About Lack Thereof

Recent posts

• Follow Following 2

  Trading in a gas guzzling truck, what makes should I look into?

  0 0 The european brands (Audi, Volkswagen, Porsche, Saab, BMW, Mercedes, etc.) have long standing reliability issues. They tend to be fantastic cars to drive, but you will need to keep an open tab at the shop. Hondas and Toyotas are good cars, but overvalued in the used market. For the price of a 3-owner, 10-year old, 150,000 mile Honda, you can often get a 1 owner 5-year old, 75,000 mile Chevy. The domestic manufacturers (excluding the Chrysler brands) have made huge strides in the past couple decades, especially in their compact market. General Motors' "Ecotec" 4-cylinder engine family, introduced around the turn of the century, has proven to be one of the most durable engine families made today - people are reporting 400,000 miles on them. The new Ford lineup is a complete worldwide success, too, and their "ecoboost" direct-injected V-6 engines are mind-blowingly powerful. The South Koreans have made their play, too. Hyundai has also made incredible leaps since the 90's. The 100k mile warranty doesn't transfer to second owners, but by all reports a modern Hyundai is every bit the reliability/driveablity equal of a Toyota, and doesn't really need that warranty. And you can get a LOT of Hyundai for $8000. You want leather? You can afford it in a Hyundai. Lack Thereof answered in Cars & Motorcycles 10 months ago Answer, comment & read 5 more answers »

• Follow Following 1

  Best used vehicle?

  1 0 General Motors' traction control system is absolutely fantastic in snow & ice, and has been an optional feature on pretty much all of their cars for the past 2 decades. It's made by Delphi, and I've had a chance to experience it in Chevys and Buicks large and small. Love it. Allows just the right amount of wheelspin to dig through snowdrifts, kicks into action fast, and gets out of the was as soon as it's not needed. A good traction control system can make a standard front-wheel-drive car just as road-worthy in the snow as a 4wd/AWD car (off-roading abilities aside). And my personal opinion is that if you need 4wd to get moving, there's no way you'll be able to turn a corner or stop. However, not all traction control systems are equal. Many manufacturers program their systems too aggressively - you end up getting stuck /because/ of the traction control, rather than in spite of it. I drove a Mercedes once where the traction control would basically stop the car at the first sign of slippage. I drove a Toyota where the traction control's reactions lagged about 2 seconds behind the road conditions - it would skitter through the icy patch and THEN cut power when it was back on dry pavement. For brute grip, though, you can't beat an all-wheel-drive system with limited slip or automatic-locking differentials. VW/Audi and Subaru are the go-to players in the car market for those systems, but practically every light SUV has such a system optional. And of course, 4 wheel ABS is mandatory. Lack Thereof answered in Cars & Motorcycles 10 months ago Answer, comment & read 4 more answers »

• Follow Following 1

  Is it worth fixing my Honda Accord?

  0 0 For what it's worth, you can easily buy a used 91' Accord for less than the price of fixing your existing one. You would be putting more money into the car than it is technically worth. However, a new (remanufactured) engine in your Accord is likely to take you another 200,000 miles, relatively trouble free. That's something you can't get by buying another early 90's Accord. You need too look long and hard at the rest of your car, and as yourself "Am I willing to live with this for another 200,000 miles?" If the seats are torn, the windshield is cracked, and the A/C doesn't work, just scrap it and replace it. However, if it's in pretty good shap otherwise, go ahead and have an engine swap done. You can have a low-mileage junkyard engine put in, and it would probably get you at least another 100,000 miles out of it, but if you're going to pay for a day's labor to swap the engine, go the extra mile and spring for a rebuilt or remanufactured one. Lack Thereof answered in Cars & Motorcycles 10 months ago Answer, comment & read 6 more answers »

• Follow Following 1

  Is parking for 60 secs with your hazards on a traffic infraction?

  0 0 Hazard lights or or no, if you've left your car there, it's parked and that's an infraction. It's just one you're likely to get away with. Lack Thereof answered in Cars & Motorcycles 10 months ago Answer, comment & read 4 more answers »

• Follow Following 1

  Do Corolla transmissions self destruct by 200,000 miles or something?

