Wed, 04 May 2005
Okay, the car doesnt seem to be exhibiting the same problems anymore but it's re-gressed into a problem that happened a few times in the past; it'll run fine but when suddenly, for a while at least, it requires a lot more 'pushing the paddle to the metal' to get it to really 'go'.
Now, I've had this issue before with a similar car I've driven in by ways of a test-drive; another Carina E, 1.8 GLI that just wouldn't "go go go!" when pushing the paddle; unless you pressed it really deep. The explanation I got for that behaviour was that this is the default acceleration-profile for the GLI-leanburn series; allowing you to 'twiddle' the gas very accurately while trying to maintain a steady speed which, in turn, should be good for your gas-mileage.
So, perhaps this is just a 'backup profile' my car's ECU (Electronic Control Unit.. how poetic), has reset itself to for a while; who knows... at least it DOES go when you tell it to.
As ever, will keep you up to date ;)
Tue, 03 May 2005
Seems that so far the car looks to be 'fix0rized'. I picked it up yesterday evening at the garage I had it fixed at. They weren't ready with computing the bill for me, so I'll be getting it in the mail. I'm not entirely sure if this is a good or a bad thing, really *gulp*.
They've replaced a fuel-injector now and taken care of a defective thermostat; also taking a moment to check the other fuel-injectors for clogged nozzles or what-have-you. There also seems to be some product you can chuck into your gas-tank and have it dissolve/clean/atomize/automagickally-fix0r the fuel-injectors in case they're dirty 'n such; at 22 Euro's, it's a bargain! *cough*
Interestingly, my car was parked behind another Carina E station-wagon (a diesel, however). The manager came, personally, to brute-force the car open with a pneumatic wedge and some typical car-jacking widgets (stiff steel-wires and slim-jims). This led to me commenting that it was a shame I'd left my lock-picks at home and from there it progressed into a general talk about security and physical security in particular. Since a few days ago, many more dutch people were informed about the BumpKey Vulnerability that many locks turned out to be susceptible to. On the 27th of April, Nova had a report about this that many people saw.
Needless to say, he left a little bewildered and perhaps a bit worried about the safety of his car/house/whatever.... ignorance is bliss, perhaps ? HTH, HAND!
Mon, 02 May 2005
Well, it seems that finally, today, I'm gonna have a _working_ car again when I leave for home from the garage. After a good week of having found problems that weren't, fixing things that havent and not paying for things that HAVE been done...finally the problem's been narrowed down to a defective fuel-injector on the 4th cylinder of my 4-cylinder , 16 valve 1.8liter Lean-burn injection-motor-thingy....
Uhm, well, it's been interesting at least; seen new parts of my car I never thought that were in there; learned a lot about ignition and fuel-distribution systems and about which cars drive nice and which don't. Over the course of one week i've driven in:
- - Toyota Yaris (silver 3-door little town-car, half-automatic; icky, but kinda cool anyway)
- - Toyota Corolla Verso (large silver super-cool MPV-type car with a start-button! )
- - Toyota Yaris Verso (small car, but at least it had the decency to posess 5 doors)
- - and... now a small Toyota starlet ?.. dunno, but it's mint-green and smalllll.
Will report more about if they got the problem fixed THIS time, or not. Stay tuned!