A couple months ago, I had the opportunity to step out of design for awhile, and jump into Bridge Inspection. I started in Mid-April, and this has taken up 90% of my free time. It's good because I get to work overtime, which means more money for toys, but working 12hr days is hard enough, let alone the couple of 14's I've had to work so far. Because of this, and all the family events that have been going on, it has been hard for me to find time to post in the forums, or work on my car.
To make things difficult, both my mx3 and the girlfriends civic started having problems 3 months ago. I was only driving her civic in the snow because the tires on the mx3 were on their way out...still legal but barely. I did not want to get a new set of all weathers, and with it being march, I figured I could hold off. Well, one day I forgot to check the weather, as the day before it had been 50 and sunny...and it snowed...alot...and car met guiderail! I was trying to switch lanes on the highway to get off, hit the snow/slush between lanes, and the back of the car scooted out. I attempted to correct, but I was more concerned about getting the car away from the other drivers on the road...and succeeded. Back end hit the guiderail and I spun around, leaving a scrape alone the front of my hood, a busted tail-light, and a decent sized dent/impact on the right rear quarter...the EXACT same spot the car had been in an accident before, when I discovered the mess that was there with the bent frame and rusting section that had been poorly welded onto the car. I did not know what to look for when I bought the car for $600 2 years ago, I sure as hell do now.
So, that pushed the search for a new MX3 forward a few months, as I was reluctant to drive a car with peeling paint, mismatched tails, and a large dent for 2 more years. You see, my next MX3 was going to be a year long project, because I wanted to do some fabrication work, and do things the right way, rather than the rushed way. So instead of waiting until I owned a house (which was a year of our savings we estimated) I wanted to get the car sooner, so I could start the work NOW rather than a year from now.
Then the girlfriends Civic blew a radiator hose while I was driving it to work. Great. Picked up a new hose/coolant during lunch with a buddy, and changed it out in the parking lot. I love having tools in all my cars. That got me home, but was not the end of the problems. I replaced the thermostat, and checked the other hoses-they seemed OK, no cracking visible, etc. but I had no maintenance records for the car so I did not know what was replaced and when. I should have listened to my instincts, but the woman told me we did not have the money to put into a "junk car" as she put it. (she started to freak out at this point because both of our cars had just had problems...she works from home, but we still need a reliable car) I got the car running fine, no problems for awhile.
Then out of the blue, the alternator in the civic dies. Great. Go to replace it, thinking it will be easy as I've done it before on my car - wrong! Apparently honda used poor aluminum with steel bolts (not stainless) for the mounting and adjustment bolts. Oxidation basically fused the 2 together, and it took me 2 weeks (keep in mind my tough schedule) to get the thing off. Even with it off the car, in 3 pieces from my griding wheel, I was unable to remove the bolt from the casing with a sledgehammer. I was happy to throw it in the garbage. Install went easy, and car was good again for another month.
Then my car (the mx3) starts having problems. Girlfriends drives it to pick me up, says she sees sparks, and the car stalls. I'm thinking terrible thoughts, but calm her down, and get her to start it again. She drives another 5 miles, then it bucks hard and stalls again. I find out she had just filled up with 87 (I use higher for the ZE) so I have a feeling it has something to do with that. I pick her up, we switch cars, and I drive it. I don't notice anything, but I filled it up with drygas, octane booster and injector cleaner to be safe. Keep in mind, I do maintain my mx3 rather well, with regular oil changes, seafoam, air filter checks, and the fuel filter has like 10k on it. Still no idea where those "sparks" she saw came from.
I start having problems 3 weeks ago. The car randomly bucks/hesitates, and it feels like its misfiring, but different than in other cars that I've experienced it in, and certainly no backfires or detonation. It will drive me down to work fine, sit for 10 hrs, drive me the last 3/4 of the way home, then buck horribly for a few seconds, stop for 5 minutes, and do it again for a minute, then stop. I thought it was the fuel pump, but didn't know why it would only do it occasionally (and its not like I was hammering on the throttle, it did it at cruising, or near idle speed/ WOT did not matter!). I have the HEI mod with external coil and a disconnected internal coil, so I did not think it was that. Anyway, I started driving the civic more at this point so I could try to find out what the problem was.
