Episode #202 - APA Garage of Horrors Vol. 2

In a world with entirely too many shows about cars, this is another Pointless Automotive Podcast.

Welcome back to another Pointless Automotive Podcast.

Hot off the heels of our four-year Princeton Flowers anniversary, Frank.

How are you doing today?

And flowers.

I am good.

As I mentioned last week, I was cleaning up my garage.

Part of that was I found this Luigi hat, which is good.

It's big and foamy.

And this was pre-political statement Luigi year.

So I don't know if that makes it more genuine or less genuine.

I don't know, but free being able to wear Luigi gear unencumbered.

Good.

So yeah, that's good.

I'm going to set it over here.

Let's see if I can make it into the basket of the Honda Passport without me looking,

with me viewing through my camera here.

And I'll do NBA Jam commentary.

Let's see it.

Ugly shot.

Exactly.

What a brick.

It was pretty good data, a little wide left.

Yeah, definitely.

Definitely.

Yeah.

Not good.

I've seen worse.

I also swapped out the video game background for those following at YouTube.

You definitely did it before we started recording.

I didn't do it just now when Frank was lining up for the shot of the century.

This is, don't mind the sticker art.

This is Tokyo Extreme Racer 2 for a Sega Dreamcast.

It's empty.

It's a sequel.

Yeah.

Fresh off the hills.

I definitely stole it.

It took your Extreme Racer the original last time.

This is also Sega Dreamcast.

You would have downloaded a car.

Great game.

Check it out.

Frank, today.

So we're literally, we're late on a lot of topics, we're late on the cars we talk

about.

We're late.

Never late on.

On my cycle.

Yeah.

We need to talk.

Are you sitting down?

Looks like I need to make a nursery.

So I like Simpsons.

We talk about the Simpsons a lot.

I like the show a lot.

It's probably my favorite show of all time.

Treehouse of Horrors are some of my favorite episodes and I kind of wanted to do this last

year or the year before we kind of, we are horrible.

They were horrible people.

A.P.A.

Horrible.

Garage of horrors we are.

It's I kind of want to document some of our personal wrenching nightmare stories

and that's kind of a fun thing to go.

If you're looking at your calendars and wondering what the hell I'm talking

about.

Yeah, I know.

I know I'm late.

It's almost a month.

But you know what?

Let's roll with it next year.

Maybe we'll be better.

I don't know.

So I wanted to personally horrify one another with some end-the-listeners.

Of course.

Let's do it.

All you guys.

Nobody from Belarus has joined this week.

I don't know.

Maybe.

Maybe we can want them over by you.

You mentioned Belarus twice.

Big in Belarus.

Yeah.

Was it Lukashenko?

Maybe Megan Lukashenko is our only Belarusian listener.

How about you, Frank?

Do you have a horrible wrenching nightmare?

Horrible wrenching story?

Car story?

Anything you want to share with us?

I'm trying to think of ones that I've never discussed on the pod.

I'm sure I probably have.

You know, one I remember and I'm pretty sure, I don't know about in this specific context

but one that I'm pretty sure I've discussed at some point was my 280ZX turbo.

Yeah.

Good one.

That's a car I would love to revisit.

That's the only Z I've ever owned and I've never really drove it.

I drove it hundreds of feet and realized it was still very broken.

I've driven some of those cars in different scenarios but it's kind of the unloved Z.

It kind of is, right?

It's like very underappreciated.

That's 130.

Yeah.

Mine was a 2 plus 2 turbo silver and blue two-tone five-speed T-top car which is a pretty cool

spec.

The 2 plus 2 turns a lot of people off but interesting car.

And the horror on that one was, without being here all day, was I bought it with a quote

unquote bad turbo.

I originally bought it to make it into a lemon's car.

I decided it was too nice to hack up and turn into a lemon's car because it was like

100 and I think it was like 112, 113,000 mile car.

It's really good.

Yeah.

Zero rust.

Paint was in great shape.

Interior was largely very good.

There were a couple of tears on the driver's seat bottom in the silver leather.

Yes.

It was a silver leather seating surface car.

What year?

82, 83?

82.

Okay.

Yeah.

Five-speed.

Very cool car.

I decided it was too cool.

So I yanked the turbo out of it.

I sent it off to get rebuilt, replaced the turbo feed line which is kind of the

bugaboo on those cars.

That's how they die.

It's got a long turbo feed line that comes from the other side of the engine, wraps

around the back of the motor and then feeds the turbo.

And that's how those things, the turbos die is people aren't up on their oil changes

diligently enough or they get a little bit too hot and you coke up that line and

it starts the turbo and then now you're buying a turbo and they weren't water-cooled.

They were, they were air-cooled or just oil-cooled turbos.

So yeah, so they were prone to that sort of thing.

Pulled the turbo out, got it rebuilt, put it all back together in a while, I did some

while you're in there type stuff, right?

So I did plugs and I pulled the valve cover and I repainted it, the crinkle finish

black and put it all back together, oops, actually turned out I had a bad head gasket

or a cracked head.

I never did any further digging.

The guy I bought it from drained the crankcase because I pulled the dipstick

and it was milkshaked and it wasn't milkshaked when I started.

So I think dude was like, oh yeah, it needs a turbo, but it had a bad head gasket.

It was burning coolant and oil and I don't know if he put used oil in it.

I don't know if it just wasn't milkshaked until I touched it because

I had seen the oil before and it was fine.

And yeah, I ended up basically selling it for everything I was in it with

my labor being free, broke even and it was a guy who I think he had one

and a tree fell on it.

And so but he had just he had rebuilt the motor like 10,000 miles ago.

So he was going to take the motor out of that car, put it in my car.

I have no idea whereabouts are today.

I hope it's cruising around.

It was very cool.

I had the bitch and daddy option.

Yeah.

It had I think every single option except for it did not have the digital dash.

OK, had the analog dash word was the original owner because it came out of

like the Palo Alto area and the original owner was a like an engineer like

Lockheed Martin and worked down there by making Hangar one and all that.

So yeah, you know, flight engineer spec.

Yeah, I love I love those cars.

They could be a little pain in the dick to get through smog.

The early ones, you know, it's it's just early 80s turbo technology.

They probably barely pass smog brand new, to be honest.

If we held them against today's standard.

So I love them.

I love how they look.

They've aged pretty well, in my opinion.

It's just like a more cumbersome 240Z.

But I kind of like the 80s touches to it.

So yeah, they're killer.

Nacaduct hood scoop and teatops are cool.

And, you know, they're a little soft.

They were more of a GT thing compared to the earlier cars.

Sure. That's why they're not as loved, right?

But like, I don't know.

I'd rather have one than a than a Z 31, I think.

Hot take. But oh, that's a little spicy.

Yeah. Yeah.

Just surprise head gasket jobs are never fun to find.

I freaking it sucks.

I've been there too.

But yeah, you're just it's like one of the top things you're not looking for.

It's like having to do a clutch immediately, right?

Like a surprise clutch failure.

So yeah, I've been there, done that too.

Kind of a little bit.

Yeah, it's when people tell you there's like something wrong

and that's the only thing that indicates wrong.

You just know you've got to assume there's something else going on, right?

But so my buddy, a good buddy of mine has a super clean low mileage 90.

1994 Mustang GT, super cool Fox body.

And he was like over it because and he had the car for a long time,

like eight years, he had basic maintenance and then some upgrades

done by his family mechanic and the guy literally just he threw

replacement parts at everything.

