The Driveway: COBbies talk cars

Catching up after the better part of a year...

Thanks to some twit in an SUV, the Honda Civic I had is now an ex-Civic. In its place is a used (if somewhat lightly; 9.2K mi at time of purchase) 2016 Hyundai Elantra GT. So far for the most part it wasn't that big a shift in driving habits to the EGT, even with three weeks of a rental 2017 Altima while waiting for insurance checks to get sent and clear the bank.

About the only real gripe I have so far is the steering. It varies the effort depending on speed (faster, more effort), but at even in-town speeds it's kind of stiff, even with the steering set to "Comfort" (Comfort/Normal/Sport settings, of increasing stiffness). Not fatal, mind you, and I've kind of gotten used to it, but still minorly annoying.

I've got a standing offer of $500 for the engine in my Towncar. I'm real tempted since all the electronics and luxuries in the car are failing but I want some more.

I figure if I can somehow get them to come up to $750 and then scrap the body I'll be touching $1000 and I can get a new car out of that.

Which wouldn't be a bad deal at all given I paid $1200 for the whole thing about 5 years ago.

edited 9th Jan '17 1:01:33 PM by LeGarcon

New, legal to drive on tires acquired (ow). Next up, the scraping noise when I brake. I've been driving this car for over three years now, it's probably at least time for new pads.

I'm trying to find a mechanic either near work or along my daily commute. The nearby Firestone appears to have rather low hiring standards, and Jensen Tire is determined to sell me stuff I don't need.

The ol' Saturn is still holding together, though. Got new tires for it last fall. I need to investigate the driver's side window, figure out why it slows/jams on cold days (which wouldn't matter if I didn't have to roll it down to get into a parking garage for work). It'd be the second window I've fixed on that car, so I'm pretty confident about doing it myself. Also need to get the serpentine belt looked at. Or rather, the stuff that it connects to. It squeals something awful whenever it's damp out, and I'm told the problem isn't the belt or the tensioner.

I used Car Talk's online Mechanics Files a couple times when I needed to find a place to get work done. It's basically Yelp but specializing in car services.

^^ I've heard more than a bit from people living elsewhere that their local Firestone store is just as "pants on head" retarded as the one local to me.

(Second hand, but one car the local Firestone worked on had its wheels fall off while the car was driving. Needless to say, this did nothing for the mechanical soundness of the auto in question. )

My father once got an oil change at a Jiffy Lube and... was barely able to get to the brake shop across the street without plowing into something, because they managed to cut his brake lines.

The Precision Tune right next door to where I work was told by our veteran car guy that the broken AC on the truck we needed fixed was the relay, not the compressor, the compressor was, upon cursory visual inspection under the hood, working just fine. It took them an hour and a half of billed labor poking at it and twice calling and saying "it needs a new compressor" for them to identify the busted relay.

More recently, we took a different truck to them that was thumping like something was catching on something else on every hard acceleration. They didn't find anything wrong with it. When it got loud enough for our oldest driver to hear it, he said "it needs a new engine mount". We took it to a different shop, and they opened the hood and said "oh wow, you can see the engine trying to jump through the hood!"

Thanks to that hail storm I mentioned in the weather thread, my car is now in the body shop for the next two weeks. In its place is a 2016 Chrysler 200 rental.

Ugh, whoever thought that interior layout was a good idea needs a severe beating. It has a lot of storage space in the center console, but part of it is located in a compartment beneath the climate control stuff, like how the GA DOT was storing stuff beneath that segment of I-85 that collapsed, and the other compartment has a flip-up armrest to get to part of it, while you need to slide the cup holder assembly back to access the rest of it.

And then there's the uConnect sound system...

Someone in their infinite wisdom decided that a sound system doesn't actually need an "off" button. There's a "mute" button, but if you turn off the car and then start it back up it turns on the sound system regardless of what you may want.

Also, every time the car starts up it shows a splash screen with an "accept" button that was presumably put there because of lawyers, saying basically "pay attention to the road, stupid, not the radio". It goes away after about five seconds if you don't press the button, but until then you can't use any of the controls for the stuff that's handled through the uConnect touch screen.

Add to the above the control arrangement, with some of the radio functions on/around the touchscreen while the volume and tuner knobs are further down on the center console, and I'm thinking that the designer should be beaten about the head and shoulders with a unit of that sound system.

(And, yes, I have checked all the system settings, both for uConnect and the car as a whole, after reading the user guide for the car. No joy on a real "off" function or permanently accepting that splash screen notice.)

Dying with laughter over here. What the heck, sound system?

Yeah, my mechanic brother is always telling me to stay away from Chryslers. With some cars, you just wonder what was going through their minds that made them think such-and-such a thing was a good idea.

Two weeks in a body shop? Geez. Seems like a long time, but I'm guessing they've got a sudden backlog of work?

Yeah, there were a lot of cars with hail damage, enough that they had to be open on Saturday (they're normally closed on the weekend) just to get through all the damage estimates in the few weeks following the storm, and they're far from the only body shop in the area.

I was quoted ~$8K in damages by the insurance company's inspector, so I suspect that I just barely squeaked by them not just totalling out the car (~$16K at time of purchase).

On the upside, I was off the road when it happened. I hear there were some drivers on their way home from work or whatever that had hail penetrate their windshield completely. Talk about a FML^* Fuck My Life moment [edit]after the need for a change of pants[/edit]...

edited 25th Apr '17 7:58:48 AM by Nohbody

Once at work a customer was looking for a solvent for fabric glue "because someone thought carpet was appropriate to put in a Jeep". She was going to replace it with Rhino Liner.

