The Automobile Thread

buggravy said:
On a very different note, I got to fiddle around with a surprisingly cool vehicle today. Shop manager at my LBS got a Ford Maverick. He was raving about it, and I've read positive reviews. Despite its diminutive exterior proportions it felt as spacious inside as I remember my Tacoma feeling. Looks like it could be a fun/practical runabout for a mountain biker, and a good value in the mid level AWD trim.
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I had a 1974/75 four door Ford Maverick in 1977. Quite the average car at that time, and that's the best thing i can say about it. Had to clean the spark plugs every time I filled up the tank, but only took about 20 minutes to do that and ran like a champ as long I did it.


The new trucks, I read they were no longer available to order for delivery in the near future. But look interesting and worth checking out.
 
Rumpled said:
What happened?
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We disregarded the BMW owner's manual and used the turn signal... see what happened!


I mentioned it back a bit, but Firstborn side-swiped a parked car and hooked the front passenger wheel. Airbags/sensors/seat tensioner/battery shut off, steering rack, control arms, probably drive shaft (AWD), body panels... mostly nothing I couldn't swap out given enough time and motivation, but lacking both of those, sold it cheap to a guy on CL. He'll put it back together and re-sell for $8,000!
 
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buggravy said:
On a very different note, I got to fiddle around with a surprisingly cool vehicle today. Shop manager at my LBS got a Ford Maverick. He was raving about it, and I've read positive reviews. Despite its diminutive exterior proportions it felt as spacious inside as I remember my Tacoma feeling. Looks like it could be a fun/practical runabout for a mountain biker, and a good value in the mid level AWD trim.
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If they make a two door Ranchero, I'll probably have to get one!
 
Cyclotourist said:
We disregarded the BMW owner's manual and used the turn signal... see what happened!


I mentioned it back a bit, but Firstborn side-swiped a parked car and hooked the front passenger wheel. Airbags/sensors/seat tensioner/battery shut off, steering rack, control arms, probably drive shaft (AWD), body panels... mostly nothing I couldn't swap out given enough time and motivation, but lacking both of those, sold it cheap to a guy on CL. He'll put it back together and re-sell for $8,000!
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Last I thought you were gonna work on fixing it.
Turned out to be an expensive rental, eh?
 
Rumpled said:
Last I thought you were gonna work on fixing it.
Turned out to be an expensive rental, eh?
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I still think I could have got it all back together and then handed it off to one of the kids. But the more I got into it, the more I found things that it needed. Moved away from the sunk cost fallacy, but it took me a minute! $3,500 for a week of driving, but now my lady friend knows she wants one for sure. I figure $1,000 of that would have been our deductible, another $1,000 the premium refund, so in my head it was only a $1,500 lesson. That's a fancy set of wheels! Now on the look out for a replacement, anyone know of a well-maintained high-mileage E91, keep me in mind!
 
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Cyclotourist said:
I still think I could have got it all back together and then handed it off to one of the kids. But the more I got into it, the more I found things that it needed. Moved away the sunk cost fallacy, but it took me a minute! $3,500 for a week of driving, but now my lady friend knows she wants one for sure. I figure $1,000 of that would have been our deductible, another $1,000 the premium refund, so in my head it was only a $1,500 lesson. That's a fancy set of wheels! Now on the look out for a replacement, anyone know of a well-maintained high-mileage E91, keep me in mind!
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I let my 4runner go with similar levels of damage. Even repaired, I didn’t want my kids driving something with potential for latent damage near the brakes and steering. In college, my Fiat 131 had two failures in quick succession like that. First I had the left front wheel come off driving SB in the #2 lane of the 405 near LAX. Once we got that sorted out, I lost brakes on the 10, in Koreatown, during rush hour…left an impression on me. And left me with a appreciation for the e-brake.