And I'm not talking like researched parts.

He's talking about like part zone, like going to other zone

and getting like the cheapest brand map sensor or something to that.

And you know, that never works, right?

Dude even bought a remanufactured ECU from other zone.

So that's how far he went down the rabbit hole of trying to fix these

little issues. And then my so basically this Mustang got delivered to me.

Barely could idle, which is fall on its face, smoke the entire garage.

I pray I talked about it back in the day, but I mean, it literally

would smoke me out of the garage, just running it for like 20 seconds.

Well, every nothing was right.

And nothing was right about the car.

So I start poking around.

I see weird things like blue marine RTV holding the intake manifold on.

No gasket. I see sensors just left disconnected.

I saw one sensor where he used RTV to seal it and just put one screw on one side.

So, you know, the usual hack stuff that you don't want to see

when you get into a car and it was super clean when my buddy had it.

So I start that process, dude, these this is always I don't buy.

I would I love working on this car because it's a buddy of mine,

but I would never buy a car in this condition because it becomes like this night

like you think you're tracking one issue and it's something completely different,

especially when you started swapping out sensors.

Yeah, those to me are like my biggest nightmare scenarios

where a mechanic has done everything to the car and it's somehow worse.

Yeah, worse worse than what it started out with the issue being reported as.

Right. So now I had, oh, well, that issue is a less noticeable

because these bigger issues are kind of taking over the the stage.

Right. Unbelievable, dude, the amount of stuff that just piled up like

so you do the first stuff like you do a you do like a I don't know,

compression test to make sure the engine's good before I even put effort into it.

It was good, good compression.

So I'm like, OK, we're working with a good box.

The blocks were good. Yes.

Yeah, let's let's go with this.

And then I'm like, let me check the ignition timing.

It was like so far off.

I'm like, well, that's our first problem.

Right. So just doing the basics.

Like first off, taking off the intake manifold,

doing all those things that were leaking or disconnected or RTV sealed shut.

Like he had done a sensor.

I can't remember.

I wish I remember what sensor it was on the throttle.

It was near the throttle body.

And he had put too much RTV, like so much that it went around the sensor inside.

And it was just by a pure miracle that the intake

it didn't get sucked into the intake manifold.

Sure. Like I'm like, what the this guy had like

he's like the Bob Ross of RTV had like every two.

He's like, I'm just going to put it a little blue RTV here.

Look at that happy little marine intake.

Lobbled. Yes, dude, so bad.

But yeah, that's where I started.

And eventually we got the car running.

It did need to get like professionally tuned

because the ECU and everything was swapped out.

Right. That's right.

But just you don't I would never

no matter how in the car is exceptionally clean.

It's a buddy of mine.

That's why I took on all that work.

But a regular shop would have turned it away.

Right. Like you start seeing all those kind of hack things.

You're like, yeah, it's not touching.

You can't blame them. Right.

Yeah. No.

If they're a good shop

and they've got a lot of business coming in because they're a good shop.

The absolute last thing you want to do is is.

Have someone open a can of worms

and then hand like microwave it till it's boiling hot

and then hand you the boiling hot can of someone else's worms.

Yep. I don't want that.

And so and and yeah, completely get that it's.

Can I just say that my least favorite thing

is when people default to

Oh, it's got to be an ECU problem.

Hey, it's not that it never happens.

Right.

But to be like, oh, there's this one thing

that like I try to hail Mary on and threw some part at it and it didn't work.

And then I keep beating my head against the same wall

and the result didn't change.

So it's got to be an ECU.

Dude, as soon as you nailed it,

as soon as someone says it's got to be the ECU ECM, whatever it is,

I go, if that's our immediate diagnosis of the issue,

I immediately go, OK, I'm going to I'm going to just take the car.

We're going to we're going to get away from here

because usually that's it's really poor diagnostic work.

And then nine, nine or 11 out of 10 times

when you replace that ECU, the issue's still there

because it wasn't the ECU Go figure.

And we've made it worse.

Yeah, the new ECU in the case of this Mustang

was a piece of shit off the shelf aftermarket one

where you just got rid of.

You got in the zone.

Yeah, he had a he had an actual Cobra ECU in originally.

So someone took that perfectly running well, I'm sure.

And so they turn it, they send it in as a core.

Yeah. So whoever got that was like, oh, fuck,

I'm just going to quit my job and make a lot of money on this right now,

because let's go for like six hundred, seven hundred bucks.

And then I'm going to sell him this $200 reman auto zone special.

Cardone. Yeah, it's great.

Cardone special.

It's three X's my horsepower or 10 or whatever that grifter does.

Unbelievable. Yeah, you're right.

It's just it's and it happens.

It's you. But usually it's like,

oh, there's this weird no start condition or there's like it's not usually

the car runs poorly.

It's like it works or it doesn't, right?

Or there's or this or it's like, oh, this is a known issue.

And this is intermittent, whatever.

But like.

Yeah. Oh, it runs poorly and it won't pass small.

It's got to be the ECU like no. Sure.

By that ever. Yeah.

And that's that's why this was a nightmare project on top of all of this.

So like maybe like the first few days of me working on the car,

like finding all these issues, right?

I go under the car and I'm looking at some stuff.

I come out, go to start the car just to see some things that dead like nothing.

I'm like, what the fuck?

So I swap out, I look at the starter solenoid, I short the solenoid.

So I'll start in the starter engages and I'm like, holy fuck.

So there's something going on after like a full like day of diagnostic

trying to figure out what's going on with the starter.

I go, does this thing have a kill switch on it?

And my buddy goes, oh, yeah, it does.

It's like right under the front bumper.

It's easy to hit if you crawl under there.

I'm like, bro, a tow truck is showing up at your house in a half an hour.

It's going to have a goddamn car on it.

God damn, dude.

I wish this and I mean, dude, it hung right behind where the bumper plastic

is because you usually want to hide it.

Yeah. So you can reach down and do it.

But also you don't want anyone to see it

because that's obvious someone could just fuck with you or right.

Obviously undo your kill switch.

But I just perfectly right where I squeeze under the front.

My knee had hit it.

It was on the outside of the car.

So underneath the bumper, like the plastic bumper.

Yeah, underneath in the front.

Not like under the dash or somewhere convenient.

No, underneath.

Like, boy, it's pouring ass rain.

Oh, let me let me go start and drive my.

Shipbox Mustang that's like full of right, you know, O'Reilly parts

or Pepple. I mean, to be fair, it was like behind the plastic part of the

but it was up in there enough, but it hung down enough.

So you touched it.

Like also, if you drag your bumper, you might hit it.

See what you'd be interested in driving a speed bump.

And it just the whole car goes dead.

But anyway, no idea.

So I'm over here diagnosing a no start, no crank.

For a day.

And I'm like, I'm not doing this, which is good.

Like I've got continuity like going through all of this.

Yeah, jump the starter.

So are those are those like the older forge where it's just like

it's a separate solenoid on the firewall.

So it's on the side fender.

So you can lay a screwdriver across that.

The cylinder looking dude and you just work it out.

Yeah. And it could fucking arc hard.

I'll tell you that much.

Yeah, it likes it likes our card.

But anyway, that was just candy on top of that already delicious dessert.

And ultimately, we did get it running.

It's just one of those jobs when it comes in.

And plus I had never seen the car before.

So it's like, not only do I have to unfuck like a guy's like any.

