car posts page 4

I don’t know why I didn’t write this before. Perhaps I’ve just lost interest in this site because of the lack of people viewing it. Anyway, I have finally gotten new doors on my car. I came home from my trip to New York late July to find my Uncle Al had replaced the doors for me. $130 and he did the hard part for me. I am very happy with the results, and thank him for the surprise. I owe him one.

For those of you who hadn’t seen my car before, both front doors were in awful shape. The mirrors were missing on both sides, making backing up and lane changing more of a pain. The cops didn’t like the lack either, and they contributed to my getting pulled over at least thrice. The passenger side door wouldn’t open at all (in fact, Uncle Al had to cut it to get it off). The drivers side door wouldn’t close as it was supposed to. I had to tie it closed to the column to prevent it from swinging open, thus making both it and the door behind it for all intents and purposes unopenable as well. So I had to climb through the passenger side rear door. It was quite a pain, especially when driving other people. And finally, both doors were very rusted out at the bottom, and the metal was bending upwards, looking rather unsightly.

I am very happy that I can back up my car and view behind me much more easily now. Not having to climb into the car is a lot easier as well. A lot. I’m much less reluctant to drive others places now as well.

I had said of this summer that I’d get new doors or a new car. I’m glad the cheaper option worked out. I hope this car can last till I can find a diesel or electric car to replace it.

My car had been missing and in general running quite poorly. It was bad enough that I always had to give myself lots of room when pulling out into traffic and had trouble getting up to speed on onramps. Up hills, I sometimes had to slow down to 25 mph in second gear to make it up.

A while back, I had looked at my distributor cap to see if it could be the problem. The points in it were rather rusty, they they still looked like they’d work. I bought a new cap anyway, especially since it came with new spark plug cables and boots. My old boots were feeling rather loose on the plugs, and I wasn’t sure how old the wires were. I planned to install that, but didn’t. I decided I oughta install the rotor at the same time, so the old rotor wouldn’t mess up the new cap (though I’m really not sure if this is possible, I wanted to be safe), and hadn’t bought one with the cap.

Finally, just recently, I bought a rotor and installed the cap. It was one of the easiest things I’ve ever done on the car. Three easy bolts plus the boots on the wires held the cap on, and the rotor just pulled right off. The old rotor actually looked better than I remembered, but I replaced it anyway. After replacing, it started right up and I took it for a test drive. It seemed to be running better, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

After several days of driving, though, I was sure the car was running much better. It hasn’t missed once since then, runs smoother, and accelerates much faster. Hills are where the biggest difference is: I can now drive up and even accelerate with no problems. It is great. It feels like a new car (as long as I don’t look at it). If I had known such a simple fix would have such a great effect, I would have done this long ago.

Nearly since I started driving, I’ve been wanting to put chrismtas lights in my car around christmas time. At one point I got some small sets of battery powered lights and taped them to the inside of the rear window. They were not very bright, and burned through batteries pretty quickly. They were also a pain to turn on and off, as I had to climb back in the back seat to reach the switches. I was dissappointed. I had dreams of lights all along the outside of the car, including on the wheels, which I was attempting to devise a way to create, all powered from the cars battery and easily switched on and off.

This year I finally got around to getting a new set of lights for the car. I got a full string of 60 of the LED lights just for it. They were AC, so I bought an inverter, figuring I could use it for my computer and other stuff as well. I routed them along the outside edge of the roof on the inside of the car, using twisty ties slid carefully into the trim. They were very bright and were a much bigger display than the previous set. I felt they weren’t noticable enough on the inside of the car, but I got plenty of compliments.

Christmas has passed, but I figured I put the effort into putting these up and liked them, so I’d keep them going until about the 15th of January, giving them a full month’s employment. I worried a bit when cops drove by that there might be something illegal about the lights in the car, but none seemed to find it a problem. But just two days short of my planned finish date, I finally got pulled over. It was right in Peninsula here, and I knew the cop from when he pulled me over last, while I was taking a late night walk alongside the road. He said that I can’t have the lights on, and added that it was well passed christmas. I am always nervous around cops and had just had one follow me for a while earlier that trip, so I was especially nervous with this guy.

I don’t know what the law says about christmas lights and where they can and can’t be placed on cars. Where I had them, they really weren’t a distraction to myself, save for a bit when backing up. I can hardly see them being a distraction to other drivers, unless their interest got the better of them, as they weren’t nearly bright enough to cause problems. I know others have had lights on their cars. I will have to look into what I can and can’t do, and perhaps figure out a way to move the lights to the exterior of the car.

Lights on the car is my favorite way to decorate for christmas.