Readme.txt

I added some more links for your reading/viewing pleasure.

1. I’ve been pretty vocal (what IS the written equivalent of that?) about my love of small cars. Well, the Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum is a virtual playground for me. Click on it and you’ll see why.

2. This Old Honda is a great site because it’s for and by people who love old Honda cars. These are the cars that made me fall in love with Hondas, specifically the wee Civics.

3. The 356 Registry is all about the Porsche 356, my favorite Porsche of all time. Actually, it might even be my favorite car of all time.

4. 3 Wheeler World is a site dedicated to the ever-shrinking world of three wheelers. They’re not made anymore and haven’t been since around 1987, so the fact that they are still so many being ridden is a particular thrill for me. This link will tell you why.

5. Another of my favorites is How Stuff Works. A couple times a day, I stumble upon something that has me wondering what makes it tick or how it even came to be. This site is great because it often saves me a lot of time; it keeps me from just pulling stuff apart, usually irreparably, just to see how it works.

6. The Museum of Automobile History. Pretty self-explanatory, methinks.

7. The last link is the CRX Owner’s Group. There aren't too many stock CRXs in the gallery, but enough to cause wistfulness.

The picture you see above is from the Microcar Museum. Interestingly, it looks strikingly similar to car that Dingo drives in Cars and Trucks and Things that Go:

Demolition Derby, or a Not-So-Great Adventure

Do you drive a Honda Element? If so, then you’re in good hands.

My Lady Fair and I headed down to Hightstown NJ this past weekend to attend my grandparents’ 65th(!) anniversary party. The party and visit were great, but the traffic was, in a word, stupefying. First of all, the drivers. Driving like a jackass hopped up on goofballs is bad enough, but driving like a jackass with your kids in the car is a whole new level of Jackassery (from where Jackasses graduate). Secondly, the Turnpike was backed up for a good fifteen miles or so because unbeknownst to us, the exit after the one we were to take was for Six Flags Great Adventure. Evidently, everyone in the Western Hemisphere had opted to go to Six Flags on Saturday.

When there are backups, accidents are inevitable because people just aren’t paying attention--we saw the aftermath of rear-end collisions seemingly every two miles or so. And that was just on the Turnpike. The actual trip on the way down notwithstanding, a great time was had by all and we even got to see my new twin nephews.

On the way back on Sunday, it was a festival of ineptitude and stupidity all over the Merritt Parkway. Again, more rear-end collisions, cars spun out in the median, etc. I had remarked to LF that the shame of the Merritt is that it’s such a beautiful drive, but its beauty is marred by the idiocy that has afflicted so many of those who travel it. Mind you, the weather on both days was beautifully sunny, dry, and about 85 degrees. More ideal traveling weather, I couldn’t give you. As we were about a mile from the exit for Route 84, I noticed in the southbound lane that there was a spun-out Ford Explorer in the right shoulder. Inevitably, the rubberneckers did their obligatory rubbernecking and completely disrupted the flow of traffic. Again, people not paying attention—not paying attention to what they should be, anyway.

An eighth of a mile after that, still in the southbound lane, I saw tire smoke come from a Honda Element. Sure enough, it started to spin out. Then, as the saying goes, everything went into slow-motion. It then began to roll. And roll. And roll. I was in the passing lane on the northbound side at this point and as I watched it roll, I realized that it was probably going to go over the guardrail and collide right into us. Mind you, I could only speculate that this was going to happen because it was not unlike trying to determine which direction a football will bounce when it hits the ground.

The Element continued to roll, and I think in total it rolled seven times, enough time for me to think, “Oh my God, is it EVER going to stop rolling? How many people are in it? Do they have seatbelts on? What number does one dial to get the police when you’re on the road? Is it taking out other cars in its path?” As it rolled, it’s as if a huge pair of tweezers kept picking at and dissecting it; a wheel assembly here, a strut over there, whatever contents were in the car, a bumper there. Glass everywhere. Really, the only word to describe the scene was surreal. It looked far too Hollywood to actually be happening.

I and the rest of the traffic managed to get to the shoulder and stop. We all just sat there for about five seconds, waiting for it to stop rolling, absolutely stunned. Once it stopped, right side up, about twenty of us jumped out of our cars and ran to the Element. I saw smoke, so I figured that regardless of what kind of condition the driver was in (he was alone), we had to get him out of there. I ran up to the car and every one of the car’s fluids minus the gasoline had dumped onto the highway. The red transmission fluid gushed like so much spilled blood, and I almost hit the pavement after slipping in it. The driver, thankfully, had his seatbelt on, and the smoke I saw was actually from the deployed airbags. The doors wouldn’t open but all the glass had been blown out, so I could see that he was conscious, in one piece, and in shock. That's the other thing about coming up on an accident scene like that--you have no idea what you're about to see as far as injuries go and the walk to the car has you preparing for the worst.

