Living with a high mileage car (over 144,000 miles!)
This may be a new thing for some, but it's the norm for me.
At the time I write this, my car just came back from the shop for rear brake adjustments and front passenger side wiring repair at a cost of $450 for the whole job. You may think that's expensive. It isn't and I'll explain why.
I am no stranger to driving a car or truck with over 100,000 miles on it. In fact, I consider any vehicle with under 100K on the odometer to be a "low miles" car.
I've learned a few things over the years when it comes to the care of a high-miles car.
Lube those tracks
This is for power windows. I unfortunately learned this lesson the hard way.
The window is held in place with tracks. These tracks over time dry out and need to be lubricated. The lubrication to use is WD-40 Specialist Water Resistant Silicone Lubricant. Roll the window down, spray the lubricant into the tracks, then roll the window up and down 10 times to work the lubricant in. Do this once a year.
Before I knew to do this, I spent several hundred dollars on repairs for a driver's side window. When it started rolling up/down slowly, I just figured "Oh, it's just doing this because it's old." No. It was slow from no lubrication. Had I lubricated the tracks, the only cost would have been the price of the lubricant and nothing more.
Stop slamming the damn door
The only thing slamming the door shut hard does is break stuff sooner, and not just for stuff on the door. Every time that door is slammed shut forcefully, a hard shock is sent through the whole car. Not smart.
It's especially stupid to forcefully slam shut a car door with the window open. Watch the window shake when you do that and you'll understand why.
Over the years, I've had to tell passengers a few times to stop slamming their door shut so hard. Yeah, they get annoyed when I say this. I don't care. It's my car and not theirs.
Air and rotate tires routinely
Air should be checked every 90 days. Rotations should be done every 6,000 miles or twice a year. That's how you get 50,000 miles or well beyond that out of a set of tires.
I'm honestly amazed at how many people I see driving around with semi-flat tires.
Don't "top off" the fuel tank
When the gas pump clicks after filling it, STOP on first click. There's a thing called an evaporative system within the fuel assembly. Namely, the canister. Topping off the tank will break that canister sooner. Not cheap to fix.
Replace the fuel cap if loose
If the cap is loose (it's obvious if it is), that can make the car's computer trip an error code and put a "check engine" light on the dashboard.
Clean the fuel cap area
This can get gummed up with black crap over time. Baby wipes clean this area easily.
Replace the radiator cap
This is more than just a cap. There's a valve inside it, and that valve eventually wears out. If the car has over 100K miles on it, replace the cap. Cheap.
Clean the MAF sensor
This is another thing that will prevent a "check engine" light from happening. Getting the MAF (mass air flow) sensor out for cleaning is usually easy on most cars. Spray it with MAF sensor cleaner, shake dry, reinstall, done.
Replace both air cleaner filter and cabin filter
This is a once-a-year thing. The air cleaner gets junk in it, and while true you can just shake out the dust and debris, better to just replace it outright. If the car has a cabin filter (mine is behind the glove box, sometimes a different location on other cars/trucks), do the same.
Sanitize the floor carpet
Resolve carpet cleaner from a spray bottle. Wear kitchen gloves when using this stuff, and don't let the spray get on to any plastics or leather. Spray, let sit for 5 minutes, use a hand towel to work it in to the carpet, let dry.
This also works on normal cloth seats.
Clean the dashboard
303 automotive protectant spray. Spray or wipes do the same job. Makes the plastics last longer and prevents discoloration/cracking.
Replace tire valve stem caps
Cheap to buy and should be replaced once yearly.
Always use simple black plastic caps, because they typically provide the best seal using the least amount of weight. I can't see how adding weight from metal caps to a valve stem would do it any good.
Replace license plate screws
If you see rust on these, replace. If the screws that are rusted also rusted the screw holes they were in, repair those holes as best you can first, then fit with new screws.
Install a new battery in the key fob for keyless entry
If it's been more than 5 years since the fob battery was replaced (if ever), replace it with a new one.
Have a spare key
If you only have one key for the car and no spare, that's not smart. Have at least two, and make sure both keys work.
Also make sure the spare is in a place where you'll actually remember where it is in case you ever need it.
Lubricate keyholes
If the car uses regular traditional keys with older style keyholes, spray some of that WD-40 silicone lubricant into the key hole (you can hold closed keyholes open with a pen), then move the key in and out a few times to lubricate. Lubricate all keyholes. Ignition, doors and trunk/hatch.
