Very interesting day.

Headed out to work this morning (“Hey, I cleaned up cat piddle, nothing worse can happen to me today!” heh.) and as I was crossing Grand, heard a little grinding/growling noise from under the right front side of the QX4. Traffic slowed, I tapped my brakes, and the noise grew to a full on metal-on-metal squeal. I got the car over to the right and turned off the main road, and parked with a lurch – felt like something seized.

Preliminary inspection showed the brake caliper assembly wasn’t in the right place – looking closer, the bottom of the caliper had dug a groove into the magnesium rim. If that had happened at highway speeds …

Called the boss, called the wife, and then started looking even closer. The bottom bolt on the caliper was missing. Plain not there. The top bolt was loose. Hmmm – maybe back where I heard the noise? I walked back the way I came for a bit, but didn’t find anything. TMBWitW pulled up, and we headed for the house. (sat at the railroad crossing for about 30 minutes as a train was switching back and forth, and I think they were building the train for departure).

Got home, changed clothes, headed up to the dealer (‘cuz I knew, in my heart, that the bolt was a dealer-only item. I was right), found out that the bolt only cost $4.74. I could pick it up on Monday.

Monday? Yup – the nearest copy of the bolt I needed was sitting in a warehouse in Tennessee and they would Fed-Ex it to the dealer and I could pick it up Monday afternoon. My mind was already racing, worried about transportation with only one vehicle and long commutes to work.

I couldn’t leave the QX4 where it sat – I needed to get it home. I called a member of boss’s networking group to have it towed, and they told me it would be about an hour to an hour and a half. I headed out after an hour, so I wouldn’t be rushed getting there when they called. As I drove along, thinking about how to get the transportation stuff done, something in the road caught my eye.

I though to myself “No way.” This was several blocks before the noise had started, so I didn’t think it was possible. I turned around, parked, waited for traffic to clear, and walked out to pick up the object – because it looked a lot like the bolt off my caliper.

When I got to the QX4, I checked it against the other caliper bolts – and it sure looked right. It fit in the hole, and threaded into the exposed rotor mounting point. I called and canceled the tow truck, drove home, grabbed the tools I would need, (cancelled the part order from Tennessee) and drove back. A little bit of mechanical work later, and the assembly was back in running order. I drove home, got TMBWitW and MEG (and Cinnamon, because she had an appointment today and TMBWitW was going to be taking her) and headed back to the QX4. Once I got the car home, I headed for the hardware store to get a new washer – hey, I found the bolt, I was more than happy to spend 30 cents on a split ring washer – and then tore the assembly apart again so I could put it back together.

30 cents instead of $4.74 and a tow bill? No problem!

Anytime something like this happens, that prevents me from going somewhere or doing something I had planned, I always wonder what God was keeping me from. I had extra toys in the car that were headed for the warehouse; that prevented me from switching cars with TMBWitW – and prevented her from being the one stranded with the broken down SUV. The caliper came apart on a fairly calm stretch of road, instead of on the stretch of highway in my commute, keeping me from having a more catastrophic event. If the caliper assembly had dug into the magnesium rim at highway speed, I wouldn’t have been able to stop before it sliced all the way through, possibly causing a loss of control and the resulting incident afterwards. Not to mention how much more expensive a rim is compared to a 30 cent washer …

All through this, TMBWitW and MEG are recovering from or headed into a stomach bug – MEG was throwing up last night, TMBWitW is feeling nauseous tonight – and the rest of the crew at the store stepped up and picked up my sudden absence.

Chat ya later…

Thanks for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, and Wear Red on Fridays!

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Obama(THHO) has decreed that we, the sheeple, should all drive the General Motors Volt. After all, it is electric (with a gasoline backup engine) and we all should know that electric cars are the future of transportation. So energy efficient! So inexpensive to drive! Cheap to fuel!

Let’s do some math, shall we? I know, Obama(THHO) doesn’t want us doing math and other stuff like thinking for ourselves, so let’s not tell him, OK? (that goes for you dhs bots, too, ok?)

Let’s start with my own vehicle for a starting point, ‘kay? We purchased a 1998 QX4 used in 2004 for about $18,000.

Yeah, it was a little high, but it was in pristine condition and Blue Booked for about 21k at the time. it had a tick over 50k miles on it. It is free and clear with no payment. It averages about 17 1/2 – 18 miles per gallon down hill with a tail wind. It has a 19 gallon tank. Let’s use an average of $4.00 per gallon (ok, fine – $3.999) for the sake of argument. At 17 gallons per week, operating costs (no insurance, repairs or maintenance costs are factored in here) are about $68.00. I have a 20 mile one way commute (24 if I need to swing by the warehouse on the way to work). This works out to about $.2285 per mile ($3.999/17.5), which means a daily cost of a warehouse run on the way and straight home after work would be $10.054.

The Chevy Volt must be incredibly cheap to drive, then, if it can be operated for less than that! Let me go out and plunk down $46,000 for a new Volt.

And a little more for a charging station. And even more for the storage fees needed to store the stuff on my side of the garage since TMBWitW sure isn’t giving up her side and park her Camry out in the elements.

OK, that was a little snarky. I’m sure I could find a cheap, HOA approved shed (less than six feet tall so it doesn’t extend above the fence) where I can store my table saw and other woodworking equipment.

Now – the commute. The QX4 has a cargo area with the seats down of 85 cubic feet. The Volt has a cargo area rated at 10.6 cubic feet. Hmm. That means my commute just went from 24 miles with a warehouse run to over 50, since I would have to make multiple trips to the warehouse. Eight, to be exact. 24 miles warehouse commute, two miles from warehouse to store means 24 miles plus (7×4) 28 miles for the extra runs equals 52 miles one way. OK, so I have to leave a lot earlier too, to drop MEG off at the babysitter and then get to the warehouse and the store and the warehouse and the store and the warehouse and the store warehouse and the store and the warehouse and the store and the warehouse and the store warehouse and the store and the warehouse and the store.

I received an email from my friend Dave T.:

Eric Bolling (Fox Business Channel’s Follow the Money) test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors.

For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine.

Let’s see … after 25 miles, the Volt is running on a gasoline engine. It takes ten hours to charge the 16kwh battery. That would put a big dent in the day’s schedule, so the gas engine it is. Hopefully, I’ll have enough time after getting home before having to leave earlier the next day to get a full ten hours of charging done.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah – so, if you can’t count on the electric motor for more than 25 miles, then the vaunted Volt no longer gets the 95 miles per gallon on the electric motor alone. Once you figure in the 9 gallons of gas, the average drops to around 30 mpg. $3.999/30 = $.133 per mile. But wait! I forgot the electricity. 16kwh x 1.19 per kwh (the average cost of electricity) = $19.04 for a 25 mile charge per day. $19.04/25=.761 – $.761 per mile for twenty five miles, then $.133 for the remaining 47 miles works out to $19.04+($.133×47)=$25.291 per day.

So I need to sell my QX4 for about $2500, finance another $43,500 and lose an hour and a half of morning time to reduce my carbon footprint and drive the Volt, which costs more than two and a half times more to operate than my QX4.

If I was a liberal, left leaning DemocRat with Obama stars in my eyes, I might believe that this is actually a good idea.

I would like to take this moment to do two things: mourn the death of common sense, and thank Dave T. for the email that started this line of thought.

(just so you know, i am not selling the QX4 anytime soon, and i am certainly NOT buying a chevy volt. ever.)

Chat ya later…

Thanks for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, and Wear Red on Fridays!

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