automotive – BrowserMetrics

Covid-19 Days — 626: 8850.9 miles

broderic on November 28, 2021

A week or so after the lockdown in March 2020, I had set the B trip odometer to my truck back to zero to figure out how many miles I would drive during the lockdown. You see, commuting daily would be at least 60 miles a day. I would do about 320 miles a week in my truck with the commute and local driving on the weekends. For the year, I think I would do about 18,000 miles.

I was just curious to see how many miles I would put on during the lockdown. Of course, we’ve been out of lockdown for almost a year so this isn’t an accurate account of how many miles I did during lockdown. If I thought to have checked immediately, I’m sure the count would’ve been under 4,000 miles. But I missed that chance to record it.

For the record, it’s 8850.9 miles for the 626 days since the lockdown. It turns out to be about 99 miles per week, 433 miles per month, or 14 miles per day. Quite a bit less than what I did before the rona. Just a bit less.

Covid-19 Days – 21

broderic on April 3, 2020

So, the truck has a coolant leak. What’s to do about this? Are auto shops open? Can you sit and wait or do you drop it off? Can I just wait for it to drain completely? But you know what, I think I would’ve been lazy about it even without the rona running around. Personally, I hate when these things happen. I’m doubly hating this because of the uncertainty about how to proceed.

Anyhow, I’m working on an off Friday to make up the hours that I need for this week. At the moment, I’m still short. LOL! Just need a couple of more hours.

210168 / End of the road

broderic on May 31, 2014

Adios and thanks for all the fun driving.

I traded her in for a truck. It’s my first time riding high on a gas guzzler. The new one’s different. It’s a boy. Tommy.

I may be making a mistake here. We’ll see in a few months what will be happening to the bank accounts. I’m already sad that I no longer drive a Volkswagen. I’ve been driving in one for my whole driving life. Now I’m not, and I have this big truck. What!

Good bye good girl. It’s been fun…

The Year in Automotive

broderic on December 23, 2013

Here’s a review of the past year in car ownership. I just want to catalog the cost of car ownership for this one year because it has to be one of the more costly years.

First things first, I paid off Itsuki-chan. She’s all mine. Now I own two cars. It’s this second car that makes owning expensive — the loan and the insurance. At least one of those payments is done.

Then even before she was fully paid off, Itsuki-chan had some issues. She had a bad start and rattle when under load. I took her in to get service for it in the spring, they changed something I forget which and cost $1400. That didn’t fix her, so I put her away for the fall maybe to take her to another mechanic to service it for real.

I switched to the VW, which was at 200k. At her age, she had some issues, too.

One day driving home from work, the temperature gauge went off. It was because a hose had deteriorated leaking coolant. I took her in for service, got her back, then had to take her in again for the temp gauge going off. This time it was the circulating fan failing. Because it had to work overtime while the temperature had gone up, it failed and needed to be replaced.

In the middle of the summer, I had the VW throw a check engine light. I ignored this one for a long time. I was still able to drive the Mini Cooper, so I set the VW in the garage. When the Mini started to worry me and I put her in the garage, I took out the VW. She wouldn’t start. I needed a new battery. Replacing it, cleared the check engine fault. I haven’t seen it show up again.

Besides routine maintenance, I bought an air compressor, so that I don’t have to pay to fill the tires up with air. The VW seems to need it all the time.

Finally, the VW’s paint is going bad. It’s peeling terrible. I should get her repainted. Next year.

Cars ownership sucks. At least, I don’t have to worry about the money to pay for them.

Neutral

broderic on May 12, 2013

Itsuki-chan’s in for repairs. Hopefully, she gets better, and hopefully, it’s not gonna cost an arm and a leg. Meanwhile, they gave me a car to tool around in. They weren’t supposed to, but I think they’re trying to buy a new one. I can’t get rid of Itsuki-chan, but this new girl is fun to drive around in.

What you see here is the Mini Cooper Coupé S in a gaudy light blue. It’s almost like the standard Mini Cooper S, but only two seats, 3/4 of the height, and more claustrophobic. It’s like a small closet. The ceiling is close to your head even cranking the seat down as far it goes. I’m 5’9″ and my head nearly touches the roof. They’ve accommodated your head with little functional alcoves on the ceiling, but I think if you’re tall, you’re gonna be ducking a lot.

The most aggravating aspect of the coupé is lack of sight lines. The rear window is small and when the spoiler extends at 51 MPH the view out back is even more obscured. The B and C pillars block the view when trying to backup. It’s small inside and hard to see out.

