Caliber

Great Success!!!!

Yours truly is now the proud owner of a new* 2007 Dodge Caliber SE. I have finally freed myself from the money pit known as 'skylark' and join the ranks of people with cars that are covered under a thing called a 'factory warranty'. This is a new thing for me and I'm rather excited about it.

My Caliber is 'stone white' like the one in the photo, but doesn't have the 17" wheels or the fog lights. It's got a 2.0 liter 4 cylinder engine with a CVT (Continuously Variable Transaxle). Having the CVT means that the acceleration is more smooth, there is no 'shifting' because there are no 'gears'. Instead a metal belt is driven by two adjustable pulleys which give optimum torque at any given throttle position or RPM. This increases fuel economy over the automatic transmission by 6-8%. Here's the best explaination for it I've found.

I bought it on saturday and picked it up monday afternoon. I've been giddy like a school girl for the past couple days. I've shown it around a little and everybody likes it. It's got neat little things like a 'Chill Zone' beverage cooler which holds 4 20oz bottles/24oz cans, an auxilary audio input, a console mp3/phone caddy and illluminated cup holders.

*New means that it's a program/rental car. I bought it with 27,048 miles on it. It's a model year 2007 but has been 'in service' since May of 2006. They sold me on the extended warranty by selling it for $1900 but lowering my rate from 6.9 to 5.9. Those finance guys at the auto dealers sure do wheald a lot of power. I am now covered until 85,000 miles though - 'bumper to bumper'.

Contrary to what most of you might be thinking, the skylark Did Not catch the fast train to scrapsville, it was saved in the final hour by a unfortunate gentlemen from the Porn Stars who plans on using the reliable car. Interestingly the skylark was worth the same in trade in value as it was in resale, a phat $100. Little did either one of them know I would've paid them a hundred dollars to take it away.

Is This It?

Have I arrived? Is this what it's supposed to be like? Why am I asking these questions?

Last Thursday I did something for the first time that most people are accostomed to doing regularly. I actually paid somebody else to change the oil in my car. It may seem like it's not a big deal to you, but it was for me. I've been driving for 12 years, had many cars, and have done the vast majority or maintenance and repairs myself. My main arguments for not having my oil changed was the price difference and that I wanted to be sure it was done right. Changing it myself would only cost $7-10, but having somebody else do it costs at least $30. I've never had a lot of money to throw around for unnecessary things like that. I still don't have the money, but lately I haven't had the time to get dirty nor the patience to do the job.

This time the want was born from necessity. I'm not sure I'll have somebody else do it next time. I'm still going to change my own brakes and do whatever other repairs are within my realm of expertise, but I may be tempted to let them change my oil again - it felt pretty good.

Turning Over

My car has defied all predictions. Earlier this week it turned over 100,000 miles. I feel the need to tell it's story.

Over two and less than 3 years ago I was not driving my Buick. I was actually driving a Cadillac, which I loved very much. Long story short, the Caddy started leaking coolant from around the head so I decided I needed a new car rather that putting a new engine in the Caddy. I look around online for a few days and happen upon this 8 year old Buick Skylark with only 35,000 miles on it. Better than the low miles, the price was only $3,000. I went to look at the car and found pretty much what I expected. It was in fair to poor shape on the exterior (hail damage, scratches, faded paint), and good to fair condition on the interior (burn holes, missing trim, faded cloth). I immediately thought that this was a car for me. I [haggled] the guy down to $2,850 and drove away in a purple Buick.

I'm not saying that the car has been great. In fact, I've had some serious problems with it. I'd be willing to bet that the problems I've had with my car would have turned any reader of this blog away from it. I, however, was not going to be dismayed by problems you might expect from a car that has sat still for an undetermined period, had 'flood' damage, been broken into, and generally treated like it was not loved. I've stayed with the car through think and thin, and she has finally rewarded my perseverance with a big milestone.

Now I can't wait to get rid of it. Hopefully I'll be able to do that next summer.

Boxes, Belts, and Birthdays

Oh my brothers, your humble narrator was forced to endure some hardship yesterday. It all started when I found a note on my door. It said that I had a package to pick up at the post office. This was good because I was expecting my zen to be in at any time. I go up to the post office just before they close. I hand the guy my ticket and he goes back to look for my box. When he comes back he's got this funny look on his face. I look down at the box, and it's got one whole side of it opened up. He was shaking it to show me that there was nothing inside the box. I felt like I wanted to go postal. They said that the package opened up somewhere between the Canadian border and Gladstone (it was shipped from Toronto), and the contents were 'lost'. So, some lucky (evil) postal employee is walking around with the third zen I've bought in the last month. The good news is that the shipper insured the package, and I should be able to get a full refund through paypal. The freaking idiot didn't even put tape on the side of the box that 'came open'. Above are pictures of the offending box. Aggrivating.