I quickly assessed the situation. Once I saw just how many people were surrounding the car, I decided that my presence wasn’t going to make any difference. All I wanted to know was whether the key had been turned off. I learned somewhere that if one comes upon an accident scene, the very least you should do is make sure they key is off, so no electrical shorts can ignite any errant flammable liquids. Someone replied in the affirmative that they turned off the key, so I headed back to my car.

As I rolled forward and got back into the left lane, I could see that his sunroof had at some point left the car and landed right in my lane. Had we not pulled over, it would have either hit my car or the one behind us.

Not surprisingly, it was rather quiet in our car the rest of the trip.

Information Overlord

S’funny. I have the ability to track who visits this web log, how long they stuck around to read, and how they got here. Some visits are just from people who are browsing on Blogger and click “Next Blog” and pretty much wind up here by accident. Some of those people immediately realize that this isn’t their cup of tea and move onto something else, but every now and then someone will hang out and read a couple posts.

I’ve gotten hits from Portugal, Italy, France, Spain, and interestingly, Africa. The visits from overseas are usually by way of the “Next Blog” method.

However.

For my faithful reader(s), you know that the past couple months have been heavy on the lists of things I’ve bought and sold and various automotive woes. So far, the greatest traffic I’ve seen is from people searching on a particular bass or amp, how to turn off that confounded Hyundai Accent “check engine” light, or just to find some info on the Island of Misfit Toys and its inhabitants. Not surprisingly, during the summer there was a rush on “Ban de Soleil”.

I hope I was helpful and at least somewhat entertaining in your search for answers.

Don't be a stranger! Drop a comment and say hello! I'd love to hear from you.

An xBox You Enjoy Outdoors

Big day in ScreamingPepperland: My Lady Fair and I bought a new 2006 Scion xB.

What led up to this purchase, you ask? Well even if you didn’t ask, I’ll tell you anyway. You know the Accent story, and our trusty Toyota Tacoma just wasn’t a practical choice anymore. Since it was a 2WD base model, it had zero storage. When I set out to replace our totaled Esteem wagon a couple years ago, I knew I wanted a truck. I also knew that I wanted an extended cab so I could have some storage. I wasn’t finding one for the price I wanted, so I jumped at the opportunity to buy the standard Tacoma because:

1. It was red
2. I was impatient. Ah yes, good ol’ impatience strikes again.

Truth be told, we loved the truck and it was very good to us. It just got to the point where I wasn’t confident that a tonneau cover would be sufficient to protect stuff from the elements, and security just wasn’t an option. The impracticality of it outweighed the ability to throw a kayak in the back or move my friends in a moment’s notice. The gas mileage wasn’t as bad as other trucks, but it wasn’t great either. It was time to move on.

I’ve loved the xB since the day I saw it in Car and Driver as a concept vehicle, most likely shown at the Tokyo Motor Show. I loved its simplicity, the fact that is was SO square amongst an industry of cars that look like melting ice cubes, and that it was economical. I knew I’d own one at some point, but I didn’t know when. I was starting to worry that they wouldn’t be available anymore because it didn’t seem like the buying public was catching on.

Fortunately, Scion (Toyota) hung in there. I didn’t actually intend to buy a new car until after the first of the year, but I got a dealer promotion letter in the mail and decided to head on down and check it out, mostly to see what I’d get for the truck. I had considered many new cars over the past two years, most notably a Chevy Aveo wagon, Hyundai Accent (before The Saga happened), Honda Fit, Toyota Matrix, Nissan Versa, Toyota Yaris hatchback, and a Scion xA. My older brother has an xA, so I had a good point of reference there. We tried three cars that day, and we took turns driving:

1. 2004 Toyota Matrix. I figured this was a great place to start because it was a wagon, and we just looove wagons. They’re also just really nice cars. It felt very solid and linear, and it had a 5-speed. Interestingly, used examples cost pretty much the same as new ones, so there was no savings to speak of. Great car, but they were still asking WAY too much for a two-year-old car with 30k on it.

2. Toyota Yaris. No doubt you’ve seen the ads. Their cuteness borders on the insane. There was a commercial some years ago for what I believe was McDonald’s, and someone was driving a car called the Two Door Speck. It was miniscule. If that were a real car, we would have owned it by now. We just love the wee autos. We’ve been ogling the Yaris hatchback since they came out in the spring because they boasted gas mileage in the high 30s, and it just seemed like a great car for us. The one we drove was an automatic (again, where the hell are the standard transmissions anymore?), and it had a decent amount of poop and essentially had the turning radius of a lazy Susan. Thing was, it just didn’t feel like Toyota built it; it was rather tinny and the engine was super buzzy at 60MPH, as if the fourth cog in its transmission wasn’t engaging. Also, the orange peel in the paint was embarrassing, really. Ultimately, we decided that it was just too small for us since it was going to be our only car. I’m pretty sure I could fit my bass cabinet and amp in there, but it would have been reeeally tight. The Yaris is pretty much the real-life version of the Two Door Speck.