Clear out dust and debris from switch areas
Use dust removal spray to clear out dust and whatever from power window/lock switches. Vacuuming never gets rid of this dust. You need the spray for it.
What was the deal with a $450 charge just for rear brake adjustments and wiring repair?
When you have a car with over 100K miles on the odometer, you get what I call "100K mile problems", which basically means age related things that go wrong with a car.
In the area of the engine bay on the passenger side front where the headlight is on that side, the part of the main engine wiring harness that connects electricity there had two little frayed wires. The wires were frayed right at the connector, preventing the passenger side turn signal from working at all, hence the need for the repair.
On top of that, the break in the wires was on the engine wiring harness side of the connector and not the headlight side. If it were the headlight side, I could have fixed that myself with a new $20 headlamp replacement wiring harness from eBay. The way this wiring break happened was something way more complicated that I could not fix.
To fix this, the connector had to be re-pinned completely, wires trimmed, stripped, re-soldered, entire system probed and checked to make sure there wasn't a break elsewhere, then put all back together and re-shielded.
All of the cost was labor. The shop barely charged me anything for the brake adjustments (e-brake cable tightening and rear drum cleaning).
Did I pay too much?
No, I didn't pay too much.
$450 for two little wire connections sounds insane, but again, this was engine wiring harness stuff. Outright replacing that harness would have cost $800 just for the parts. With labor included, it would have easily busted well over $1,000. The price of $450 was a bargain, especially since the car is paid in full.
What caused the wire break? Unknown. Could have been a rodent that chewed through the wires, or something flew under the car while on the highway and yanked the cable hard, or maybe something else entirely.
Newer cars don't have problems like this, but older ones over 10 years old do. My guess is something yanked the cable, and since the wiring is over a decade old, yeah, that can cause a break.
If it's paid and it runs right...
If the car is paid off and running well, which mine is, then it's worth putting some cash into it for repairs. The alternative to that is financing a new car. And $450 is way, way cheaper than that.
My car just turned over 144,000 miles recently. I looked at the miles before writing this, but at this point I don't pay much attention to the miles anymore otherwise. Car maintenance is performed based on time (in months, specifically) because it's just easier to schedule things out that way. My odometer is digital and can be switched over to trip odometer, and that's what I use because it's easier to tell when to fuel up based on miles rather than fuel gauge.
What's it like to drive a car with this many miles on it?
Not all that different from a low-miles car - if you keep up on the maintenance.
It is the maintenance more than anything else that's key to keeping a car running longer.
I'm not saying this is true for all cars and trucks, because some of them are just stinkers like the 2011 Hyundai Sonata and 2014 Ford Focus.
But for cars and trucks that aren't known to be stinkers, running them up to 100K and well beyond that is a totally doable thing, again with proper maintenance.
Hamburger: The Motion Picture
An awful movie from the mid-1980s. I watched this.
I stumbled upon this movie while browsing around the internet, meaning I wasn't actively looking for it. It took me two days to get through this because I could only watch it in 15 to 20-minute bursts...
...because it's that bad.
According to a trivia page I read about this flick:
The movie was not sold to a distributor and was released independently by its production company, which has been long out of business. It's unclear who exactly owns the rights to the movie, and it's unknown once the movie will ever see its DVD or Blu-ray release.
This means you can watch the movie completely for free on the internet. More on that in a minute.
Okay, let's get into this.
Hamburger: The Motion Picture is one of those '80s movies that has a Porky's and Screwballs flavor to it. It doesn't take itself seriously at all.
The storyline? Well, there is one, so that's something. It's about a guy who is doing poorly in college because he can't stop having sex, so he decides to enroll in a corporate hamburger franchise camp to "graduate" there and become a franchise owner. He figures that's easier than college and is certain to "graduate" because it's a place where he can't have so much sex. I am totally not kidding. That is the plot.
You'd think there would be a ton of nudity in this movie, but there really isn't. Yes, it has it but it's not constantly in-your-face.
In the way this movie works, you get a few barely-there minutes of story, a gag that goes on way too long, a little more story, another gag that goes on too long, rinse and repeat until the end.
Most of the gags aren't funny, and for some you have to suspend your disbelief a lot. An example is one scene where a bunch of fat people fart in the bathroom and blow a hole in the side of the building as a result.
There was one thing about the story that really ticked me off. The guy doesn't get the girl at the end. Don't worry, I am spoiling nothing by telling you that. It's a completely missed opportunity by the writers. They could have had the guy, the protagonist, get the girl, signifying his days of fooling around were over and that he finally found his calling. Then they could have shown them getting married in a "Busterburger" themed wedding and afterward running their own franchise store, together and happy. It would have been easy for them to put that in there. They didn't do that. Instead you're just left wondering whatever happened to those two.
