Upgrades

As with any used car we buy, there's usually a few things that it needed. When we bought it, the paperwork was a mess (honestly that was the thing that gave me the most pause about buying it) and it took quite a bit of going back and forth before it looked like it's squared away. Now that it appears that everything is in order and in process (we still don't have the title in hand, but it appears that we have it all sorted, and have mailed it in and payed it, and the web portal seems to have it cleared) I felt OK going ahead and starting in on a few things.

Last weekend I stopped by the junkyard to see if I could get some of the specific parts. There were 4 Matrixes (Matrii???) and 2 Vibes. The Matrixes were all fairly picked clean, the only thing I could find was a gear shift knob that's not split open. I think the XR designation that ours has, one of the things they come with is leather-wrapped steering wheel and gear shift. The wheel is OK (at least on the leather grip surface, the Toyota logo in the center is badly scratched up) but the gear shift knob is, as I said, split open. The replacement I found is rubberized instead, and worn a bit smooth, but still looks better. When I was pulling it off, it has a little button under the gear change knob to switch the overdrive on and off, and I ended up breaking the wire off figuring that it would have some kind of plug, but saw how to remove that portion and use the one from what's on there.

On to the Vibes, that seems to be the hot ticket if you're looking for parts!!! Found most of the other things on my list on the first one I looked at. The center console is a double unit, with a shallow storage area in the lid, and a deeper portion under that. The lid for the top was not only split open, too, but the hinge is broken. The one I got is in much better shape, but one of the 2 hinge ends is broken. Still better than what was on there. Also, the gear selection indicator was broken on ours, but the Pontiac had one that's still intact, albeit it has some stress cracks showing already. It's a pretty basic piece, so if it ends up going eventually I can probably fabricate something better up. Perhaps I'll have a 3D printer by then, and can do something very stylized. I also got the cover for over the 3rd brake light. It wasn't bad without it, but having it on there gives it a finished look.

It also had both of it's dome lights, something that has never worked on ours. They have the slider switch, which some of the others didn't have. Unfortunately, it didn't cure the problem, so I'm back to the drawing board for those. It also had a very clean steering wheel center that I grabbed. It has the Pontiac logo, of course, but I like the look better. Another thing that's missing is the grille logo. I couldn't find one, but even before I'd gone, I was telling my wife I'd like to find a Scion logo and slap that on the front, because they appear about the right size and it's a Toyota brand, so why not??? I also found out that they had sold the Pontiac styled ones in Japan as Toyota Voltz, with the Pontiac V replaced with a chrome V for Voltz. I looked around to see if I could find some of the badges online for the rear hatch, but no dice. ANyway, found a nice Scion badge, I've got to do a little modification, but the size is right.

I figured it wouldn't be too hard to swap the center console lid and gear shift knob, so I tried doing that last week after work one day. The center console lid was easy, but the shift knob didn't go so well. I was being careful to not break the wires to the switch, but I wasn't able to get it detached. I'm not sure how it's going to go, but I'm thinking of adding a plug under the shift. While I had everything apart, I changed the stereo. The one that was in there was a Dual that cycled through whorehouse colors. AM stations were always terrible on it, too. I might have been able to change the display, but I really don't care much for it, and I had the stereo from 3 that I really like, so in it went. The AM reception is no better, so a new antenna is probably in order. I had been thinking about grabbing a different mast from the junkyard, but never got it on my list, and didn't remember. If the thread is the same, I'll try the one from Scruffy on it sometime and see if it's any better.

Bought a bunch of stuff from Rock Auto, too. Not having had taken a look at the air filter, bought one sight unseen, as well as an activated charcoal cabin air filter. The engine filter looked pretty decent, so I've saved the old one, but the cabin one was filthy, and full of leaves and sticks. That was quite easy to change. Bought wiper blades, the one for the back glass is missing it's rubber completely. I'll probably wait until the weather starts turning to change them, lest they bake in the summer sun. The airbag light on the dash has always been on, and a bit of online sleuthing showed that it's often a part called the clockspring, located directly behind the steering wheel. I'll do that at some point and see if it fixes the issue, and do the center for the steering wheel at the same time. One of these days, we've got to get in touch with a Toyota dealer and see if the Takata air bag recall has been done for it!!! Under moderate to hard braking, it would give the warped rotors (or biuld up on the rotors) feeling, so I bought new rotors and ceramic brake pads. Those went in yesterday, as well as some new fasteners for the under engine panels and the rocker panel extensions. (The one on the passenger side felt like it was barely holding on) One thing that I forgot to mention having removed from Jade on her way out was the horn. I did this because the horn on the Matrix sounds like a little Japanese import car's horn, a little 'beep', while the one in Saturns sounds much bigger than the car it's from, a commanding 'HONK!!!'. I put that in at the same time. I've got a front and rear view dash cam to install someday, and I still need to come up with a decent phone holder!!!

The Mountain Getaway

A couple of weeks ago I took the week off. I've got to use up some of my days off so I don't have a bunch to carry over or cash out at the end of the year!!!

Since there is a shortage of rental cars at places we might have wanted to fly to for vacations, I had been thinking of going up to the place we've had our anniversary weekend the last couple of years, right on the beach. It would be the first time the boy would have gone. However, when I called to see what kind of deal I could get, they told me a price around $450 a night!!!

Guess the time we normally go has been "off season". Scratch that, I'll come up with someplace else to visit. We decided to head up to the mountains for a few days instead.

As seen in the first picture, Running Springs is the town we were staying in. It was a very reasonable price, not a lot of amenities, but it was fine. They do have an indoor pool and hot tub that we jumped in for a while.

We drove out to the same forest service fire lookout tower that we'd gone to a few years back. It's a ways out to get to it, and this time we pulled off to the side of the road heading out there to take pictures of the impressive rock formations.

Speaking of driving out, it was the first long trip for Keanu-Kutcher, and it performed without a hitch. The driving dynamics aren't Saturn S-Series, it is close to 1 1/2 tons compared to just over a ton for the Saturns, and you can feel it. The Toyota 1.8 engine is, of course, different from the Saturn 1.9, which has more torque at lower RPMs hauling around less car. Climbing up the mountain, there are signs to turn off your A/C. We didn't, although I kept an eye on the temprature guage. Guess what, it didn't move!!! The transmission did a lot more gear changes, and the RPMs were in the higher range, but no undue dramatics anywhere, so I'm calling it a complete success!!!

The boy & I went on evening walks. The first one, we went across the road to a large turn out area, and followed a path that seemed to go down the side. It connected to a trail that went on a long while, then connected to a paved road and eventually connected another road, then came up and back the road we'd started on. I'm pretty sure we were on a private road for part of it.

The propieter of the place we stayed had told us the place across the road (towards "downtown") has the best breakfast in the area, so we went there the first morning. It was closed for construction. We went to another place.

For dinner one night, we went to a pizza place (Neo's Pizza, since we were in the Matrix, I guess we had to go there!!!) and they had some of the best pizza I've had since we'd gone to Chicago!!! Cheese garlic knots, which were excellent, too.

There was a candy store we stopped into and got some goodies, and a thrift store that we bought a couple of shirts from. The day we left, we were able to stop in for the best breakfast in Running Springs, and it lived up to the hype!!!

We pulled off in a very large turn-out on the way back from the fire tower, where someone had made up a very large eye design!!!

The last night we were there, the boy and I went on another night walk, and did some geocaching, since it turns out there were a ton of them up there!!! We found three, and took over a Pokemon gym.

It was a great little get away!!!