Slow Down, Chumps

If you drive in Illinois, you’d better keep your speed EXACTLY at the work zone speed limit.

If you go too slow, you’ll have 20 ton semis about 6 inches from your rear bumper.

And if you go too fast, even by just ONE MPH, you risk a $375 fine mailed to you as a result of photo enforcement that goes into effect tomorrow, July 1.

Of course, slowing down every driver in every work zone in the entire state will cost us all more time and money. More time, obviously. And more money, because gas mileage is always worse at 45 m.p.h than at 55 or 65. And gas prices are already higher in the summer, because demand is higher … because there are already more of us on the road. A perfect time to insist on slower driving.

And I won’t even get into the possibility that some of the speed trap photo enforcement equipment will be poorly calibrated, resulting in fines for innocent drivers. That would be unhelpful.

I also won’t get into the risks of adding time to an already-long drive which can cause drowsiness later. Again, unhelpful.

But as a benefit, we might get some unknown level of slightly reduced risk. Maybe. So, YAY!

Enjoy your summer! Get out there and travel — the economy needs you!

Driving While Texting = Cleaning Out the Gene Pool

For all the yahoos and moe-rons that just can’t put aside the damn iPhones and Crackberrys whilst motoring a vehicle on public roads: 10 Car Pile-Up! ROTFL!

It’s a must-read.

Apparently, 26% of drivers admit to texting while driving. Um, talk about impaired.

What if 26% of drivers admitted they were legally drunk while driving? Impaired is impaired. Just what the hell is the difference to the unlucky ones that get hit?

When it comes to the types of impaired driving we get all up in arms about, we are curiously capricious.

I wonder … is MADD going to start another chapter devoted to this form of potentially lethal use of a vehicle? And get that PR and lobbying machine all cranked up to demonize “texting and driving”? Care to place a bet?

All that aside, we would do well to remember that driving a car is a public safety issue.

While we are very sorry if it interrupts your busy Twittering schedule, that’s just too f*cking bad.

Deal. With. It.

Sounds Like the Least of Your Problems

If you’ve ever wondered why nobody ever called in to “Car Talk” and asked how to patch a bunch of bullet holes, wonder no more!

This Kid is Going Places

Srsly

A six year old boy missed the school bus. So what does he do? He gets the keys to the family car, and drives 10 miles to school.

OK, sure, he went in the ditch a few times, and ended up hitting a light pole, but he’s alright. The police got him to school (after taking him to the hospital) around lunch time.

His mom was asleep during all this. Might want to keep a closer eye on that kid, I’m thinking.

You Think YOU’VE Got Economic Problems

Wanna trade places with the Chairman and CEO of GM, Rick Wagoner?

Imagine that this mess is now your problem:

Worries about whether GM has enough cash to survive caused the company’s stock to plunge last week to its lowest level since 1951. On Monday, GM’s battered shares rose 33% or $1.62 to $6.51 in 4 p.m. composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange. A year ago the stock traded for $43.20.

In a move that promises to add pressure to GM’s short-term outlook, GMAC LLC — the lending arm that finances a bulk of buyers purchasing GM vehicles — said Monday that it is taking a more conservative lending stance in financing, limiting purchase contracts to customers with credit scores of 700 and above. The median score of Americans is 720.

[...]

In June, GM said it intended to close four truck factories in total, including plants in Oshawa, Ontario, and Toluca, Mexico, as well as the Janesville and Moraine operations. GM was consuming about $1 billion in cash a month in the second quarter. Analysts believe it is burning much more now because of production cutbacks in the third quarter and because the financial crisis has slowed auto sales dramatically.

Buckingham Research analyst Joseph Amaturo estimates GM burned through $5 billion in the third quarter. GM had about $21 billion in cash reserves at the June 30 end of the second quarter. Since it needs a minimum of $11 billion to $14 billion to run its operations, some analysts believe it risks running short of cash within 12 months if does not raise additional financing.

GM hasn’t yet said when it will report third quarter results. The company lost $15.5 billion in the second quarter.

Wow.

GM used to be the engine that ran the entire economy. But today, we’re watching it die, day by day.

One could make criticisms about the roles of union protectionism, or global markets, or car building, etc., in the ongoing disaster that is GM in today’s economy. And I’d be first in line to make many of those criticisms.

But even with all that, it’s a damn shame.

Millions of people have either worked at these plants, or worked at companies that supplied parts for them, or worked in the offices next to them.

Entire generations of families have lived and died in the towns where these plants and offices were located, by whatever accident placed them there. Places like Janesville, Wisconsin, which I’ve driven through many times.

Millions more people have been able to go to college and break out of the economic straitjacket their fathers worked in for forty or more years, due to the higher wages the unions were able to secure for the largely unskilled labor of their members. Unions have their faults, but helping multiple generations of unskilled laborers afford middle class homes, and send their offspring to college, wasn’t one of them.

GM is a piece of our social history.

But GM’s future — social, financial, or any other kind — isn’t looking too good.

Maybe the company doesn’t deserve to live on; economic math is brutal, and you don’t get credit for trying, like in some of our dippy schools.

Either way, it’s still a damn shame.

Folks of a certain age recall GM products of the 60s and early 70s with fondness. Pontiac GTO and Le Mans. Olds 442. Chevy Camaro and Impala. Many, many others. Big V8 motors + huge interiors + squishy suspensions + cool looks = awesome cars. And gas was like $.35 a gallon in 1970. What’s not to like?

