Rocket Sled Man Fails Darwin Award Attempt

In the Oakland Press this morning, a 62 year old Independence Township man almost killed himself in glorious drunk fashion. 

After consuming "unknown quantities of alcohol", he strapped on a motorcycle muffler which he had stuffed full of gunpowder, match-heads, and gasoline.  He also put on a motorcycle helmet and a cape.  Then he had a friend light his fuse, and started down the hill on a plastic orange sled, no doubt after saying something like "Hey guys! Watch this!"

It did not end well.  But, he didn't quite make it onto the Darwin Awards--he's in the hospital.

Link.

The Toyota Pedal Fix

If you go to Toyota's media site, you can see this graphic which shows the change they are making in their pedal.
The toothy thing is a pedal feedback mechanism which uses friction to give the pedal a certain amount of resistance at the end of its travel.

What Toyota is doing is putting a shim in behind the pedal arm, to limit its travel. Which means that unless they reprogram their ECU to interpret the new position as WOT (wide open throttle), customers won't ever be able to get to WOT--instead they'll top out at 97% or whatever the new maximum travel point corresponds to.

So in addition to installing "precision cut steel", I would expect Toyota to also have to spend a few minutes on each car to reprogram the throttle pedal calibration curves. Unless, of course, the extra few percent of travel isn't needed.

The Autoprophet Geocache Challenge (SOLVED)

Update: SOLVED! We have a winner.

To promote the new season of Top Gear, BBC America sent me some stuff to give away to my readers. They didn't say how I had to do it, so instead of a boring lottery, I have decided to do a geocache.
The Top Gear swag is hidden inside a brown cardboard box, wrapped up in a plastic bag to keep it dry. The prize includes a 2010 Top Gear calendar, a "Stig" coffee mug, and best of all, the complete season 11 and season 12 DVD sets, 6 discs in all.

The Rules:

• The first person who finds the stuff keeps it.
• If you find the booty, please send me an email at TheAutoProphet"at"gmail.com and let me know that you got it. Please mention the secret word (included with the prize).
  
• If no one finds it in two (2) weeks, I will give the whole pile to the Salvation Army for charity
• Extra points: find the bottle of beer that someone left behind (not me) near my cache.
  

The Location:

The goods are located in Oakland County, MI, in a little known municipal park. The box will not be buried, but will be mildly camouflaged.

The cache is not far from the trail, you don't have to do much bush-wacking.

Now, GO GO GO!

Apple iPad

I have been reading about the newly revealed Apple iPad, and I am thinking, "do not want".  Here's why:

• No on-board memory card slot
• No Adobe Flash support
• Closed OS--all apps must come from Apple store
• No camera--this thing should be able to do Skype out of the box
• No on-board USB ports
• No multi-tasking

This is because Apple decided to make the iPad basically an over-sized IPod Touch, not a shrunken Macbook.  Myself, I'd be more interested in a scaled-down Macbook.

I predict this will be a disappointment for Apple, until they fix some of these flaws.  Most people who would be interested in an iPad already have an iPhone, they won't see a compelling reason to get one.

The Fluid Flush Scam

A family member took her compact SUV for its 100,000 mile service recently, and the service manager attacked her with the dreaded "fluid flush gauntlet".  He showed her samples of her transmission oil, power steering oil, brake fluid, and coolant, and tried to sell her about $500 worth of fluid flushes.  He also tried to convince her to change out her rear differential fluid, which is rather expensive, because it comes from nearly extinct whales.

This is a scam.  It is pure profit for the shop.

You should not get any fluid changed on your car that is not recommended by the owner's manual, unless you have special circumstances.  More on those below.

She checked her owner's manual, and while the transmission fluid and coolant were recommended, there was no mention of power steering fluid, rear differential, or brake fluid.

And here's why: all three of these systems are sealed.  In the power steering and brake fluid systems, the fluids are primarily hydraulic working fluids, although they do have some lubrication functions.  If the systems are still well sealed, and are working properly, you may not need to touch them for more than 150,000 miles.

Part of the trick is to show you that the fluids are "dirty".  This is scary, but not necessarily meaningful.  I asked a guy I know, who is involved in the design of power steering systems.  He told me that power steering fluid picks up carbon black from the hoses, and that you can't really tell a 5,000 mile fluid from a 50,000 mile fluid based on color.  His professional advice was, "don't touch it unless you are getting noise from the system or hard steering".  And if you don't want to change it, he recommended using a turkey baster to remove as much from the reservoir as you can, replacing the rest with clean fluid.  "The flushes the service places sell are junk!" he said,"A waste of money."

So when should you change your fluids?

If the owner's manual says it is time to do it, or if something is wrong, or clearly contaminated.  If large particles are obvious in your fluid reservoir, or if there is water in the oil, or if the system has failed in some way, or is making strange noises. 

Cool Cover Song

Wow, I like.  5FDP does "Bad Company".

"I was born, a shotgun in my hand"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVTn6qciodo

Toyota Wins Crown Of Shame

I think we can all now agree that Toyota has won the crown of "most severe quality issue" from the previous champions, Ford and Firestone.  Toyota is going to lose hundreds of millions of dollars on this, both directly and indirectly.  Directly, through replacement costs, and lost sales while the plants are down, and indirectly through their damaged quality reputation.