But dang I miss that truck…
 
tick said:
I let my 4runner go with similar levels of damage. Even repaired, I didn’t want my kids driving something with potential for latent damage near the brakes and steering. In college, my Fiat 131 had two failures in quick succession like that. First I had the left front wheel come off driving SB in the #2 lane of the 405 near LAX. Once we got that sorted out, I lost brakes on the 10, in Koreatown, during rush hour…left an impression on me. And left me with a appreciation for the e-brake.

But dang I miss that truck…
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Used cars are fun indeed!
 
Cyclotourist said:
It was a lovely few weeks we had together...

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Update: Another Sportwagon popped up on CL Saturday night, and after a quick trip to Glendale Sunday morning, it's filling the empty space in my driveway! It's a 2007 just like the previous one, but with more miles (180k vs 150k). Great sport package interior, but it's a L.A. car, so kinda' beat up on the outside. My move is to buy O.C. castoff cars, but sometimes you gotta' go where you gotta' go! Hopefully this lasts longer than two weeks! One of these days I may ride a bike again!

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Been busy purchasing, selling, and maintaining the internal combustion fleet! It's literally been nothing but drama (good and bad) since mid-November when I picked up a car in Bend. Since then we've bought another one for my wife's commuter, crashed it and sold it off, purchased a replacement, "sold" that one to Firstborn, and then bought a nicer option for wifey. Now I'm in the time/money vortex of maintaining five cars between 11 and 15 years old, all with more than 100k miles on them (mine has 217k!). Not complaining mind you, it's relatively cheap, pretty fun and relaxing, but still a lot of time goes into diagnosing the problem and figuring out what needs to be done, and then obviously doing them! There's nothing more expensive than a cheap German car...

This weekend's fun-time revolved around installing bouncy bits front and rear on my car. And wow did it need it! All struts/shocks were blown and the springs were tearing into/merging with the perches. Refreshed with new springs, why not!

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Still need to do front control arms which I should have done while I had it apart, and a chunk of stuff on Firstborn's car (Beyond my skillset, $$$ will be involved). Wife's car is good at the moment, but water pump is coming up.

So anyway, now that I have the big lifting done to get everyone's car going, I can hopefully ride a bike soon!
 
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Catch up repair and maintenance is a never ending story on the ambulance. At 25+ years and 300,000 miles (and probably thousands of idle hours), it is non stop.

Luckily being an old Ford, everything is cheap. Turn signal switch was like $20 a few months ago. Blower motor and resistor pack (wasn't sure which was bad, replaced them both out of precaution) was about $50 total, etc. As long as I am not IN the engine bay, all is good.
 
At 147k miles on the Ram, I finally got around to swapping out the original shocks. Apparently I was overdue. One of the fronts I could easily compress by hand....and it never returned to length at all.

Gotta thank Ram for putting a removeable nut on the backside of the shock bolt under the bed that can only be access with a handmade wrench. I guess when they do in the factory with no body on it, makes sense as it's totally accessible.

New Bilstein 4600's and it's good to go.

Also decided to throw a rubber mat into the bed....probably should have done that when I first got it.
 
siata94 said:
Nice!!!

My fleet of 5 avg is 200K miles. Just replaced an O2 sensor on my E36 to clear the check engine light and an alternator on daughter's car.

Are those single adj Konis?
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My average is a bit lower, at 125k... basically brand new!

I put in the Koni Actives, hopefully splitting the difference between stock/touring grade and Bilsteins HD/Sport level (which I normally get). Springs are stock sport package. Didn't want to dip it any lower than it is. The car is a commuter so needs to deal with potholes a lot more than cornering at 9/10!

mtnbikej said:
At 147k miles on the Ram, I finally got around to swapping out the original shocks. Apparently I was overdue. One of the fronts I could easily compress by hand....and it never returned to length at all.

Gotta thank Ram for putting a removeable nut on the backside of the shock bolt under the bed that can only be access with a handmade wrench. I guess when they do in the factory with no body on it, makes sense as it's totally accessible.

New Bilstein 4600's and it's good to go.