3. Scion xB. I deliberately chose to drive this one last. I wanted to make sure I was giving everything a fair trial and didn’t go the impulsive route. Man, am I ever glad I did. I was sold the second I sat in it. The headroom is absolutely amazing, and the interior volume overall is incredible. I set out to find a 5-speed in white, and predictably, there were none to be had. It seems to me that dealers aren’t even interested in finding exactly what you’re looking for anymore. The car I sat in was a Blue Onyx Pearl with automatic. Sigh. Fine, I’ll try the automatic.

Right out of the gate I lost any and all reservations about its performance. It’s a very well-engineered transmission, and I surrendered to it immediately. The whole car is ingenious in so many ways, and we couldn’t be happier with it. The stereo alone is just ridiculous. With pretty much any car I’ve ever bought, I’d hit the Crutchfield catalog the next day to buy a new stereo to replace the craptacular stock stereo. Not this time. This is by far the best-sounding OEM stereo I’ve ever heard.

So there it is. Sure, I have the afterglow of owning a brand-new car, but what I think I’m most excited about is that we now own a car whose history I know, and lo and behold, it has a warranty. I’m also glad that I decided to not go for second or third best just so I could save a few bucks. We’re goofy in love with the xB and are looking forward to a VERY long relationship with it. And, much to the delight of my family and friends, I can finally cease the remorse of letting go of my first new and favorite car, my 1991 Honda CRX.

And for those of you keeping score at home, yes, this is indeed my fourteenth car.

Because It Feels So Good When I Stop

So, as promised, the Hyundai Accent Saga.

I got the catalytic converter replaced, and I had the check engine light reset. Here’s a tip from me to you: if you need your check engine light reset, AutoZone will do it for free, whereas virtually any garage will charge you $70 plus. For two months I’ve been deliberating whether or not I should just buy my own scanner and determine what the problem is on my own, but I’m not in any hurry to spend another $100 to $200 when I know AutoZone will tell me why the light is on and then reset it for me.

Three days after getting the CEL reset, it came on again. I went back to AutoZone and had them put the scanner on it again (the whole operation takes maybe three minutes), and it came up with the “catalyst error” again. I asked the tech what he thought, and he suggested I replace the O2 sensor at the exhaust manifold. I found this advice rather harebrained because that sensor doesn’t have anything to do with the catalytic converter. Plus, if it were bad, I’d get an error code indicating such a thing. I’m also in no hurry to pay another $130 for a part that will likely have no effect other than lightening my wallet.

I have until November 29th to get this car right, as my failed inspection sticker expires on that day.

Know what? I’ve had enough. I’ve learned yet another expensive lesson and I am just done with this car and the notion of being able to resurrect everything. My “visionary” tendencies have gotten the better of me yet again and I’ve been seriously re-evaluating where they even come from. One would think that common sense would prevent these quandaries, but no.

I think I may have inadvertently co-opted the idea of Wabi-Sabi. I never even knew such a thing existed until my Lady Fair turned me onto it recently via the book Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers by Leonard Koren.

From Wikipedia:

“Wabi-Sabi (in Kanji: 侘寂) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The phrase comes from the two words wabi and sabi. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a concept derived from the Buddhist assertion of the first noble truth — Anicca, or in Japanese, 無常 (mujyou), impermanence.”

So to oversimplify, it’s a love all things old, experienced, weathered, etc. I have that love, I guess. Always have. And it often compels me to make horrific buying decisions. I doubt the Japanese were referring to ten-year-old econoboxes, however.

I’m selling it and will be taking a huge loss, but I’ll be glad to have it out of my life. I have an ad up on Craigslist and judging by the responses I’ve gotten, apparently there are a lot of insane asylum escapees looking for a getaway car. And interestingly, they all have “only $600 to spend and no more”. I’m thinking of referring to it from now on as a Hyundai Accident.

Charlie-in-the-Box

I have a new Charlie-in-the-Box, and this one is in the form of a ’97 Hyundai Accent. I have been looking for a cheap, economical second car for months. I didn’t really want to spend more than maybe $1500. My only requirements were that it was rot-free, mechanically sound, and standard transmission. Tall order, I know, but such examples do exist. I started first by searching solely for Hondas and Toyotas; having owned both I was reasonably confident in their durability. Well, gas prices being that they are, people who are selling Hondas and Toyotas know exactly what they have and can command pretty much any price they want. Buying in the wrong period of a market is my shtick; not something I do consciously, but subconsciously most definitely. I was striking out or losing out left and right.

The choice came down to a ’93 Mazda Protégé or a ’97 Hyundai Accent. Though attractive, the Mazda was more than I wanted to spend, and judging by the 50 Vanillaroma air fresheners that showed up in the interior photos, it appeared the owner smoked. A LOT. I don’t smoke anymore, so I have no desire to own a car that smells like a litter box, because that means I’ll always smell like a litter box as well. A Vanillaroma litter box.

