I was dismissed from jury duty moments before having to describe in open court the meaning of my trans colored @tikibunnyimports@weird.autos bumper sticker. 😂
Remote
Dan 
@dan@weird.autos
mastodon 4.7.2Just a guy who likes fixing up old Volvos and reading about cars. Other interest include analog photography and STEM education.
259 Followers
275 Following
50 Posts
Joined November 08, 2022
Replying to
The comparison makes more sense then it might seem.
These were both essentially upper middle class practical luxury vehicles.
Going after the same market about 40 years apart.
I admire the sheer force of will necessary to not only keep this VW fox on the road but use it on a 95 degree day where the air is mostly water.
I don’t mean to alarm anybody but a php web app I wrote in 2004 may have broken containment.
Took a junghandle hard enough that the rear outside wheel of the Volvo briefly lost traction. I’m going to need a LSD for that ravenous 114HP.
Let me just google that up.
$1000
Maybe not.
Someone posted on Reddit about a clean Saab 900 classic they bought (on Incas!) for $3,500 and after an hours drive home they noticed a small coolant leak. Did they get ripped off?
Brother this is not the car for you.
When we went to the 1 modern car 3 old car fleet the theory was that we would always have the modern car for challenging driving conditions and at least 1 running classic for around town errands.
With the Polestar and Volvo in the shop, and 105 degree weather approaching we are testing the limits of this theory.
My daughter was just invited to a Foo Fighters concert for a 10th birthday party.
Its like my childhood friends weren’t even trying.
The stripped and seized bolt is no longer a bolt and no longer seized.
Responded to a kid whom bought a Volvo 240 as a first car on Reddit. He wants to buy wheels.
I’m three replies into trying to make him understand what a forum classified is and that he is going to need to meet real local people.
“But when I Google it they are $400 each”
Replying to
@DenOfEarth@mas.to @vwestlife@mastodon.social It really is an astonishing self own. You carved a vehicle niche practically all to yourself and instead of leaning in you decided to make your car more like every other car in the world, including several of your own models.
Got the Polestar back today.
Brought it in for an intermittent AC issue and some suspension noises.
2 new rear axels ($500 each)
2 new Ohlins struts + mounts ($2,000 each!)
2 HVAC blend doors ($300?)
Just a casual $8-10k of work.
All covered CPO
Bonus EX30 Cross Country — looks good in the CC trim but not for $50k
One last jury duty observation. Another stands question was “where do you get the news?” which 9/10 people answered “I don’t watch the news.”
Eventually causing the slightly exasperated judge to exclaim “you all know that LeBron signed with the 76ers right?”
I was talking to a guy who was helping to make AI agents for a major pharmaceutical company. These agents are supposed to call patients and do………. something
He’s like “I don’t like it, we have no idea what the agent will say once people start talking to it.”
When I first got my EV gas was cheap, I was doing public charging and on-peak level 1 charging.
It was hardly cheaper than gas.
It cost a ton to get my level 2 charger installed and a while for my off peak credits to come online.
My rooftop solar install fell through and it seemed a bit like a mistake.
Now I’m saving roughly $150-$200 a month vs my old daily. 😮
It no longer seems like a mistake.
All you nerds seem to be missing the point of the new Star Fox release.
My 11 year old will do almost any chore for the promise of getting the game.
Today she spent an hour searching the garage floor for a valve cover screw for a 1991 Mercedes 300TE.
She did not find it.
This is the most first world problem I will ever post, but how does one find a decent house cleaner??
Local Facebook recommendations have not panned out and I don’t want to fall into an Internet marketing abyss.
The previous owner of the Mercedes hid an AirTag in it. Every time I drive it my phone tells me I’m being followed.
He removed the AirTag from his apple account but does not remember exactly where he put it and I have not gone looking for it.
Eventually it will annoy me enough that I do.
Wife and daughter are still on spring break. Time to soft launch the two wagon driveway.
Poor Duke ran into a fence gate at full speed and now needs to get multiple layers of sutures.
Because the pet urgent care is in the Philly suburbs they at least have complementary soft pretzels
I generally don't talk about work, because who cares.
But I'm trying to order in lumber for next year. Holy crap shitty pine boards are expensive. Apparently this little project costs over $15 in material cost alone now.
Also I would not order this in for school but whatever is happening with Walnut Slabs cannot be sustainable.
I dropped all the valve cover bolts on the garage floor and one disappeared. I am too frustrated to look anymore.
I gave up and ordered a new one.
I’m sure I’ll find it the day the new one arrives.
I’ve never once installed an oil seal and had any confidence it was not going to immediately leak.
Not once.
StubHub has refunded me $80 for a Phillies game we successfully attended last year and I have no idea why.
I swore I was going to replace the stripped and drilled out bolt with a hardware store head head, but I lost my nerve and ordered a genuine Mercedes.
Look how shallow that Torx head is.
Replying to
To be 100% fair the Volvo is not stock and is more or less built to my preference, the manual swap is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Those old 4 speed automatics with torque converters that never lock up are just not my thing.
Replying to
For the record the way you reset the GPS is by holding down the front defroster button until the “on star” light flashes.
Totally intuitive 🙄
I didn’t get a picture but there is a small used car lot near me that covered several Jeep Wranglers in camouflage netting and put some weeds sticking out.
Like little Jeep ghillie suits and I can’t imagine what they are going for.
It made the 30 mile highway run to work with no drama.
It’s surprisingly high strung on the highway running at more than 3k rpm at speed. Forums tell me this is normal.
Something is wrong with the cold idle circuit. This is apparently common with no clear solution. 🤔
Replying to
Lauren is keeping the Polestar for spring break leaving me various premium chugging 30 year old cars to commute in and I’m not sure I’m going to financially recover from this week.
Replying to
@DenOfEarth You really helped by reminding me that once the head was removed the rest of the bolt would come free.
Encouraged me to stop messing about and drill off the damn head.
Replying to
@vwdasher@weird.autos All stitched up — he’s going to be just fine. I thought he might had broken his leg at first, but thankfully just a deep laceration.
A few of my students asked if we could make “bikini boxes” in wood shop.
While I never thought it was inappropriate, I figured that the phrase was a risky google at work.
Anyway it’s just a small crate, apparently made popular on socials.
Yes we can make that.
Replying to
@rootwyrm@weird.autos It is indeed an upsetting amount of oil.
That would be one hell of a coincidence.
The weird mix of pride an disgust you feel when they destroy one of your preferred shit boxes for a bit.
Replying to
@federicomena@mstdn.mx It might be different with Tesla, which is probably big enough to build independent shops around but with my EV I’d assume only a dealership would do maintenance or I could try DIY.
There is very little maintenance. But it seems that any repairs/maintenance not done by the dealership is mostly figured out by dedicated weirdos that post tutorials to YouTube.
Replying to
@rootwyrm No one’s arguing I’m not a massive fuckup but I doubt I was the fist to fuckup this job.
According to my shop manual that bolt should have been only tightened to 18-22 Nm