Also decided to throw a rubber mat into the bed....probably should have done that when I first got it.
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Ugh, I hate running into things like that! And I'm sure the bed looks great now!

Oh yeah, forgot to throw a pic of spouse's new whip. It's a 2011, so the newest vehicle we have! The last year of the naturally aspirated straight six (N52), but the first year of the new fiver chassis model (F10), so a bit of a unicorn.

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Recently had my E36 clutch replaced. My first clutch replacement ever across dozens of cars some as high as 300K.
Everything that was removed or accessible while in there was replaced. Parts alone was over $1500 and fortunately
I didn't buy a BMW branded dual mass flywheel ($1500) but found the same exact part made by Lux that BMW
simply resells for $500. Same with O2 sensor (made by NTK, $100 vs $300).

Initially I was annoyed because I drive like grandma but most get only 100-150K, some much less, out of the stock clutch. I must drive slower...
 
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I'm not uptodate on what Koni Actives are. I've had many sets of Konis but once I went Bilsteins I will never go back.
The single adjust imo is useless and the Bilsteins (mostly Sports but HDs for the tow vehicle) ime don't wear out
over many many years, only their lifetime warranty is useless (because they don't wear out).
 
siata94 said:
Recently had my E36 clutch replaced. My first clutch replacement ever across dozens of cars some as high as 300K.
Everything that was removed or accessible while in there was replaced. Parts alone was over $1500 and fortunately
I didn't buy a BMW branded dual mass flywheel ($1500) but found the same exact part made by Lux that BMW
simply resells for $500. Same with O2 sensor (made by NTK, $100 vs $300).

Initially I was annoyed because I drive like grandma but most get only 100-150K, some much less, out of the stock clutch. I must drive slower...
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I've driven manuals all my life, and have never had to replace a clutch. Although I have a bad feeling teaching three teenagers to drive MT is going to put that to the test on our Mazda3!

siata94 said:
I'm not uptodate on what Koni Actives are. I've had many sets of Konis but once I went Bilsteins I will never go back.
The single adjust imo is useless and the Bilsteins (mostly Sports but HDs for the tow vehicle) ime don't wear out
over many many years, only their lifetime warranty is useless (because they don't wear out).
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I've always been a Bilstein Sport + H&R guy, but roads between home and work REALLY suck. So I wanted to dial it down a bit and go for more comfort (I'm getting old!). Chris at Strutmonkey suggested the Koni Actives with stock sport springs to keep the ride height up, but also the dampers are supposed to be able to adjust based on conditions (not manually set). Drove them for about 10 miles last night and they were LOADS different and better than the totally clapped out ones I took off.

Long/short: They're fine.
 
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I've done a couple clutches that I can remember. My '86 Chrysler clutch went out when I was up in Alaska, and I had no way of doing it myself. $450 job in the late 90's.

Clutch on my ex's 1989 Bronco II went out when she was 500 miles away, but luckily at my dads house. So I drove down (back when I was stationed in NorCal) and dropped the trans in the driveway and swapped it out, pretty easy.

I miss a manual car. Fighting the urge to buy something that I clearly don't need just so I have one again. My motorcycle hasn't moved in a month!
 
Sidewalk said:
I've done a couple clutches that I can remember. My '86 Chrysler clutch went out when I was up in Alaska, and I had no way of doing it myself. $450 job in the late 90's.

Clutch on my ex's 1989 Bronco II went out when she was 500 miles away, but luckily at my dads house. So I drove down (back when I was stationed in NorCal) and dropped the trans in the driveway and swapped it out, pretty easy.

I miss a manual car. Fighting the urge to buy something that I clearly don't need just so I have one again. My motorcycle hasn't moved in a month!
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While they are definitely wear parts, clutches aren't the worst thing out there. I know there anecdotal stories of bad manual transmissions, but I'll take the reliability of a manual over the potential failure of an automatic any day. As for doing the clutch, except for my little FWD Mazda3 which looks to be super easy, I'm at the point where I would pay someone else to do the others.
 
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