3 Strikes and You’re Out?

Strike 1, Two Months Ago – A Cooked CAS Sensor and Smoked Pig Butts
Strike 2, A Week Ago – Was That Money Well Spent?
Strike 3, Yesterday – Someone was coming to look at the house between 12 and 1 so we hopped in the Miata to vacate the place. We didn’t really have a solid plan on what to do to kill the roughly 1-1/2 hours we needed to stay away, but one was, unfortunately, thrust upon us.

We were a mile away from home, waiting patiently for the light to change and give us our left turn arrow and I noticed a minor roughness in the car’s idle. When the light changed I eased out the clutch and as soon as I depressed the gas pedal the car died. I briefly thought perhaps I had stalled it, but it didn’t feel like that, the car just shut off. When I went to restart it, it wouldn’t. Great. We were first in line with about four cars behind us, talk about major embarrassment.

I hit the flasher button and started waving people around me. We were in a nose up attitude because of the slight incline, so if everyone would clear out behind us we could possibly coast back into the parking area of the corner quick stop. Those behind me all made the light, but the lane to the right of me didn’t fully empty before the light changed back to red. At the next light change there were fewer cars behind us and they all made the light, so I let off the parking brake and starting coasting back. I was almost completely into the lot when a white pickup truck decided to exit the lot. He hit his horn, but I kept backing up, so he stopped moving and I managed to get the car 98% off the road. He rolled down his window and when I told him why I did what I did he mellowed out and backed up a bit to allow Donna and I to finish pushing the CTBNL into the lot.

So, first, a quick update from Strike 2: I took the car back to the shop and they ran their code reader on the car and received no fault codes either, the only questionable reading they got was a slightly elevated charging voltage. So I told them that I would just order a new Cam Angle Sensor and see what happens. The new one arrived on Wednesday afternoon and I had been driving with it in there several small trips (all longer than a mile!) and the car had behaved fine. It also ran fine with the back up CAS in it from Saturday to Wednesday.

Because it was midday this Saturday, the repair shop was still open and they have their own tow truck, so I gave them a ring and told them my tale of woe and where we were. They promised to send the truck right over. While we waited Donna went into the quick stop and bought us each an ice cream bar to enjoy. Just as we were finishing our treat our knight in shining truck arrived. After the car was loaded up he offered to drop us off at home as he took the car in. We declined because we still couldn’t go back there for at least 45 or 50 minutes.

There was a Zaxby’s a couple hundred yards further down the road, so we told the driver that we were going to get lunch and when I got home I’d drive over and talk with them. When I arrived at the shop the head mechanic was eating lunch in the front lounge area and I asked him what he’d found out. They had plugged in the code reader and once again there were no stored codes. They were in the middle of finishing up some promised jobs, so he promised to do some troubleshooting on Monday. He also said that if the car started and ran fine on Monday, he would take it for at least a twenty minute drive in the heat of afternoon before he gave it back to me.

At this point, even if he finds another sensor or something bad, Donna has vowed never to get in the car again. She won’t trust it to get to the store and back, let alone an evening drive, or a day trip or a weekend get away. It has now left us stranded on the side of the road three times in the last 10 weeks. The next time it happens it may be in a place or time where or when we don’t want to be. Frankly I am quite near to that point myself.

The Shoe Is On The Other Foot

Back in late June when we were poking around Klamath Falls, Oregon looking at houses, I commented how it was nice to actually go inside a home because you can’t fully get an accurate idea about its feel just from the pictures on Zillow.

Now that the house we have lived in for the past thirty years is listed on Zillow, we have looked at the photos the realtor has uploaded, and now our own place seems slightly unrecognizable even to ourselves.

75,000 Reasons to Fill Out The Card

The beginnings of this post has been sitting in the drafts folder here at Life of Brian HQ for almost 4 months. Why am I finally getting around to turning it into an actual post? I’ll get to that at the end, but first the set up.

We were reading magazines at the local library back in April, me an auto rag and her a female-centric one, when a blow-in card landed in my lap.

Get a full year of Car and Driver and Road & Track for just $15.
2 Years of Road & Track and Car and Driver for just $25 – BEST DEAL!
1 Year of Road & Track and Car and Driver for just $15

Hmmm, I thought, I’ve tried reading Motor Trend via Amazon Prime on the Kindle and it was totally unsatisfactory, maybe going to an old-school paper magazine might be interesting. I told Donna of my plan and she approved it as long as she could do the same. So she hunted down a blow-in card in her magazine:

Get one year of Good Housekeeping and Woman’s Day for a total of just $14.97 — a combined savings of 81% Off the newsstand price.
2 Years of Woman’s Day and Good Housekeeping for just $16 – BEST DEAL!
1 Year of Woman’s Day and Good Housekeeping for just $11

When we got back home I sat down in front of the PC and headed to hearstmag.com, or some such thing, to sign up. I filled out all the name, address, email, credit card info and got to the point where I pick between 1 or 2 years. At first I selected 2, then thought, just one year for now and if I like it there’ll be another good deal for renewing sometime later. I clicked OK and got a confirmation page – Congratulations on your 2 year subscription to Road & Track and Car and Driver, your card has been charged $27.02!