All this time, the girlfriend and I had been looking for both MX3's and and "bigger" vehicle for the 2 of us, and our dogs. We wanted something newer than our 18yr old cars, with less than 60k miles so I did not have to kill myself with maintenance as I do on our 160k+ cars. We had picked out a number of smaller to mid sized SUV's such as the CRV, CX7, Tribute, Highlander and the Xterra. She liked the CRV/Highlander the best initially, and I liked the CX7/Subaru Forester the best because of the car like drive and ruggedness of Subaru products. We looked at the CRV's, and my god, what an uncomfortable car. The seats are terrible, worse than her civic seats which cause 1000 lifetimes of misery to my back. Highlander was OK, but it did not come with a manual option, something we were both pushing for. As we kept looking, we realized we wanted something with some towing capacity. Of all the cars we were looking at, the Xterra was the only one that had the most features. I narrowed it down to 2002-2004 xterra years only, both for the price, ruggedness of the vehicle and the LSD that is present in those years. Sure the newer models of 100 more HP, but they have a weaker drivetrain, with drive by wire gas pedal and 100x the electronics of the dated 1st Gen...clearly I wanted the older model as I don't want to mess with crazy electronics.
Found what looked like a good deal on a 2002 Xterra SE S/C Enthusiast/Extreme edition with every bell and whistle offered on the car, including full skid plates, bumper guards, leather, with 60k miles for 12k. Price was on the high side, but we figured since its at a dealer we could talk them down a little. They had mentioned that their "boss" would like to negotiate in person, after we said we would have a hard time getting a car long on something so old, for so much money. They made the car out to be the best deal we'd find, so we drove the 3.5 hours to Massachusetts to see it. Not only did the car have a number of dings/scratches, it needed CV joints, tires were garbage, interior had scratches everywhere, but the sales people were RUDE. After we looked at the car, I made a list of everything good and bad about it, and brought out our research, they flat out told us the price was non-negotiable. Could have saved us a trip out there! No wonder the thing has been sitting on their lot since November!
Get home disappointed. I hop on the computer, and look at Craigslist for MX3's like I always do, just to see whats out there, not expecting anything to come up. Had some interest in a few the past few months, but timing did not work out, had problems going to look at them or just decided that they were not the cars that I wanted based on body/rust/missing parts, etc. After a minute of searching, I find a post that has been up for 1 hour. In NJ, an MX3 with 100,000 miles, 1 owner (bought when the lady was 60 years old) 5spd gs, trailered up from florida with her estate in near-mint condition for $2500. My jaw drops. I've seen plenty of cars listed for that price advertised as mint, that always have rust, or some major flaw. I got a very good feeling. Walk away from the girlfriend so she can't hear me, and I call the guy. I'm apparently the 3rd caller already. He was a very nice 50yr old man, who had been giving the car by his Aunt in her will. He had no use of it, so he was selling it. He went on to explain to me that she loved the car, and always gave it synthetic fluid and took it to a family friend who had a shop down the road for maintenance it's whole life. A/C worked great, wheels were in good condition, every power option worked on the car, no rips on anything in the interior, etc. The only flaw was 1 dent about 3" wide x 1/2" deep IN THE SAME SPOT AS THE DENT ON MY CAR. This has to be too good to be true, so I spend a good while talking to him about it trying to make sure he's not BSing me, and it's actually in as good of shape as he says. I get him to send me 10 more pictures and then I go and announce to the girlfriend that I am driving ANOTHER 3.5 hours to pick up an MX3.
I talked to him again to convince him to hold the car until I could down there the next day, and that I was leaving at 6am. He had already had 2 people come by to look at it within the 2 hours I had used to decide if I wanted to drive that far again, but neither of them were 100% sure they wanted it (one was a 300lb man apprently, the other was a dad looking to buy it for his 17yr old son, who wanted nothing but another civic since he wrecked his first one). I called him at 6:30 after I had been on the road for a little, because I did not want to wake him up too early. I call him again at 9 as we are getting closer, and he laughs because he was unable to go back to sleep since he had people calling him again about the car, including the people who had looked at it the day before! I knew at this point he was not pulling my leg about it, because there was NO reason to make up these stories when I'm 15 minutes away and after a total of 1 hour of phone conversations.
