For a while back, the Prius had been giving us sporadic error lights. Usually would go away and run fairly normally after a few restarts. Finally it stopped and was towed to Toyota. After being taken back twice, Toyota finally replaced the main battery pack. A sizeable cost if not under warranty. Since then it seems to have been running ok. Until last weekend when my mom picked me up from airport. I got in to drive it home, when cranking it gave the array of check engine and warning lamp. I tried power of and on cycles three times. Still had warning, and drove it home ok on surface streets. Next day it seemed normal. But my parents were worried of more problems cropping up, so there was talk of replacing it. I suggested they look at the 3 door Yaris. Continue reading ‘Bye Bye Hybrid’
Archive for the 'car' Category
I picked this up in the automotive section at Wal Mart for a buck - really, $1.00 USD! It is rare to find a common houseware like this that isn’t made in the PRC, and no less for a dollar! Of course you can use this for it’s intended purpose of getting automotive radiator coolant into the tank or reservoir, but I got this to use with sports drink powders. Most kitchen funnels have really small openings, generally around 8 to 10mm. Dense powders like Endurox R4 or Cytomax have difficulty getting through openings that small without tapping or shaking the funnel. I was looking for a jar funnel, but those are difficult to find, and the ones I have seen have openings that don’t fit in the neck of a standard sport bottle or liter-sized Nalgene. The 25mm+ opening on this funnel lets powders through unobstructed! Once you use it for coolant, don’t use it for anything else! Get two if you need one for coolant and another for sports drinks.
Highly recommended
Four out of four techno monkeys
$1 USD plus tax!
So, one of my left side rear brake lights has been out for a while. Been lazy, but safety is this month. Got home early tonight and checked it out as I was unloading cargo. Pull the socket out of light assembly. Hmm, the bulb is shattered, and the socket is rusted. Use a rag, crack of most of the other jagged bit of bulb left, and managed to extract the bulb. There’s water in the socket. I pull the other bulbs out, there’s moisture inside the lower housing, the other bulb and socket is rusted together. Continue reading ‘The Rice Lives’
I was going to rant earlier about the guy yelling out his car window calling me an a-hole for not letting the car in front of him turn into building driveway when there was no car behind me for the rest of the road all the way back to traffic light. But that annoyance went away already.
Instead, I’ll say, WTF? As I was going to leave Los Chaps after having dinner, my drivers side headlight was out. That wasn’t the one I messed with to put the zip tie on. Aw heck, that’s what I get for reusing old scavenged bulbs from the time both bulbs went out simultaneously. Such is life.
And so it starts, ever so popular with the “dorifuto” and wannabes, zip ties to hold together various car body trim bits. I just did my first one on the FX. The other night after I got in car to leave work, I turned on the headlights and something didn’t look right. Why was the office wall lit up. I take a look up front and my passenger headlight is cockeyed. WTF? I take a closer look and see that at one corner there is a plastic ball and socket joint where the light pivots about to aim, except its not a socket anymore. The plastic has cracked letting the ball free and the spring has pulled the light into a funky angle. For the time being I jammed a rag into the opposite corner to wedge the light closer to normal. Continue reading ‘Zip Zip’
Toyota had the one gasket I needed. Didn’t have just about all other things I asked for including some hoses. Does not bode well, will I have to resort to cutting own paper gaskets in the future? I love the Toyota coated metal gaskets so much more. Ah well, anyway after some struggling got the gasket replaced and everything back together. Scat, CKucke and El Santo cruised by after their dinner to bug me. Did an oil change too. Belt sounds a bit squeaky, tried retightening belt. We’ll see how it is, it’s late now, good night.
Ugh. So I ran down to Redline Automotive to pick up a waterpump for the FX. Spun by AM Sears to also buy one of those Diehard Platinum AGM batteries for the AE86 since they finally got them back in stock and I’ll need to move it. Get home, install battery, AE86 starts right up. Move cars, pull FX in. Start on removing the old water pump. In the process I get a chest full of radiator fluid from when the pump finally pops apart and dumps it’s contents out on me, yum. Aside from that it goes relatively painlessly.
Once I get things out, I look at the old pump and start to get a sneaking suspicion. The water stains on the outside don’t look right for a failing waterpump, which usually starts leaking out the weep hole(s). There’s some more waterstains on the block that don’t look quite right. In any case, I have a new pump. This AC Delco replacement has a plastic impeller, interesting. It makes it lighter, and I imagine won’t rust like the original iron impellers
. I also discover the pulley’s got a bunch of ugly holes drilled in it. I can’t figure out why, only thing I can think of it’s an ugly and feeble attempt at lightening the pulley. I can’t imagine this being balanced. Anyway, I don’t have another one handy at the moment, so it goes back on. With everything finally back together, I fill up the radiator. Just about ready for the moment of truth when I check everything over and see a new puddle under the car. Curses! My earlier suspicions were correct, the leak was coming from the water outlet fitting above the water pump. The knocking about & prying to install the pump and alternator must have opened up the leak more because now it was obvious where the leak was coming from. Damn, it’s late, I don’t have gaskets, time to call it a night. I’ll have to go to Toyota tomorrow and pray they have the parts.
Ugh, over the past weeks, the FX has been consuming a lot of water without a really obvious leak. Its so bad now it looses half a quart in a day. When I got home today, I immediately popped the hood and shined the SureFire around. This time I spotted wetness on the water pump. Saves me the trouble of rigging up the riceboy UV black light neon that I had found under the dash of the FX and going to store to find some UV dye. Now the question is what should I do about this? I’d been wanting to do a complete rebuild of the original FX engine and install that. But that’ll take some time. Do I fix this current engine which is of unknown condition that lights up the oil pressure light at low idle and valve clatters like a diesei?
Ah the saga continues. Oh, and had a disheartening trip to Toyota parts. Wanted to replace the fuseable link box, no longer available, neg cable, discontinued. More and more parts are becoming unavailable.
No, not wang. When I started drivng home on Wednesday, I heard a tap on the passenger window, and when I looked over to see what it was, I saw myself in the side mirror. I didn’t clip anything, so I didn’t know why the mirror was folded in. Maybe someone brushed up against it in the parking lot. As I approached the four-way stop, the mirror rotated back into the normal position. WTF?! As I stated moving off the stop, it started to rotate in again. Bumps in the road made the mirror shake around. Had the pivot mechanism failed? Continue reading ‘Floppy Wing - Field-Expedient FJ80 Side Mirror Repair’
Well, mom took the Prius in second time in as many weeks. It had been giving warning lights every blue moon, but it finally got bad couple weeks ago and refused to move. It was towed to Toyota, and looking at the service invoice all they did was hook it up to diagnostics, cleared codes, looked up for any service advisories, and sent it on its merry way almost a week later. Less than a week later pile of warning lights came on and I took it for test drive and it was running only on electric. Mom made appointment and took it into Toyota earlier this week. Came back and this time they said the main battery was bad, some leaky cell(s) and corroded wiring. Replaced under warranty, thank goodness as those batteries set you back around $4000. The bad thing with all this technology is its pretty darn hard for the home mechanic to do anything with them, and they’re (hybrid esp) are pretty sensitive. If sensors detect too much out of whack, it shuts it all down. Gone are the days of driving a belching, smoking, running on half cylinders car, which I suppose isn’t a bad thing. Anyway, lets see if this finally fixed things on the Prius. Continue reading ‘Cars & Technology’
