The car thread

Disabled Account
Joined 2017
What is an SUV anyway. Is it a product for mothers who drive their children to school then go shopping?

Its a product for people to look like they own a 4x4 but not really, because they're cowards. They want the macho image of owning a 4x4 so that they can put a sports device (Kayak, Surfboard) on the top or a couple of bicycles on the back and go and ride a bike, but drive there first.

These people feel infinitely superior towards others (because they are thin/apparently look good to their friends, but in reality their insides are rotting from a lack of nutrition and too much coffee) and don't really care if everyone decided to just die just so that they could get a coffee in a minute. They also usually work in a field which boosts their self esteem so high that nobody can tell them that they are wrong at anything, even if it kills someone they'll blame somebody else rather than admit that they were wrong.


An SUV is a car that a drug addict would buy, and it shows, because Caffeine is a drug. And just like a gun an SUV provides an inflated sense of self esteem.


They also have zero cargo space so you can't help anyone move their stuff like a normal human being would for their friends, with a wagon or ute. Boosting yet again their fake macho scorched-earth image.

They are also high up in the SUV so they leer over other drivers saying "look at me aren't I important!" but there is no ground clearance, a true testament to the Napoleon syndrome that most people have today when treating strangers like garbage in traffic or really anywhere in real life. This shows you just where the SUV originally came from, from gangsters, from the Escalade crowd of black and latino murderers and drug lords. The 90s and 00s when growing your own pot and selling drugs to kids then shooting someone because they are on your turf was/is still considered cool. That is what an SUV is to most people, the epitome of bad attitude.

Its the same snotty crazy consumerist attitude that ute drivers have when they pull out of a car park and leave a smashed passengers side window and a huge ding in the side of your door, or ram your car up the **** and write it off, which happens on a regular basis around this town.

This same ******* attitude is what kills little old lady's in their Toyota Echos at roundabouts because the Ute driver with an (illegally) lifted 4x4 or SUV decided to run the gauntlet and run the other car over killing the occupant. Or when they take their lifted 4x4 over to the beach and kill a little girl that was playing in the sand dunes by hitting her head-on with a steel or aluminium bull bar.

But its okay because they had a light bar fitted, which they use illegally on the road to blind other drivers.

Top Gear covered it in one of their last season episodes. Before the ******* took over and fired the good cast.
 
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How long do you keep your car?
Just listing the current ones from oldest to newest.

1991 Toyota Previa van with 5 speed manual.
My parents bought it used about 2001. Gave it to me about 2013 with about 220,000 miles.
Currently has about 287,000 miles and drives fine. Carried a trailer from Denver CO to Fruita CO last week for one last biking/camping trip before winter. Needs valve adjustment with shims and replace MAF sensor to run perfectly before next emissions test. It does not consume or dirty the oil so I expect it to clear 300,000 miles no problem. It is a mid-engine AWD vehicle that really handles well in snow.
I may actually get the the Previa painted and replace the windshield. While doing so, I may put duraliner on the front to avoid rust from rock hits.
Also, someone in the Denver area seems to be buying up the existing vintage Previa vans and giving them a makeover.
Sort of makes mine look abused/neglected when I see them.


1998 Subaru outback. Mother in law bought originally and gave it to my son in 2015 with 146,000 miles. Currently has 160,000 miles and runs fine.

2001 Honda CRV. My mom bought about 2013 with 166,000 miles. She gave it to me about 2017 with 189,000 miles after developing a head gasket leaking a little coolant.
I had the head planed and bought a rebuild kit and just rebuilt the whole engine. Currently has 197,000 and runs nice. Good for snow and ice driving in Denver.

2004 Honda Accord 5 speed bought used in 2011 with 130,000 miles. Currently has 240,000 miles. Runs fine. Consumes about a quart of oil every thousand miles and will probably get an engine rebuild in the next two years if oil consumption gets worse or it fails emissions.

? year Toyota chopped pickup trailer. Pulled by the 1991 Previa when needed.

One advantage to living in Denver, CO is cars do not rust as fast. The older cars may have some rust spots that do not seem to grow from year to year.
 
diyAudio Moderator
Joined 2008
Paid Member
@ Venus. US marketing has always allowed us to modify their commercials to suit us. Now they insist it has to 'pop' - (groan).

This is a new product for us and I think the new name was a mistake. Fortunately we don't take well to being told what to like.
 
The car before my current one I’d had for over 15 years.

