A New Ongoing Saga of My Car.

Ian Cooper

 

In several previous blog posts, I wrote about the ongoing saga of my car. At the time, it was a 2002 Dodge Neon.

She’s finally gone to the great big boneyard in the sky. Basically, I reckoned up the cost of a few repairs, and came to the conclusion that if you’re going to spend fifteen hundred bucks in repairs, you’re almost better off to find yourself a slightly newer piece of crap and start again.

A vehicle from a used car lot, one with an e-test and a safety check, might be a better option. 

I paid about $2,700 for the PT. The Neon only cost $1,900 at the time. I owned it for two years and nine months.

The Neon needed exhaust system work. The front tire bounced, as a belt had separated, and the front end needed an alignment. The thing even needed wiper blades…the power steering was out and so was the air conditioning.

What I did was to buy a Chrysler PT Cruiser, a 2004 model. It’s got a lot of miles on it, and yet the comparison was pretty stark: this one goes down the road straight, it’s clean, quiet, the air conditioning and power steering work. In fact it’s loaded up with all kinds of goodies, including a fairly nice stereo, a compass, external thermometer, cruise control, fog lamps even.

Seriously, it’s been decades since I had fog lamps.

The car has a five-speed manual gearbox. The power is adequate for what is more of a boulevard cruiser. The Neon had more power and better handling, but you can’t have everything, can you?

Besides, I’m getting a little older. It wouldn’t hurt to slow down a bit, drive like a little old lady and try not to, uh, drive this one into the ground.

A month after buying it, the thing died on me. The engine light came on, she started to bog and die on giving it throttle. The thing was to shift up into another gear, use torque, work it up to fifty kilometres an hour (at an idle or minimal throttle settings) and get her home.

That turned out to be the crankshaft position sensor. My mother has CAA and we got a free tow. The thing was fixed.

Imagine my surprise a day later. The car did virtually the same thing again. I barely got her home from half a mile away. We got another free tow—the value of that premium membership I guess.

That one turned out to be the camshaft position sensor.

I don’t know what to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, but at least we’re fixing something worth having.

It’s a used car. It’s got a lot of miles on it. I’m working from home these days, but reliability is still important.

Thinking of it as a kind of hobby, something to have a little fun with, might be the right attitude under such circumstances.

I still like the car, and it’s still a hell of a lot better than the old Neon.

So far, it hasn’t broken this week and that’s always good.

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Hot-Rods and Free Hamburgers.

Ian Cooper

We stumbled onto a couple of free hamburgers today. As a bonus, there were a few hot-rods parked right there.

Most people have a phone with camera these days, but I never leave home without the Samsung ST-67 camera.

We got a free pen, too.

Nothing wrong with it, ladies and gentlemen.

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Performance Wish List for the PT Cruiser

Ian Cooper

This is my wish list for a few performance parts for a 2004 Chrysler PT Cruiser. There are all kinds of mods you could make. Just so you know, mine has the sunroof, a five-speed manual gearbox, power everything. The stereo is nice and there is a driver’s side seat heater for those cold winter mornings.

My first thought was a set of Hooker headers. It’s a lot of money although I’m sure it would sound good. It seems a bit nuts to put headers on there if you don’t plan on doing anything else to the engine. However, we could sure get a nice sound from a cat-back free-flow exhaust system like this, and who knows, it might add a horsey or two onto the top-end figures.

Every kid knows about cold air induction. But this kit looks fairly inexpensive and you might get a couple of additional horsepower on the Chrysler 2.4-litre four cylinder engine in the PT.

This is some kind of spacer that goes in between the thingy and the thingamabobber.

It’s only eighty bucks so we might as well throw that in the shopping cart…I have no idea what that does but I do love tormenting the neighbours. That will teach you to look over my shoulder all the time, Mofo.

I saw a PT going down the road the other day and it sounded pretty good. It also had some stripes on there, most likely factory. That car was purple, which does say something about the driver. The horn blows too, as we all know. But I sort of wondered and then Googled around. 

These are really cute, I kind of like the chrome colour.

In the bad old days, we might have used premium fuel for the simplest, cheapest performance boost possible. The occasional tank of 94-octane (as opposed to the regular 87-octane) won’t hurt the engine or the plugs. A little jug of fuel injector cleaner in there once or twice a year won’t hurt either.

All kinds of tips and pointers here.

Bearing in mind the price difference between regular and premium, that might not be worth it these days unless we plan on jacking into the engine computer. In this particular case, we have no plans to do that.

Simply removing the rear seats might take a hundred pounds from the car, although one comment here says two hundred. Mine are the leather ones, which probably are the heaviest. On a car of this weight, 3,123 lbs., you’re maybe taking three percent of the total mass away from your package. This is the cheapest extra horsepower you’re ever going to get. Yeah, I don’t have kids and most of the time I’m alone in the car. The real problem is where to leave them when you live in an apartment and the car is three hundred feet and a few flights of steps away.

Also, I’m a lazy cunt.

When you’re young and the hair still hasn’t started falling, you really ought to get a set of Recaro bucket seats. If this doesn’t convince the ladies of the sheer bulk of your cojones, this writer is completely mystified by women.

Oh, yeah, Baby. Put a pair of them in there for me, willya? And we probably need one of these in here too.

We really ought to throw some aftermarket electronic goodies on there as long as we got that old Kickstarter campaign going….shit.

Did I say that?

Please don’t tell the ODSP.

One of these babies would work well. I could have a second career as a tech blogger if I'm not careful. (All the tech bloggers have them in their airplanes.)

Oh, yeah, and she’s looking a bit dusty lately.

Did I say she’s black, with black, on black, with black trim and accessories and a little bit of extra black checked off on the option list for good measure?

For that we’re going to need some wax and a couple of bikini-clad skankers.

Fog lamps are always worthwhile, and who knows, maybe you won’t have to go to the speed shop to put them in. Ah, who are we kidding.

Then there’s the whole Cragar thing. (Mag wheels.)

I’m just kidding, ladies and gentlemen. Ha! We’ve already got mag wheels on there.

Sorry. I was just goofing around.

Pirellis. Because it’s a wish list. It’s not like I have the money to do any of this!

Fuzzy Dice. (Wiki.)

Other than that, it’s pretty easy to piss away a lot of money on a crappy old car.

It might be fun, though.

This might be the last car I own before I die.

Which is kind of sad, when you think about it.

(Aw. – ed.)

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