The other thing is you left it with the mechanic for an extended period of time.

I think almost a year.

So I'm on fucking a year's worth of like I'm Mr.

Like parts guy. Yeah, that's the problem, right?

At night, it was an absolute night.

I'll say it's a nightmare.

I'm glad that I helped my buddy out and we got it's running great now, by the way.

The car is amazing after that tune from a professional tuner and got some stuff sorted.

Did it it didn't immediately just start like devouring children

outside of a car some coffee on a weekend?

No, I wish to just think so clean.

Let it eat.

It was like a low mileage white Fox body just looked right.

The interior was 10 out of 10.

It's his dream car and he has some cool cobra mods on there.

So it's like legit.

It's like it's really good.

You know, that horse got snakes.

Yeah, dude, horse snake.

But those are the kind of things in that to me was like one of those scenarios

that could easily spot if it was my own personal car, I would have been panicking

because those are the ones that just you blow budgets, you blow timelines.

Right.

Imagine if you bought it in the prior owner just didn't tell you about the kill switch.

Like, oh, God.

Especially the way it was hidden to like who would put it there?

And like, I don't know.

Thanks for letting me know it was there.

Yeah, good, good scenario right there, dude.

That's a nightmare scenario.

Yeah, it's.

Boy, sorry.

I was like enthralled of just like thinking about bad ECU bullshit.

Oh, my God, not thinking about because again, I'm the one who doesn't take

notes about about other shit that like has gone wrong because there's a lot.

I mean, I mean, shoot, we can we can talk about the the trials and tribulations

of the the focus SVT like, yeah, unbelievable.

That's like semi.

Well, I mean, it's semi recent.

So I don't want to spend too much time talking about it.

But how about that?

How about this is just a theme because it's definitely happened to me.

You buy the brand new part and the brand new part instantly shits the bed, right?

Dude, it should be told.

It's been happening more recently, right?

Sure. I mean, it's kind of boy.

I mean, it's kind of always happened.

Like I remember probably the first instance, the earliest instance

that I could remember for me is in high school is the starter on my barracuda.

Shit, the bed.

It was, you know, questionable age and origin, old school, just old shitty

Mopar probably built in Saginaw, Michigan starter.

And it just it just finally just it was it's slow cranked for like a week.

And then it was just done.

So fished it out, replaced it with a later gear reduction starter.

So if you you could order starting in like 91 up until I believe 92 or 93

when it switched over to the the the Magnum V8, which was just that, you know,

it was basically an advanced version of the original L.A.

series Mopar small block, right?

And in those late run L.A.

Mopar small block like 318 or 360, they had a much smaller,

like more modern gear reduction starter and you just bolted in.

So sick. I just went to my local, whatever, Napa car parts.

Auto parts, I should say.

That's Napa auto parts went there.

The starter and I think I don't it might not have been Napa.

It was whomever, right?

Went to the local aftermarket.

Joint paid whatever it was, probably at the time, 120 bucks

for a new aftermarket starter.

Put it in.

It was great, quieter, cranked faster because of the gear reduction.

It was much smaller.

It was probably 60 percent of the size of the original one.

Holy shit. Put it in.

Everything everything's great.

I think it lasted like three days.

And this is by daily at the time.

Oh, and then it just and it wasn't like slow crank.

It would just click, click, click, click, click, click.

I was like, what the fuck did I got?

Did I kill my battery?

So go to jump it.

Click, click, click, click, click.

So I'm going, oh, man, I'm an idiot.

I screwed something up like I've got my, you know,

it's got to be like my negative, you know,

terminal wire that goes from the battery to the starter.

And let me go look at that.

Oh, it's pretty old.

Maybe I had to replace it, but it looks like it's got good.

I'm just like troubleshooting all this shit as a 16 year old, 17 year old

and going up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up.

And I talked to some old head who's like, oh, you bought like, you know,

a new aftermarket or remand starter, as you said, right?

Oh, all these aftermarket parts these days, getting worse.

And then get off my lawn.

It's a bad part. Well, the old right, you know.

So I fish it out.

I took it back in.

They bench tested it like, oh, yeah, this thing's done.

Here you go. They handed me a new one.

Put it in the car.

I think it's still in the car to this day.

Oh, wow. The second, the warranty starter.

Yeah, just a bad part and it and it happens.

And I've had it happen with, you know, the reason I brought it up

was the lower coolant hose on the Focus SVT special order.

The part in its SVT specific and I wrestle it in, you know,

whatever it was 36 hours before the start of the rally.

Nope. Sorry.

There's a bad casting in this, like, wide joint.

So it's pissing coolant out. Great.

God, I'm trying to think.

I promise I've had other.

Oh, I had actually the opposite of it.

And my one of my first gen forerunners.

And I'll let you add to this here in a second.

You can throw more vegetables into this soup of bad new parts

where I did it was the opposite where

at a first gen, my first gen forerunner, 87 forerunner, 22 RE automatic.

I kept getting low charging.

Warnings, which on that car is just a simple alternator,

single red LED that lights up doing.

Shit, OK, you know, I tested at the battery.

It was only it was it putting out like 12.9, 13.1, something like that.

OK, we're not we're not charging properly.

I look it's what looks like the original starter and car add.

I don't know, 170,000 miles at the time.

OK, it's random times.

You'll nip and denso.

So I pulled it out and I take it to the local local car,

you know, used car, whatever, not used, but O'Reilly's, whatever.

Autosome, take it there.

Hey, man, I'd love to sell you a starter.

I just tested this thing.

It Bench test perfect.

No, honestly, and if if he was right, he would have been right.

But if he was right, his point was was valid, which was like,

this is a nice OE nip and denso starter.

I tested it. It tests great.

You should just put this back in the car versus buying some whatever

a one car don't part that I'm going to sell you out of my place here.

I'd love to sell you a starter, but this is a good starter.

Shit, OK, put it back in the car.

I keep getting the same problem.

So I'm cleaning all my grounds.

I found there's an old there was like an old fusible link

in the charging circuit on that.

And I'm like, well, you know, maybe there's a.

So I went to a pick and pull and I found it and I swapped that out.

And I swap I'm swapping out a bunch of parts.

And it I can't I can't correct it.

If I would rev it up, the charge light would go away.

But I would be at idle in gear.

I would get this charge. I'm like, fuck.

So I go, you know what?

I'm going to fire the parts candidate.

Fuck it. I pull the starter back out after doing all this other work.

I put it. I put a remand starter in it.

Perfect. Great. Huh. Done.

Solved. I don't know why a bench tested OK.

I trust that he actually did it.

I don't know. Right.

Random part aftermarket parts counter guys making $11 an hour.

And doubt that that's bad thing.

But like he's not a an engineer and electrical, you know, right.

Diagnostition. So.

I don't know.

But that was like the inverse of like this was the known bad part

that tested good when I went to buy a known good part.

Yeah. And but there's lots of like if the test isn't done right,

like, and then you have like a false positive, right?

Like so like EGRs, you can make the diaphragm move up and down with a vacuum

like a hand vacuum.

You're like, Oh, my EGR is good, except you're supposed to do that.

Put the vacuum on it and then wait to see if it leaks out

because that means the diaphragm is leaking.

Yeah. So a lot of people just do it and like, Oh, plunger moves.

EGR is good. Yeah.

No, bro. If it does it and then like it's right back down.

Yeah. It's essentially leak down.

