TireSmoke.org

I always changed my own oil in my Golf. Castrol made an oil I believe that met all the criteria for the factory warranty, and I never changed my drain plug. It was the same plastic one that just took a big screwdriver to remove. I had it about as long as you do now. As long as you have the receipts...

I am shopping for a Jaguar XJS Coupe. I always wanted one. I am not getting any younger. I have the space to store and work on a car. And these are surprisingly affordable. It has taken me over a year of thinking and occasional research to reach this conclusion. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to take on ...

With a bunch of road trips, we burned through almost another 10K miles in just a couple months. The car now has 37,600 miles. Technically, the car still has a thousand miles before it is due for its next service, but we have a 3000-mile road trip coming up, so the car needed service sooner rather th...

The Nissan had its first road trip in a long time. I was the ground crew for a friend who was competing in the Missouri River 340, a 340-mile canoe/kayak race from Kansas City to St. Charles. The truck has been running great. The hiccup in the electrical system hasn’t shown itself in months which ha...

A couple weeks ago, I took the VW in for its last included service. You would think since I have to pay for my own service from here on out, they would have really tried to show me how good they are. First, they tried to sell me an air filter and a cabin filter for over $100 for the pair (less than ...

https://take4digital.com/karavan.jpg I got a “new addition” last week, too, but mine is clearly intended for 4X8 sheet materials and other obvious light duty utility purposes; no one accusing me of ulterior motives. I have been debating the intelligence of buying a utility trailer. I can probably r...

Last weekend was snowy and this weekend was cold and rainy, but we had some really nice days this week so I changed out the tires and washed the car. While we didn’t get a lot of snow this winter, the snow tires proved their worth a few times. The most interesting was 8” of fresh unplowed snow clogg...

Yeah, 2.0 turbo sedan.

I remember the last time you hit a deer. I think that was on 306 just north of Fairmont. Did you keep the deer this time, too? While none of that looks horrible, I am guessing this was not a project you wanted added to your list right now. I could send you a link to a guy who has a frame straighteni...

A few weeks ago, I took the car to Rapid City for its 20,000 mile service. I was about 600 miles early, but we had a big trip to Asheville coming up. The trip was another successful 2900-mile road trip, although fuel economy was quite a bit worse on this trip averaging only 37.4 mpg. With the road t...

https://take4digital.com/IMG_1862.jpg I pulled the trigger on a snow tire and wheel package. I kept looking at our sloped roads and driveway and decided that traction in snow was going to be important. I bought both the cheapest wheels and the cheapest tires that Tire Rack was showing for my car, b...

Here is an image with the dark gray flaps reinstalled over the black rockers. https://take4digital.com/IMG_1853.jpg I only took the black up to the door and there were a few chips in the white above that (some of the big ones are visible in the image above). I have since dug out my very old bottle o...

The first repair on the VW was with a Permatex windshield repair kit. We got peppered with gravel by a truck going the other way on a 65mph two-lane road in rural Nebraska on our way to Ohio. On the advice of the owner of that Auburn inn that I stay at, I tried the kit. The idea makes sense. It trie...

What size are those dirt tires?

Today’s effort was rocker panels. A few years ago, I removed the front mud flaps and the deflectors that were mounted on the front side of the rear wheel wells. From the stone chip patterns on my rocker panels, it appears that Nissan had a good design with those plastic pieces. Now that high speed g...