car posts page 4

My corolla finally died

in

Due to its rust and general shape, my Corolla has looked liked it was on its way out since I bought it from my brother. Five years later, it finally went out. It could perhaps have been fixed, but I didn’t think it was worth it.

The death

On my last day of school for the Spring semester, on the way home from class (in the campus parking lot in fact), I ran over a curb (I was tired). I drove all the way home with no problems. Later that day I headed toward my parents’ house, but soon after I made a turn (Akron Cleveland onto 303) my car started sliding on the front right tire. Due to a warning that the tie-rod ends were in bad shape, I was expecting something would happen. I slid over to the side of the road (digging a deep tire mark and gathering some asphalt on my tire).

I discovered my tire at quite an angle, and found the driveshaft to be disconnected from the transmission. I called my Dad, and he headed over to take a look. I called the tow truck right after that. A cop showed up and asked me about what happened. He attempted to help me push the car over fully off the road, but it didn’t move, even when he used his car. So he decided to park behind me with his flashers so no one would hit me. My dad showed up and took a look, and determined that it probably wasn’t salvageable.

After a lot of waiting, the tow truck guy finally showed up. He drove me and my car back home. He said a lot of cars had had an axle problem that week. We dropped my car off in front of my house, where it stayed for over a month (until after I got my new car). Parking was a little difficult with it there.

The problem

I jacked it up and looked closely underneath it after several weeks. I finally determined what had happened. The frame had cracked where one of the arms connects that holds the wheel in place. The wheel twisted out a bit without its support, pulling the axle out of the transmission. The support could have been welded, but the frame was pretty rusted at that point, and a new frame piece almost would have been needed. The whole car was too rusted anyway, and I had been planning to get a new car after my issues in the winter. That car had a lot of issues in its time, though I suppose they weren’t so bad to deal with (the most difficult problems were probably the numerous busted brake lines).

Gone

She sold for $75 to a tow truck company, with extra door trim bits and haynes and chiltons guides included. She has been replaced by my new car.

thief in my car

in

Since I got my current car from my brother, I’ve left it unlocked almost all the time. Only when I’ve had band equipment or the like in there have I considered locking it. The locks, except the one on the back hatch, froze up and stopped working a while back (one was frozen when I got the car), so it’s hard to lock it anyway: I’d have to climb in from the rear hatch. At the beginning, I even left the key in the car, as that is what my brother had been doing for a while, but I gave up on that out of fear.

As far as I know and can recall, nothing was stolen, even the change left clearly visible.

So today, I went to the library for several hours. There’s a parking garage there. Normally, employees are there and it has gates, costs a ridiculous amount of money. But on the weekends it is free and the gates are left open. When I left my car, I actually glanced in and thought about someone stealing something, as I frequently do. I took my cell phone along, but everything else seemed like it would be fine. Why would someone choose an old rusted car like mine anyway?

When I came back to the car, I quickly noticed the door wasn’t fully closed (driver’s). The thought of a someone being in my car flashed into my head. It become more realistic as I noticed the rearview mirror had been knocked out of place. Then I saw some change from the center console missing. I was still not totally sure at that point, thinking perhaps that I had removed the change there and some other missing stuff at some point. But I was sure when I noticed the case for my jumper cables was missing. I never remove that from my car, save for in use.

So, stolen were:

  • Jumper cables, with a case, a screwdriver, some fuses and other assorted car stuff packed in
  • change from my console and floor, but not from the thing on my dash or the ashtray
  • my photochromatic cycling sunglasses. luckily they were all smeared with some gunk, so the thief will have some cleaning to do. cost me $40
  • my socket set. Craftsmen laser engraved kind, maybe a 96 piece one that I got on sale for like $60. Had some cheap taiwan wrenches and a few other tools in there as well

This is all I know about, as my car is somewhat of a mess, and I’m not exactly sure what all was in there.

I guess I should’ve expected it to happen one day. I imagine the tools or the change to be the biggest drawer. The change would have been by far the most visible, as the tools were tucked underneath the pink panther’s feet in the back seat foot area. I have no intention of locking in the future, mainly because of the extreme difficulty of doing so with this car, but also because of the crappiness deterrent of the car and lack of valuable things.