It's not good. So sometimes doing those tests or you go EGR is great.

It's got to be something else.

We're like, no, man.

Like, yeah, the EGR valve is working fine, but the car is never getting

signal to actually send, send, you know, vacuum to the EGR valve, right?

You just got to, you got to go to the next step upstream,

but people just will do that.

But yep, it's good, you know.

Yeah. That's an extra nightmare scenario.

It's an ECU.

Yeah. When do you, don't say it, what do you think you fixed an issue

and you've ruled that out and that still is a goddamn issue.

So you're troubleshooting around that, the known issue,

which is actually the real cause, but EGRs are like that.

And then like it's like my track or like the EGR is fine,

but now the intake manifold, all the EGR runners are fucking full.

Like, you have to take the intake manifold off.

Whole other story there.

But another nightmare scenario, diagnostic diagnostics,

I think trip up most like DIYers or mechanics.

I hate it, but it's also so fun.

It's so fun.

But like one of the hardest things is diagnosing a sound.

I think those can be the absolute most challenging.

So my 07 legacy spec be one of the best cars I ever owned out

of it for seven years.

All of a sudden I was driving and under like boost

would make a whistling sound and you're like, oh, fucking turbo.

You know, you haven't sat it had lower mileage.

So I wasn't too worried about the turbo.

And I'm like, it could be anywhere.

It could be on the intake guide.

It could be the exhaust side.

It could be anything, right?

And if you've ever worked on a boxer engine,

you know how much of a pain in the literal dick it is to get.

It's very complicated.

It's like tight in there.

The up pipe area, the down pipe area, everything's tight.

All the intake to the intercooler stuff.

Well, the pipes are tight.

So anyway, try to find the sound.

I take everything apart.

And it's a pain.

It's literally a pain in the dick.

Take everything off.

I replaced every gasket.

To be fair, if you're wrenching on your legacy

or anything else and you have literal pain in your dick,

you're probably doing it incorrectly.

Or correctly.

Or super like, or like super correctly.

Or correctly.

This is true.

Yeah, exactly.

So the funny thing is there's like a million unique gaskets

for all the different joints because the system is a flat engine.

It goes around at weird angles, replaced every gasket,

did really high quality ones like Grim Speed at the time.

So it's a big job.

It's a lot of money.

Get it all back together.

Go for a rip.

And I'm like, oh, my God, it's not doing it.

Not doing it then.

And I'm like, son of a, you know.

I'm talking like to take all that apart is hours.

Like little hours then put it all back together.

I'm like, you got to be fine, kid.

So the only thing I didn't touch was the up pipe.

And I'm like, God, it looked, it looked really good.

So I look the factory up pipe.

Yeah.

The factory up pipe has a flex section.

And so I'm like, let me just look at the flex section.

So I flex it a little perfect hairline crack.

So every time I was hitting boost, the up pipe was going.

So after market up pipe, we're good.

But those goddamn dude, just that job.

And it was a East Coast car.

Not super crusty, but that part of your car

gets all the water and snow damage.

Yeah.

And it's mostly just like mild steel.

And I broke three bolts taking all that stuff.

It like it was down for like a weekend plus to find a sound.

Like that's the worst.

Expending money to get rid of a sound like no performance

difference, no like maintenance difference, just

painting the dick work.

And then just to go for that.

When I went for that first drive on that Monday

and I was like, oh my God, it's fixed.

And then the it's like the most high pitch.

Like I, and I hate noises.

Like, you know, me, I can't say it at one point.

It's like drag to breaks.

Dragging is one of my other pet peeves.

But dude, just and then to swap out that up pipe,

which Matt taken everything fucking off the engine again.

Yeah.

Do you be blaster?

Can one go through?

Just like I was like one for you, one for me with the

plastic.

So I was I was getting drunk with the car.

But dude, just those those little things like

diagnosing sounds is like another always it can

it has the potential to really become a nightmare.

Suspension clunks.

Oh, I think it's this and you can get out of the car

and you can move the car.

It won't ever make the fucking same noise.

And then the second you drive it out of like your garage

and hit like a little pot hole or speed bump.

It's like and you're like, oh my God, exactly.

Where's a bridge bridge too far?

Yeah, it's I'm trying to remember.

It's funny.

So you mentioned you mentioned with that flex pipe.

I don't even remember which car of mine this was.

But it had it would have this intermission

intermittent.

Like stumble under more than like three quarter throttle.

You'd give it like those annoying.

If you would tow in it would be fine.

Fifty percent of throttle would be fine.

Give it much more than that, right?

Like you would punch it and it would it would shit the bed.

It was like, OK, like there's it's it's it's

there's some enrichment issue, right?

So and that's what it was presenting as.

And I don't even remember how I how I found it.

But what actually was happening was and all the hoses under the hood look great.

It was two fold.

It was worn motor mounts and there was some it was like a PCV line

or some some bigger vacuum hose that at idle or with the car off looked perfect.

But when you give it bigger throttle, it would move on the motor mounts

and there was like a split in the line that you couldn't see.

Until but there was enough play in the motor mounts.

It would pull it apart and it was just it would just suck in tons of unmetered air

and it would just hit the bed.

Yep. And yeah.

And that's what it was.

It was like, OK, it needs motor mounts.

That's fine. And I was just playing with like, oh, yeah.

Look how bad it needs motor mounts.

And then I'd like saw it at the corner of my eye.

I was like, oh, like this this line would just split open

and just like pull all this air.

We should be shit like, oh, that's my problem.

And sure enough, like I thought it was I thought it was like, you know,

it was getting either getting too much fuel or not enough fuel.

And it was just getting too much unmetered air.

And yeah, that was less of a nightmare.

More of just like, whoa, I'm glad I saw that at the right moment

because otherwise, you know, you know, unless I smoke tested everything,

I wasn't going to find it.

Unbelievable. But yeah, it's just like even the thing that gets me to

is like when it's on a good car and you run into one of these

like nightmare scenarios, right?

Like we we intentionally get ourselves into some of these situations.

Oh, sure. You know, we we see the red flag.

It's like women. You see, you see the red flag and you're like, I can.

Or men.

Have you or? Yeah.

Or sex bots or clinkers.

There's a lot of red flag in that in that clinker.

Those ones you kind of like set yourself up like emotionally

everything else, because you know, you're going to have to

you're going to have to deal with this eventually.

But when it happens to like a good running vehicle, like out of the blue

and then you're going down diagnostic hell.

Boy, those can become real nightmares real fast.

And I think we get some pretty good ones in.

This will be we'll make it more Halloweeny next year.

But just I don't know.

We talked about sex bots.

It's Halloween adjacent.

Fair. Yeah. Yeah.

So what I do want to hear is like, if any of our listeners

have had any absolute nightmare jobs,

dude, share it with us because misery fucking loves company.

Yeah, that that that's like adjacent to our like awful car stories

is awful car wrenching stories.

Oh, God, you know, we know you got some.

Yeah, like the you know, it's funny.

It's just a quick, a quick aside.

So when I was when I was in high school, a buddy

mine had a it was an 86 Camaro Iroxie.

It was like cream white with a brown interior.

Oh, he tops 305 TBI five speed.

And I had like all the Iroxie stuff.

And the wheels were like factory, like gold, like gold lettering.

And the wheels were like gold.

It wasn't gold.

They were like the the silver, but like with like the painted.

Yeah, gold accent and the accent.

Yes, yes. Uh-huh.

