Valid gripes. Some might be a little bit adaptivity related.
The ugly. Take the guy my gal and I took care of for a year. Who's wife left him of 10 years. A dude with it all. Could whoop any one of our asses with a punch that would sail you several feet before your heels would land, dragging the dirt. But an overall nice guy.
Drove around a corner on a snowy night. Lost it. Got launched out of the car by a pond. A passer by stopped and saw him passed out. Picked him up and shook his shoulders. Head flopping around.
Welcome to the world of a quadriplegic. Lost everything he ever had. From that day on depending on another human to keep him alive.There's a lot more. Pity harvesting, unappreciative, vengeful. Got him up and showered, shaved, clothed. Fed. Put to bed. Rolled several times several times a night because a single bruise could end up going to the bone. Body having to be trained like a clock. Eat at this time....bed at this time. Scooping him up from neighbors after coming home from a long day in the hot sun in Florida to a mentally stressed out chick who had about enough.
Neighbors who felt sorry for the poor poor guy. Shoving whiskey, coke, more whiskey in his body. Looking like a dick throwing his joystick controlled wheelchair out of gear and pushing him home with dead senses arms flailing at me.
Getting him up in the morning, dressing him, and rolling him into his wheelchair.
And gravity immediately taking over. Days and days and days (thank God randomly) of going straight to the tiled wheelchair shower. And taking his pants out in the back yard to garden hose off. Until the hammer came down.
Poor poor guy. But try to take a Saturday or evening out with the wifey. Where are those neighborly friends then for a few hours?
Go to a you-pullit junk yard. Slice a chunk of seat belt for the latch. Enjoy your damned no-ding-chime and annoying dash light now-off vehicle.
People who get in my vehicles? I sit there motionless with the engine running until they give me the andele', vamos, let's-go-already look. "Remember Gene?....make it click". The giving and receiving party does not enjoy "The Bowel Program".
Yeah. You save a lot of gas when the engine shuts off every time you stop. What? Every 4-5 years an OEM starter costs 400 bucks and up to hours of labor to swap? Stop and go driving? The stealership loves you when you try to make a warranty claim now. Use the option to bypass that if you have it.
Uh-huh. How about having warranty work performed for a drivers door rattle. The only one with the key slot. For the emergency key tucked in the fob. Only to find you weren't smart enough in the spring from parking it over the winter to keep a battery maintainer on. And pushing the unlock fob button to no avail. The emergency key turning effortlessly in the drivers door. Wondering if in fact there is a solenoid or what. Cant open the hood. Crawl under and find the starter battery terminal. Contort yourself to clip a charger lead on it. Finally being able to unlock it when the battery got enough juice. Why? Because the tech forgot to put the danged lock linkage back in.
But then again. Christmas shopping is a bit safer when you put crap in the back of your SUV and there's no lock cylinder to stab a screwdriver in and spin it into submission. So. Remember that catchy little jingle. Safelite repair, Safelite Replace.
It's Cruise Control. In your face laser etched in the buttons and illuminated on the dash by the annoying seat belt warning visual annunciator. Not tool-around-town control while you stare at the hot chick coming from the gym on the sidewalk and barrel-ass into Mrs. Smith's soccer van of teens. Cruise. Out on the open highway, maintaining the legal speed limit (give or take) adhering to Johnny Law and his electronic speed detection apparati (Latin).
Brakes boys. Brakes. Breaks is what happens when you don't use the....Brakes.
Y'all are the ones who call dielectric grease and blue-snot gasket maker Silicon.
Remember. The beach is made of silicon. Silicone is why you go to the beach. With dark sun glasses.
Okay. So you can beat the safety factor of anti locks you say? On the snow or ice? How about when you start to hydroplane? On loose sandy gravel spilled on the road from a dump truck? How about in a corner at night when its misty outside of a concrete plant? The only gripes you should have about anti lock braking is forgetting to have the system bled and exercised every few years to flush gook from the calipers and pump.
"Breaks"....sheesh!
How many aircraft would careen out of control without the wonderful invention of the anti locking braking system?
Traction control? Takes the fun out of smoking tires.
I moved back to PA and wanted to cut donuts in the snow for the first time since a kid. My inherited, best $10,000 forty thousand dollar vehicle that I paid off from the estate. It wouldn't cut stinkin' donuts. Cut the wheels, stab the gas. Flashy instrument panel lights, chatter and shudders. Feeling like someone shoved a 'tater in the muffler pipe.
Oh. Wait. What's that little squiggly-tire button over there? Salvation! I call it the fun switch.
Parasitic draws. Get used to it. Get a battery tender. When the computer system goes to sleep tens, hunderds of milliamps draw on the battery drops to a milliamp or so. Or should. Ford's infamous call home system forgets and keeps on a sucking the pixies. Probably others also. But Ford. It's etched in stone. You can count on it.
Ever had an expensive vehicle stolen because you thought it was safely parked in the garage?
Well I have. And it sucks. Destroys your trust in mankind. Now I have a battery backed-up Viper alarm with one mile range hidden so deep that it would take you a long time to find where I put it. Guaranteed.
And my HD? After the guy in Orlando woke up with Lojack calling him in the middle of the night informing him his brand new bagger had motion detection. Going out to the garage and finding it gone.
A call to OPD and 45 minutes later he rolled up to a warehouse in an industrial park to a chop shop and his bike in the back of a box truck. So, Lojack got my business 2X. Only good in areas covered by it.
Yeah.
Well. I got asked if I could reprogram a friends Jeep for bigger tires he got his wifey for xmas along with wheels and lights and brush guards and stuff. He aint by no means tekkie. Sure, why not. He bought the programmer.
Easy. Roll a tire over a tape measure and find the circumference. Plug the box in the diag. port. Punch in a few numbers. Follow him and make sure 45 mph is 45. 55, 60, 70. Spot on.
What was cool was other things like one push on the unlock button to unlock both doors. How long the markers stayed lit, windows up on lock or not. Delay after key pulled to operate the windows. Cool stuff, huh!
So. Buy one if you can for your ride. Do your deed. And keep it or sell it.
Ahh the good 'ole soccer van incident. No officer. I didn't have the cruise control engaged looking at the sweaty hottie over there. I was trying to punch in my destination to the new weed store on Harrison on the Garmin. Because Siri was being a bitch. Stop the car, please!
Subs? SXM. Nice to have a free trial with your new ride. Except when you find a cryptic charge when you reconcile your bank statement and $214 gone. Five bucks a month. That's what "deal" I'm offered by SXM right now. That's what? 4 times what the deal costs? Unauthorized charge and like pulling teeth to get refunded. Homie don't do SXM anymore. My cell phone plan gives me enough gigs of data to stream to the car audio system. Bluetooth. Unless you cross over into Kentucky. Where its known as greentooth.
And my former employer going crazy because Onstar let him know that the tires on his Enclave were 2psi under.
So he goes and pays some stupid fee at the stealership for nitrogen per tire. You can get a tank of nitrogen from the welding supply for like 20 bucks. And enough to fill every tire in the 'hood and then some.
Didn't fix the Onstar thing though.
.
Pine Hill Auto Diagnostics on YouTube. Ivan. Not far from me. Very adept and equipped to diagnose most any vehicle. It blows me away with the interconnected modules included in every car these day that have to talk to each other. And how one failure in any one of them can kill your vehicle dead in the water.
And shows just how much the car you bought and paid for somehow just really isn't yours any more.
View attachment 161798