The wife of a good friend of mine has a ’98 Accent, and she swears by it. She’s owned it since new and has had absolutely no issues at all. It’s pretty much the same car as mine, just a year younger. My sister-in-law also owned a Hyundai Elantra, and near as I can tell, she had no problems with that either. Okay, I have two favorable testimonials for Hyundai; I guess they’ve come a long way. I’ll check it out it. I went to see it one night (I always seem to do these transactions at night), and discovered that it was a cute, reasonably comfortable little car. And, it has a hatch! Stupendous. I took it for a drive, and after driving my Toyota truck for so long, this car felt like a toy. But I liked it. I could tell the exhaust needed to be replaced soon, but I expected that with pretty much any car I was seeking out. For a base-model car, it had a pretty decent amount of amenities. It has very high mileage, but I thought it’d do nicely.

A mechanic owned it, and as many can attest, that is in no way a guarantee that you’re buying a trouble-free car. I looked it over quickly on the outside and saw no readily apparent rust or rot. The right rear quarter was matte for some reason, but I figured that with some judicious buffing, I could at the very least make it look a little better. The ad for the car read that it was selling for $1000. I was ready to pay that, but as I was talking to the seller, he said he’d let it go for $900. Hmm. I didn’t even try to talk him down and out of the blue he just offered it for $100 less. He seemed like a standup guy, so I didn’t question it. It was frighteningly reminiscent of when I bought a used ’86 Kawasaki KLR 600, but that’s a story for another day. I made arrangements to pick it up a couple days later, we shook hands, and I started getting all the pertinent papers in order.

My Lady Fair and I went to go pick it up, and this time I had daylight. I didn’t realize how filthy this car was. I mean, we’re not just talking dirty exterior and a couple wrappers on the floor. This literally looked like he got in it and drove it, completely ignoring anything outside the immediate area of the driver’s seat for a year. There were still cups, wrappers, old French fries, receipts, etc. from the person HE bought the car from. It also had what appeared to be chocolate sauce and toner all over the seats and carpet. This is once again where the former detailing-for-a-living perspective comes into play. I knew I could make it right. It’d take a lot of work, but I could see there was still some beauty under all that dreck.

I drove it home and realized that I’d have to replace the exhaust sooner than I had originally anticipated. The next day, I dropped it off at a Meineke that had done some work for me before. Interestingly, the check engine light came on while I was driving there, but I figured it was because of the exhaust leak and it’d shut off when it the offending exhaust section was replaced.

Now, I have nothing but disdain for brake and muffler shops. I’ve seen people get taken advantage of too many times to count, and I’ve always found their pricing astronomical. Regardless, I can’t weld (yet), so I’m at their mercy. I figured I’d be paying about $300 for the replacement of a flex pipe. Yeah, right. The call went like this:

“Hi, this is Meineke Muffler and we have your estimate.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“Well, your flex pipe needs to be replaced, but we can’t start that unless we replace your oil pan.”
“What?!?!? My oil pan? Why? I didn’t see any leaks under the car or anything?”
“Well, it’s rotted and weeping oil and we can’t put a torch near it unless it’s replaced.”
“Jesus.”
***uncomfortable, painful pause***
“All right. What’s the estimate?”
“Exhaust, oil pan, and labor will total $596.”
***uncomfortable, painful pause***
“Siiiiiigh. What can I do? Go ahead.”

I get it back and the light is still on. My Lady Fair takes it to get inspected the next day, and it fails due to emissions. Evidently, if your check engine light is on, you fail, period. Gone are the days of sticking the wand in the tail pipe and getting the emission reading. The car’s on-board diagnostic computer tells them what the deal is now. Marvelous. So, I make an appointment at a garage that was on the list of authorized emissions repair shops that the inspection station gives when you fail.

The Weekend
LF and I clean the car top to bottom. Detailed, essentially, engine included. As LF said, you can’t even tell it’s the same car. Looks good, smells good.

Garage Appointment Day
The garage tells me that the computer shows “engine misfire” and “catalyst failure”. The first error is because two spark plug wires had popped off the distributor, and I discovered this when cleaning the engine. I don’t even know how it ran at all that way, but I put them back on and all was fine. But the computer hung onto that code. The second error? You guessed it: I needed a new catalytic converter. The shop told me that I was looking at a touch under a grand for that repair. I said thanks but no thanks, paid the diagnostic fee, and proceeded to freak out.

