My 2000 Suburban is the same size as 2025 Toyota Tacoma, the smaller of the Toyota pickups. The Tacoma is wider and taller, but the Surbuban is a bit longer. Just making cars bigger seems to be the automakers’ primary way of updating cars.
I think this is the primary reason the value of the GMT800 based trucks have gone up. They’re modern enough that you can put a cheap OBDII scanner on them and find out what is wrong, but old enough that you don’t need a dealership computer to program any parts you do replace.
Mechanical parts are readily available, though less so for trim pieces, and there is a big aftermarket if you want to customize or add go fast parts.
> On my drive home I abruptly had absolutely no acceleration, the gear indicator on the dash started flashing, the power mode indicator disappeared, an alert said shift into park and press the brake + start button, and the check engine light and red wrench lights came on. I was still able to steer and brake with power steering and brakes for maybe 30 seconds before those went out too. After putting it into park and pressing the brake and start button it started back up and I could drive it normally for a little bit, but it happened two more times on my 1.5 mi drive home.
If that happened on the highway I could easily see people being killed.
Just replaced the battery in my 91 Ford Ranger. I installed the old one in May 2018. I bought it as an OEM battery from the local Ford dealer, and it came with a 36 month full replacement warranty and a 100 month pro-rated warranty. So it made it 94 months. Here in the desert heat, almost eight years is long time for a battery.
So I mentioned this 100 month warranty at the parts counter, and the guy working the parts counter said that no, the warranty is only for 36 months. But I said it said so right on the battery, and he could see for himself when I brought in the core (I actually had it the core with me, but I don’t bother to lug it to the parts counter until I verify they have a new battery in stock). I figured that I wasn’t expecting much on the pro-rated part, but they knocked $10 off the new $200 battery. Fair enough. And the new battery has a 36 month warranty, no mention of any warranty beyond that, so I can see why he was sceptical of my mention of the 100 month warranty.
Eight years ago the battery was $130, today it is $200. Previous to getting the OEM battery from the dealer, I was getting Duralast batteries from AutoZone, but they would only last 4 or 5 years, and at the time (and now as well) they were not much cheaper than the OEM part. Since then, I have only bought OEM batteries for my other cars (Hondas), and now for my Ford. The Honda OEM batteries have been rock solid as well. So if you need a battery, don’t overlook getting one from a dealer, they are competitively priced and in my experience better quality than other options, including an Interstate battery that was in my 2001 Accord.
The Polestar 2 would have been my first choice if I were buying a new car today. I always just assumed they’d still be around whenever I do replace my current car.
As an owner of a Polestar 2, I think you dodged a bullet. For me, a person who works from home and is upper middle class, it’s not a terrible vehicle. If you get a good one, I hear they are remarkable. However if you have problems, there are only 32 dealerships in the USA that service them.
Their software is really pretty awful. While that seems common in newer connected cars these days, they are a low volume automaker using cut rate software contractors and it really shows. It’s a shame because there are some really nice things about the car. But when you ask 50k for something,people expect quality.
“Blasting” is a real stretch here. My wife’s car got the Spiderman ad, but to see it, you had to take action. It started with a notification of a new message in the message center (or whatver the wording was, I don’t exactly recall) and then you had to choose to see the message. I only knew of it because I was curious to see what the fuss was about. My wife had no idea, not being one to ever look at her car’s inbox.
In the crash, a Toyota SUV was traveling in the left of two high-speed toll lanes around 5:30 a.m. when the driver suddenly slowed down and merged right. She was going 15 mph in the right high-speed lane, preparing to cross an empty median to get to the manual lanes, according to the NTSB. Moments later, a tractor-trailer going the 70 mph speed limit slammed into the back of the vehicle. The slow-speed lanes the driver was trying to reach were marked at 10 mph.
I had a different reaction: I think there should be a significantly lower speed limit at these toll booths–rather than vehicles going through them at 70mph.
AND/or more properly separate the manual-pay lanes from the e-pays, both laterally and longitudinally so that they are not exactly side by side. That elbow-to-elbow toll point configuration with a 60mph speed differential is asking for trouble.
ISTM the operator should try to minimize the chance for last-moment lane switches (which was the immediate error here) by making you pull off to a distinct hard-divided side service lane (not just have a “median” defined by paint and plastic knockdown markers) at a comfortable merge speed a half or quarter mile away. And if you missed it you missed it, the ticket will be a reminder to pay attention next time. Though sure, there will always be “that” driver who even then will not merge over until the last 100 feet but it should not involve slowing down to a near stop in traffic.
Since transponder-based e-tolls are not uniformly compatible everywhere, the recommendation would really mean for every highway/bridge authority to have to adopt toll-by-plate. That may get quite some pushback from operators.
Reading the actual NTSB report, the high-speed lanes and the low-speed lanes were separated by a gore area of about two lanes wide (as shown in the photo on page 1). And none of the three passengers in the SUV in the second row of seats were belted. Two were children and one an adult. Two passengers (the adult and one child) died. Honestly, the SUV driver was the dumbass here.
Yeah seems they were somehow more afraid of crossing over “speeding” over the separation space…? No wait… from that report pic turns out there WAS a hard barrier in the final stretch, and they waited to merge exactly where it started! SMH
Putting this here instead of starting it’s own thread.
Could I put jet fuel in my diesel engine without causing any harm to the engine or fuel system?
I recently watched a video where they were running small turbojets on diesel+oil, so does it go the other way, too?
I heard a report that the average price of diesel is ~$6.20/gallon, but jet fuel is ~$4.50/gallon. What would happen if I took my old dump truck over to the regional airport and asked for 50 gallons of jet-A?
Just to be safe, I’ll go 50/50 and fill the tanks half with diesel, and then the rest of the way with jet fuel. Also I’ll only do it in my older dump truck that doesn’t have a DEF system.
This is all completely hypothetical, as I only use a EV dump trucks at my mountain top removal strip mine. Also, I either misheard the $4.50/gallon, or that is the price for the major airlines, because at my local airport it is twice that.
IIRC the US Army burns jet fuel in their diesel trucks. Saves them having to supply two kinds of fuel to the field that are interchangeable enough. They don’t want to run their turbine helos on truck diesel, so they do it the other way.
I think I’ve heard that diesel, jet fuel, kerosene, and heating oil are all pretty much the same blend of hydrocarbons, chemically speaking. The main differences are the additives blended in, and the allowable level of impurities. I would guess a diesel engine would be able to run on any of them. Maybe the injectors would get clogged if you routinely ran it on heating oil, but I doubt one tank would do much damage.
Although you might get in trouble for not paying the fuel tax if the authorities found out. I recall hearing about some British cab drivers who got in trouble for tax evasion when the authorities found out they were running their cabs on vegetable oil because it was cheaper than diesel in the UK.
