TireSmoke.org

It was over 60 degrees today and sunny, so I decided to cruise my favorite high-speed one-hour loop on Christmas Eve. That took the car over the 49,000 mile mark. The car has no immediate problems, so I haven't worked on it in any meaningful way since fixing that squeaky brake pad. I thought I had ...

Yowza, that's an analog beast. There's no way I would ever turn traction/stability control off in a car like that, but I am not even sure yours has such features. Congrats on fulfilling a dream.

48,172 miles
35.2 mpg average

Today I put the snow tires back on. I wasn't in a hurry this year as it hadn't snowed until last week. That did have me working with cold tools, but at least the garage warmed up quickly with the heater on. All four snow tires were still holding air. With each wheel ...

The cricket has been squashed. It was a squeaky brake pad.

I kept contemplating how to pinpoint the precise source of the sound. Last night, I even experimented with driving at a walking pace in the longest local parking lot, trying to imagine my instructions to my wife on how to drive slowly ...

Random questions on the brake noise:

Since the brake noise is when moving slowly, will it do it at walking speed? Just wondering if hearing it from the outside might help you isolate where its coming from.

Is it any different when you turn?

Are you certain this is not a wheel bearing issue ...

Today was the first time I did any work on the car in over two months. The car has been driven regularly and mostly is running great. The squeaky brake problem still hasn’t gone away. With music in the car now, the squeak is almost not an issue, but I don’t always want loud music in the car, and it ...

Awesome!

If I understand the data correctly, it looks like he qualified 5th for the final 32 bracket race. I can't find the results of the bracket race yet. It looks like he had a good week with reasonably consistent numbers.

I bought a cheap accessory for the Jaguar, a Bluetooth cassette tape adapter that allows me to play music from my phone through the car stereo. It works surprisingly well. I wouldn’t describe the sound quality as great, but I don’t think the phone delivers great sound quality to my other cars ...

47,226 miles (catching up to the Jaguar)
35.2 mpg total average fuel economy

Today I changed the oil and the limited slip differential fluid. The LSD was probably slightly overdue, but the fluid looked clean. It was a bit of an awkward job, but some YouTube videos had me reasonably well prepared ...

The Honda had its first road trip. We drove it to Ohio this time instead of the VW. It was nice to have more room to move around on long days of driving. My last few road trips in the VW have felt a little like torture. The VW is a comfortable vehicle, but there isn’t much room for changing ...

I have a squeak that repeats proportional to vehicle speed. It sounds a little like a cricket. The squeak vanishes with just the lightest touch of the brake pedal. It isn’t always there, but it is annoying when it shows up. Yesterday, I pulled each front and inspected the brakes because I thought ...

My touchup kit arrived today, and I spent an hour fixing my mistakes from last week and touching up a few other edges. I also did a little more polishing. The best approach appears to be wet sanding with 1500 and then using polishing compound. At this point, the couple of spots that I originally ...

I participated in my first car show ever. It was an amusing experience. The show was in Centennial Park, which is a couple hundred yards from my home (as the crow flies), right along the river in downtown Hot Springs. Saturday afternoon was a convenient time for me as we volunteer at Wind Cave ...

I am not really sure what possessed me to take a closer look at this. I have never really figured out the history of the paint on the car. Some panels look like a full repaint while some look original. There are also a number of imperfections. The ugliest spot is on top of the passenger fender. I ...