As I was leaving the post office in disgust thinking 'why did god have to sh*t in my cheerios again today', I was confronted with a more immediate problem. I was driving home and I noticed that the A/C wasn't working. At the same time I noticed that the battery light was on. I knew immediately that the serpentine belt had either come loose or had broke. When I got home I pulled the broken belt out and called my dad to give me a ride to the parts store. He took me up there, we got the belt, got back and tried to put it on. Because the other one was broken it took us a half hour to try putting it on the wrong way before we figured out the right way. It still took another 15 minutes to do. Here's a picture of the offending belt.

As I was getting dirty in the parking lot changing my belt, our tennis team was practicing. I needed to be there because I need to get some hits in before the tournament match tomorrow. Needless to say I missed the practice. Our coach hooked me up with a guy to hit with tonight, but that brought on another problem. My granddad (my only surviving grandparent) is having a birthday dinner tonight at 6:30 and I'm supposed to hit with this guy at 7:00. I haven't been able to get a hold of this guy to try to push it back. Hopefully I can. Whoever out there is wishing me bad luck, I wish they'd stop.

Hallelujah

I finally went and got the air conditioner in my car fixed yesterday. It works great. It's been so long since I've had a car with A/C, I just don't know what to do. It makes me want to go out and drive in the middle of the day.

I have tried to fix this problem before. I took the car to a place in riverside and they wanted to change the high-pressure line as well as the evaporator. They said it would cost $550, and that they wouldn't guarantee it would work after they did that. As you could imagine, I wasn't in the mood to spend $550 on that stuff just to find out that I'd have to spend another $1000 on a compressor. This time I took my car to a place I've never been, but was recommended by one of my bosses. They called me in the middle of the day and said that there was a hole in the line, but that they were confident with the rest of the system. They replaced the $150 hose and I got out of there spending only $350. I will go back to Northtown Alignment and Radiator for all my repair needs from now on.

Even though I'm much more happy with my car now, I'm still looking forward to getting rid of it. I should be able to buy a new car next summer after my Lasik note is paid off.

Results

I have a couple things to write about. Firstly, I'd like to announce that I have successfully disabled the passlock system on my car. When it did it to me again after I'd had the remote start system taken out, I was finally motivated to exhaust the web in search of an answer. I found the answer on a bbs somewhere on the web. The solution consisted of starting the car and unplugging a wire. No cutting of wires or connecting of wires to make the job more complicated. Thanks to Denny for researching this problem for me, his solution was right on the money.

Next I'll report on our trip to STL to play softball. We all got up early last Saturday to meet at the Price Chopper in Blue Springs at 6am. We all made it, and were on the road by 6:05. Our first game was at 11, and we arrived about 90 mins early. We spread the first team, and won the second game by 3. That's where our luck ran out. The third and fourth games were lost by 1 and 2 runs respectively - the third game going 10 innings. The fifth game was a complete embarassment. One of our guys got mad for some reason and cussed out the umpire - leaving us with only 9 guys to play. In his defense, we were getting horrible calls all day, and it's hard to play against another team AND and umpire. BUT, you have to keep control of yourself if you want to win. We ended up getting spread early in that game, and because of the jackass who couldn't control himself, the team left STL with a bad taste in it's mouth.

Lastly I need to rave about this device I've recently had the chance to use extensively. It's a Palm Treo 700. It's a phone and a PDA which has the ability to 'sync' with an Exchange server so it's owner can send and receive emails from wherever they get a cell signal. It's got a 330 mhz processor, it runs Windows Mobile OS, it's built on the sturdy PocketPC platform, it's got outstanding battery life, and it's totally expandable and customizable. I whole-heartedly recommend the Palm Treo 700 to anybody who's in the PDA market. With the new Windows OS, it's a joy to use.

Remote Start Resolution

Yesterday I got rid of a problem that has been the source of so much frustration for me. I finally got some resolution in the matter of the remote start system. I can't remember if I've done a post about this or not, so here's a little background.

A year ago February, I took my car to a local car stereo shop to have them install a keyless entry/remote start system. It was more expensive to go there rather than best buy, or something like that, but I was less concerned with price than I was quality of work. They put it in, and it worked really well for about 6 months.

One day last summer I went out to my car to go somewhere. I started the car and put it in gear, then it just died. I tried to start it back up, and it did, and promptly died. At this point I noticed a flashing idiot light that read 'THEFT SYSTEM'. I came to understand that I couldn't start the car when the light was blinking. Sometimes it would come on after trying to start the car and would stay on for 10-15 minutes - which made me late for lots of things.

I took the car back to the shop to have it fixed several times. Each time it would work for a week to a month, then I would have to disable it because it would mess with the 'THEFT SYSTEM'. When it did it to me Monday night, for the first time in a couple months, it was the last straw. It had made me miss tennis and I felt like I wanted to shoot somebody.

What did I do? I called upon the services of my lovely and gracious sister LauraKCMO to assist me with my dilemma. Not only did she help me drop my car off, pick me up, and let me borrow her car the next day, but she talked to the mechanics for me too. Get this - she got them to take the system out for free and write me a refund check for the full purchase price. Thank you Laura! You're the best at what you do!