While my wife enjoys coffee, I’m not sure she and other typical ute driving mums would fall into the category described! What I see is more of the modern equivalent of this;
1972 Chevrolet Kingswood Estate 454 | Station Wagon Forums

I do agree that it is pretty ridiculous to see vehicles modified to a point where the fundamental safety of others has been disregarded. The bumper heights are established for a reason on road going vehicles. If one wants to go around this, then they should invest in a trailer to haul the thing around to an off road or track location.
It’s not uncommon for the modified trucks to lose an oversized wheel, cross the barrier where there is one, and collide with traffic head on.
 
Well, the girlfriend's Ford Expedition (our family car) has been eating PCM relays off and on since March, and just this week killed two in one day (we carry spares) so it came apparent that it was time to fix it. Research shows that the issue is intermittent/poor connection to one of the terminals on the relay, causing them to overheat and fail, and apparently it's a pretty common issue with 2003-2004 Expeditions in particular. Pulled the fuse/relay panel, and found a pretty oxidized connection on the board, with very loose contacts, and a broken solder pad connection to the trace. Cleaned the contacts, used needle nose pliers and squeezed the connector to provide better tension, and added a wire jumper from the solder pad to the trace. Fingers crossed, but I'm pretty confident it should work now. Worse case, we spend the $300 on a "new, improved" fusebox that "may" fix the problem.

Car started right up, so that's a good sign :)
 

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Just another Moderator
Joined 2003
Paid Member
I recently had a melted relay and melted 30 amp fuse due to oxidised connections!

I'm going to be putting in a separate start switch to bypass my dodgy ignition switch tonight. Key will still be used for unlocking the steering and the normal ignition functions, just a separate switch to press for the starter.

I'm putting in a relay so that it can only be done whilst the ignition is turned on as well (not that the car would start without the ignition, but figured a big red button my be tempting for little fingers which would not be good if car was in gear!)

Tony.
 

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Its a product for people to look like they own a 4x4 but not really, because they're cowards. They want the macho image of owning a 4x4 so that they can put a sports device (Kayak, Surfboard) on the top or a couple of bicycles on the back and go and ride a bike, but drive there first.

These people feel infinitely superior towards others (because they are thin/apparently look good to their friends, but in reality their insides are rotting from a lack of nutrition and too much coffee) and don't really care if everyone decided to just die just so that they could get a coffee in a minute. They also usually work in a field which boosts their self esteem so high that nobody can tell them that they are wrong at anything, even if it kills someone they'll blame somebody else rather than admit that they were wrong.


An SUV is a car that a drug addict would buy, and it shows, because Caffeine is a drug. And just like a gun an SUV provides an inflated sense of self esteem.


They also have zero cargo space so you can't help anyone move their stuff like a normal human being would for their friends, with a wagon or ute. Boosting yet again their fake macho scorched-earth image.

They are also high up in the SUV so they leer over other drivers saying "look at me aren't I important!" but there is no ground clearance, a true testament to the Napoleon syndrome that most people have today when treating strangers like garbage in traffic or really anywhere in real life. This shows you just where the SUV originally came from, from gangsters, from the Escalade crowd of black and latino murderers and drug lords. The 90s and 00s when growing your own pot and selling drugs to kids then shooting someone because they are on your turf was/is still considered cool. That is what an SUV is to most people, the epitome of bad attitude.

Its the same snotty crazy consumerist attitude that ute drivers have when they pull out of a car park and leave a smashed passengers side window and a huge ding in the side of your door, or ram your car up the **** and write it off, which happens on a regular basis around this town.

This same ******* attitude is what kills little old lady's in their Toyota Echos at roundabouts because the Ute driver with an (illegally) lifted 4x4 or SUV decided to run the gauntlet and run the other car over killing the occupant. Or when they take their lifted 4x4 over to the beach and kill a little girl that was playing in the sand dunes by hitting her head-on with a steel or aluminium bull bar.

But its okay because they had a light bar fitted, which they use illegally on the road to blind other drivers.

Top Gear covered it in one of their last season episodes. Before the ******* took over and fired the good cast.

LMAO:up::up::up::up::up:
 
Disabled Account
Joined 2017
Happy news. I ran 3x RG58 Coax lines to the boot and cut them to length (to know I'm serious about this) for the analog audio going to the two Pioneer Class-AB amplifiers. I ended up using split loom conduit for various areas to protect the coax.

Room was kind of limited around near where the rear seats are but I managed to get 3x coax wires in through there without much issues, I was going to try and route 6x coax cables through there but 3x should be enough, 2x for L/R stereo 1 for sub channels.