For the few positives I can say, there is a defined protagonist (main character) and antagonist (villain). Most characters in the context of the movie are fairly well defined.
The biggest positive, oddly enough, is the music.
Where the music is concerned, somebody cared. I recognized the style from the very opening theme Hamburgers for America. This is the first thing you hear when the movie begins. It's pro-level jingle style music you heard all over the place in the 1980s. For the time, it has got some seriously high production value to it. When I heard that song, I was thinking, "Wow.. that guy is really putting his all into a song about hamburgers." Catchy? Yes, very. It's WAY too good of a soundtrack for this movie.
But make no mistake, this movie sucks. Watch it for a guilty pleasure and nothing more.
Yes, this this movie is available to watch completely for free... if you can stand to watch it. Just search for it on YouTube.
Guys who own stupid expensive and stupid cheap guitars at the same time
I used to think these guys were weird, but I understand why they do this.
Take a Fender Eric Clapton Stratocaster in Torino Red. Not cheap. But that doesn't stop guys from buying it, as it is one of the better Artist models from fender. I personally think the Eric Johnson model is the better guitar, but that's just my preference.
What's more interesting is what some guys do after they buy that really expensive guitar.
Before getting into that, yes I have owned some expensive ritzy guitars. I parted with all of them because none ever really worked out. At this point in my guitar playing life, I go with cheap vintage or cheap new. In addition to that, I've been around some seriously expensive stuff. I did attend a NAMM show and saw the best of the best new guitars, and have also seen the best of the best vintage as well.
The only thing I've not seen nor experienced at this point is a from-scratch built guitar. And by that I mean one guy, with his own shop, that builds every single part of the guitar. For the wood parts, that is. This is the guy who fabricates the body and neck from blanks and does it all himself. That's the only type of electric guitar I've yet to experience.
Now as for the guys who buy the ridiculously expensive guitars, it is interesting and sometimes almost funny that they will also own something ridiculously dirt cheap, like a Grote. Sure, the guy may have a $2,000 Stratocaster or a $4,000 Les Paul. But literally right next to it in his collection are one or more insanely cheap guitars, none of which are worth more than $200 at most.
Is this guitar player's remorse? No. That kind of remorse happens when you buy something really expensive and then realize it was a mistake. These guys kept their expensive guitars.
The urge to go dirt cheap is for a different reason entirely.
Okay, so the guy bought his dream guitar. It was really expensive, but he finally got it. The top of the mountain was reached.
After reaching that peak, there's only one way to go. Down.
The funny part is this: Now there's a new goal. How far down can one go?
This is when that guy who owns the really expensive guitar will buy something really cheap. Something he can just bang around, maybe switch out the electronics, maybe try some woodworking with it, and so on. He's certainly not going to modify his expensive guitar, but for something under $200? Sure.
Remember that dirt cheap guitar I said some people buy in threes? It would not surprise me at all if some of those buyers were people that already owned a guitar worth over $2,000.
It's fun to finally get that dream guitar. But it's also fun to mod cheap guitars. The goal in both instances is to keep having fun, and that's why some guys own both the expensive and dirt cheap stuff at the same time.
There's also a secondary goal, which is to have a guitar they can actually use instead of just sit there and look pretty. All expensive guitars are ultimately white elephants. Nice to own, very pretty, but useless as a gigging guitar because the stupid thing is just too valuable. The expensive guitar is totally a "pride of ownership" thing more than anything else, so having a cheap guitar for gigging or taking to a friend's place for a jam is less stressful, to say the least.
The classiest little Casio, AQ230
Somewhat annoying to set, but probably the most elegant little Casio watch you could have.
I just did a battery change in my silver Casio AQ230. It's been a while since I've said anything about this model.
For those who own this watch, the battery type is SR920W, also known as a 370 or 371.
Both my silver and gold AQ230's were bought in 2019 and I still have them, but the silver one gets more wrist time because the digital panel is easier to read.
The AQ230 is the smallest watch I own. The lug-to-lug is 38.8mm, the case diameter is 29.8mm and thickness is 8.1mm. I actually do own the Casio A700 which is just 6mm thick. Too thin. The AQ230 gets it just right. And for a 100% digital, the tried-and-true Casio F-91W also gets it right at just being 8.5mm thick.
How to set the time and date on the AQ230
This is very atypical compared to most Casio watches.