At the time, we gave them shit for it, right?

Because like he bought it.

He thought it was he thought it was a 350.

And then he figured out after like, oh, no, like two weeks later,

it's like, bro, the 350s were all auto.

I'm pretty sure.

And so we're like looking at like the emissions label under the hood.

Like, bro, this is five liter, you're fucked.

Even though I take a five liter, five speed over the 350, they actually,

I mean, they drive OK.

Like they're better. Yeah.

Better than a higher.

We did speaking of dumb car stories.

We did dumb car story stuff in that.

Let's just say when you're in high school in your home,

he's getting new tires and then you decide you need to make the old ones go away.

You do you do things in that car.

You recycle them.

Anyways, he basically he was like, oh, dude,

I think my transmission is fucked on this car.

I need a transmission.

So we're like, OK, it was it was he's like, yeah, like it just,

you know, I put it in whatever gear, like it's fine in first and second.

But if I put it in like third, like it just it just revs,

like I think it's like something like I think I blew third gear out of it

because again, doing dumb stuff and we're, you know, whatever, 17.

So OK, sure.

So we go to a pick and pull.

We drag another T five out of a car and pick and pull.

We get it to we took high school auto shop.

So we limp the car.

We put the transmission in the trunk of his Iraq.

We limp it over to the high school auto shop, put it in the air.

We drop the transmission on my my buddy almost drops it on his head.

Like he was a big dude, thankfully, he caught it.

He was like six three water polo player.

He caught it and was just like, we caught him and we just like

landed on the ground with the transmission to drop out of his car.

God damn. We do all of that.

We get in there. His clutches smoked.

Transmission was fine.

What was happening was first and second gear was fine.

But when you put it in the higher gear and you give it give it the beans,

it would torque just flare because the.

So it is flywheel was burnt, clutch was gone.

I don't I think we just put his original transmission back in it.

So we're like, I don't trust this like junkyard one.

Like I would keep the junkyard in it for sure, though.

Yeah, I don't remember what happened to it.

And and yeah, so we put it all.

So but that was just like, hey, we're kids.

We don't know.

We just assume we do the transmission and just know we smoke the clutch

because we were doing terrible things and we didn't really know how to drive

at five speed. Yeah.

Yeah, it's not a nightmare job, but you know, considering we almost died

and we had to go by a lot of mission for no for no reason.

Right. Good Lord.

Cool. But yeah, like I like the nightmare stuff.

We'll have to make it an anniversary thing every Halloween will celebrate.

Are you ready to get a little?

Well, this could be scary, depending on how you view this vehicle.

Oh, it's time, my friend, a spooky vehicle could be out.

Maybe. It's a bit of a mystery vehicle.

Rolls Royce Specter.

God damn it.

Nineteen, nineteen eighty five, the Silver Ghost.

All right, you mind intro and the the the show?

Well, I pull up this this absolutely ghoulish ad.

This is what's going to happen.

So this is our print ad quiz game.

Oh, boy, in today's rousing edition,

Chadwick has already discovered a perhaps spooky advertisement

from the 80s, the 90s to the mid 2000s.

He's going to read and describe this advertisement.

He's got his glasses on.

We are aging out over here.

And part of this is I will then after he reads the ad,

I get three guesses to try and figure out the make model

and approximate model here of the vehicle at hand.

I get 10 minutes.

I get three guesses.

I get hints if and when I get some guesses.

Maybe long. Please play along at home.

It's a bunch of fun yell at me, calling me a clown and an idiot

and a fraud when when you know what it is and I don't.

Yes, this is interactive.

I'm ready. Hopefully you are ready.

Chadwick, what you got?

What you got? Let's do it.

So we got a two page ad for you today.

Driver's side three quarter in the African Savannah

with a giraffe to giraffe giraffe.

I don't know if you pluralize giraffe.

I don't do this. I think you do giraffes.

I think it's giraffes.

I don't think it's like dry like what you're a fair.

I think it's just giraffe like you would here.

Do you? Oh, right.

I mean, they are long, dear.

I think that's what they are.

I prefer a John, dear.

But anyway, one of the one of the giraffes is looking at the vehicle.

Longingly, the headline, the H1 in the HTML world

is the most civilized way to leave civilization.

OK, all right.

It's a fun one, man.

Introvert, disco one. Done.

OK, here we go.

Within the limits imposed by certain unalterable laws of physics,

the new blank has the going deep,

has the capabilities to go practically anywhere.

It is tough.

It has a tough box frame chassis strategically placed steel skid plates.

Sure. And convenient shift on the fly

for a real drive. OK.

A hostile environment on the outside,

however, only serves to accentuate how comfortable the environment is on the inside.

Amenities like leather, a power moonroof and heated seats ensure that

this is a vehicle well suited to an exclusive restaurant

as it is to an extended African safari. OK. Wow.

I'll do both of those.

And one that more than lives up to its luxury nameplate, Frank.

Ah, luxury nameplate. OK.

That's a big one.

It's unique combination of strength and grace.

It's dedicated to the notion that your adventure should be wild and uncivilized,

but never your accommodations. Wow. OK.

This should pretty well written ad to be.

I'm into it so far. Yeah, I'm nearly sold.

I need some tech specs.

I think we have tech specs coming right up.

OK, good. This is good. All right.

Leather trimmed interior. Wow. OK.

Oversized power moonroof.

Oh, that's it.

It did power front seats, theft deterrent system.

It doesn't prevent. It just deters. Oh, fair.

Shift on the fly for a drive.

Dual airbags. OK.

One hundred and ninety horsepower.

This is what you've been waiting for.

B six single overhead cam.

Oh, oh, oh. Engine. Oh, OK.

Ninety point two cubic feet of cargo space.

Ninety point two cubic feet cargo space. OK.

The big one there was the hundred and ninety horsepower

B six of overhead cam motor.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Frank.

Ten minutes on the clock.

What is the most civilized way to leave civilization?

Oh, man.

Boy, great reflexively good ad.

I don't know if it's great, but it's good.

It's fucking great.

You see, here's the thing in my head.

I'm like, oh, boy, like this absolutely reads like.

Like Lexus Alex, it reads like, you know,

Discovery one, Discovery two, Range Rover, right?

Like this is again, luxury nameplate.

Motor does not does not fit the bill here.

Hundred and ninety horsepower.

No displacement.

We didn't get a displacement, but it's an overhead cam.

A sock, if you will.

It's a sock.

It did say V six, V six.

Yes, yes, V six.

Hundred and ninety horsepower.

So with a luxury, it has to be true to a luxury nameplate.

Allegedly. Correct.

So that leads me to think of.

This could be an accurate SLX,

but I think that three and a half liter

made more than one hundred and ninety horsepower.

I want to say it was two thirty or two fifty.

I think it's model year dependent.

Like I think it was two fifty in the V across.

I don't know if it wasn't the SLX.

There's a pretty robust engine for sure.

Robust engine.

I want to say it made more than one hundred and ninety horsepower.

Luxury nameplate, that's making a body on frame SUV.

I would almost want to say like a

like a Land Rover Freelander,

because you have the two five V six.

Feels like a hundred and ninety horsepower would be about right.

Pretty sure those were unibody.

I don't think that's a body on frame vehicle.

But like, you know.

If this is an ML three twenty.

Boy, maybe.

Ooh, that might be it.

It might be an ML three twenty.

But I want to say that made more than one hundred and ninety.

