Month: August 2021

Sport, Off-Road, Touring: Year 1 by the Numbers

Last week as I finished my Monday trolling of Bring A Trailer looking for my perfect 3-car garage I realized that it was week fifty-two. I told myself that I should do a wrap-up of all the cars I “bought” during that year as my next post. I promptly forgot all about it.

So, this week on Monday as I started the next Sport, Off-Road, Touring post I stopped and went ahead and started to record all my “purchases.” Turns out it takes a pretty long time to go back and look up the information on that many cars, so about half way through I abandoned the count and went ahead and picked my 3 cars for week one of year two.

So, here we go: The 156 cars I picked, if I actually won their auctions, would have cost me $11,127,321. That is an average of $71,389 for each vehicle, so obviously I was not bargain hunting.

The most expensive car I picked was in the Sport category, a 1957 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing at $1,152,0001. The second most expensive auto was in the Off-Road category, a 2014 Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG 6×62 at $901,333. The next 22 cars in order of price were all in the 6-figure range, so this probably skews that average car cost up.

The least expensive car I picked was from Off-Road category, a 2003 Land Rover Discovery II SE at a mere $6,200. It took until the sixth next highest cost car before we got to the ten-thousand-dollar mark.

The oldest car I picked was a 350-Powered 1940 Ford Deluxe Coupe. There were 4 more cars selected from the 40’s, fourteen from the 50’s, eighteen from the 60’s and 28 from the 70’s. Taking all cars into account, the average model year car would be from 1986, even though just 20 of the 156 cars came from the 80’s. There are 18 cars from the 90’s, the 2000’s had the most cars chosen with 31 and there were nineteen picked from 2010-2019. The newest cars were from the year 2020, two Chevy C-8 Corvettes and a replica Land Rover Defender 90 NAS.

The cars came from 41 separate manufacturers. The most popular make was BMW with 17. Mercedes-Benz was the runner-up with 13. Porsche, Toyota and Ford were 3rd with twelve cars & trucks each. There were 17 one car manufacturers, including 3 that make just make replicas of cars that in original form can no longer be afforded by anyone but billionaires. And finally, one of those 1 car manufacturers, knowing me, would be probably be considered a surprise, Mazda. I only picked one Miata, but that is probably tempered a bit by the fact that I already have one.

The most chosen model name was Land Cruiser (Toyota) with 8 and the runner-up was Corvette with 6. Apropos of nothing, there were 48 car names that started with numbers and 38 more that were mostly number based.

Now for some nonsense3. The most popular car, if it existed, would be a 2004 Mercedes-Benz Land Cruiser that costs $23,000 and the most average car, if it existed, would be a 1986 Honda 914 that costs $71,389.

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

Yellow & Brown Edition of SORT
As of Monday, August 9, 2021 at 9:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
Beck Replica 550 Spyder 1999 Jeep Wrangler Sahara 1936 Buick Series 40
James Dean died in an original Porsche Spyder 550, weirdly enough just 3 days after I was born. Only driven by the owner’s daughters when they visited for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Wait a minute, the clock doesn’t work! Maybe I shouldn’t buy it…

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to, if the reserve was not met.
Sports: 1998 Chevrolet Corvette Indy 500 Pace Car Bid to $30,000 on 8/4/21
Off-Road: Safari-Style 2007 BMW Z4 M Coupe Sold for $30,001 on 8/4/21
Touring: 1996 Volkswagen Golf Harlequin Sold for $25,500 on 8/6/21

Visual Proof

We got the power bill in our email yesterday. Pacific Power includes lots of helpful charts and stuff to help you monitor your energy usage. Turns out oneparticular graph is visual proof of just which day our home A/C was repaired, mid afternoon on the 3rd of August.

All through July when we ran fans to suck in cool air at night to make the house bearable you can see we were spending an average of a little over 2 bucks a day on electricity. On the day it was fixed it jumped to nearly to a sawbuck. And the next day when it ran for the full day it $8.

Found It

Thursday is grocery shopping day for us. As usual we take the Mini so that no one has to ride home with any groceries on their lap

On the way to Fred Meyer she went to put some hand cream on and realized her small tube of the stuff wasn’t in the the bag. We spent the next few minutes guessing as to where the tube of hand cream might be. Back home on her desk? In the smaller alternate yellow knapsack? Maybe it was in dedicated Geocaching knapsack?

When we got back home, she started all the unpacking and I headed back out in the Miata to fill up the car with gas. As I backed out of the garage I head a cracking noise. I looked back and saw several dead leaves had blown into the garage and figured they were the source of the noise.

