h.i.e.p. karma

Let me start of this entry by saying that I sure do love cars. Especially fast ones.

There are however, certain aspects of cars and car ownership that I don't particularly care for. One of the biggest things that I dislike about cars is tire maintenance. I really do abhor checking the tire pressure. Why? Because everytime I check it, I have to also pump air into it. Maybe it's the tire pressure gauge I'm using (somehow I doubt that though, since this has happened with every gauge I've used), but I can never seat the damn gauge tip correctly without losing a good amount of air pressure from the tire. Say, 3 to 5 psi in the worst cases.

It's just damn annoying.

So this morning I wasted 15+ minutes pumping (and re-pumping) air into my tires. It took longer than I wanted because I hadn't checked the tires in a few months and they had lost a decent amount of air; we're talking about ~5psi or so. In addition to having to pump that much pressure using a foot pump, I also had to deal with losing a good amount because I can't seat the tire air pressure gauge correctly!

This in turn made me come into work later than I wanted to, which just fed into another pet peeve of mine - getting into work later than I want to!!!

I'm slightly sad. My rear car bumper has suffered a scrape! On the left rear side (on the corner of the bumper) there is about a 4-inch high area that is scraped, along with two deeper scratch lines, extending 1/2" on one and 1" on the other. WTF...

The scrapes I can probably buff out myself. But the scratches would have to be fixed by a professional body shop.

What I don't understand is how I could've gotten that scrape. It must've happened sometime between Saturday night (late Saturday - as I washed my car Saturday night and was done by 10:30pm) and this morning or afternoon. From my memory, my car wasn't in any situation where it could've gotten that scrape. But of course, it did. Ugh.

Oh well. 6 months ago I would probably have been livid. Now that I've had the car awhile that new-owner paranoia has subsided somewhat, so I'm not really mad. Just a tad sad. I will buff out what I can though soon.

Hmm I got a brain fart and actually forgot to write in the clay portion of my last blog entry. So here it is -

I clayed bar'd my car last week, for the first time. It was an interesting experience, and being smart enough NOT to do the entire car in one go made things easier and definitely less stressful. In any case, I clayed the top of the rear trunk, as well as the entire rear bumper. It's actually fun (*gasp*). The reality is that once you clay bar the area and feel how amazingly smooth your car paint is, it becomes addictive.

However it is quite a lot of work. Not only do you have to clay the car, but odds are you have to wash that area again because the lubricant you use to clay the car kind of "sticks" on, even after a rinse. So you wash the car and of course you have to wax that area too - as the claying process removes any kind of wax you may previously have on that area of the car.

So today I washed my car again and clay'd more areas: basically the front of the car except for the front bumper (front sides and front hood).

Not sure what additional areas to clay. Probably the top of the car, if at all. The sides (vertical areas) don't really seem to need much claying...

I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier, but I think I've found a solution to my lack-of-time when it comes to washing and waxing my car (not to mention, clay bar-ing the car as well).

The solution? Basically just do it in sections over multiple sessions. In other words, let's say the first session would consist of washing the car, drying it, and then applying the clay bar and wax on just one or two sections of the car, say the rear bumper and trunk. This way I won't spend 3+ hours killing myself. Then the next time I wash the car (preferably 2-3 weeks later) I would then clay bar and wax another section, say the right side front and passenger doors. And so on. This would prob take 2-3 months to completely clay bar and wax the car but hey it's better than never doing it! The slight tricky issue would be to keep good track on what sections have been done already.

Waxing my car yesterday I noticed some sections were still decently smooth, while others definitely needed a clay bar application - mostly the top horizontal surface of my rear bumper and possibly the top surface of the trunk. My best guess is a lot of water trickles/flows down onto that bumper surface and leaves junk there as the water dries.

Man I'm so tired... almost to the point of exhaustion. I washed and waxed the car today. I was able to do it in under 3 hours (fast!). I got a little help at the end from a friend - mostly to wipe off the wax.

It feels good though to get the car so nice and shiny. Good thing I'm only doing this every 3--6 months, lol...

Edit and update:
I'd be a little remiss if I didn't include pictures huh? Pretty boring to talk about a shiny car and not see it! So I took some pictures the after I waxed the car, around 7pm.


This last picture is different from the others because I took it with the camera facing into the setting sun...

Past two weeks I've been doing mostly city driving, with some highway (so it's not all city). Obviously, it's the worst mileage I've gotten to date.

264.5 miles / 14.128 gals = 18.72mpg

Wow... today gas hit $3.58 for 91 octane at my local Shell (and that's one of the CHEAPER gas stations). How much more is it going to go up? Will it hit $4 this year?

What a relief... I finally found some time to wash my car this Sunday. I had not washed it in quite a long time - at least since I had it tinted. The weather (and timing) just wasn't cooperating. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get it as clean as I could; the water managed to dry a lot faster than I had anticipated given the weather conditions that morning - hazy - which left some dirt/water spots on the car. I will have to wash it more regularly now that the weather is becoming more "spring"-ish.

I would still like to get my car washed-clayed-waxed sometime this spring. However that's at least a 6+ hour job for one person and honestly I don't think I have the stamina for that.

Latest gas/driving stat:

254.5 miles / 11.103gal = 22.92mpg. Computer listed 24.9mpg. How optimistic.
About 1/4 of my tank used, I was getting pretty bad mileage (probably due to recent bad traffic, stop and go). I did a lot of nice steady freeway driving this weekend which helped my gas mileage.

So now gas is over $70 a damn barrel. Ouch.

Past few gas fillings:

Last fill:
267.6 miles / 12.36gal = 21.65mpg (pretty spirited as well... until halfway when I was getting truly bad mileage... lol)
Cheapest premium gas is now $3.06/gal. Grrr.

One before that:
309.6 miles / 14.084gal = 21.98mpg (spirited driving) $41.39 for a tank of gas!

Yesterday my car reached a wee lil milestone: 10,000 miles. I got it mid-July, so that's approximately 8 1/2 months. That's about 1,200 miles a month. BUT! There's about at least 1-2 months where I barely drove the Legacy GT because I wanted to use up the mileage on my TT. So let's just divide that instead by 7 months, and I get almost 1,500 miles a month...

Latest mileage update (I know it's boring for everybody... but it's for me, not for you )

286.3 miles / 12.607gals = 22.72mpg.

And that's driving with a slightly lead foot at times

346 miles / 15.341 gals = 22.55mpg

Not even 23 (almost). And this is with pretty conservative driving...

Latest MPG, normal driving method:

261.6 miles / 12.627 gals used = 20.67MPG

Another full-ish tank filled up today. Result:

275 miles / 13.372 gallons = 20.56mpg.

This is with my more "normal" driving where I'm not really trying to conserve gas. I'll accelerate when I want to