I’m driving a 2002 Lexus LS430 with Ultra Luxury Package. It has OEM 17″ chrome rims, and one of the tires has an air leak. My mechanic diagnosed the problem as peeling chrome at the bead, causing an improper air seal. I asked to put a tube on it, but he refused because of the potential for overheating, and they weren’t designed for tubes anyway. He also commented during my seasonal rotation that the other 3 rims are doing the same thing, so they’ll all eventually develop leaks. He recommended getting 4 new rims.
Fortunately this car has a full-size spare, so I’m not in a hurry to replace the one rim. The chrome is peeling on a couple of the non-leaking ones near the lip where it’s been curbed by yours truly, but otherwise they look new.
I’m going to put my winter tires on aftermarket rims this fall, but want to keep the OEM rims for summer duty. My goal is tasteful understatement, so I want my car as close to stock as possible.
My question is: can a reputable wheel shop fix these rims?
Happy Hangover Tuesday! I trust you’re all in good spirits despite possibly imbibing too many good spirits over the holiday weekend. Nothing a nice nap in the county lockup won’t cure.
Yup, chances are at least one or two of you were given an introduction to the ins and outs of traffic, DUI or public drunkenness laws this weekend. Hopefully you didn’t try to outrun the cops before they caught you.
There’s always lots of cool things to see besides the new model year vehicles at the auto show, and one display I always enjoy is the one showing off the latest and greatest police cars. I especially love the ones they’ve confiscated from drug busts and tricked out to take care of law enforcement business. Good luck outrunning those. Read More >
Despite having more cash than debt for the first time in decades, GM is going back to Wall Street in search of fresh debt. Over the weekend, The General has been in talks with several banks to secure a $5b revolving line of credit to shore up its liquidity position ahead of an IPO that’s rumored to take place in August. At $5b, GM’s desired line of credit would essentially replace the $5.8b the automaker has repaid to the Treasury, and will help it deal with a number of pressing cash needs to maintain its shaky global empire. But with so many pressing uses for the cash, and political pressure mounting for a rapid IPO, can GM deal with its issues and take on more debt and be worth what the government wants it to be worth? Troublingly, the answers to these questions are not to be found on GM’s balance sheet.
The Booth Babe requests your indulgence. She announces that The Booth Babe Chronicles will be late, due to the fact that she’s at a beach somewhere. So if you see a hot babe furiously typing into an iPhone or similar at a beach, who knows, this could be her.
Easy to find out: Walk up to the lady, and say: “Do you come with the car?”
Blank stare: Fail.
Slap in the face and a kick in the privates: Bingo!
TTAC is a 24/7 operation, spanning most continents (except Antarctica, but we are working on it.) Nevertheless, there are occasional gaps in our coverage, and such a gap is now. Our Dear Leader Ed Niedermeyer is on a secret mission this weekend, and he may not be able to log in all the time. Which means: Yours truly is alone manning the ramparts of TTAC. Even I may be interrupted, because my presence is DEMANDED by members of the German community in Beijing to cheer on the Teutonic team from a German restaurant owned by the former military attaché of East Germany. I have no idea about soccer (that’s probably why they expelled me.) I hope Germany will lose so that I can focus on more pressing matters.
Anyway: Coverage will be spotty this weekend. Writers: Don’t send your stuff to Ed, send it to me. Thank you!
(Might as well get used to the Ed-less weekends: His secret mission will extent through all of July weekends, or so he mumbled.)
It’s no fun knocking Tesla. Having spent my most formative years growing up just South of the Silicon Valley, and as a lifelong resident of the West Coast of the United States, Tesla’s the closest thing I’ve got to a home team in the auto industry. In fact, as I write this, a Tesla-branded coffee mug, sits due East of my keyboard, a thoughtful housewarming gift from a kind family friend. This unexpected gift, and the frisson around Tesla’s newly-public stock price prove that there’s a lot of excitement around the California upstart. Unfortunately, Tesla is but a small, inexperienced fish swimming in the global shark tank of the auto industry. Now, one of the big sharks, Volkswagen, is beginning to circle for the kill. Read More >
I have 111,000 miles on my 2000 Volvo S40 and it does not leak any oil. Have always changed the oil around 5000 miles. have never used synthetic on it before. I have heard I have too many miles to change over to synthetic. That it could cause my seals to leak if I switch over at this point. Have heard the opposite that if I don’t have any leaks that it will be fine. What do you think, should I switch over to a synthetic or a synthetic blend, or stick with what I have been using?
TTAC Commentator Sinistermisterman writes:
I have a 1997 Ford Escort (Manual) with far too many miles on the clock. If I’m particularly harsh with the gear changes, I get a clunk every time the revs drop off. I’m guessing this may be the engine/transmission mounts wearing out. Now if they are wearing out, can I just be gentle from now on and not worry about it? Only I really don’t want to spend much on the car. The reason I ask is that when I used to live in the UK I had a 1996 European Ford Escort and the rather puny rear engine mount broke (after thrashing it mercilessly)… and the engine tried to twist its way out of the car in a rather spectacular fashion. Are the engine mounts on US Escorts equally as weak/rubbish as the European versions?