Yet, it still a fun little ride. Compared to Itsuki-chan, it’s feels more agile. Perhaps this is because it is more rigid being smaller and lacking the sunroof. It goes into corners just as confidently as Itsuki-chan, but without the LSD that Itsuki-chan has, it doesn’t pull as smoothly. There’s some spinning.

The coupé has about the same options as mine, maybe. The interior is black which makes the plastic look much, much better. The radio integrated into the center speedometer is better designed with both the On button and the volume button adjacent to each other rather than the way it is on mine with one down below the CD player and the other on the speedometer itself. Mini is putting better effort in making the fit of the car better. It’s come a way from my Itsuki-chan, but it feels just about worth its price.

The coupé is also a sport automatic. It’s got paddle shifters on the steering column, or you can shift on the gear selector. It’s weird because I can drive most other automatics, but in a Mini Cooper, I have to use the sport shifting.

When you drive a sport automatic, the ECU controls the shift points. I’ve put her into ‘sport’ mode during my drives hoping it would be almost manual, but the ECU kicks in and makes shifts when I don’t want it to, especially when slowing down. The ECU doesn’t help with the shifting; it hinders it when you’re used to manual.

I also miss neutral, an essential gear on a manual. In a manual, you can take the car out of gear while coasting. In this special automatic, there is no neutral to get to when needed. It’s always in gear. That’s why its tough to drive when I’m used to manual. I like to coast in neutral sometimes and it’s just not available.

I hope Itsuki-chan will be better. This dalliance is great fun, but I want her back.

The Road Goes Ever On

broderic on April 7, 2013

She’s hit the big 200,000 mile milestone. At close to 12 years of age, she’s still going strong. Maybe another 100,000 miles in her. She needs a better paint job for the hood and clearing the cataracts from her headlights. I think she also needs new shocks and struts.

Is she worth it?

I think I can just keep driving her the way she is now. Yet, I know she needs some fixing up to get her to the next 100K milestone. I want to keep her. She’s driving better than the Mini though even after her cooling system went on the fritz last month. She’s a strong German girl. She’ll continue. She’ll continue.

Onward to 300K!

1 Followed By Lots of Eights

broderic on March 23, 2012

Fantastic! We’re a long way from the zeroes. I think the car had about 98 miles on it when I received it. That’s a lot for a new car considering Itsuki-chan had 23. But it’s still about 16K per year. When I did get Itsuki-chan, she had about 145K on her. That was three and a half years ago.

Sun Glare

broderic on December 1, 2011

Nothing to really write about lately, but I have to try.This morning driving into work traffic went from 80 MPH to a standstill because of sun glare. People, don't you know how to drive? I'm guessing that 75% (conservative number) on 695 this morning are commuters driving the same dreary route to work, but we still hit a slowdown because of sun glare. Come on, people, you should know by now the quirks of your drive to work. You should know that sun glare's just around the corner. You should know to have your visor down. You should know to wear your sunglasses. You should know not to look directly into the sun. You should know to look at the lines on the road. You should know to look at the backlit car in front of you.Follow the lines on the road and be wary of the cars in front of you and we can all still drive 80 MPH into the sun!

Fresh Mornin’ Do

broderic on October 13, 2011

One of the craziest things I do while commuting in the morning is that whenever traffic forces me to stomp the brakes, I take a look into my rear view mirror. I do it to watch the driver behind me either rear end me or swerve to miss.

This morning the traffic in the commute was cruising along at the standard 70 MPH. It was also bumper to bumper although I leave a car space in front. This leaves me susceptible to some wanker sneaking into that space.

I was watching this fellow make his way through traffic until he was behind me. He made me nervous.

We go under an overpass and seconds later I am hearing the sound of tires squealing. It was from the tractor trailer on my right hitting his brakes. The sound staccato.

I look up ahead. Cars are slowing down fast. I press firmly on the brakes closing the gap between me and the car ahead. That’s when I look up into my rear view mirror. I try to catch a glimpse of the idiot behind me. He’s swerving a bit to my right. Then he’s swerving to my left and he’s diving to my left. I don’t even look to the cars I am going to hit. I watch the idiot end up on the shoulder akimbo to my car.

Crazy. We just missed each other. It was because of another rear end.

I need to stop peaking at cars behind me.

“Sure, we’ve all wanted to kill Matthew, but what good would that do?” “It would make him dead.”

broderic on September 5, 2011

Had a blast at the inaugural Baltimore Grand Prix. Although, we were there on the Saturday and just watched the American Le Mans, it was still fun. If you go next year, get the 2 day pass so that you can wander around on the Saturday and watch the grand prix on the Sunday. There’s just too much to do for one day. If you do something, you’ll miss the races, and if you watch the races, you’ll miss the stuff to do.