My wife has a 2000 neon [not shown] that I bought used 4-5 years ago with 125k. It is just passing 172k and is slowly falling apart:
* The AC no longer blows cold (just an AC flush?)
* Trunk lock broke (We get into the trunk via the back seat now and only store limited/small items there)
* Is burning oil — at 2800 miles since the last oil change I had to add 1.1-1.2 qt to get it to the correct area on the dip stick.
* We have never changed the tranny fluid that I know of, as the mechanic said it does not need it. Checking it, it is still a reddish color.
* The car is starting to rust on the lower left rear door.
Outside of normal wear items & the above, we have had no major problems with the car. The interior still looks great and doesn’t have a single tear or stain. We are trying to decide if we should do some/all of the above fixes or simply get a Mazda 5, the “minivan-which-is-not-a-minivan” that my wife likes.
The 1969 Camaro is an automotive icon. Because of this juggernaut tag there are tens of thousands of these late 60s pony cars restored or under restoration. The late Reverend Jimmy “drink the Kool-Aid” Jones would have been humbled by this kind of blind loyalty-the sole reason the 09 Camaro exists was GM’s critical need for a home run.
But which car is going to be more valuable in 2019? Even after 10 years of service as a daily driver?
I recently came across a brand new Lincoln MKS. I’m a pretty hard core Japanese car fan but I had to admit that this car looks pretty slick. I had heard that it was pretty fast too. I like fast. Upon inspecting the exterior of the car it came to my attention that the MKS is equipped with ‘EcoBoost.’ Not being up on the very latest in automotive tech, the unfamiliar name intrigued me. Was this some hybrid or electric technology? Curious, I started off on a quest to find out what this EcoBoost is and what makes it so… EcoBoost-y.
Hi Sajeev, this is part two of my Monte Carlo saga discussed in an older Piston Slap. I finally had the transmission codes read on my Monte Carlo. Just to remind everyone it is a 2000 with 196,000 miles, engine is a V6 3800, series 2. The transmission lost overdrive. It shifts fine through first, second, and third. The transmission shop said there are no codes and it must be a mechanical failure. They also said it could last a long time or fail very soon. So far there no strange noises except a small faint whine at 70 MPH. So I am actually asking about the engine codes. P0128, coolant thermostat (I know how to fix this); P0440, evap emissions system fault; P0463, fuel level sensor (i can live with this); P0481, fan control 2/3 circuit; P1115, ECT circuit intermittent voltage high. So there is my list: what to fix? Oh, I should add the car runs okay.
Regression to the mean. Lowest common denominator. Thinking inside the box. These over-used expressions are all-too often applied to Detroit iron. But which vehicle most fully lives down to them? Here it is: the crudest, simplest, most wretched-handling and least-safe vehicle made by the Big Three in the sixties. It’s a box with two cart axles, a motor and transmission, and useless brakes. Throw in a couple of milking stools, and you have yourself a Handi-Van.
One of my good friends asked me a question that I thought you and TTAC’s B&B could answer better than I could. “Hey David, We just returned from the beach yesterday. I tried an experiment with the air conditioner in the car on this trip. If we set the A/C at the coldest setting the car usually gets too cold, we usually adjust the temperature higher to keep us comfortable. However, I think the way the A/C works is that turning the temperature up simply allows some hot water from the radiator to heat up the air conditioned air. So we simply turned the A/C on and off as needed. Admittedly it was not quite as comfy since it would get a bit cold and a bit warm. I have two questions. First: does turning the A/C on and off at ten or fifteen minute intervals damage the A/C (such as putting greater wear on the electric clutch)? Second: does manually cycling the A/C save gas? We measured gas mileage after such a trip and got 30mpg, which was the best mileage we’ve ever gotten on the Camry. But we just had the oil changed and the air filter, which was pretty clogged, changed too. So I don’t know if it was the ac cycling that caused the improvement in mileage or the change of the air filter.”
Friends, we are gathered together to pay our last respects to a fallen brother. Saturn was the love child of Roger Smith and Hal Riney; one was the Chairman of GM, a manufacturer of cars; the other, an ad man extraordinaire, a manufacturer of emotions. Let us savor their own words as we remember the brand that was Saturn, starting with these from Roger: (Saturn will be)“a quantum leap ahead of the Japanese, including what they have coming in the future. In Saturn we have GM’s answer – the American answer – to the Japanese challenge. It’s the clean-sheet approach to producing small cars that in time will have historic implications…(Saturn is) the key to GM’s long-term competitiveness, survival, and success.”