  0 0 Until the past decade or so, Toyota transmissions required extremely frequent fluid changes - on the order of every 15,000 miles or less. If you get a secondhand Corolla, it's virtually guaranteed that a previous owner skipped the vast majority of the transmission services. Therein lies the source of the self-destructing Corolla transmissions. Even properly serviced, automatic transmissions tend to fail much more frequently than manuals anyway. The easiest solution is to simply have a remanufactured transmission swapped in (or swap it yourself). Daunting as it seems, It's not actually a very complicated job, you can trust pretty much any ASE certified shop to do it. Most transmissions shouldn't cost more than $2000, and one day's worth of shop labor is plenty to get the job done. If the rest of the car is in good shape (lights work, doors open, all the switches and knobs do their jobs), it could be well worth the investment. It's harder to find a car with a good body & interior than one with a good drivetrain. Lack Thereof answered in Cars & Motorcycles 10 months ago Answer, comment & read 2 more answers »

• Follow Following 1

  Oil Filter Change questions: How does the rubber ring work?

  2 0 I believe most of the "rubber" seals in car engines are in fact chemically closer to Neoprene, and far more resilient than natural rubber. The layer of oil you spread on the new gasket keeps it from stretching or bunching up when you tighten the filter, thus improving the seal. And anyway, there's 60 psi of hot motor oil inside of that gasket most of the time. The thin film you spread on with your finger is a drop in the bucket. Lack Thereof answered in Cars & Motorcycles 10 months ago Answer, comment & read 3 more answers »

• Follow Following 1

  How good an idea is a Prius/hybred car these days?

  0 0 For highway cruising, a hybrid has little to no gas mileage advantage over a conventional car. Stop and go driving is where the hybrids really shine. If highway driving is your focus, you should look at a current generation Ford Fiesta or a Hyundai Elantra - both sport 40 MPG highway ratings. The Chevy Cruze and Ford Focus are nipping at their heels around 38 MPG highway - hardly anything else currently being built can compete with those 4 cars. Even the long-time MPG champion Honda Civic is falling behind the pack (28/36). If your budget will support it, you might consider the Audi & VW turbodiesels. They're far more reliable than the gasoline VWs, have a smaller carbon footprint, and will happily burn biofuels. They also hold their value much better than any gasoline car. If you do go the hybrid route, a used 2nd Generation Prius (model year 2004-2008), is the most practical and affordable hybrid available right now. Prices on the used Prius are finally coming down to an affordable level. Earlier models had some undesirable quirks, but mechanics never really had any difficulty working on them. Underneath all those fancy looking electronics are the same old gas engines people have been working on for most of a century. The Prius does get a lot of well-deserved criticism from car magazines regarding its performance and maneuverability (Car & Driver in particular has hammered Toyota hard on this point). By all accounts, the current Honda Insight & Ford Fusion hybrids are head-and-shoulders above both the old & new Prius in terms of driveability. At best, the Prius can be considered on par with a 1990's era compact car for performance & handling. However, this should be acceptable for the vast majority of drivers today. Lack Thereof answered in Cars & Motorcycles 10 months ago Answer, comment & read 4 more answers »

• Comment on Lack Thereof's answer…

  1 0 A carbon filter on the nozzle will do the job just fine. Stay current on your filter-cartridge changes and you should be just as safe as if you had lead-free pipes and a low-lead faucet. Carbon filters are surprisingly effective, and relatively inexpensive. Lack Thereof commented about 1 year ago

• Follow Following 1

  Brand new water heater installed today. Now the hot water is a murky orange. Rust? From where?

  1 0 Probably simply rust from the insides of the pipes, that was disturbed in the process of the replacement. Run your hot water full blast, say in the bathtub faucet, until it clears up. Lack Thereof answered in Home Fix & Maintain about 1 year ago Answer, comment & read 2 more answers »

• Follow Following 1

  Lead in faucets?

  1 0 Most faucets made after 1997 have very low levels of lead in them, but virtually all have some lead. The lead in a faucet usually comes from the use of brass. Brass is mostly copper and zinc, but also contains low levels of many other elements, including ~8% lead. The NSF certifies plumbing fixtures as "low-lead" (which they call standard #61), and they maintain a list of low-lead faucets on their website. A NSF certified low-lead faucet contains less than 0.25% lead. a Prop 65 warning is required for a faucet with 5%, and the legal maximum is still 8%. In the grand scheme of things, it's a pretty trivial amount of lead. The vast majority of lead in your drinking water is not leached from your faucet, but comes from solder joints in the pipes; lead solder was used in household plumbing up until 1988, which includes most Seattle buildings. Running the tap for a minute when you get up in the morning and when you get home from work is typically a good enough solution, still. If you're still concerned, an ordinary carbon filter, like the kind used in pitcher water filters and most refrigerator water dispensers, does an excellent job of removing lead. Lack Thereof answered in Home Fix & Maintain about 1 year ago Answer and comment »

• See all of my 0 Questions , 13 Answers and 1 Comment