Those days are so over.

Adventures in My Garage

Things I’ve learned in the last week while attempting — for the first time EVER — to do a brake job.

REMOVING the calipers, pads, and rotors from the rear end of an Audi A4 isn’t all that hard, if you have all the tools;
RETRACTING the piston in the caliper, however, is tricky, you can’t just compress the piston with a big C-clamp, you have to turn it too;
BUYING the Bentley manual for the car isn’t always enough to know how to fix it;
HEEDING that manual’s advice when it says “use special tool xxxxx” might be a good idea;
EVEN THOUGH you might have researched it on the Internet, and think you know a way to DIY;
BECAUSE both turning and compressing the caliper piston at the same time are required, which means you need, um, a special tool, just like the book says;
BUT you can rent the tool at Autozone for FREE (deposit is fully refunded upon return), and it works great, though I, of course, had to first compress one piston enough, using mostly arm strength, to fit it fully in there;
REALLY wish I’d known all this before starting, to save time and money;
SINCE I did not, I decided to bleed fluid from the rears, on the theory that this would help compress the piston;
IN THE COURSE of doing this I ripped one of the caliper dust boots;
AUDI charges $54 for a caliper rebuild kit which consists of: a couple of rubber dust boots, a couple of rubber O-rings, and a packet of pink goop … FIFTY … FOUR … DOLLARS! ;
IN ORDER to change these out, you have to now extend the pistons, which you’ve just spent time retracting, using the special tool you thought you didn’t need in the first place;
I WAS UNABLE to get this to happen, either because I’m a moron, or because my calipers are seized, or because (as I later found out) of the air in the lines;
IF my calipers are seized, it is probably something I did, because they used to work;
NOW I have to bleed the brakes, to get out the air that I introduced without gaining any other advantages, and I did this yesterday, and hopefully I actually got all the air out (if only fluid is coming out of the bleeder, does that ALWAYS mean you’ve expelled all the air?);
UNFORTUNATELY, as I am to find out, I did not get all the air out, so the pedal goes to the floor and does nothing to stop the car;
THE PARKING BRAKE does work though, so my calipers aren’t seized, and the pads and rotors are probably OK;
FURTHER I decided that since the brake fluid needed to be changed anyway, to flush the whole system, which would also bleed any remaining air out too;
SO I had to once again jack up the car and remove all four wheels to bleed the brakes completely;
DID THIS on Sunday, in about an hour, and voila!, the mushy pedal is gone, and all brakes now work, which is good since I drove it on public roads last night;
REAR brakes are a pain because the parking brake is integral to the way they work, ie, the reason the piston compresses via turning it;
AUDI QUATTRO rear suspensions sure are complicated compared to a standard FWD car – upper and lower control arms, struts instead of shocks, various linkages to sway bars, etc., plus of course CV joints and driveshafts because it is AWD;
MY A4 needs some new bushings and whatnot back there, and maybe new struts, but this will have to wait;
BRAKE cleaner is awesome stuff for degreasing and general cleaning … what is this stuff, kerosene?;
STILL have to put the new caliper dust boots on someday;
IF you need auto parts for an Audi, try blauparts.com, they have lots of parts, a nice website, and helpful, friendly people on the phone;

That’s about it, I think.

Murphy’s Law for Shadetree Mechanics

Anybody who has bought a set of wrenches, or a socket set, can tell you that, usually, one of the sizes in the range is not included; for instance, a set of metric wrenches might include all sizes from 8mm – 19mm inclusive, EXCEPT 18mm.

Because, really, who needs an 18mm wrench?

I do, as it turns out.

So yesterday I had to crawl out from under a car, drive the other car to Ace Hardware, and pay $10 for a single 18mm wrench; the whole set of Craftsman wrenches was only about $25, a few years ago.

Oh, well, at least now I’ve got the full set for next time. It’s still kind of annoying, though. I imagine it’s totally done on purpose, to force you to pay extra for one wrench, to up the profit margin for the whole set. And to be frank, $35 or $40 for a nice set of 12 wrenches is a pretty good deal, really. It’s really the “stopping in the middle to go get it” part that frustrates.

The job itself was pretty easy; it was a lower trans mount for our new-to-us Saab 9-5 Aero wagon. Remove two bolts, and swap the new one in. The setup work — getting the car up in the air, getting tools out, going to the store, and putting everything away — took longer than the actual job.

Pay Me Now, or Pay Me Later

It’s Later, Apparently

My 1999 Audi A4Q has been acting up lately, so I took it into the shop today. It’s been making this horrible humming/grinding sound from the rear for a couple weeks — it seems to get louder every day, and it isn’t tire noise. Also, the handling has been a little odd, it doesn’t want to track straight.

Turns out the right rear wheel bearing is shot, and the left one is starting to go. too. But you can’t just re-pack them with grease, or pop in new bearings and be done with it. No, these are entire assemblies, including the hub and a speed sensor and who knows what else, so the cost for both sides is, um, about 5% of what I spent for the car three years ago (bought it used with 40k miles).

The tracking problem is the tie rods on both sides, which runs about another 4% of what I spent back then.

Oh, and it needs rear pads and rotors, but that has to wait. I may even try that myself, since my son is now an expert at doing brakes, based on his extensive experience from last summer.