It’s almost time to buy my last old man car. This guy’s on the short list. I just can’t get used to how they look.
Bimmer’s Back from the Shop
At close to 150k miles, Bimmer went in the shop Monday for all the long term stuff needed to hopefully get at least another 100k out of it by the time it reaches true unicorn status. I scaled back attempting much more than the light-duty car stuff myself in 2019.
Interesting twist on the story – they didn’t remember me from the coilover job a few years ago, so I got the “new customer” treatment. As expected, after getting it opened up and evaluating the box of parts I provided, they were terrified. There’s any number of factory parts missing with custom stuff they’ve never seen before added. Some of what they were going to be doing involved significant tear-down to replace most of the vacuum system, so they’re rightfully skeptical. I get that. Took three phone calls with the service manager to get through it.
This most recent maintenance episode stands in stark contrast to when I drove down to Atlanta for the exhaust update. There’s a little small business performance shop in the Dallas suburb, not unlike Bimmerhaus here in CO. Drove around back and parked on a lift, popped the hood for Andrew while he looked it over and started pointing at things asking “what’s that?” Numerous times. I’m just standing there thinking “crap, he’s not gonna want to work on it.” After about a half minute he said “Cool. You’re gettin’ the new 2.8 rev. This car’s gonna be fast.”
Nothing against Bimmerhaus. To be fair, Andrew had a little better idea what he was getting into. This is just an example of how the same type engagement can work very differently with different people. Bill ‘n the Bimmerhaus gang seem like a great bunch, and they have my respect for doing things right. I’m sure we’ll be seeing them again sometime. Just not for quite awhile – but I bet they remember me next time. 😉
Go ahead and send the EPA. I need a new M-Car anyway.
Workin’ on that Landing
Anybody wanna take a ride? Astronaut wings for the survivors!
Welcome to the Cloud
Just wait till Musk points the Tesla hackers at automotive targets of opportunity for competitive advantage.
I have a question for the car companies. And trust me when I say the fact-checking will continue: Is there any possibility under any conceivable circumstances, environmental conditions or foreseeable physical anomalies of any kind under which reasonably competent coders might devise a system whereby the vehicle will fail to operate due to lack of authenticated network connectivity?
Relative Terms
I can’t fathom how Randall’s mind works, but it’s pretty damn funny sometimes. This one caught my attention because it perfectly explains how I characterize my car. It just defies comprehension how it’s so middle-of-the-road in virtually every respect. It’s an innocuous, small grey sedan with an aftermarket exhaust that is louder, but not much. Tooling around in normal ops, the accelerator pedal could be confused with the floor pedal on a sewing machine, just based on the auditory and tactile feedback.
OTOH, if it had an industrial grade needle-and-thread mechanism belted-in somewhere under the hood, it would be the world’s largest, most powerful sewing machine on four wheels. 😜
Wintertime Work Backup
My shyt’s jacked – literally. Took me two hours to get the Bimmer on jackstands yesterday. It popped a fuel leak the other day, so I need to get under it. In the middle of winter with Red Betsy on the lift makes it difficult. She can’t be trusted to start even warm until the carb is sorted, so I’ll be repairing the little grey monster the old fashioned way: On my back on the floor. Might even be easier with the new creeper.
I already know what’s wrong. The cobbed-up water separator plumbing suffered some loosening with the deep freeze over Christmas. Should be interesting to see how that’s doing, under the circumstances. This was the first time I ever had any diesel winterization issues. I forgot to put ClearDiesel and Howes treatment in last fall, so apparently the line froze at least twice in these low temps we’ve had. It’s pretty obvious what’s going on when it fails to start with zero fuel pressure showing post-filter.
It took me a few tries to remember how the jack points work on this car. It won’t go up very far at any one corner, and headroom is limited under the lift. Too cold for my fingers next few days, so we’ll see how it goes later in the week. It’s a chore just getting the bottom covers off.
Automotive D/A Conversion
D/A (digital-to-analog) conversion talk typically revolves around getting the 1’s and 0’s from a playback device to your old-fashioned eardrums in one, continuous analog stream of music or whatever. I’ve reached a juxtaposed epiphany about the D/A issue WRT enclosed chairs on wheels: It’s backwards, or upside-down.
ICE (internal combustion engine) cars are digital, and the new stuff is analog. This observation has little to do with the electronics.
Four, six, eight or more distinct power pulses slamming into a crankshaft starts alot of moving parts and noise that are soon to be things of the past, in terms of mainstream transportation. That D/A conversion from the old-school ICE cars is what they are all about, to me. It happens in the seat of your pants and the brain parts connected to your ears during that first test run after washing the black grime off your hands that never seems to disappear from underneath your fingernails.
OTOH, it’s all analog in terms of driving impressions when the rheostats flow the juice. I suppose an argument for electrons bouncing around somewhere could be made. That’s been quite the quandary over the networks since forever. Digital-to-analog conversion is proceeding apace in the automotive industry. Not too sure what to think about it yet, except to say that I’m gonna need a new M-car.