You know, that's a two hundred and twenty, two hundred and thirty horsepower motor.

I don't know if it was down tuned for the ML three twenty.

But that's a body on frame luxury nameplate.

Boy, that might be that might be my first stab.

You know, I'm going to go back.

So for now to get the ball rolling, I'm going to say that this is.

A nineteen ninety eight Acura SLX.

Final answer, Bob.

The most civilized way to leave civilization, the Acura SLX.

Hundred ninety.

I thought it was more early.

So this is a ninety five the first year.

OK, they didn't have the three.

Was it not the three five?

Was it the three oh, I think it was a three oh to start.

The three five did the year you said ninety eight.

I think they did have the three five ninety eight ninety nine.

I know it was late nineties.

And that's when it went to, like you said, over two hundred and twenty horsepower.

So yeah, significant jump.

I'm one ninety is not bad for mid nineties, to be honest, though.

Yeah, that's fair.

Yeah.

So and dual airbags was a big deal for ninety five.

And I was going to bring that up dual airbags.

Here's the ad.

We'll see the giraffeies.

Yeah, God, that's a slick.

It's so good.

So what do you what is your good job?

First off, thank you nailed it.

Thank you. What do you how do you feel about the SLX?

I would like to own an SLX.

Now, I know it's just in a Zuzu trooper with second gen leather trim.

It's a second gen trooper, though, which was a huge upgrade in luxury over the

five. Let me tell you. Yeah.

You know, I would like to.

Frankly, Mealy, I don't know.

I don't know if I know enough about the all the full breadth of

differentiation between a trooper and an SLX, right?

Like, I know like trim leather amenities and trim.

But like, you know, did they have like, you know,

softer rubber bushings in the various, you know, it's the same.

It's or did they add more sound deadening?

No, they, you know, like the the glass is glassier.

Like, I don't know.

Like maybe nicer leatherette. Right.

Yeah, like, you know, the woodgrain is there's more wood to the grain.

Like, I don't I don't know.

I don't we need we need one complete sidebar.

I had a brief conversation yesterday with a gal

who used to work in Mitsubishi and I talked to her.

I was like, you know, I used to have a galant VR four.

She was like, I I organized the launch event for that car.

And I was like, oh, we need to talk later.

And like, I need that is killer.

Yeah. Yeah. She works for a really cool charity.

She used to work for Singer and Ferrari.

And but she started at Mitsubishi in the 80s, 90s killer.

Yeah. So we need to get one.

I like them. I like them a lot because I a I'm already predisposed to like them

because I love troopers so much.

They look killer, like the they're still boxy.

The two tone, like you said, and you could get like a green or a blue or like

it in between. It was like, yeah, these these color combos were brilliant.

And they're proper. That's a proper.

And the ad is not fucking around.

These really can go anywhere.

These were pretty serious off-road rigs, to be honest.

Oh, I found I found two.

I just did a quick search and I found a pair of them on

one is trash on Facebook Marketplace.

One is trash trash and three hundred dollars.

Here's a cool.

I'll send you a link later.

This makes for terrible radio, but I found one for thirty five hundred

dollars here and sixty three thousand miles.

It actually looks really, really, really clean, Frank.

Yeah, I'm going to look at that one tomorrow.

OK. Are you serious?

Yeah, yeah, I'm dead serious.

That's the one in Citrus Heights.

I'm not even looking at Craig's list right now.

Marketplace, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I talked to a guy.

I'm going to go check it out after work tomorrow.

Oh, bro, it looks so good.

There's some like door dings and stuff, but a PDR away from.

Yeah, look at like, look at like the left rear bumper.

Stop, stop.

Corner is no, no, no, I'm so I'm dog.

I'm fucking going there, dude.

So tomorrow. Yeah, it's really nice.

Can I be horny for you?

Yeah, you got it.

It looks so good.

Dude, it looks so good.

Are we already? Are we already?

Are we already doing the?

Should it be? Should that be it?

The thirty five hundred dollar or under luxury?

Oh, yeah, that's a tough one.

I mean, you can get a lot of Land Rover and get some mercury

mountaineer up in this bitch.

Yeah, Land Rover products for sure.

You could probably get an LR three.

Yeah, but I wanted to work.

They work. I'd go disco to disco.

Oh, they're a little pricier now.

Have you been looking at the disco prices?

No, I haven't looked at disco in a while.

Don't do it. Yeah, they've gone up a little bit.

No, I would need to be more, more shitty sub brand, right?

Like I would need to do I mean, S.

Alex is like the king of that.

Dude, so the best thing is you need to mention the ad.

It's a ninety nine.

So I do get the three five with that.

Yeah, we'll see. I'm not getting too excited.

The dude is like a little iffy.

Sure. One that I mentioned that I said all that stuff.

And he's like, sure.

Well, sometimes that ends up being good, right?

You sell them. But yeah, no.

But like, I mean, like, you know, shitty bedside manner

might chase a bunch of people off.

You write the fact that it's an accurate S.

Alex, probably. Well, fair.

Yeah, this is not some like air cooled Porsche

where like I'm getting a good deal because I'm the only one

to deal with this.

How good does it look, though?

It looks really good.

I know like greenish blue.

I've been so excited to just like I think it posted two days ago or something.

I messaged him immediately and I've kind of been working out.

But tomorrow I hope, dude, I hope I send you a picture

at a gas station with this this thing.

God, I'm trying to think I'm trying.

Oh, damn, you're getting like I'm just rolling down and here's like a.

Here's a rover at like 14 grand.

Told you. Yeah, it sucks, dude.

Yeah, but yeah, OK.

Well, no, I mean, I'm excited.

That's fun. I'm excited.

You know what I would do if, you know, honestly,

if we're going to play like honestly,

$3,500, $4,000 off-roader, that's kind of interesting.

I'd go for like a Honda Passport original first gen.

I think that's similar vein to this.

Another robust.

I mean, it's genuine.

It's about as literally you can get.

Yeah, rodeo with the Honda badge.

I like how those look, by the way.

I think they look killer.

Yeah, sports.

Yeah, you know what?

I would need to get a JDM.

God, the Honda.

What was it called?

Where they rebadged,

they rebadged the original discovery as a Honda in Japan.

Oh, I'm stumbling.

I forgot what it's called.

I know exactly what you're talking about.

Yeah, it's like very clearly a discovery,

but with like a Honda grill,

like a great Honda grill on it.

So I know you were saying it,

but this this is essentially a trooper.

I think they just changed the badging

and I think they upgraded the interior materials.

They didn't change anything mechanically.

So what I do is mechanically,

I know it's no, I'm talking like didn't touch bushings,

didn't adjust anything to feel different.

You know what I'm saying?

Sometimes they'll adjust the suspension like rates.

Nope, it's a trooper second gen trooper.

Man, all right, you get that.

I'll get a Mazda Navajo and I like that.

Yeah, it was fucking really good.

Yeah, we'll have we'll have like a rebadge.

That should be it, just rebadge SUV.

Good, those two would look great together, by the way.

They would, I mean, the side would be pretty significant.

Significant, yeah.

But they kind of have the same like style though.

So they look kind of period.

They never made, help me out here.

They never made a Mercury mountaineer

from the first gen.

Did not explore, right?

Only the second gen?

Second gen.

So you had Explorer and then Navajo

and then Navajo went away and you had everything.

God, how sick would it have been

if they made a Lincoln first gen Explorer?

