Darkoshi

My car was making an odd noise this last month, which it turns out was the alternator going bad. Normally, the engine is a low-pitched rumble. This was a higher pitched sort of whiny noise on top of the normal noise, and it increased in pitch as the car drove faster. It wasn't loud enough for me to be sure that something was wrong, but it was different enough to make me wonder. The sound was like the noise a small electric motor can make; sort of like a sound-effect in a video game.

The noise started after we had a bunch of other work done on the car, including new spark plugs, getting the power steering pump and oil pan gasket replaced (due to fluid leaks), and getting the A/C compressor replaced (as the A/C hasn't worked in forever). (There must still be a freon leak somewhere else, as it all leaked out again, and smelled nasty while it was doing so.)

So I was thinking, maybe the car simply sounds different due to having new parts.

This week, one day the battery light came on for just a few seconds and went out again, and the next day it came on and stayed on. So I had the car checked, and they said the alternator was bad. After getting it replaced, the odd noise is gone, and my car sounds like normal again. Yay.

From what I've read, power steering fluid or other fluids leaking onto the alternator can cause it to go bad. Yet, my car doesn't seem to have any hoses by the alternator that could drip onto it. Maybe it was just coincidence.


...Oooh. While going through my notes now, it turns out that I already had my alternator replaced 2 years ago, along with my belt and battery... so it wasn't a 17 year old alternator after all, like I was thinking! Hmmm.

Oh well. Hopefully it's all good now. I like my little car, and now that I've decided to keep it, I want it to keep running a long time.

I bought my current car in 1999 for $4550. It was 3 years old, with 50,000 miles on it. I've had it for almost 14 years, and have driven it about 80,000 miles.

I'm looking for a new car. I thought that no matter which car I chose (excluding SUVs, pickup trucks, and big cars in general), that surely it would have better fuel economy than my current car. It's 14 years later, after all. Technology has advanced, and fuel economy has been a hot topic during that time.

Excluding hybrid and electric vehicles, the cars nowadays with the best mileage seem to get up to 28/35 (city/highway driving) miles per gallon. Many cars have much lower numbers.

I thought that one of those 28mpg cars would surely be an improvement over my current car.

But then I checked the fuel economy of my current vehicle. One website says 21/29 mpg. Okay... 28/35 mpg should be a noticeable improvement compared to that.

But another site says 24/31, and yet another says 25/32. Those numbers are better than the ones for many of the newer vehicles I've researched!

I decided to check my own documents to calculate how many miles per gallon I've been actually getting. I keep track of all my gas purchases, along with the per-gallon price of the gas. I also have notes on my car's total mileage at various points in time.

Using two separate time-frames within these first months of 2013, both calculations came out to 28.5 mpg!

Maybe that was just a fluke... maybe some of my numbers were wrong.

So I calculated it for a half-year time-frame between 2010 and 2011... 26.96 mpg. Hmm, still pretty good.

Then I calculated it for a whole-year time-frame between 2009 and 2010... 39 mpg!?? I figured this number had to be wrong. But even supposing I forgot to write down a few gas purchases (unlikely, as I almost always use a credit or debit card when buying gas), how could my numbers be that far off?

Then I checked the numbers for the 2 work-related trips I made to Florida in 2010. As I was getting compensated for expenses, I had detailed notes on my before & after odometer readings as well as my gas purchases. For the first trip, I seem to have gotten 34.8 mpg. On that trip, I drove back on slower roads, with more stop & go traffic.
On the 2nd trip, where I drove mostly on the interstates, I seem to have gotten about 39 mpg!

Whoa.

Maybe I should keep my current car after all. It has minor leaks, and I worry about it breaking down. But maybe even if it costs a lot to repair, it would still be worth it. It also avoids having to pay higher taxes and insurance premiums.

I don't know what to do. The cars I've been looking at are all selling for higher than what I was wanting to spend (actually for what I was wanting for Qiao to spend, as he has very kindly offered to buy me my new car).

How could it be worth it to spend over $10,000 on a newer car, when it doesn't even get significantly better mileage than my current one?

I got one of the SC Equality license plates for my car. It is quite nice looking:



The black rectangle is where the numbers are. The white rectangles are where the month/year stickers go.

