-handedly release the latch tab while pulling the weather pack connector with enough force to get it apart. After several unsuccessful minutes, my son tried. He requested an assortment of screwdrivers, selected one of appropriate length, and was able to finish the job.
Well…the job was not quite finished. I went to start the car to see if that repair made the CEL go away, but turning the key didn’t do anything. It was as if the car was in gear. Then I noticed the shift indicator was on 3, and remained there regardless of where the shift lever was. I crawled underneath the car and saw that the shifter cable had come loose from the transmission while we were fighting the sensor, and the transmission linkage was no longer in the Park position. It only took a couple more seconds to reconnect everything, but I was extremely happy that we do not have Sjalabais-grade incline in our driveway and that nothing moved while either one of us was under the car as it was in neutral.
Just been seeing all the devastation caused by tornadoes and flooding in various places, I hope everyone is safe and thoughts are with anyone affected
Just a rant about how one of my favorite pass times, looking for used shitboxes that would make fun projects. has been ruined. The shortage of late-model used cars apparently has every jackbag believing that their wrecked, 300,000 mile Trooper is worth 9 grand. Interesting projects are now 2-3 times what they were 6 months ago. Everybody thinks they’re sitting on a gold mine. I get that your favorite movie is Wall Street, and you believe that greed will MAGA us back to greatness, but you’re ruining my fun. And that ain’t great.
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