SAmadei
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Everything posted by SAmadei
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Looks like all your hard work is going to save you a hassle and your 'Trep from a potential trip to the big parking lot in the sky. Nice!
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$3.33 just across the bridge in Woodbride, NJ... $3.36 down near home. No pumping req'd. ;-)
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Its not the car, its how you drive it. Most excitement (not good kind) I ever had was driving a Chevette at 60 mph, and nearly changing lanes into a truck I didn't see in my blind spot.
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I used to like sleeping, but no more. I'd rather stop the habit. I usually can't fall to sleep unless I'm exhausted... I have used Melatonin to help the process, but only certain brands make a workable Melatonin and its hard to stick to some semblance of a schedule.. as the daily usage wants you to stick to a certain 24 hour schedule. Then after about sleeping 3 hours, I still start hurting... either back or knees... sometimes whatever muscles I was overworking. I have 5 places to sleep in 3 houses, so I can usually switch from bed to sofa or vice versa... but sometimes there just is no comfort coming. Since I'm not sleeping well... and I've usually drank lots of liquids, now my body feels the need to purge liquid every 75 minutes. Sun comes up and shines right in my face and the cat won't leave me alone unless I feed him. Then I wake up completely unrested after snoring all night dehydrated with a pounding headache, because using the CPAP can be annoying. Yeah, I hate sleep. My grandfather used to say that one can sleep when their dead.
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For starters, we have to stop banding about this $0.57 cost... That is only the cost for a new part going forward. That does not take into consideration the cost of retrofitting the cars already built or the huge potential stockpile of unused parts. I still question if this is such a big deal of a recall. Again, cars are inherently dangerous... and the act of driving one means that you have decided to accept that risk. Should GM recall all the Dexcool screwed intakes? Flooding the crankcase with antifreeze also likely can cause a car to stall if extreme enough. Should GM recall all the break pads? They wear for God's sake! Then you can't stop! Oh, think of the children! In any case, this law of unintended consequences here is that in the future GM will not study any potential issues. This recall would not have blown up in their face IF THEY HADN'T DONE THE BEAN COUNTER MATH! If questioning the quality of the parts becomes persona non grata at GM, there is going to be a lot of problem parts in the future. At some point, this bean counter math has to be accepted as part of the price of running a business with the intention of profit.
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I thought most of the push button starts used an unpowered RFID in the fob to keep range short... but I guess not. Since its battery powered, there is a backup method... page 12 of the owner's manual describes how to start the engine with a dead fob battery... but the nose end against the engine start/stop button and push to operate the ignition switch. Also, speaking of fobs eating batteries, be sure that the buttons are not sticking in the pressed position. One of my refurbed ones is doing this.
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Assuming you bought a battery from a decent brand, you should be fine. Do you use the Remote Start button a lot? Is it one of those that require holding the button down for a while? If you don't use it often, I imagine the button contacts might be getting some corrosion on them and holding the button down is not giving a good contact to start the vehicle. I would also check out the battery holder contacts to ensure its holding the battery correctly and with good contact. Quite frankly, a 2011 fob shouldn't be already experiencing this stuff... but I suppose it could have lived a hard life. I have worked with a lot of radio transmitters, and I believe that over time the cheap transmitters lose effectiveness... either something is happening to the transmitter itself or the background noise from more and more electronics is killing the signal/noise ratio and that hurts range. It seems like all my fobs require one to be within 15 feet of the car, whereas they worked from 50 feet when newer. I see a similar degradation with old remotes, wifi, pagers, cellular phones, walkie talkies. Its a real PITA. Of course, I don't like remoting the car from a distance, usually, so it never is such as issue that I'll run out and get a new fob. I almost hate transmitters as much as rechargeable batteries for their fickle nature.
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But thats only data about recall defects. I didn't read the articles, but I imagine the point here is to get ALL a carmaker's defect data. I'm certain GM knows the failure rate for most parts... probably even before the cars are sold. In the end, this will become another barrier to entry into the North American car market. I'm surprised some legislator hasn't proposed a law requiring some complex mechanism to shut off the car... like manual cars used to have... that required two hands to remove the key. Ugh.