I may be slow to replace the missing items. I can make up for the sunglasses with cheap spare pares I have for now. They were nice for cycling, but I didn’t use them a whole ton. The tools, I’ll have to borrow for now. I don’t use them that often currently anyway. I’ll wait till I see another good deal on them and need seems high. The jumper cables I’ll probably get soon just to be safe, though I rarely need them and others often have them if I do.

[Update] The sunglasses weren’t stolen: I had just left them in the sailboat. So I’ve got my good sunglasses still. Just no sockets or wrenches or jumper cables.

Doors on car

in

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.

car running much better; distributor cap

in

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.

Christmas (lighting) has ended for the year

in

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.

Bolt taken care of

in

I finally got that messed up exhaust bolt taken care of. I bought some nuts for it, but didn’t end up needing them: for some reason, when I went to replace them, the entire post came out this time, instead of just the nut. I used one of the bolts I had bought before, and it worked perfectly.

Now my exhaust is quieter. I’m not sure why it is still somewhat noisy, but at least it’s better than before. At some point I’ll look at the rest of the boltage there and ensure everything is tight.

The tighter exhaust seems to have improved my performance somewhat as well. Now, when my cylinder misses, the performance impact is not quite as bad, though it definately still is a problem. I’m not sure why fixing the exhaust would have improved the performance like that; perhaps the lack of vibration helps somehow, or just makes me more willing to pump more gas into the engine.

valve cover gaskets; exhaust bolt trouble

in

My engine’s been running rather poorly for a while now. I have trouble pulling out into the road in front of other cars and going up hills. A valve seems to be ‘missing’ in high power (or sometimes all) situations. The problem seems to be caused by oil leaking into a spark plug hole and messing with the firing. I recently replaced the valve cover gasket and the gaskets that seal between the valve cover and the spark plug holes. Unfortunately, this made it worse for a while. I put some sealant around all possible areas of leakage, save for around the valve cover gasket, as this is supposed to be free of sealant, and would be unrelated to the problem anyway. I still seem to be having some oil leaking up there though. There is oil leaking all over the engine block as well. I’m a little worried and put off by this.

My most urgent problem is an exhaust leak. I’ve had it since I replaced the exhaust (replacing the previous, more significant leak), as I hadn’t replaced a bolt I semi-broke. It connects a pipe to the manifold. I can’t tighten it down since it’s a bit broke, so exhaust is able to leak out easily. I can definately smell exhaust while driving, which is of course bad for the health. Regular car part stores don’t seem to have the exact part I’m replacing. I plan to just get a nut of the same size, but Lowe’s and Home Depot don’t have a good metric selection. I’ll have to try a place with more. I wan’t to get that taken care of quite soon though.

While driving to try to get replacement parts, I used my brother’s car. He has a little early ninety’s Civic with mileage around 40k (an amazing buy). My that car has some power. My car’s quite anemic right now, but even in good shape it wasn’t that powerful. And I’ll bet it get’s near the mileage I get. It handles better than my car as well, which is to be expected because of its shortness. The transmission is quite interesting, with extremely short movement between gears. Only a 4 speed, but it seems to manage quite well with them; it makes it quite easy to drive. The brakes are not very good though, requiring a lot of depression before they kick in at all. They don’t feel to have much power. The steering is rack-n-peanut, so it can be hard to steer at times. I’m not sure whether I like that or not. It is a bit more reliable and easy to maintain than power-steering, but it can take quite a bit of force at times.

New front tires; cylinder missing

in

Got some BF Goodrich touring tires for the front. I looked into tires a good bit, heard Firestones were bad, Bridgestones and Michelin’s were good, and the one’s with Weather in them seemed reasonably to be good for weather. I went to Sears just because they had a variety of brands that seemed better than NTB. The lady there didn’t mention any Bridgestone or Michelins being available for my 13″ rims, though some had said on their webiste and on the wall at the store that they were available. She said the Goodrich tires would be the best for what I was looking for, which was good snow traction as well as good all-season performance. They cost $45 each before installation fees, etc., which wasn’t much more than the Bridgestone’s and others that were on sale, so I wen’t with them. $145 installed. That’s a good bit of money, getting close to half of what I spent on four Bridgestone Insignias on my Camry, which had also included wheel alignment. The Insignias I had liked a lot. They had really good snow traction. But they were unavailable in 13″. Hopefully these’ll perform as well as those.