Auto show season might be over, but the marketing event season is in full swing. At concerts, state fairs, sporting goods stores, hotels, golf tournaments, baseball games, food and wine festivals, gay pride festivals, dog parks, any kind of place where a target demographic might gather, you will find a car company showing off the vehicle they think target demographic should be driving.
It could be a ride and drive, it could be a static display ,or it could be an entire day’s experience like AMG Challenge, Chevy Rev It Up or Taste of Lexus (although big events like these seem to have been put on pause with the onslaught of the recession). Regardless of the level of formality or the amount of activity, all have one thing in common: People like me are working there. Read More >
TTAC readers, the Best and the Brightest, seemed to have liked the first Magazine Memories so I started to sort and organize the boxes of old buff books in the basement, with an eye towards another column for you guys. The first piece was about a Sports Car Graphic from 1969, a golden age for both performance cars and auto racing. I thought it would be interesting, by way of contrast, to look at an era of less worthy automobiles, the “malaise era”, so named because of a speech given by Jimmy Carter during his presidency that attempted to address a sense of national lethargy. Though Carter never actually used the word malaise, the tag stuck. Looking at magazines from the middle of the Carter years, the winter of 1980-81, though, the cars were so boring and mediocre that I thought it’d be too much of a challenge to even joke about how boring and mediocre they were. Read More >
As we all know, those oblivious to history are bound to repeat its mistakes. Longtime readers also know I’ve gone down this road before, but the powers of my Twitter news feed shoved extra grist into this particular mill. Behold: Alain Raymond’s blog about the death of the V8 engine. Raymond’s weakest argument revolves around one fact: V8’s did lose mainstream appeal shortly after the demise of the Butterfly Collar. But Alain wishes to beat this dead horse for some misguided reason.
I just picked up a 2010 Accord sedan (don’t start – at least it’s a 5 speed stick) a month ago. Last weekend I was driving with a full, 2 gallon gas can in the trunk. I was forced to stop short due to some creative driving by some jabroney in a white panel van ahead of me. The ensuing gas spill wasn’t quite BP/Gulf of Mexico, but it did manage to soak part of my trunk carpet, and in a stroke of good fortune, the nozzle managed to wedge itself between the seatback and trunk floor, allowing gas to flow underneath my back seat cushion.
Sajeev, I have a question for the Piston Slap expert. My son drives my old ’99 Ford Ranger (extended cab, 4 cyl, manual, 2WD) with roughly 130,000 miles on the odometer. I had new tires put on 5 months back at the Firestone place. Then last week, the anti-lock brakes started acting up. As in heavily manipulating the pedal even during very light braking. I assumed the sensor was fried and pulled the fuse, after which everything worked normally. There was a slight ticking sound from the drive train, so I replaced U-joints. Still ticking, but no other obvious issues.
Then, Friday, the driver’s side rear tire and axle came loose. Luckily he was making a low speed U-turn and the last 6” of axle was still in the housing by time he stopped. We jacked the truck up, pushed the axle back in, and pushed it home (two blocks – very very lucky it happened there and not on I-45). I pulled the differential cover and immediately found the (bleeping) C-clip loose in the housing. The anti-lock sensor works off of teeth on the ring gear (just now figured that out), so I’m assuming that having about half the teeth ground off is the cause of the brake malfunction. The oil appeared original, had that burnt smell, and was full of grit. I’m now in the process of changing the whole assembly with a salvage yard spare due to the gear damage.
Let’s be real: I am not rollin’ in an exotic. My middle-class wheels get me from Point A to Point B with a little fun in between, but it’s not something that’s going to get any panties thrown at it (that and the fact that I’m not a wealthy middle-aged man). The closest I get to those amazing pieces of vehicular art is the same as most of you: at the auto show and, if I’m very, very lucky, the occasional track day at which I’m either working or to which someone has graciously invited me.
In the last couple of weeks though, I have seen some ridiculously hot cars driving around town. Read More >
It’s no fun knocking Tesla. Having spent my most formative years growing up just South of the Silicon Valley, and as a lifelong resident of the West Coast of the United States, Tesla’s the closest thing I’ve got to a home team in the auto industry. In fact, as I write this, a Tesla-branded coffee mug, sits due East of my keyboard, a thoughtful housewarming gift from a kind family friend. This unexpected gift, and the frisson around Tesla’s newly-public stock price prove that there’s a lot of excitement around the California upstart. Unfortunately, Tesla is but a small, inexperienced fish swimming in the global shark tank of the auto industry. Now, one of the big sharks, Volkswagen, is beginning to circle for the kill.
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