I was also thinking about running a length of RG58 for cctv camera reasons, for a rear view camera, BUT! I can do that on the drivers side instead.

I just remembered (after waiting to get paid so that I can buy that supercap) that I've got to run power from the deep cycle battery to my car audio head unit in the front of the car. This isn't something that I can just tap into the 35mmsq wire going to the front passengers side. I can't tap power from there because that is a line dedicated for ham radio use, if I were to tap into that I would get RFI on my audio chain whenever I transmitted.

I'm thinking of using cat6-cat7 cabling, running that from the front on the drivers side to the rear of the car into the boot. To obtain clean power for running the head unit and for various low powered gadgets in the front of the car underneath the dash, like for example a rasberry pi. To also obtain power which is completely independent of the starter battery (which will be replaced by a super capacitor.)

See. That is why I cannot simply tap in for power from the regular electrical wiring of the car, because if I do that then the head unit will drain power from the super capacitor, act as a parasitic draw on that. I also cannot keep a solenoid engaged all of the time to keep the supercapacitor happy and fully charged, otherwise that will drain the battery very quickly with the heavy load of the relay.

See how adding a supercapacitor to a car complicates things?

So anyway, if wired up correctly, I should be able to run my car stereo head unit and clock from the auxiliary deep cycle battery located in the boot inside the battery box, which could be a LifePO4 battery. For extended periods I might add, by drawing power over a cat6/7 cable. Tricky part is though I won't be able to use the head unit's amplifier as the wire gauge of cat6/7 is insufficient, even when considering that head units lie about their power outputs and that the most that I would get is 15 watts RMS from 2/4 channels, that is still kinda excessive for a 5 meter run of cat6/7. Mainly because of voltage drop.

I might also run two more cat6/7 cables, for various reasons such as networking, and operating relays inside the boot, to wiring into sensor leads coming from the car's ECU and sending that data back to the boot for a raspberry pi or arduino to analyze and monitor.

And its gotta be shielded cat 6/7 otherwise, again, when I transmit, it will interfere with the data lines.


So I'm thinking maybe of running cat6/7 instead on the drivers side to and from the boot, and running cctv signals, and data signals to/from the car's ecu, and ethernet, and low current draw power. All over 3 separate lengths of cat6/7. I suppose I could cut that down to 2x cat6/7 cables and leave enough room then for running a length of RG58 coax for an antenna mounted on the rear boot.


I'm thinking at this point of simply just running 3x lengths of LL195 for the L/R/SUB audio channels alongside 2x lengths of CAT6/7 on the drivers side, and then leaving the already laid higher power rating RG58 on the passengers side for RF transmissions, such as antennas and radios.


So. All up. It would be 3x lengths of LL195 for the L/R/SUB analog audio signals, plus 1x lengths of CAT6/7 for relay logic signals from an arduino. Plus on top of that a length of CAT6/7 for simply ethernet data. AND then on the passengers side it would be 3x lengths of RG58 for RF tranmissions. In total it would be 8x cables. I would love to have an analog HD camera as a rear view camera though so I had better throw another length of LL195 in there. For a total of 9x leads.
 
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Well, looks like the fusebox repair held, 500+ miles without a hiccup. I also replaced the blower motor resistor pack for the main HVAC fan in the dash (~19$ for a PCB with a few traces on it, highway robbery!) since the old one had been corroded from weather, as it is located inside the airbox behind the dash. So, finally after nearly a year of owning the vehicle, we can now select fan speeds other than full blast or off :) Of course, as soon as this happens, the brake light switch starts requiring almost full pedal pressure to activate, so I replaced that too. Another $30 part.

Next project is to replace the HVAC control servos for the rear AC, since it currently is stuck on AC, no heat, and the ability to switch between roof vents and floor vents is also nonfunctioning. Two 25~35$ parts for that. Less complaining from the kids hopefully (daddy, it's cold! meanwhile we are burning up in the front seat) and it'll be nice knowing it all works correctly. Less janky feeling.


On my car (73 Super Beetle) the passenger side fuel hardline running from the tee off the fuel pump has rubbed a hole in itself against the aircleaner, spraying gas on the intake manifold on that side. Grabbing more hardline tommorow (it's actually brakeline, but it doesn't know that :) ) and bending up a new piece with some creative routing to avoid that issue in the future. I've never been happy with the routing anyway, so here's a good excuse to do it better.