My friend Polly’s ’83 air cooled, fuel injected, VW Vanagon dies at stoplights, and she has to let it cool down before it will start again. It also runs a bit rough, and it’s normally hard to start.
The engine was rebuilt 5 years ago (in Sturgis, South Dakota, where she’d gone from her home in Bethesda Maryland, for a sheepdog trial, by a VW mechanic whom she rousted out of retirement), and she thinks she’s put less than 20k on the clock since. In efforts to solve the problem, the air flow meter, the wiring, and the spark plugs have been replaced.
I am that oddball of pistonhedonism who has never lusted for speed. In fact, caution genes run in my family. To wit: my parents installed seatbelts in the ‘57 Chevy in 1960, eight years before they became mandatory in new cars. Our ‘65 404 was probably the first Peugeot station wagon in all of France to have rear shoulder belts. My father, an academic economist, showed the men at the factory how to install them. I didn’t get tagged for speeding until I was just shy of 40, and that for doing all of 35 in Rock Creek Park. (Gail Wilensky, the Porsche driving head of Medicare under George H.W. Bush, was hitching a ride downtown with me in my then 16 year old Toyota Corolla with the busted window from a smash & grab, but that’s another story.)
So exactly how did Ford achieve quality equal to Toyota? Or are their TV ads misleading, as the ads from decades ago which proclaimed “At Ford Quality Is Job One”? This was the question in my mind as I returned to the Sharonville Transmission Plant after exactly 30 years. A long term friend, who did not jump ship in 1979 as I had done, when it looked like Ford was going to self destruct, got me past the guard post for a tour of the plant. Jerry had seen what he called “a compete transformation of Ford Motor Company” during his 37 years. He said I would not recognize the place.
Sometimes” obvious” is a vague concept for people and nowhere is that more obvious than behind the wheel of a car. The basic rules of engagement on the road are subject to interpretation by many drivers whose personal universe exists within a tight gravitational pull of their physical location.
For all of the uproar around distracted driving this week, nobody seems to know exactly what the problem is, let alone how to stop it. Everything from in-car makeup application to text messaging is being blamed for 6,000 deaths in 2008, some 15 percent of all road fatalities. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has heard stories of heartbreaking tragedy from families who have lost loved ones to distracted drivers, seen the statistics which say cell phone use impairs driving ability to the same extent as a .08 blood alcohol content, and he sees an opportunity to make a difference. That’s an admirable response, but LaHood’s do-right attitude is enveloping his department and administration in a perfect storm of hysteria, opportunism, and quixotic pathos.
Bernie Madoff’s first bogus trade. Richard Nixon’s first fib. Charlie Parker’s first hit of heroin. What do they have in common with this perfectly harmless-looking Pontiac Ventura II? That first little giving in to temptation has a nasty way of turning into a big deadly habit, like GM’s badge engineering. All bad habits have a beginning, but the evidence typically is lost in the haze of history. Not GM’s. Before you sits the proof; the badge-engineering progenitor; the automotive equivalent of finding Humphrey Bogart’s first Lucky Strike butt laying at the curb.
Jaguar and V12. Two of the most lyrical automotive icons ever. One stands for grace at speed, the other for speed with grace. The combination of the two offered the prospect of a marriage made in automotive heaven. Yet when they finally enmeshed, the result fell short of the potential envisioned by the marque’s match-maker and its loyal patrons. Yes, in those rare moments when the Jag V12’s stars were aligned , and its four carburetors synchronized, the results were heavenly. But in the final judgment, the V12 was a fall from grace, straight into automotive hell.
After checking out TTAC’s reviews and having a general distaste for sending a perfectly fine car to the clunker heap, I decided (even though I have a vehicle that qualifies for C4C) that the best car is a free car. I’ve been catching up on maintenance on the 1992 Lexus LS400 since I made that choice as I was letting the work slide. Saturday night’s project was a PCV valve replacement. Nothing major . . . unless you are clumsy. I dropped the PCV valve on what I’m assuming is my exhaust manifold (I’m kind of new at this). There is a metal . . . tray? created by the part and sure enough—3 point shot from downtown—the valve landed smack in that little trough. No biggie, right? Just get the magnetic grabber tool and fish it out.
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