One week in...

So I've had the new car for just over a week now. I'm really liking it, but I'm torn between 'new purchase anxiety' and 'new purchase superiority' complexes. Complexies? Compliix? How do you even pronounce that last one?

The Good.

Manual transmission was the correct choice. True, I'm sort of learning as I go how to handel certain situations, but as a whole it is nice to be able to accelerate when you want to. True, it's not going to beat anyone in a race, but it is refreshing to get a response right away from the vehicle.

CD player works, sound system is good, and as soon as I get the iPod connector cable for this thing, I will be in audio heaven.

GREAT visibility out the back. It is on par with visibility out the front. The seats are awkward to turn around in when backing up, but it's made easier by having a super-wide rear window.

Good mileage... if you want it. This past week I've been playing around with my mileage, seeing the range. Overall so far I've gotten about 30 MPG with equal city/ hw driving. One day (really trying) on the highway, I got an average of 40! This was an average commute home, going 65! I was really impressed. So of course, the next 2 days I drove like a maniac, seeing how much I could push that average down... Turns out hard driving on the highway (low gear passing, higher avg speeds) stays around 30. Hard city driving gets the worst by far, but I'm not sure exactly what it is.

Feels very comfortable cruising, even up to 80. No overbearing engine noise, no thrasing feeling. Takes the bumps of city streets quite admirably, too.

The speedometer is loads easier to read when the headlights are on. I only test drove the car in the day, and had complained the gauges were vauge and hard to interpret, but with the dash light on, all the major unit lines are lit up. I guess that's a good thing. If only they were easily visible all the time.



The bad.

Electronic acclerator means sometimes a delay in revving the engine. It's especially annoying when you're trying to double-clutch on the highway. True, modern syncros mean that you don't need to double-clutch, but it saves the transmission some wear in the long run, and to be quite honest, I'm just practicing for when I have to shift in the Z car ;)

Light color not only is unnattractive (to some, but not all), but it shows dirt and pollen accumulation too well. This has been cripplingly bad this past week with all the rain we've had. It may be a new car, but it looks dirtier than everything else on the road.

The back window may be wide and awesome to look out, but it is a tad high. Because of the large, rising trunk, the rear window has a distinctive 'upwards tilt' that I'm not use to yet, causing much anxiety when I need to parallel park. I'm sure I'll get use to it.

REALLY soft suspension. If anyone knows of that stretch of 93N near exit 36, you'll know a well-known 'ripple' in the road. Hitting this at highway speeds in the Focus causes the pillow-soft springs to toss you waaaay up and down. I'm sure getting stiffer shocks would prevent this (it was not nearly this bad in the Jetta), but would detract from around-town driving smoothness.

Tire pressure was low when they gave me the car. A few days later it got cold, and the tire pressure light blinked on. Not really a complaint about the car, just a complaint in general. I had to re-air the tires within the first week of ownership (

I'll update the blog with anything else I notice. But for the first week, I'm very content!

Yup. Another new car.

So I ended up buying another car. This is actually kinda painful for my bank account. Two cars, a new computer, and a new expensive city apartment all within one year. Yeesh.


On the other hand, I feel like I got a pretty good deal. Car is a 2008 Focus, sold for $9,200 after a good old-fashioned haggling. To get some perspective, this car (optioned, with the SE trim) was typically sold new between 17 and 18 thousand. It is now two years old and has 22,000 miles. KBB prices it (dealer price) in the mid $12 thousands, and Consumer Reports gives it an applaudable 8.8/10 rating.

The only concession I made on the car was the color: it is the worst of the Focus's color choices, which I believe in the 2008 version there were 8 exterior colors. But while Kiwi Metallic Green (Ford's official name for this particular shade) may make me slightly queasy, the effect it had on lowering the price was strangely attractive. What's more, taking a quick census, less than half of the people I talked to thought that the color was bad. Still doesn't mean that I'm considering how much a pro paint job would be... but maybe it'll grow on me. A lot of odd car things do.