As all this is going on during the course of a week, all the people I’ve been burdening with the saga cry “Lemon Law! Lemon Law!” Forget the Lemon Law. I bought this car as-is, no warranties implied. That’s what you do when you buy an old car after giving it a good once-over and make a judgment call that it’s legit. After the catalytic converter news, I immediately called the original owner who was of course very apologetic and completely unaware that he car had issues. He recommended a muffler shop that could provide a universal catalytic converter for $189 installed. So that’s what I did yesterday. The check engine light is still on, but purportedly it should go out within a week once an issue has been resolved. The computer is constantly checking the car, so it has to reset on its own. A $900 car is now about $1800, and there has been a great deal of speculation that because the guy who sold me this car is a mechanic and therefore has the ability to reset the check engine light, he did so before selling it to me. I can’t say if that assumption is right or wrong because although I am supremely skeptical about most everything, I do in my heart want to give people benefit of the doubt.

This story is far from over. Stay tuned.

Island of Misfit Toys

Anyone who has seen the Claymation Christmas special Rudolph he Red-Nosed Reindeer is familiar with the Island of Misfit Toys. On this island, there is a small population of toys that didn’t make the cut for distribution. The ruler of this island is a lion named King Moonracer(!), and he has a soft spot for these passed-over creations. They are factory seconds or “B” stock, or just rejects overall. For example, there is a train with square wheels, a fish that can’t swim, a squirt gun that only squirts something as random as jam, and a “Charlie-in-the-Box". The argument presented by Mr. –in-the-Box is that “no one wants a Charlie-in-the-Box!”

Well Charlie, I’m the King Moonracer of this non-Claymation island, and I embrace you and all your Misfit friends. I’m a sucker for all of your flaws, whether you’re basses, amplifiers, camera equipment, motorcycles, or cars.

It used to be that the poster child for my charity was my ’78 Chevy Nova. This was the car that succeeded (though the descriptor hardly seems appropriate) the Chevette. The car came into my possession in a blurry succession of events; I wound up buying it from a guy who for a very brief time played guitar in my first band. I still don’t know what drew me to this car, though I suspect it was the straight six underneath its long hood. Even visually it was a mess; there was rot on the doors, rear quarters, and curiously even the metal dashboard. Inside the car, I always got a sense that time stood still. Though made in 1978, the interior styling reflected a time maybe twenty years prior; worn chrome pieces on the dash bits, tweedy tartan-looking upholstery, and again, that metal dashboard. There was also a laminated card of some saint stuffed in the corner of the instrument panel. I imagine it was Saint Nova, patron saint of sketchy automotive health. Surely many a prayer was made to this saint by the previous owner, because I was about to fill the saint’s docket with prayers of my own. The interior also smelled of frankincense and myrrh. Was mass held in this car every day too? It definitely tied in with the saint theme, so why not?

I was an eighteen-year-old college student who, as my broken-English-speaking Italian grandfather would say, “didn’t have two cents to piss in”. Somehow, I scraped together $400 for this prize.

I should back up here and mention that around this time, I was working for a guy detailing cars. This job gave me a false sense of “I can turn this lump of coal into a diamond”. That sense follows me to this day. I may be able to put a shine on something, but that can only be accomplished when there is actual metal to shine, and this wish in the form of a polishing rag doesn’t work on electronics, mechanicals, or other principles of automobiles. Nope, at best it’s just turd polishing (or for my father, the less lowbrow “putting a shine on a sneaker”).

I bought the car, and as far as I can remember, I never even took it for a test drive first. The first thing I noticed was that the driver’s seat frame was broken on the inside. A weld had broken God only knows how many years ago, so a piece of angle iron was jutting out, just waiting to lacerate me. I noticed this not by spying it as I entered the car, but as my lower back came into contact with it. I glazed over the trap at first because there was a two-by-four propping up the seat back, keeping the metal inside somehow. I didn’t know why the board was there until the unfortunate Seat vs. Flesh Incident unfolded.

Another feature I noticed was its curious lack of rear suspension. Well, it had rear suspension, but only in the academic sense. The rear leaf springs had the rigidity of warm Jell-o, and I think functional shock absorbers were back there once upon a time--in 1978. In 1989, the rear suspension was merely decorative. If I rolled over so much as a Q-tip, the suspension would bottom so harshly that it felt like landing on the frozen ground after dropping from four feet in the air on one of those red saucers used for sledding. The long driveway to the college I was attending had an inordinate amount of speed bumps, so there was some insult to injury happening there; I wasn’t especially thrilled to be there in the first place, and as I tried to get there, there was the sound of someone beating the undercarriage of my car with a pipe.

Sublime.

After not too many miles, I started to notice more curiosities. The driver’s side door was afflicted with the same ills that affect so many old American cars: too heavy and long for the woefully inadequate hinges. The door sagged and just wouldn’t latch. I tried everything I could think of to cure this problem, but I never remedied it 100%. Just when I thought I had it securely latched, I’d take a right through an intersection and the door would swing wide open. As one who finds difficulty in walking and chewing gum, driving through an intersection and simultaneously trying to reel back in a 200 lb door was especially challenging. The heater controls had all the levers broken off, so I had to use a small screwdriver to adjust them. It was a very awkward method, and it usually resulted in the fan and temperature being either full-on or off completely.