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Uh... I'm likely to do this because its easier for me to physically get in a full size truck when its lowered. And the parking spot in Brooklyn is so extreme, you need some sort of variable height control to get into it. I have the needs for a truck... that's why I picked up the CheapHoe... I find the idea of using a shiny truck for work to be nuts... but when I'm driving something shiny and new... I want a low COG... but GM sells nothing that is full size, fast and low.
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Jalopnik recently had an article concerning the steepest streets... of course, I can't find it right now... but this infographic is similar... http://www.fixr.com/infographics/top-10-US-steepest-streets.html No Seattle streets... sorry, dfelt. I've been to Seattle a couple times... and several streets are very steep... but when you actually measure them, they are less than 25%.
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Balthy... my buddy's 2007 E-350 has 375K on it and it runs strong as hell... it constantly gets runs grossly overloaded. A Sprinter will never live up to that. I thought GM already has decided to phase out the Express/Savanna and replace it with a wimpy Eurovan... that leaves Nissan with the only heavy duty old school work van. And I've heard good things about them.
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Apparently, most GM cars have PassKey III after 1996, which uses an RFID... odd, considering my '99 Bonneville has a resistor pellet (and I guess is PassKey II). This makes some sense, as the '04 Grand Prix keys are marked PK3. However, both the '98 Sunfire and the '97 Tahoe are both well optioned, however, both use a metal key which cannot possibly have a RFID in it. I can believe the Tahoe might have had PassKey III bypassed... but the Sunfire has spent most of its life in out family... I can't imagine that it was bypassed when the car was less than 6 years old... in fact, I find it hard to believe both vehicles might have been bypassed. Is there some sort of easy way that PassKey III can be "trained" to use a non-RFID key? Anyone know what might be going on here? I ask because the Sunfire has a parasitic battery drain, and I may have to replace the BCM... which seems to be related to the PassKey system... and I'd hate to find out my "new" BCM needs a proper PassKey III key.
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Cutting the springs is generally better than heating them and screwing up the temper of the metal. Assuming that the both ends of the spring coil do not change diameter (more typical of rear springs), you can remove one whole coil and the ends of the spring will be in the same place. Of course, if your not strictly into the original ride, I prefer aftermarket springs that firm up the suspension a bit and drop the car to closer to where you expect it to be... these also seem to sag less over time.
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I imagine they are still "owned by Chrysler" because they never had a title or certificate of origin, as they were not street legal. In other words, the lawyers are not legally recognizing the donation as a transfer of ownership. But how this is different from some of the Corvettes at the National Corvette Museum (such as the preproduction '83 Corvette), I don't know. Lawyers ruin everything for everybody.
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Agree with Balthy. They will settle, but only a little. Since almost all cars are sitting on their springs all the time, by the time cars are 30, 40 years old, they all are sitting low and new springs makes them look too high. However, they came from the factory with a lot of extra height... its just most people don't remember them that way. Its been about 12 years since I put new springs in my '86 Buick wagon... and they finally have settled to "look", but now that car is sitting below factory spec again. Hell, I just replaced the front struts on the '98 Sunfire and the new springs included are giving it a nose-up appearance that I'm not so happy with... and I fear I will need to do the rear struts to make it look right.
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I agree that loosing power is disconcerting, but it is like any other hazard of driving... you have to be prepared for anything... be it a sudden stall, a huge pothole, or a car darting out of nowhere into your lane. Steering/brakes not working normally? You better adjust your plans RIGHT NOW. One can argue fault all they would like, but it does not bring one back from the dead... the only person on the road that is looking out for your life is yourself. Dfelt, I used to drive my '68 Catalina with no assist, as the pitman arm seal leaked like a sieve, so I removed the pump. Nothing like regularly parallel parking a power steering car with no power steering to build the muscles. Ugh. Normal manual steering cars fixed the issue by have an insane turning ratio and a huge wheel to give you better leverage... so parallel parking involved turning the wheel 50 times to the right followed by 100 times to the left and then 50 times to the left again.