My recommendation for setting this thing is digital first, analog second.
Digital set
- Press/hold the bottom left button until it beeps, then release. Seconds are blinking.
- Press top left button to reset seconds to 0.
- Press bottom left button.
- Press top left bottom to set the hour.
- Press bottom left button.
- Press top left button to set the minute.
- Press bottom left button.
- Press top left button to choose 12 or 24-hour time.
- Press bottom left button to exit.
Analog set
Before explaining how to set this, I have to describe how it works. This will sound complicated, but trust me, it's not.
The AQ230 does not have a seconds hand. For every 20 seconds of digital time, the minute hand ticks forward. For example, the minute hand will advance at 12:00:00, 12:00:20 and 12:00:40. After that, it will advance at 12:01:00, 12:01:20 and 12:01:40. Every time the digital time reaches 00 seconds, 20 seconds and 40 seconds, the minute hand advances.
On the right side of the watch is one button, and its sole function is to adjust the analog time. Pressing it once will advance the minute hand one tick, which is 20 seconds. Pressing and holding the minute hand will fast-scroll advance the analog clock.
The easiest way to set the analog clock is to synchronize it at a 15-minute mark, as in minute 0, 15, 30 or 45. You do this because those lines on the clock face are easiest to read and straight (meaning not on an angle.)
For example, if the digital time reads 12:29, advance the analog clock close to 12:29. When the digital clock reads 12:30, press the right side button a few times until the minute hand reaches the 30 minute marker. Because the AQ230's minute hand moves in 20 second increments, as long as you advance the minute hand to 12:30 within the first 20 seconds after the minute, the digital and analog clocks will be synchronized perfectly.
Again, I know this sounds complicated but it really isn't.
Why is the AQ230 so elegant and classy?
A few reasons.
First is the lack of a seconds hand. For some reason, when the seconds hand isn't present, that makes a square/rectangle watch look better. The classic Cartier Tank does not have a seconds hand, and neither does the Seiko SUP880. But the Casio is obviously much more affordable.
Second, the AQ230 is an atypical Casio design where the appearance is very toned down, even for the gold version. Nothing about the watch is "loud" at all.
Third is the appearance of minimalism. I say appearance because the watch does have an alarm feature, month/date/weekday calendar, hourly signal feature, a stopwatch and dual-time. Actually, it's triple-time. The analog clock, main digital time and secondary digital time can all be set differently, so technically, yes it is triple-time capable. But you'd never know that by looking at it. All you see is a classy little timepiece.
In the way Casio designed the AQ230, it does sometimes reflect light playfully on the outer corners, and the 12-hour marker is raised and reflects too.
On the gold version, the face is not white but rather linen colored. You can even see a vertical pattern when you angle it right and look close.
I sold off a bunch of Casios a while back...
...but not my AQ230's. I kept those because they're just good. Small and classy, and the silver one is surprisingly very legible.
The only thing I've had to do for maintenance, other than change the battery, is take some minor scratches off the crystal with Polywatch. Worked like a charm.
Is the Casio AQ230 the classiest little watch? No, that would be the Cartier Tank. But it is the classiest little ana-digi watch that I know of.
Where can a middle aged guy get plain sneakers these days?
Nowhere, that's where.
Remember Payless ShoeSource? The last one I ever visited was in 2019. This was right before they closed up shop.
When I say "closed up shop", that doesn't mean out-of-business. Payless ShoeSource still exists as an online retailer, although they just go by Payless now.
I am a Gen-X, born in the 1970s. The sneakers we wore back in the day were plain, but good. They all looked decent, didn't have any wild styles and were made for sport. As a daily wearer shoe, these were great.
One of the few plain sneakers left that's still like this is the New Balance 608; this is what I wear currently.
The 608 is one of the very few sneakers you can get in plain white or plain black. In fact, New Balance even offers this model in 100% white or 100% black. It's also one of the few sneakers you can get in a proper plain style that is wide, and I have wide feet. Not clown-shoes big, but wide.
I used to go to Payless ShoeSource to get plain sneakers, but after their stores shuttered, finding something plain in my size required me to buy it online.
Oh, I've tried other stores. Cheap places, upscale and even a few high-end ones. All they had were just a scant few plain sneaker offerings, and when they did have them, they were never in my size.
Should I just go sandal?
I'm considering it.
A sandal type I like is the fisherman sandal with a closed toe. Most of these are brown and look traditional with very little goofy style stuff going on.
With sandals I actually have more choice than I do with sneakers, so that might be the way to go.