Then it came time to get the car inspected. I still knew relatively little about cars at this point and even less about the laws regarding inspection. I was long fed misinformation about an old car’s getting a Get out of Jail Free card when it came to emissions and safety standards, so I figured I was all set. The car failed inspection, not for all the reasons I thought it would, but for a cracked windshield. I only owned that car for about a week, so I didn’t really get a chance to give it a thorough going-over to determine its true state of health. The rusty metal dashboard, I discovered, was due to the crack in the windshield. That crack was there long enough, leaking water, to have actually rotted the dash. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes. I wasn’t about to pay six-, seven-, or even eight hundred dollars for a new windshield, so I sought one out at a junkyard. They were kind enough to remove one from a similar Nova while I stood there watching, but they made me carry it the mile back to the office. There really is no easy way to carry a 5’x2’ sheet of laminated glass, so I had to carry it over my head for that mile.

I drove to a windshield replacement shop, and they agreed to install if for me. This is when the fun REALLY began. When they removed my old windshield, they discovered that it wasn’t just the dashboard that was rotted; it was the firewall too and there was really nothing to mount the new glass to. I must have given them a look of hopelessness/helplessness/haplessness/desperation/suicidal tendency, because they suddenly came up with a solution: they would somehow fill the void in the firewall and dash by unloading several tubes’ worth of silicone into the holes and somehow “float” the glass in place. Miraculously, it worked, and for several days I drove with much paranoia that the glass would just slip down like so much melting ice cream.

The car also had a tendency to smoke. This wasn’t a mere wisp, either. This was smoke like a ninja uses to elude capture. The engine was very strong but always sounded like someone dropped a bag of marbles in the cylinders. Good grief did that thing knock. However, that wasn’t where the smoke came from. It had a leaky seal somewhere, and oil would weep onto the exhaust, causing a smoke show especially when sitting still. I remember quite vividly driving home from school, particularly downtrodden and getting pulled over for speeding. As I sat there silently as the smug cop added to his monthly quota, the car just smoked and smoked. It was the cherry on the sundae, really. How I didn’t get cited for driving a fire hazard is beyond me.

My father was away on business as all this was going on, so he was completely unaware that I had purchased this, the first in a long line of albatross. I had to pick him up one night from his office as he had just returned from the trip. He was outside waiting with his boss, and when I rolled up the first thing he did was incredulously look at me, then at his boss, then at me again, and ask, “What the hell is THIS?” What the hell is this, indeed.

Strangely, I took this car to the car wash pretty often. I was driving a heap, but it was a clean heap. Taking it to the car wash meant that I didn’t have to wash it myself, thereby preventing lacerations and the ensuing tetanus shot due to the rotting body panels. In order to avoid any further injury, I duct taped the offending razor-sharp edges. By the time I was done, the car looked as if it were two-toned. By a blind man.

Unbeknownst to me, the trunk also leaked. As I mentioned before, I was a broke college student, never prepared for the exorbitant amount of money I needed to fork every semester for books. One of my most expensive books was the one for Accounting (at the risk of dating myself, it even had a tutorial on 5 ¼” floppy), and that was $100. Without putting even an angstrom of thought into the mistake I was making, I kept my schoolbooks in the trunk. Well, it rained one day, and that was when I discovered, albeit way too late, that the trunk leaked. The Accounting book swelled to three times its normal size and all the pages stuck together, thereby rendering it useless. My father looked at me with his mouth half-open, slowly shook his head, and walked away.

I didn’t have the car long. After Christmas break, it was time to start a new semester at college. It was snowing pretty hard the first day back, and upon entering the driveway of the school, I spun out and took out a sign. It’s a well-known fact that rear-wheel drive American cars are largely ineffective in snow, so the incident was inevitable. As I headed to the main office to report that I completely obliterated one of their signs, I vowed to get rid of that car. I drove it to my usual junkyard and watched them pick it up with a forklift and crush it. It was beautiful.

Insert Witty Title Here

I mentioned that there will be a new (to us) car in the family soon.

It has arrived.

Naturally, there's a saga behind it. In the meantime, enjoy a little Get Fuzzy:

Cars and Trucks and Things that Go

I’ve owned a lot of cars. I mean, a LOT. As of right now, I’ve owned twelve, and I’m about to pick up another to replace the Geo Metro I sold this past spring. That’ll make the tally thirteen cars in nineteen years.

Cars have always been a simultaneously maddening and rewarding variable in my life; maddening because of their expense and hassle, and rewarding because I’ve learned gobs and gobs about mechanics. I prefer to work on my own cars, and more often than not I curse myself for that decision halfway through whatever operation I happen to be performing. I’ve done countless brake jobs, replaced wheel bearings, brake lines, carburetors, rotors, drums, wheel cylinders, various electrical components, water pumps, belts, radiators, stereos, entire interiors, ball joints, tie rods, shocks, etc.