Why-o-Wyoming?
Government/legislative ignorance has reached a new high water mark in the great state of Wyoming.
“Therefore, in order to protect the incomes of people who earn money extracting hydrocarbons from the ground or moving them around the state, sales of new EVs must be banned in Wyoming by 2035, the bill argues.”
People need to understand the days of burning stuff for energy with big herds of cattle roaming the prairie are over. The only income they’ll have left is being on the dole after nobody goes there anymore. Probably not a real big change, after all.
Cummins ACE
I had no idea. Looks like a real monster. Wonder if I’ll ever be able to get one in a pickup someday?
The “Best” BMW 3-Series
I was saying this myself after we leased that F30 328i Michelle had for a few years. It was a really nice car, but not a driver like the D. I remember the 1st time driving the 328, thinking to myself “this can’t be a BMW 3’er.” It wasn’t bad, just not the same. It’s an important nuance only true car enthusiast drivers notice.
BMW’s tone-setter is the 3 Series. It’s the car that BMW built its reputation on. So when the 3 Series goes soft, the rest of BMW goes soft too and the F30 seems to be the point when it all changed for BMW, when it began chasing mainstream success and widespread consumer popularity. There’s no question, the F30 had a broader customer appeal than the E90 and it probably made BMW more money. But the E90 was a better BMW and there hasn’t been a better 3 Series since.
This Is What I Want
Probably need to wait for the M2 version next year. Fastest Bimmer to ever lap The Ring. – and arguably faster than many cars costing more than twice as much. The 335D is a weapon of a car with the Ohlins coilovers, but it grows long in the tooth, and I can’t find anybody besides me to work on it around here anymore.
“And it sure seems like there’s more speed on deck before the Bimmer runs out of steam. Acceleration slows above 300 km/h (186 mph), but it remains steady up to the top speed. Provided the limiter doesn’t kick in, could the M4 reach 200 mph given enough room to run?”
Timing Is Everything
The “D” was sitting outside the other day while I struggled with the Chrysler’s carb. We haven’t had much rain this year, except for a couple good soakings – one of which just happened to be that day. So Bimmer got washed for the 1st time in two years!
Jerry Cans
After starting to haul diesel for the Webastos, I finally got fed up with the EPA-compliant fuel cans found at most outlets these days. I’ve modified a few of those plastic junk can spouts and vents over the years, but decided those were going to be the last. They can sit out back in the shed after the Armageddon Vehicle got an upgrade – real NATO-spec jerry cans.
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The hold-down bracket folds up out of the way lashed to the headache rack for hauling dirt and gravel. Padding where it hits the handles puts a little tension down to hold the cans firmly in place. At an average 20MPG, the old Dodge now has around 1,700 miles range with a full load of fuel: 30 gallons in the stock tank under the bed, 40 under the toolbox and another 15 in the cans.
Drive the Car or Fix the Server?
This is why my truck does not need even a battery to start and run if it’s daylight and parked on a hill. Back in the last century, vehicular electronics were known to cause more problems than they solved. This state of affairs was well demonstrated in the early Dodge Cummins PCMs. They were technically computers, and did offer some improvements – when they worked. Tesla has just provided a great contemporary example of what happens when they don’t. Nowadays it all comes through the net, so your car really has nothing to do with it, except failing to operate correctly when a bit gets stuck sideways somewhere in an incredibly complex neural net control system.
More Pet Stuff ‘n a Truck Pic
Continued the ongoing project clearing photos out of the Google cloud with that last pond post. This about wraps it up for summer photo fun. Jax nearly bit that black tomcat‘s head off at the age of ten weeks, but he remains defiant.
Jax is in stealth mode on that last shot.
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Almost done clearing deadwood out of the front yard. Keeping fingers crossed we don’t have another hard freeze before the leaves are down again this year.
Car Stuff
I was feeling my oats enough to get the Bimmer tires re-organized a few weeks ago. Then it came home with this, the 1st time time I took it out on the Bridgestones:
The funny thing was, I did not know it was dead flat before next time I almost got to the highway, except for the TPMS warning. Love the runflats! I’m starting to work through the process of some long term maintenance, coming up on 150k miles. It’s going to need belts, bushings, balancer, tensioner and maybe some new motor mounts and turbos. Bimmer Haus has a big job coming next month…
So with the little one outside, the big one came down from it’s lift perch for the 1st time in probably over 2 years. Accelerator pump is toast again, so I guess I’ll put another carburetor on it this time. Replacing the accelerator is a trivial, inexpensive task I’ve accomplished 3 or 4 times on these things, but it’s time consuming and I’ve never been able to get the carb(s) – on it’s 2nd AVS now) – tuned properly for altitude, so we’ll try a newer model Eddy 750. A 3-car garage holding 4 vehicles including a 91′ Dodge Cummins is tight. But with the 20-foot-long land barge on the lift, everything fits with the doors closed.