From use so far, they seem to have quite good traction. Turns feel more controlled. I had worried a bit with my previous tires, which were pretty much flat bald in the centers. They seem to work quite well on wet pavement. I’ll have to wait till winter though to see their snow/ice performance. Though turning feels more sporty with them, acceleration does not. They feel heavier/bulkier, and make acceleration feel a bit slower.

One of my cylinders is missing, ie not firing, part of the time. It had been acting similarly for a while, and had been doing it particularly badly just before I installed the new exhaust. It then stopped for a bit. It started again soon after I did two things: I tightened a bolt on the exhaust system; I filled up the tank with Sheetz gasoline. I’m guessing the gasoline may have been the reason it suddenly started again. Either that or my Dad’s driving habits, as he borrowed the car the day it started having trouble again (the day after I refilled the tank and tightened the bolt). I found the cylinder, which was covered in wet oil. I’m guessing a gasket is leaking and the oil is preventing the spark from igniting when it is coating the plug thickly enough. The tank of gas I used before the Sheetz tank was from BP, with some fuel injector cleaner. I’m guessing the injector cleaner was helping burn off the oil.

I’ll have to look into it more, as a number of things could be causing this oil leak. Another valve looks like it is not far from having this problem, as it has oil covering its threads, though none below that. I can’t imagine running on only two cylinders. Some potential causes could be quite costly to fix, and it will be a pain to figure out the problem in the first place. Gotta happen soon though, as it is running quite poorly. I just put some new BP gas in, and will see what effect that has. I will try some more injector cleaner soon until I get the actual problem fixed.

Car is mine now

in

By title anyway, the Corrolla is now mine (I still have to pay my brother for it though). My dad got the power of attorney notarization to allow me to transfer it from his name to mine. I did for only $7 (cash only, so I part of that was some sticky change left over from my brothers stay in the car). I also needed plates and an e-check though. I sillilly got temp plate first, figuring I wouldn’t have enough time to get an e-check and come back to the license bureau (I had gotten the title transferred first in the first place because I was even worried I wouldn’t have enough time to get the e-check then get to the license bureau, plus I wasn’t sure if I could get the e-check before transferring the title), but I surprisingly was able to make it all the way to the e-check place and back to get real plates with time to spare. I technically only needed the temp plate for about two hours, then, but I left it on for now to get a little more use out of the $10 spent on it. So this is the first car I’ve had actually in my name, and the second title I own, (in addition to my house). One less dependancy to have to worry about. I’ll have to transfer the insurance to my own account soon enough.

My brother got a new car, a little civic in amazingly good condition, only 44k miles, for only $2600, so I won’t have to worry about him trying to get the corrolla back. He’s getting the Volvo (a car he’d purchased maybe two months ago that since has gotten in a wreck and then had electrical problems) fixed professionally to operable condition, so he’ll have two cars as well. I guess my dad may actually be considering using it for a little while, as his truck is having problems.

My other car is still in need of brake line repairs, but it will have to wait for more important matters to be taken care of, such as the car I’m driving and my house (I really would like to have hot water before winter comes along).

Cat Replaced

in

A week and a half ago I replaced the catalytic converter on my car. As I had said, during my trip to Lakewood, it had broken in two near the flange at the front, so I needed a new one. NAPA surprisingly didn’t carry one for that particular car. I went to Advanced Auto, as they had the cheapest quote that I got. The cats they had, however, didn’t have flanges, so I would have to figure out some way to attach them, perhaps a clamping flange. I paid the 30 extra dollars at Auto Zone for the one with the flanges. It included gaskets as well, but no bolts. I was going to just use the old bolts, but I had to cut two of them with the angle grinder. I wanted to replace them with stainless steel, but no one seemed to carry metric stainless. I bought some cheap regular ones to use until I can find the stainless in metric. Lowe’s amazingly didn’t seem to have metric at all, so my temporary bolts are 9/16″. I grabbed them all from the 5/8″ bin, but they seem to require the 9/16″ wrench. Strange. In addition to stainless bolts, I also wanted a stainless exhaust, but they seem to be way too expensive, even much more than the expensive cost I thought they’d be. Instead, I plan to buy some engine block 1200Β° or 1800Β° paint to seal the exhaust from exterior rust anyways. Hopefully that’ll increase the lifespan noticeably. The rest of the exhaust system seems to be in need of replacement, as it is getting rather loud again, so I’ll try to paint it when I do that.