What the heck, I did change my selection to one year, didn’t I? So when it came time to subscribe to Donna’s magazines I asked her to stand behind me to make sure I click on one year. So I go through the whole process, filling out the form and selecting one year. I confirm with my auditor wife that in fact I have selected the one year option. She says yes and I click the OK button – Congratulations on your 2 year subscription to Good Housekeeping and Woman’s Day, your card has been charged $16.84!

WTF! What a scam. Seems like that if you subscribe on the web, no matter what you pick, you’re gonna get 2 years worth of magazines

I get why there is a little extra money on top of the quoted price though, tax, but why did they charge 8% on my magazines and only 7% on hers. Oh well, it really is a good deal and it is cool to get something in the mail besides bills and charge card applications.

So why am I finally writing about this, in my email inbox yesterday, what did I get but an offer to renew my Road and Track subscription just four months into a 24 month run. The deal? I would get another year for just the low price of $14.97 and with it I can give a subscription to two of my friends.

Wow, I’m saving 3¢ and they are getting two new subscribers to their magazine, upping their monetary ask from the folks who want to place ads in the magazine. And they are probably hoping that in a year I’ll have forgotten about those gifts and the subscriptions will automatically renew on my charge card for the full price, $60, for a total of $120!

Sometime yesterday the CTBNL ran past 75,000 miles.

Was That Money Well Spent?

The Miata Club’s Bug Splat is coming up and this year we thought we might return to the loop where it all began. We used to start after a meal at a Zaxby’s in Evan, GA by heading north and crossing over the Strom Thurmond Dam into SC before turning south and returning to Georgia for ice cream at a Dairy Queen. It has beeen at east a dozen years since we’ve run that route, so yesterday evening we thought it might be a good idea to run the loop to make sure that suburban sprawl hadn’t obliterated those long stretches of uninhabited roads.

About halfway to Zaxby’s for dinner, after a right turn the Miata hiccuped. Several feet later it hiccuped again. Donna said, “Turn around and take me home.” I took the next right to prepare to make a u-turn and the car died. I coasted to a stop a the side of the road. Like homicide detectives, I don’t believe in coincidences, so I called the shop who just did the work on the car. We were about an hour past their Saturday closing time, but we were hoping someone was still there, maybe catching up on paperwork. No such luck, so I left a long disappointed sounding message about our situation.

Before making the second call for a tow truck, Donna said, “Try and start it back up.” I did and it did. We drove home slowly all the while waiting for the car to stop running again. It didn’t quit, but we did get two widely separated hiccups that causing some breath holding. It was a very hot afternoon, the hiccups and the engine dying, made me get a big whiff of déjà vu. A little more than two months ago, the CTBNL did the same thing on the way to lunch with the Club.

This time it didn’t trigger the Check Engine Light. When we got home I ran Torque Light app and it too showed no fault codes. Anyway for now, I did what I did last time, I put my backup Cam Angle Sensor back in the car. I’m not sure if I should buy a new one or what. Right now the plan is to take it back to the shop to have them look at it. Maybe their OBDII reader will show a code…

On the bright side, the Moto g7 phone is still working after more than a week.

Not a Charcoal Briquette

The CTBNL has returned from its stint in the car hospital. There was nothing really wrong with it, this was some much over due preventative maintenance. In the past 35 months and twenty-eight thousand miles in the family the only real service it has had is oil changes and tire rotations every 5,000 miles in my driveway.

With the car fast approaching 75 thousand miles it was time to do the real big 60,000 mile service. This includes changing practically every vital fluid on the car and replacing the timing belt. In the Miata it is pretty safe to extend the usage of the rubber timing belt because the engine is the non-interference type. If the belt breaks you don’t mash the valves into pistons or anything, you just end up coasting to a stop. Plus, in California the timing belt change interval is 90,000 miles because it is considered part of the emission system and has to be warrantied for that long, the part number for the California belt is the same as for everyone other state.

When the mechanic called to tell me the car was ready he told me that when they pulled the valve cover off to do the timing belt they noticed these large chunks of congealed oil on top of the cylinder head. He then asked me on what oil I used and how often I changed it, etc. He then dissed my brand choice told me I should be using a synthetic blend instead of pure dino oil. Whatever.

This car had only 40 something thousand miles on it when the previous owner bought it at 12 years old. I bet the original owner was a little old lady who drove it to church on Sundays. And church was only a half a mile away. I believe this caused the build up, but then again I believe UFOs exist an aliens walk among us.