Summer is a busy time and in addition to personal life I also have to do multiple jobs. However, I thought I’d give you an update on how all the 3 cars are currently doing.

Corvette:

This must be my most reliable car of them all. I can say that after the new brakes were installed in Spring, we’ve driven this car around whole summer without any need for maintenance. Well, ofcourse I do the oil changes and filter changes as necessary, but nothing has broken or worn out. Somehow everything just works. Recently though the starter began to demand a bit too much energy and is rotating the engine slower than it did. Just need to take it off some time and send to rebuild. Nothing serious anyway. The retractable lights are having some vibrations when going over bumpy roads and this is a rather usual thing with such lights on any car. The construction and retraction mechanism wears out and causes a play to some degree in the whole construction. We tried to tighten the light systems and had some luck but to make them perfect I have to remove the front bumper assembly and disassemble the lights a bit for better access underneath. This car is certainly turning heads around the city every time we drive it. Some people want to race and the others just want me to spin the tires from traffic lights. The exhaust is really loud now and in the combination with manual gearbox you really get the greatest bang for the buck. All I have to do is take the foot from the gas pedal when the RPM is somewhere around 4500 RPM and the rumble which then comes from the engine is absolutely stunning. I must record it one day for you to hear.

We also attended the end of July American car cruise in Tallinn and we took some nice photos, too. It was rather enjoyable, although I really prefer driving the Vette a bit stronger than just idling in the convoy :)

1979 Corvette C3 in front of Estonian Parliament Building

See more photos of the cruise…

Audi A6:

Our newest family member the year 2005 Audi A6 is behaving nicely. It’s a really economical car with around 31 MPG (7.5 liters per 100 km) average from my experience. Sometimes in the pure city driving it rises a bit but not significantly if you don’t utilize all the 165 kilowatts. I did find out an issue with the car shortly after purchase and it was in the transmission – apparently the torque converter lock was worn out and therefore began causing RPM jump and later really noticeable torque jump at constant speed. Fortunately there are still some nice car stores around – they agreed to fix that issue themselves no questions asked and some time ago I got the car back from the repair. Now everything is perfect. By the way, the torque converter issue seems to be a typical problem on these vehicles when I made a quick search in Google.

All in all, I am VERY glad that I decided to buy the Audi. It’s a very good car in every aspect – nice looking and elegant, very well made interior, great handling, 4 wheel drive, economical yet powerful diesel engine, perfect factory audio system etc. I really recommend it!

Chevy Suburban:

When the Audi came the Suburban was replaced as my daily driver. Since I moved a bit away from the city we have a lot more driving and the fuel economy of the Audi is about 3 times less. At the moment the truck is certainly the least driven of all our cars and sometimes we just take it out for fun. It’s a cool vehicle to drive but I must say that if I just want to go around and drive for pleasure, I prefer the Vette and for all the other needs I use the Audi because it’s just so comfortable and also cheap to drive. We also use the Suburban to tow a trailer when we need to. Sometimes just around the horse farm.

The car itself runs fine and the only issue with it is the steering pump which is leaking. It’s a new (refurbished) pump and it basically began leaking after just a few months from installation. Quite sad, really…

So, ofcourse, what had happened was that the alternator – water pump rubber belt had broken and didn’t pull things around anymore. We managed to get a new belt in a couple of hours and after replacing it, we were happy to see that the engine was still running fine and everything began behaving normally again. Had I driven it longer like that, the engine could have gotten hurt. So, next time you notice a voltage drop, CHECK THE OTHER GAUGES TOO!

The reason we took the long trip was not just about driving – it was to go and see our two months old horse baby who’s still with his mother and has to stay with her till the end of this Summer. Then we can bring him home. Our new horse is called Calvados and he will become a beautiful grey stallion.

We took a few photos and they are here for you to see:

First of all I need to apologize for not posting anything new for a long time. Things have been really busy and in addition to my main job I have been working on pushing up the car stickers brand Red Rock Decals and we are also going to start a horse supplies and services business with my girlfriend which I will write about sometime later perhaps. Anyway, I promise I will be writing here a lot more often now and will keep you updated on what’s going on over here.

About the Corvette – what I haven’t told you about yet is that I I was somehow able to mess up both of the rear brake supports after rebuilding them. I simply over-tightened the ventilation screws on both calipers and they broke so easily nobody still believes me… So, I needed new brakes. I decided to buy the SSBC full brake package from Summit Racing and it was a good decision. The car works nicely now and I have no more issues with brakes. We have driven it for several hundred miles this Spring without any large issues. Just the Q-Jet carb needs a bit of tuning and perhaps a rebuild. I’ll try to do it within a month or so. Oh, and I need new front tires! Will be probably 235 width Cooper Cobras which I will order from Germany. They have good prices there compared to our local suppliers.