So what've I gotten for my cool 9? (More like 10, counting taxes, registration, liscencing, plates, etc.) Well, as specs go for cars, this one isn't going to impress anyone, but it's more than enough to qualify for my daily driver. 140hp out of a 2.0 I4 engine. The engine bay itself is packed much tighter than in my last car, allowing for extra room inside. 5 speed manual has been fun on test drives, and although I know it's not soft like a sophisticated euro clutch strives to be, but I vastly prefer the firmness. It's got 15" alloys that help get it to that once-lauded 24/35mpg EPA rating, and in-dash computers show gas level, average mileage per trip, and remaining range (so cool, right!?). It's been tested at 0-60 in 8s, 0-100 24s, and is limited to 112mph. I don't really know if it has a working SYNC system (which would be flat-out awesome), but it does have satellite radio, MP3 controls, and.. umm what else... a traction-control-disabling option.

Well, not much more to say about it now. I got it insured yesterday, and the plates should be on it tomorrow. So hopefully I'll have much to say about it after that!

Edit- Oh yeah, and it came with a 'free' Blue-ray disk player... And a 20" TV. I plan on attaching the tv to the hood and playing a blue ray of Fast& Furious on it whenever I drive anywhere XD

so is dividends

Moonroof is a really wierd word. Just say it a few times.

Moonroof.
Moonroof.
Moonroof.


...that is all.

Easter Sunday...

ARRRRGH!

So this weekend I learned how frustrating working on the car could be. My plan was to get 2 things done: new brake pads and rewire the reverse lights. Saturday I was lazy and just drove the car around, and I didn't spend time actually fixing it. So Sunday rolls around and I feel like I'm still golden- these jobs can't be that hard.


So I get the wheels off and take a look at the front brakes. I've been suspicious that the pads would be worn down to practically nothing because they feel really weak when I try and press them. But looking at them, they look fine. They're wearing evenly, they just barely rub the discs when at rest, and they look nothing like the guant, brittle slivers I had imagined. So I put those back in. Obviously the weak brakes are something else. My next best guess would be the brake fluid is old, and needs to be replaced, but I wasn't ready to do that yesterday, so I moved on to the rewiring job.

Which was even more perplexing! The reverse lights were coded with RB/B wires coming out of the bulbs and into a big conglomeration of wires, all taped together and dissapearing into a tiny hole in the body panel in the back. Looking at a service manual, I found where the wires reappeared in the car (passenger's footwell) and began a tedious search for RB/B pairs of wires. I began to realize how bad the seats needed to be upholstered while lying upside-down in one, with my spine pressed against the metal seat siding. Finally, I found a pair of wires, and tested them with a DMM against the car body- only to find that they were somehow grounded. So I assumed those couldn't be them, and kept searching. Found another pair. Tested. Grounded. At this point I was cramped and sweaty and tired of wires, so I looked at the transmission to find the actual leads to the reverse light switch: which turned out to be the only good news of the day. Putting the car in reverse does close the switch, so I won't have to take the transmission apart to fix that, at least.

But in short, the wiring is a mess. There are orignial wires that have been cut, and previous-owner installed wires that end in mysterious black cylinders. There is also an aftermarket radio/cassette player from the early 90's, but all the car's speakers have been taken out. I really need to take the entire dashboard off to get a look underneath, so I guess that's on the agenda for next weekend.

Four months later...

Okay.





So the red car is dying and it's finally nice weather out. The combination of these things means that the Z is undergoing major repairs to become my daily driver. Sooo... List time!








Major jobs TBD ASAP

• Exhaust manifold patch/ overhaul
• Brake replacement: pads and shoes to start, possibly a full line bleed
• Rewiring: horn, revese lights, turn signals
• Choke lines hooked up to butterfly valve in Carb.
• maintainance on heater core
• Door/ rear window seals
• New bumpers?

Minor aka 'For Fun' Jobs

• Replace 14" wth 15" rims
• Rewiring: radio, antenna, door sensors
• Refurb interior: tran tunnel, dash cover, door handels, visors
• Upholster seating/ new seats?
• Fabricate rollbar for single-carb setup
• Clean engine bay
• All fluids replaced
• Front lip
• Rear louvers
• Lower it. (Suspension I have in storage drops it another 1-1.5")
• Get all the dings out, refinish those spots
• New 'Datsun 240Z' badges on rear hatch+ behind front wheels

There. That should give me enough to do until at least June. Below: Pic of the car as it appeared last weekend, before any work.