Now I have to tell you, I knew this car was the one the moment I laid eyes on her. Sure, she's white, and will be getting repainted (planned to do this) but the paint is in amazing condition. For being a florida car, there is 0 fading/cracking of the trim/dashboard as the car was not only GARAGED its ENTIRE life, the woman used AEROSPACE 303 on it, and there was 1/2 a bottle in the glove box! AMAZING. The A/C blew colder than most new cars I've sat in, idled perfectly, clutch grabbed well, tires have 75% life, carpet looks great, the car even SMELLED nice. All the interior plastics in the trunk closed as they should, there was even a stock hatch cover, tho it was kind of broken as it folded in the middle when you lifted the trunk. All the door seals looked minty, not a single rip on any of them and the best part NO RUST ANYWHERE. I opened the oil fill cap to look inside the engine, and it had a very very light golden color, better than the ZE I have. I pulled out $2000 and told the guy I was the best person who would be looking at this car to take car of it for another 20 years.
It ran perfect the way home and I am almost sad that I will be tearing the thing apart soon. I will be putting the k8 into my current DD MX3 to replace the ZE so that I can rebuild it, so I supposed it's OK. Backed the car into the garage, and scavenged a fuel pump and disty from it to throw on my DD.
I'm happy as a pig in pig food.
I should also mention that during this time period, I have also been looking for some tools to add to my garage. Top of the list was an air compressor, with 6 point sockets a close second. Picked up the sockets to remove stuff on the civic, and somewhere along the way found a homemade powder coating oven, 500+cfm exhaust fan, and homemade condenser/water/air filter for a compressor. Picked all three up for $200, which did not please the woman...let me tell you though, the oven has almost 40 CF of USABLE space with 4 heating elements. It's amazing. I will be powder coating EVERYTHING on my car, since it will all fit, including the engine block/heads when its time. I might even be able to ceramic coat an exhaust in there, if I cut it into 5-6' sections and weld it after. No compressor at this time
THEN, 2 days later, I'm under a bridge somewhere in a stream and get a call from the girlfriend that she found another xterra that was JUST posted, as a dealer trade in 20 minutes from home. Listed for $14,900 a 2004 Silver Xterra SE with 42k miles, 5 spd. This sits right about where it should, according to blue book value, with 1 owner who did not smoke. I figured we would take a look but pass as 15k was still too high for us. We go look at the car, and its in much better shape than the last - only 1 dent on the rear hatch 1"x 1/4" deep. The car needs a new muffler, but everything else about it is in good condition. After talking to the salesman, we get the price down to $12,250. If you look at the Kelley Blue book value, you will see we did pretty well for the car, especially considering the car has the towing package, full skid plates, auto dimming mirror and extra roof rack attachments.
So...we picked the Xterra up the next day, and have had it for about a week now. I talked to Mike Fortin (Nd4SpdSe) about it before we bought it and after looking at the car myself, I can see it's going to be very simple to work on.
Today, I used the Xterra to pick up the first thing that I would not have been able to do in the MX3 or the civic - An AIR COMPRESSOR!!!!
Finally found one large enough for my needs (mostly) and cheap enough for my bank (lol depends who you talk to). It's a slightly older model, but has been sitting for 3 years since it was bought new, and I was assured that it was used for no more than 5 hours its entire life. 30 Gallon Campbell Hausfield horizontal air compressor, 240V 6HP 11.5 SCFM @ 40psi and 10.1 SCFM @ 90 PSI. Cast Iron Oiled pump rated at 5000 hours, working continuously. The oil still looked great even though its the original oil! (Clearly will be changing that). For $200, I got the compressor, a 35' 30AMP extension cord for it and a 75' rubber air hose...not bad in my book. Took some engineering to remove it from the trunk by myself, but I pieced together some makeshift ramps out of scrap wood/card board and tree logs and got it out without a scratch on anything. The thing must weigh 150 lbs!
So yes. I now own 4 cars jointly w/ the girlfriend, have 2 dogs and will be renting for at least an extra 6 months than we had planned - but we're happy and OK with it...til I start hearing (more) about getting her a ring!
Pics of everything will come tomorrow, I started this with daylight, now its dark outside, and only 1 car can fit in the garage. Can you guess which one it is?