The cars I buy don’t follow any particular trend; no two have been the same. I have a tendency to buy a car that is completely unlike any of the ones prior. I suppose I’m the same way with cars that I am with basses; I like to experiment, always searching for The One. There have been a couple that were just wrong from the start, like my ’83 Jeep CJ-7, ’92 Jeep Cherokee, and ’78 Nova. The CJ and Nova have rap sheets lengthy enough to warrant their own posts.

The one that started it all was my first car, a 1976 Chevrolet Chevette donated to me by a friend of the family. It didn’t run and needed body work, but that didn't matter. It was mine. After towing it home from his house, I bought a battery and spark plugs for it and set out to get this funky little car running. Mind you, I had no experience working on cars and had a very, VERY limited knowledge of mechanics overall. All I had was a Clymer manual and a crazed sense of urgency. I also had time, because I was still months away from getting my license.

Getting the engine going was relatively pain-free. It just came to life one day and I was then able to move on to tackling the bodywork. The lower portions of the doors were rotted, so I riveted some copper scrap and bondo’d the seams. All in all, it looked surprisingly good. I then decided to paint the car a solid white, wheels included. It was 1988, so the monochromatic theme was in (I’m pretty sure I got the idea from a picture of a bb Porsche 928). My father and uncle painted it for me in our garage, and once that was done, my excitement welled tenfold. I was now looking at a customized, running example of my first car, and I gotta tell ya, I got a lot of compliments on it when it was finally on the road. I have a single, poor quality Polaroid of the entire operation, and it’s just of the car up on blocks with all the masking. Why I didn’t take more pictures of this grand metamorphosis, I’ll never know. As a finishing touch, I hand-painted the Chevrolet badges and emblems in red, including the hubcaps. We’re now ready to roll. In a high school parking lot filled with beat-up Camaros, Firebirds, Mustangs and a Roadrunner, it was quite a standout.

It was a funny little car with a four-speed manual transmission. I have yet to drive another car that begged for another cog in the transmission like the Chevette did. It was probably designed as a city car, so highway speeds had that engine screaming like a banshee. It had no tachometer, so I have no idea what the RPM was at 55 MPH, let alone 65 MPH. I’d probably put it at about 328,000. In short, it was a very loud car on the highway. It was also missing a floorboard on the passenger’s side. I was fortunate that the company my father worked for had a lot of scrap material (hence the copper), so he grabbed me a half-inch thick piece of Plexiglas. It fit perfectly under the carpet, and was not unlike a glass-bottom boat. Also, the engine had an exhaust leak at the manifold because one of the studs was broken. So, I devised a clamping system that consisted of a piece of wood(!) and a C clamp that acted as a lever, holding the exhaust pipe flange against the exhaust manifold. It worked well and only required a tightening of the C clamp every now and then. Not surprisingly, the wood would get charred and I’d have to replace it every couple hundred miles. If you’re wondering how it never ignited, I don’t know either.

I drove to band practice one day and as I approached an intersection, the brake pedal just went straight to the floor. Hmm. It never occurred to me to check the brakes when I got the car. It was all about “Does it run? Does it look good?”, and that was pretty much the extent of it. “Brakes? Bah. I’m sure they’re fine.” What happened was that the rear brake lines ruptured due to corrosion. I had no idea what to do about it because I didn’t even really know how brakes worked. I just knew there were pads and fluid involved somehow. So I looked it up, went out and bought some brake line, and replaced them. Then I seemingly had to replace every brake component on it within a couple weeks.

I was finally driving a solid car that started, went, stopped, and looked great. I got to enjoy that euphoria for maybe four months until I injured myself at work with a utility knife, lacerating my calf (thereby requiring twenty-seven stitches). I couldn’t drive because it was my clutch-side leg, so I let my brother borrow it while I recuperated. One day after work he told me that it was running rough and had little power. Since I wasn’t working, I spent an afternoon trying to sort out the problem. I figured the timing belt needed to be changed. I didn’t have a good reason for coming to this conclusion; I just figured it was the problem. It wasn’t. I replaced it and it made no difference. I then tried timing it, and that process was brought to an abrupt halt because as the engine was running with me leaning over it, the fan grabbed the flannel shirt I was wearing and ripped right off my body.

I closed the hood and called it a day.

The next day, I had the revelation of a lifetime: ALWAYS check the simple things first. I started with the spark plugs. First one looks good…second one looks good…third one loo..waaait a minute! It was the spark plug equivalent of one of those cardboard phony computer monitors you see in a furniture store: it was just a shell of a spark plug with no electrode in the middle. If I checked that first, I would have saved myself about eighteen hours and untold frustration. That lesson has stuck with me all my life.