Could have been dope.

Could have been really dope.

Interior would have been awesome.

It would have been plush.

It felt like the Lincoln, I don't know, John Wilkes.

Like I don't know what you would call it like.

I mean, that's probably their first thing.

That's probably their first thing.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, the Mary Todd.

I think you got it.

Well, anyway, not to bury the lead,

but yeah, I'm gonna go check that bad boy out tomorrow.

Hopefully he hasn't sent me the address.

It's one of those weird guys,

like I'll send it to you tomorrow.

I'm like, ah.

Well, you can send it to me now.

Yeah, right?

Like he thinks you're like, he's gonna wake up

and you're gonna be like sleeping in the car

in his garage.

I've come for your SLX.

But no, I'm super.

When that thing popped up, I'm like, yep.

Sick.

That's cool.

Question, does that mean you have

Acura SLX as a saved search?

Of course, you know I do.

That's fucking good.

You fucking know me, bro.

Right, right, right.

Do you think they've, I'm gonna look real quick

because this again, this makes for fantastic audio.

Do you think Cars and Bids or Bring a Trailer

has ever sold an Acura SLX?

If I was gonna venture, I guess

I think Cars and Bids might have run one.

I just look, Cars and Bids

has not sold an Acura SLX.

No.

Bring a Trailer, I search Acura SLX

and it just gives me a Zuzu Trooper results.

Like it doesn't even, it just, that's what you get.

I know they're pretty fucking rare.

I know they've sold one.

Here it is, a 96 SLX, 63,000 miles.

Oh, red over gold, which is cool.

Is that a good two-tone cloth interior?

Oh wow.

What do you think it sold for?

190 horsepower, which we know.

Yep, yep.

It probably sold for like 7,800 bucks.

11,250.

Shocking.

So you need to get yourself on this SLX.

Yeah, this one has 163,000,

so probably not gonna get there for that kind of value,

but it is nice.

It is nice looking.

Yeah, cool.

It's honestly becoming my fishing rig if I grab it,

so I need some more beater-ish.

Yeah, I mean, I have that in my Suburban, but.

Yeah, you do.

And I have to get into fishing, I suppose,

if that's what I'm gonna do, but.

It's an easy thing to get into, my friend.

Well, Mike, the kid, today and yesterday,

he's like, I really wanna go fishing,

I really wanna go fishing, and I'm not a fisher,

I'm not against it, like, don't care.

But I'm like, okay, yeah, let's do it.

And so like, maybe we need to do this.

We should do it.

We need to do a fishing rig adventure situation.

And we've got enough rods and reels,

and plus Teddy's like, literally the same age as your son.

Literally, like, I think it's a week apart,

so we could make that happen, man.

And we could go in the SLX, how cool would that be?

Hell yeah.

You take the SLX, I'll take my Mazda Navajo

that I've yet to locate.

And yeah, we will do this, I'm into it.

I support you in this Tom Fullery.

Excellent.

Fantastic.

Well, let's celebrate.

You did nail that, dude.

If anyone's gonna come out of the woodwork

with an Acura SLX first-turn rip.

Oh, you got the money gun loaded?

Oh, you fucking know it.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

We need more money for the money gun.

It's got 10 bucks in it.

I know, we need more than that.

We need, I don't know.

Well, when we start plugging our Patreon,

we can make, please, oh.

Yes.

Please fund the money gun, the make it rain gun.

Should that be it?

Like, we should have an, a dollar.

I assume, here's the thing, I assume.

Well, no, I assume on Patreon that, I mean,

obviously, like, I'm sure you just like,

sign up with your credit card or PayPal or whatever.

Okay.

I don't know, do you think there's a way

where you can be like,

send individual bills every month?

Like mail five singles to this new box.

Not only do I don't believe that's a thing,

I think they are vehemently against that policy,

sending cash to them.

You're right, actually, because I bet you,

because it probably cuts Patreon out of the deal.

Exactly.

So then I get their cut.

Damn.

How about we celebrate your victory,

not just with dollar bills, with PCP, man.

Project, car, progress.

Frank, have you done any wrenching?

Oh boy, not really.

All I'm going to do is,

I still have all of the things.

I might be getting another other car in here.

We talked about it.

Robert Epley, friend of the podcast,

has his Shipbox Triumph.

Oh yeah.

We talked about briefly before.

We've just been, we've been ships passing in the night,

but hopefully this week I will get it over here.

I did discover it's got $500 in back due DMV on it,

which might be roughly 40% of the value of the car.

Right.

So we'll see what happens there.

There's kind of no way around dealing with that

because we also don't have a title.

Yeah.

So to get a title, you got to pay the fees.

So you got to pay to play.

So that's what we're figuring out there.

I'm hoping as early as real world tomorrow,

not podcast world tomorrow,

by the time you listen to this,

hopefully it will be sorted out.

But that's in waiting in the wings.

I finally also got in the actual,

for the umpteenth attempt,

the actual bushing, not bushing,

undamaged bushing,

torque arm transmission mount for the Sprint Turbo.

Oh, nice.

A few weeks ago, it was like, okay, I got the one in,

it's bad, like the bushing is kind of tearing

out of its mount already.

It feels squishier and softer and worse

than the bad one I'm taking out of the car.

So I returned it.

I made the exact, I'm gonna return it.

They took it back.

I paid an extra like $8 to like overnight the new one.

Guess what?

It still took two fucking weeks.

So we went back, right?

And I was like, hey, like, did they call me?

And so I was like, hey, like, it's $8.

I'm not gonna like be upset about it,

but like I paid extra money to get it two days

instead of eight days and it took 15 days.

Can I get that money back?

And then I was like, oh yeah, yeah, no,

that makes sense for sure.

And he's like fighting his computer

and he's like, oh, it won't let me,

can I just like give you a $10 like auto zone gift card?

I'll put in the computer that you gave me a battery core

and I'm giving you a $10 merchandise credit

on a gift card.

That dude's getting fired.

I'm like, sure, that's fine.

Like, I don't care.

Yeah.

Okay, yeah, cause I can't...

Then I was like, wait, you just buy cores

even if I don't have a core return.

Like I can just show up at the battery core

and you'll give me $10 at least and store credit for it.

He's like, oh yeah, yeah, we buy cores.

I was like sick.

I have six cores.

I just like, there's two over here.

I have a couple on my side yard.

I have one, God, I have one in something.

I'm gonna like pull out.

Frank's got a dozen of them in the stream,

but I'm gonna just roll in and just be like,

give me $50 and store credit dog

for these like absolute disaster-ish shithouse batteries.

So yeah, that's it.

Other than like, I'm still kind of redoing the garage.

This is the new, I got a new toolbox over here.

Heavily discounted at the local Home Depot.

It was like 300 bucks.

Oh shit, that's a good deal.

Like a Husky, whatever.

Yeah, dude.

So I'm gonna stuff it between these two cabinets.

And yeah, hopefully put a lift in here.

Maybe sooner than later,

the background will have a lift back there.

That would be cool.

It'd be cool to see like a,

like the bottom half of a car like up here

because there's something elevated back up over there.

That'd be right.

That'd be killer.

Well, at least you did PCP.

I literally did PCP that yielded no positive results.

You did the drug PCP.

I did, well, that's the first problem

is I started with the real drug PCP

before I tried my project car progress.

I have an idea.

Yeah.

Sorry to interrupt.

You're not getting anything done

other than hopefully tomorrow buying a car.