Unsurprisingly, working on the Expedition makes me appreciate the Super even more, if I have issues they're all cheap and easy fixes, no dumbass electronics modules to simply get heat working, or other stuff. "Dumb" parts like carburetors, points, and simple switches are very forgiving compared to servos, modules, resistor packs, etc. I love that Ford, but it sure aint no Volkswagen :)
 
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Just another Moderator
Joined 2003
Paid Member
I just recently replaced the fan blower controller in my 306 as well. Mine is solid state and had failed short circuit, so I only had full blast! Couldn't turn off the fans without either pulling the fuse, or the connector from the base of the fan motor.

I got mine off aliexpress, I was a bit dubious that it would be ok, but the quality seems excellent. I think with shipping and exchange rate it was about $45. A lot cheaper than a complete unit (fan and controller) that was my other option at $450!

Tony.
 
I stopped using fram filters in 1986, and worked in a car parts store. The owners explained to me the difference in construction and how that company spent tons on advertising instead of building a quality product.

As for suggesting a car as a birthday present, well that really depends on a few things none of us know.
Mine wouldn’t turn down a vintage Mercedes convertible I’m pretty sure.
 
Administrator
Joined 2007
Paid Member
Batteries...

Just throwing this out in the wild to see what any thoughts and opinions might be.

A topic on another forum had me questioning and re-evaluating what I know about automotive batteries and charging circuits and that in turn led me to measure the voltage across the battery in my own car under various conditions and to question its condition... good or bad.

At rest, and this is typically 18 or more hours since last being run, and I measure a voltage of 12.4v

Turning the ignition on (but not starting) sees that drop to 12.08 volts. I'm assuming this is light loading of a couple of amps or so.

Adding a load such as the rear heated window pulls this down further to around 11.75v. This voltage seems to be maintained and doesn't fall away quickly.

Starting sees a rise to around 14.4v.

Driving sees (on some occasions, not all) the alternator output being reduced to 12.5v after the first quarter mile or so. This seems to be an active kind of management to aid emissions and economy because lifting off the gas sees the voltage rise back to 14.4v, back on the gas and its back to 12.5v. At idle during this phase it switches back to 14.4v.

Once warmed up the output seems to be maintained between 14.4 and 14.5v.

The 12.08 volts and 11.75 volts under load seem lower than I would have expected for a lead acid battery although I'm assuming this battery is one of the AGM (absorbed glass mat) types suited for engines with 'Stop/Start.

This original battery is nine years old and counting. In terms of turning the engine over and so on, it doesn't appear any different to when it was new.

All these voltages are measured at the lighter socket with a suitable lead and DVM and so there may be slight differences between actual terminal voltage and what is measured at this test point.
 
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Do you measure 12.4v without unlocking or open any doors?
My BMWs from 2006 start drawing up to 30A just by touching the door handle. The voltage will drop to around 12.4V with a new AGM battery.
I bought some cheap bluetooth battery testers to be able to measure voltage without unlocking the cars. The battery voltage is 12.6-12.65V before unlocking.
 
I bought a used 1999 Ford Mustang convertible in about 2001 with a 3.8L 6 cylinder engine. It never missed a beat until somewhere around 2007 when it would randomly drop 2 cylinders, and of course run very poorly. Turning the ignition off and restarting would fix the problem.

It only happened on hot days which meant running the AC even if I had the top down. It could happen twice in a day, or not at all for months. I learned to do a rolling restart and put up with it until a hot summer in 2007.

The kid across the street worked at the local Ford store, so he took it into their shop. Of course it didn't act up, and passed all of their diagnostics. One day it happened near my house, so I turned around, went home, popped the hood, and started yanking plug wires. I learned which two cylinders were not working, and by getting zapped, that the problem was not ignition.

The Ford guy said that they could replace the ECU for about $400, but it might not fix the problem and the $400 was not refundable......

A few weeks later I get my latest issue of Hot Rod magazine in the mail and was reading a story about a sick Corvette. The GM tech said that if you ever have a weird problem on a fuel injected car, try a new battery. That fixed the Vette.

My car had the original 8 year old battery and it was about 95 degrees in the afternoon when the car acted up. A trip to Walmart for a battery made the car crank a lot faster and the problem never returned.

I had never noticed the slowness of the car's cranking since it degraded slowly over 7 years. The battery voltage before starting the car was a bit low, but I don't remember the exact number. The car had the MACH 460 sound system which sucked a lot of power when cranked and probably put enough ripple into the car's electrical system to glitch the ECU.

So if weird stuff starts to happen........