Then it developed a problem I could never remedy. I’d be driving on the highway for awhile, and for some reason, the engine would just backfire, once, and extremely loudly. Like a canon loud. I’d never know when it was going to occur, so all my highway driving was incredibly tense, always anticipating that godforsaken explosion. It's the kind of tense when you know your older sibling is lurking in the house somewhere, waiting to jump out and scare you out of your skin. When the backfire finally loosed itself, I’d look in my rearview mirror and see a huge cloud of black, swirling smoke, much to the horror of everyone around me. Also, I’d take a turn, and without warning, the power would just disappear and kick back in again. Hmm.

I took the car to a garage (after replacing the carburetor) to see if they could figure it out. The mechanic told me “I honestly can’t get it to run any better than you can.” That statement was met with equal parts flattery and sadness, because a certified mechanic could do no better than my green 17-year-old self, but it also meant the end was near for my beloved Chevette. I took a trip to Amherst to visit my brother at college, and the symptoms only worsened. Somehow, it made it all the way up and back, but as I pulled into the driveway, it just died.

After weeks of deliberation, I got a line on another car and decided it was time to put the Chevette to rest. I assumed I’d have it towed, but out of curiosity, I figured I’d try to start it. Fired right up. Not wanting to waste any time, I jumped in and drove it to the junkyard. Really, it never ran better than it did on that trip. I just couldn’t understand it.

I “donated” a couple cars to that junk yard over the years, and the guy who ran the place would always tell me “you know, a lot of people have asked about that Chevette...they love it. It’s a good-lookin’ car.” I’d just reply with my usual wistful “yeeeeah, it was. Maybe I’ll come back for it someday.”

I still have dreams that I did go back for it.

Ode to a Clown Car

About 3 ½ years ago, I decided to get a second car. More accurately, I decided to get a second car and persuaded LF that it’d be a good idea. I knew that once I showed her the one we should get, no more convincing would be required because the future vehicle was almost unreasonably cute.

What I was mostly interested in was a secondary car that was cheap to run, cheap to fix, didn’t make too big an impact on the environment via emissions or footprint, and something that could hold a good amount of cargo--we always seem to be hauling SOMEthing.

Enter the 1992 Geo Metro. I had been eyeballing these cars since 1989 and couldn’t get over how something so small could be legal in the United States. Surely the DOT wouldn’t permit such a thing. Of course I was immediately intrigued by the little wonder. I’m notorious for my love of weird machines, and this car was weird in all the right ways.

It has a 1.0 liter, three-cylinder engine that produces forty-nine horsepower. I’ll let that sink in for a second. Forty-nine. A standard motorcycle today has more power than that. It also had a three speed automatic transmission. For a car that’s small enough to “get stuck on gum”, this thing actually has a fair amount of poop. Getting on the highway was never really a problem as it’s pretty ingeniously geared. It even had air conditioning, but I never used it because 1) the car would probably pull over to the side of the road and punch me in the mouth for even trying, and 2) it didn’t work anyway.

Another funny little feature is that it has 12” wheels. By way of comparison, the wheels, tires included, could fit within a standard rim of a Cadillac Escalade (the Complete Antithesis Vehicle).

I found a used ’92 with 128k miles on it, and that was fine because I didn’t intend to use it for any hardcore driving. At the dealership the salesman indicated that state law dictated that he had to come with LF and I on the test drive. Eesh. Three full-size adults in a 1/3 scale automobile. It was a funny drive because I just couldn’t get over the fact that there’s a tiny little mill rivaled only by a hamster wheel moving this car. I knew right off that we’d buy it. I was half ecstatic because we were going to have a gas-sipping, practical car, and half elated because I felt like I was driving what so few had: something akin to a peculiar, tiny post-war Czech car (I guess). We brought her home and dubbed her Baby Girl. And, she became the primary vehicle much more often than we had ever intended.

Almost immediately I had to start replacing stuff. I knew I would because it was a 10-year-old car. First an alternator, then rotors, then suspension bits, then…but again, I didn’t mind. The parts were relatively cheap and it kept my mechanic chops up. I was seemingly replacing something every weekend. Never could figure out how to fix that damned driver’s side window, however.

I have often referred to the car as the Sugarcube. That’s how quickly it dissolves. No matter. As long as it was mechanically sound, I didn’t worry about it. Amazingly, it kept passing inspection despite its obvious leprosy.

We loved the car because it was so funky and could hold ludicrous amounts of stuff; even a kayak slid in through the hatch and kept me company in the passenger’s seat. It was also great because you could park it anywhere and never had to worry about things like theft, people hitting it with their doors, or bumping into it. The situation was always win-win because it just didn’t matter if it took on another blemish. We had nothing to lose.

But now the engine is producing an ugly sound that I no longer have the time or energy to investigate or fix. I live in a condo and automotive work of any type is prohibited. The past two years have been like trying to keep a three-legged, blind, asthmatic, diabetic dog alive. Without fail I would mutter that this was the last time. It was out of principle more than anything, but it’s become a battle I can no longer fight and it’s unfortunately time to put her down. We had a good run, but it’s now time to bid her adieu. Farewell, Baby Girl.