When I returned and opened the garage door I noticed something else on the garage floor along with the leaves that I didn’t notice before. So I stopped the Miata and got out to see what it was.

I found the hand cream.

While standing around in garage getting ready to go grocery shopping this morning Donna’s knapsack had slid off the the trunk of the Miata onto the floor. She picked it up and we got in the Mini to head to Fred Meyer. The tube must have popped out and slid under the Miata where I ran over it as I went back out.

Just in Time

On the afternoon of the 28th of June in the middle of the afternoon our home A/C just quit. The outside condenser fan was still spinning, but the blower motor was as quiet as a church mouse. I checked for tripped breakers and found none. I flipped the furnace breaker on then off with not luck. On the afternoon of the 3rd of August it was finally repaired.

June 28 June 29 June 30 July 1 July 2 July 3
103° 100° 94° 93° 94° 96°
July 4 July 5 July 6 July 7 July 8 July 9 July 10
91° 94° 96° 96° 91° 98° 99°
July 11 July 12 July 13 July 14 July 15 July 16 July 17
96° 96° 94° 93° 90° 86° 90°
July 18 July 19 July 20 July 21 July 22 July 23 July 24
94° 92° 91° 86° 89° 91° 92°
July 25 July 26 July 27 July 28 July 29 July 30 July 31
95° 94° 70° 88° 95° 86° 87°
August 1 August 2 August 3
91° 93° 92°

I searched the net for some local heating and air conditioning contractors with some decent ratings, there were only a couple that stood out. I called Contractor #1 and was told they were were scheduling 2 weeks out, I said thanks, but no thanks. Second place said they could be here in a week, I took it.

Contractor #2 arrived and troubleshot it down to a bad controller board. Right there on the back of the board was a large blackened spot. They had to order one and said it would take a week for the new one to arrive. Eight days later the same tech arrived with the new board. After he installed it and came upstairs to turn the unit back on the result was the same as when it quit in the first place, no blower running. I followed him back downstairs and before we even got to the furnace we could smell toasted electronics. Yep, the board was burnt in the same spot.

He called his boss and was talked through finding out what was causing the problem. Turns out that the blower motor was shorted to ground and all that current made it’s way right through that spot on the control board. The tech left us with what his boss told him, they weren’t sure whether they could warranty the board, they would have to eat the cost or it would be on us. We were going to need to have a new board and a motor to get back up and running. We should get a call back from the boss on what was what in a few days.

After a week of radio silence I decided to call them up. No one answered the phone and the lead in to leaving a message didn’t sound promising. It went a little like, “Due to a lack of technicians we will only be servicing our existing customers and will no longer be taking new customers. If you are an existing customer leave your name and phone number and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.” When we hadn’t heard back by the following day I called again and left name and number. I then took a chance and called the tech direct (I had his number because he called me before showing up the first time.) He didn’t return my call.

The next day, we tried a second tack, Donna emailed their contact number with our displeasure at the lack of communications. Within the hour the tech called us back. His sole statement was that the boss is handling it and we should hear back from him in a day or two. The next day I called the main number again and left one more message, “Sorry about your technician troubles, but thanks for nothing, we are going to go with another contractor. Don’t contact us again.”

So, I called back contractor #1 and got on their 2 week waiting list. Sure enough 2 weeks to the date, a technician arrives outside our door. I gave him the rundown on what had transpired so far and he said, I’ll look into everything to make sure the original diagnosis from Contractor #2 was correct. After about 45 minutes he told us that sure enough that was our problem. He thought that for sure we could warranty out the burnt board and all we would need is a new blower motor.

Four days later he was back with a new board and motor. They did get the board under warranty, so all it would cost us was the service call fee, the motor and labor for the installation.

A little over five weeks later and five hundred dollars poorer, we are once again enjoying a cool house.

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

What Were They Thinking Edition of SORT
As of Monday, August 2, 2021 at 9:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
1998 Chevrolet Corvette Indy 500 Pace Car Safari-Style 2007 BMW Z4 M Coupe 1996 Volkswagen Golf Harlequin
Wild purple paint with yellow seats & wheels. Only the colr blind need apply. Maybe modding a plain Z4 coupe this way, but not an M version please. Hard to believe they sold 3,000 in Europe let alone 264 in the USA?

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to, if the reserve was not met.
Sports: 2014 Lamborghini Gallardo Sold for $240,000 on 7/30/21
Off-Road: 1953 Dodge M37 Sold for $15,750 on 7/28/21
Touring: 1973 BMW 3.0CSi Sold for $101,000 on 7/27/21