Should that be after dark episode number one?

We actually try actual PCP.

God damn dude.

We're not dying on the first episode.

That's a patriotic, full positive.

But maybe 50, like what's, like how many?

LD 50.

No, no, I'm saying like how many bonus episodes

like after dark late night confidential episodes

is it that we, till we, is it once a year?

Once a year we try a new drug that we've never done before.

We're not earning enough.

Which in my case is kind of all of them.

Yeah, we're not earning enough for PCP.

We're not even making crack money.

So we know.

No, but I'm saying is hopefully in a year.

Oh, meh, let's, let's.

We can at least, PCP is pretty, I assume.

I don't know.

I don't know any, like, I can like.

We know.

We can get edibles.

I don't know anyone who can get PCP.

Do you?

Do you know a guy?

Do you have a guy who knows that?

We can, of course, but we can legitimately do an episode

on edibles, that'd be fine.

But I did actually get some work done.

It just didn't result in anything.

So the Volvo airbag light.

Sprinting in place.

Oh no.

The vein of my existence.

The pallet.

I finally got a Volvo scan tool,

which is cool because I can go in create.

Volvos are pretty complex, even in the early to mid 2000s.

The safety features.

Volvo's always been a pioneer in the field.

So.

What's the acronym?

What's that?

Isn't there like an acronym, like on the, on the,

like the B pillar, it's like the S.I.

It's not SIDS, but it's something like that.

Like the side impact.

It's the opposite of the SIDS that keeps you alive.

It's like SIPs.

It's like SIPs, S-I-P-S, right?

Oh yeah, it is SIPs.

Yep.

So you go in there and I see what the thing is.

It's like a high resistance on the seat belt tensioner

on the driver's side.

Right.

So, which could be one of five million things.

So I start tearing apart the B pillar.

I hate messing with plastics.

We talk about this all the time.

Take it all off.

I take every connector off and clean it

because a dirty connector kicks that light up more times

and not, or you had something loose disconnected

while you connected the battery back up

and that light will stay permanently

until you fix the issue and then reset it again.

I went under the seat, unbolted the driver's seat,

pulled it up.

As you know from me redoing the passenger seat,

there are five million connectors under this seat

from 2005, which wasn't the connect,

yeah, usually like 4.98 million.

Yeah, Niners.

So I took every one out,

painted the dick on doing all those connectors

in a weird cramped space, cleaned them,

put it all back together.

Everything's testing test of resistance

like I'm supposed to on every fucking connection.

Perfect resistance.

I'm like, okay, cool.

Maybe the cleaning helped.

Put it all back together, reset the light,

the airbag light goes off,

but airbag light comes right back,

comes right back, SRS issue.

I'm like, I just want to die.

So it could be the pretensioner for the seatbelt,

which is a safety feature.

If you get in an accident,

it tightens your seatbelt instantly.

Sometimes those fail over time

and you lose that ability,

you can't tell you lost that ability

until you get in an accident.

So I might just fucking just wing it

and try to buy a used known good pretensioner.

They're like 80 bucks and it's a pain in the dick.

I don't know where I'm at with that.

It can be sorted.

It's just how much time do I want to keep

putting into this little thing?

Obviously the car work, everything works.

It's not an airbag isn't going to deploy issue.

It's just the tensioner.

The tensioner's gaining some resistance fault

in the wiring and I didn't see any damaged wires.

I don't know.

I'm chasing my tail on this one.

It's taking way too much time,

but Volvo safety, God bless it, right?

God bless it.

Yeah, until you get like an airbag deploy

in your skull because of a SOS fault or Sims fault or whatever.

Yeah, this light has nothing to do with the airbag.

So it's like, it's not a safety concern,

which is like what I was really worried about

when the passenger seat was cut out by a knife wielding,

I don't even know, tweaker.

But yeah, that's all I got.

So chasing that issue,

but I just want to point out that like,

I think I'd rather do a time and belt job

than take apart an inferior and start messing with like,

I don't know, fucking sensors and wiring.

That's a goddamn nightmare.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's frustrating.

Yeah, it's just, I don't,

because yeah, what do you do?

Like, we were just discussing about the parts cannon, right?

And unless you have extreme,

heavy specific diagnostic tools and scan tools,

and even then they can lead you down in a wrong direction.

Sure.

And I'm not taking my $2,000 rally car

to a fucking Volvo dealer to have them run up

like four hours of diagnostic work to say,

it could be this and it could be this,

because that's what it ends up being

with these complicated systems.

Well, we're going to start with like four hours of dyag

and then we're going to...

At that point, I'll just swap out the tensioner

and see it's worth the shot, right?

All right, we're over, we're over on time.

Take us home, I'm really depressed.

Let's get in.

If you have dreadful or fantastic

legal or illegal car story questions or questions,

answers to questions, questions to answers,

things to tell us, stories to tell,

just hop on the Instagram machine and send us a message

without outlying what the story is.

We're going to do Instagram for now.

I think there's like weird character limit shit,

so we'll probably do something different in the future.

Fair enough.

But yeah, we'll figure that out.

Even just send us a message saying like,

I've got a cool story and in your email address

and we'll get you hooked up,

but we want to collect some of those.

So hopefully in a month or two,

we will have a small collection.

So once a week, we can be like,

hey, check out this story from Bob Anonymous

or Sally Tootix or whomever.

We'll give you a clever alias.

None of those were clever,

but we'll make a clever one for you.

And so that's fun.

If you want to stalk me, you should or shouldn't,

but that's the photographer's garage, Instagram,

a splash on YouTube.

But most importantly, just keep coming back here.

Another pointless automotive podcast.

I get to talk more off the cuff here than elsewhere.

So please do that.

Chadwick, if somebody wants to send you grotesque

very forward messages to you or see what you're up to,

how do they do that?

Yeah, please do.

Frank's restraining order threats are fucking hollow

and weak, just that stock away.

With me, I will, dude, I'll open my arms up invitingly.

I bring it on, bring your stocking.

No, if you want to find out how I survive

or don't survive the track or EGR issues

and the Volvo airbag issues, tune into Auto Obscure Garage

for all your rescues, restorations and reviews.

You can watch me hating life right now.

I'm so excited for your SLX content coming up.

Oh, don't curse it, man.

It's not there.

Yeah, I'm feeling, I'm very, very iffy on this one.

But yeah, in Homeboy opened a profile,

just one item for sale ever.

He's done three posts in three years.

It's not good, but we'll see.

We live dangerously, but yeah.

Like Frank said, tell us your stories.

We love you and we'll see you in, I don't know, seven days.

Yeah, that sounds good.

All right, until then, enjoy Turkey.

Oh yeah, Thanksgiving.

Wait, you've already enjoyed Turkey.

You have.

I hope it's great.

Have leftovers, make a sandwich.

Sandwich.

As the late great, I'm already fluttering here.

I'm already fluttering here.

It's okay, we're totally on time.

That's the late great Warren Zavon once said,

enjoy every sandwich.

Okay, later guys.

Peace.

Episode #202 - APA Garage of Horrors Vol. 2

Honda Passport

Buick Century

Datsun 280Zx

Datsun 240Z

Ford Mustang GTD

Plymouth Barracuda

Chevrolet Camaro

Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost

Land Rover Range Rover

Land Rover Freelander

Acura Slx

Mitsubishi Galant

Mercury Mountaineer

Ford Explorer

About this episode

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