Suburban has been a bit of a tricky lady for us over the past few months. First of all, somebody decided to rob my laptop from the back seat when I was parking in front of a suburb house and it happened at about 10.30 AM!! What a stupid time to steal anything, but they managed to do it. They broke the left side middle row door window and got my laptop with ease. I know, I know… I was stupid to leave it there in the first place. But I’ve learned my lesson now as I’m typing this message from my brand new Dell Latitude E6400 series ;) The Suburban has got a state of the art alarm system now which lets me know of anything happening with the car on the alarm remote LCD. Then I can at least run out if I park in front of somebody’s house and some moron tries to steal the audio/video system.

I travelled to Israel for a week in March with my girlfriend and left the Suburban parked in my yard. When we came back and wanted to drive it, the starter just rotated the motor and the bendix didn’t hook to the engine at all. I removed the starter and cleaned the bendix which was simply a bit rusted and when I put the starter back, nothing worked properly. It did a horrible noise, didn’t rotate the engine and finally I had to pull the truck to service where they spent 3 days on it. After about 3 starters and a new flywheel, they also had to replace the distributor head and rotor. Somehow those were also dead. Now the truck is working perfectly and I just noticed an oil leak from some place near the steering wheel pump. Damn it! :)

I must tell you all about our Red Rock Decals stickers business which is now really becoming more and more popular both here locally in Estonia and also internationally.

Rapla Racing Track Photo Gallery

Although everything was OK with the Corvette differential when I bought the car October 2008, I had it parked in the garage over the winter and when I began driving it last Spring, I noticed a very strange behaviour with the rear end. When cold, everything was fine, but when I began driving it and had driven for about 20 miles, it began making horrible noises when taking corners and giving gas at the same time. It also wanted to drag the inside wheel and the car was just vibrating terribly. I almost had the rear end rebuilt but I didn’t have time to mess with it and then I just thought I’ll do it over the winter. Browsing the Corvette Forums about a week ago about the similar issues people have had, I accidentally found a tip which suggested to try fully synthetic 75W-140 rear end oil instead of the usual 80W-90. They also said that it’s very important to add limited slip diff additive (one 4 oz. bottle) even if the oil is certified for LSD use. So I decided to give it a try and bought also a small bottle of Ford LSD additive which was told to be the same thing as GM additive, simply different branding.

Guess what – my rear end issues are GONE. It’s silk smooth, the lock seems to be working fine and I can drive hundreds of miles without any of the issues appearing which I had before. It’s just a pleasure to drive this car now. Again it’s a good proof that American cars are EASY to fix. I’ve fixed most of the issues on my cars in a similar manner. I don’t know if the oil solved the issue permanently, but at least this summer-autumn period will hopefully be OK to drive.

The additive I used:

Oil used (two bottles):

Long time no new information here, but the present moment makes an end to this silence :) Again, I’ve been busy. I have my Air Traffic Controller job and all sorts of other activites with my businesses. Still, I managed to accomplish one of my long time ideas to gather two friends, one with a car and another with camera, and have a highway photo session of the Vette. So, off we went with my photographer handling my EOS 40D in the Monte Carlo SS. Oh well, the friend who was supposed to be taking good photos almost got really angry at us because we just couldn’t stop playing around and passing each other at full throttle! In the end we were still able to capture some decent stuff. Editing was done by me. When we finished shooting, we went to a drive-in and accidentally there were two Firebirds also in the queue. So we began talking and made some new friends.

First of all I’m sorry for staying so quiet for so long. Times have been busy at work, but also with the cars :) I have started a new division under my company called Red Rock Decals which is a sticker production firm, mainly creating them for cars. Stickers have been my interest for a long time and I’m hoping to make this business grow quickly. If you ever need anything like flags, signs, texts etc. then please contact me George via www.redrockdecals.com.

I’ve driven the Vette a lot since we’ve had beautiful weather all the time. The interior looks quite new and after a lot of waxing the outside isn’t bad, either. Yesterday we finally got the speedometer fixed!!! I replaced the plastic gear connecting to the cable, tightened the clamp which fastens the cable end, and it now works. What a great feeling to drive without the GPS.

However! Yesterday we also found a big problem – when the car was on the lift we pushed on the top of the wheels and noticed the half shafts move back and forth into the diff assembly by approx half an inch. As much as I’ve found out by now, it seems that while it’s not forbidden to drive like this, I shall fix it ASAP. The side yokes certainly need replacement and there might be other stuff, too. Getting into the diff means releasing it from the frame. Parts and labour I’m estimating near 800 dollars in total. There goes my new exhaust :D

By the way, I wrote this post on my new iPhone 3G. What an awesome phone and writing such long texts is just a bit slower than on the PC.