If you own a vehicle registered in South Carolina, and if you've been thinking about getting one of these plates, I'd suggest you don't wait too long. Based on SC Code Section 56-3-8000,
"If the department receives less than three hundred biennial applications and renewals for a particular plate authorized under this section, it shall not produce additional plates in that series. The department shall continue to issue plates of that series until the existing inventory is exhausted."

Based on the number I got, it doesn't look like 300 have been issued yet.

I was uncertain how much to pay for the plate. The application form (MV-95) indicates that you should pay $25 plus the regular registration fee (which is $24 for passenger cars), so I sent $49. They sent me a $12 refund, however. What is stated on the SC Equality site seems to be correct:
"If your current registration is less than one year old, you will not have to pay an additional registration fee, and will pay just the $25.00 plate fee. If your registration is in its second year, the DMV will ask you to pay just one year in order to have a full, two-year active registration.".

The MV-95 form also states:
"If your current tag is within three months of expiring, you should pay your property taxes and renew your plate BEFORE you submit an application for a specialty plate."

SC announces pro-equality license plates - to be available starting the end of this month.

Other specialty plates currently available in SC are shown on this DMV page.

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On a related note, it's ironic to me how some groups claim that they want to "Save Marriage" when what they actually mean is that they want to prevent marriage; ie., prevent certain people from marrying.

Qiao just called me to say he saw the Google street-view car with the 6-foot high tripod with cameras on the end. It passed him while he was driving on Pine Belt Rd. He said it was a small white funny-looking car with stripes on it.... must have been like this one.

I checked Google maps, and the area between Pine Belt Rd, Two Notch Rd, and Beltline Blvd doesn't have street-view available yet, so the car might have been doing imaging of that area. I'm curious whether Qiao's car got into any of the images. We will check Google maps in the future to find out.

Hoo-ray for e-Bay. I found climate control knobs for my car there, which I couldn't find anywhere else. I had bought a generic 3-piece assortment at an auto store, which had one knob that looked exactly right, but turned out to be about a millimeter too narrow on the stem. Since my knobs broke, I haven't been able to even turn on the fan to clear the windshield when it fogs up. Hopefully the new ones will fit and won't break.

I bought a nice-looking dragon fruit at a new Asian market in town, as well as a bunch of leek flowers.

The "interesting" person stopped corresponding with me with no reason given, nor even a goodbye. I guess that means he probably does smoke, or he lost interest in me for some other reason. But mainly, that he's rude.

My car still has the leak. So the leak must be coming from somewhere else, and I suppose I will need to investigate it further. I now at least have a used copy of the repair manual for my car; I had ordered it last week.

I sewed two items that needed sewing.
I did my taxes.
I cooked the fava beans which had been soaking for 2 days. I left them in the pressure cooker for an hour and a half, and they actually got nicely soft this time.

I shall make brownies.

I think I shall make an appointment with the chiropractor. Something is off with my right leg, and I haven't been able to stretch on that side without a modicum of pain for more than 3 months now. The pain comes from the muscle, but seems like it may originate in my lower spine above the tailbone. So perhaps the chiropractor can help. I had something similar several years ago, and it lasted about half a year, till I was able to stretch normally again. I'd rather it not last another 3 months this time.

I was going to try to fix something on my car. So I popped the hood. Except the hood didn't pop. Eventually figured that I should be able to trip the hood-latch by fiddling with it from underneath the front of the car, so I got down and fiddled. It didn't have any effect. So there I was, lying on the ground, looking up at the nice blue sky... ah, how nice. I've never been in this position in the front yard before, looking up at the sky... then I moved my fingers a bit again, and ta-dah!, the hood popped open. I checked the mechanism, and nothing seemed wrong with it, so I closed the hood and pulled the hood release from inside the car, and this time it worked.

But I wasn't able to fix the thing I wanted to fix. A water leak when it rains. At first it felt good, figuring out how to get the plastic pieces off the end of the wipers, to expose the nuts. But then I wasn't able to get the wiper arms off, and I couldn't get the plastic screws out either, which were holding down the cowl, without breaking them, at least. So much for that.

A guy walking down the street addressed me... "Hello. Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend? Do you want a friend?" No thanks, I replied, a bit amused. Later, he walked by again, and this time Forestfen was there, and he asked her the same thing. She declined as well.