Well, depending on the model she's right.

I wouldn't personally recommend taking something like the FWD Liberty off the streets, mind you, and the Grand Cherokee is more a beefed up station wagon than off-roader nowadays, but if you're going to get a Jeep part of the regular maintenance should include feeding it a diet of rocks and mud.

edited 26th Apr '17 6:09:03 AM by Nohbody

A meme that said "no, you can't drive my Jeep" came up in my Facebook feed once. I commented "afraid your toy is going to get broken?" I was not popular.

Golf ball put a huge ass crack in my windshield. Too big to fix, I'll have to replace it.

Which I won't because fuck spending that much money.

Well, I don't know your finances and can't make that decision for you, but you might want to keep in mind that cracked windshields are a safety thing. In some places, it's illegal to drive with a cracked windshield. Insurance may cover replacement. Another impact (a rock thrown by a truck, hitting a really bad pothole) may cause the windshield to shatter completely. Which, yes, it's safety glass, so there wouldn't be a lot of sharp edges, but it would still suck.

(Annoyingly, it's hard to find information about cracked windshields that doesn't come from auto glass suppliers or body shops.)

I don't have the money to fix it even if I wanted to. So nothing to do but hope nothing shatters on me.

Have you checked with your insurance company to see if they will cover it? I know that with State Farm (my car insurer) they cover one windshield replacement a year, and after that you (generic "you") kind of figuratively get it in the shorts.

I know for a fact they won't cover it. I've got them for $25 worth of window repairs just so I can say I own some sort of insurance to be able to drive legally.

Amusing sight while playing "family taxi" this morning: A car for a driving school ("student driver" stickers in various places) with the license plate "ohmeomy".

How's that for a vote of confidence in the student driver...?

Grr.

I called the body shop on Monday, when they said it'd be ready to pick up, and was told that they found more damage, and had gotten it authorized by the insurance company. They said I should be able to pick it up today.

Wrong.

Now they're saying another week, because of still more damage. Repairs authorized by the insurance company, but that still means another week of that piece of crap rental, which mind you is on my own dime as my insurance policy doesn't cover rentals (one of those "penny wise, pound foolish" situations on my part).

At this rate, they could have ordered every single external body part from the factory in S. Korea and gotten them painted by now.

Finally got my car back... and even then I have to take it back in next week because one of the replacement panels was damaged in shipping, and they're waiting on a replacement for the replacement.

(The secretary said which body panel, but I didn't catch it, and nothing seems to still be dinged.)

Now I just need to get used to having to pull the key out of my pocket instead of leaving the fob in the pocket for a pushbutton start. Thank God I actually have an "off" option for the radio now, though.

Two weeks ago the third out of four window regulators went out on my car. Got that fixed quickly because it had to be done. Last night, I got a flat tire. No way I'm going to be able to get a new tire before payday this week.

Since I wasn't in any hurry and already at home, I figured for once I'd actually change my own tire. Unfortunately, I just don't have the strength to get the lug nuts off, so I called AAA (which is thankfully free).

Or I tried to. I don't like talking on the phone, so I tried the website on my phone first. You have to log into your account. I didn't remember my account info, so I went to the assistance hotline. I think it's my cellular service, but it just sat there trying to place the call for tens of seconds without even a dial tone. So I went inside and plugged a handset into my useless landline, and that went straight to a few rings and a then busy signal.

So I went back to the site, did a password reset, and tried to log into the Texas roadside assistance site. It said "noooo, you're not our member!" So I switched to the Indiana site (with great obnoxitude), and then I got a popup that said, "Hi! You're on the Indiana site, but we can tell you're not in Indiana! Please give us your zip code!" Only my phone wouldn't let me type anything into the box.

So I went back inside and got on my desktop. I logged into my account, but it said "you're not actually a member according to our records..." So I put in the information from my gold card that says "valid through January 2018". And it still said "nothing on file for that". So I sent a very angry missive through the feedback portal.

Then, because I still needed to connect to a human being, I thought I'd try the customer service number. The phone tree offered me a way to connect to the roadside assistance hotline, so I went with that. And I got a person! Whose jurisdiction did not include my location! I told her about my problems with the roadside assistance hotline, so she gave me the direct number for Texas before transferring me to a Texas dispatcher. It worked, so I didn't need the number, and everything went smoothly from there and we were done by five minutes before their "you should hear from them by" time.

Oh, and I forgot to say that I was expecting the tech to pull out a pneumatic tool, but he just put a pipe on the wrench I was using to get more leverage.

I was able to find the receipt from when I bought my four new tires back in January that said I bought the Road Hazard insurance. As I read the policy, it only covers patching the hole, but they deemed the tire unsafe and replaced it for free. I just paid for the new warranty, which is less than a fifth of the price of the tire, so a good deal.

Those Road Hazard warranties are totally worth it. Got a fat nail in the sidewall of a tire not long ago, and the warranty (good for two years!) covered the cost of a new tire. Similar reason to yours, since a patch doesn't work on sidewall.

The roadside tech didn't find anything but a half-centimeter crack in the tread, but I drove it a few miles before I realized it was flat, and then as many more to get home, so I probably murdered the sidewalls.

edited 8th Jul '17 1:49:11 PM by TParadox