Since I run a few businesses one of them being Red Rock Decals which specializes in stickers, I just have to drop a few words about it to all of my readers here. Red Rock Decals is becoming more and more popular each day and we’re really satisfied with the steps we’ve taken forward lately. We are receiving orders from pretty large American corporations and a lot more from individuals around the world. If you need stickers of any kind, especially car stickers and designs, please don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll work out a good offer for you, no doubt about this!

At the moment we are selling ready-to-ship products in such categories like bumper stickers, warning signs, emergency exit and other such notice signs, flag stickers, rally car name tags etc.

Please take the time to visit the website at www.redrockdecals.com and I already thank you in advance for this.

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, it’s a year 2005 Audi A6 Quattro with a 3.0 litre V6 turbo-diesel engine. The color is metallic black (ofcourse black, as you see I just love this color!) and to those of you who are not familiar with European cars, A6 is a German manufactured so called executive car which is a perfect driver’s car and in size it fits between the smaller A4 and the larger A8 luxury car. Quattro means all-time four wheel drive and this is really a very good feature in our climate since we do tend to get a lot of snow during winter. The 3 litre TDI engine is currently one of the best car diesels available and it produces around 225 HP (165 kW) of power and a lot of torque. The fuel economy is around 9 l/100 km (or 26 mpg) in the city and 6.5 l/100 km (or 36 mpg) on the highway which is really a tremendous improvement from any of my previous vehicles. Diesel fuel costs nearly the same here as gasoline so it doesn’t matter what fuel it drinks.

The interior is what I’d call beige and it’s ofcourse real leather. All the interior panels fit perfectly with that color and it’s very comfortable to be in there indeed.

So, first impressions… unlocking the car is done with a button on the ignition key and you barely hear the door locks noise which is accompanied by a couple of turn signal blinks. The doors open very gently and they also close smoothly. No smashing is necessary. Sitting inside, there is a leather-covered beige steering wheel with several buttons on it for the stereo control and so on. The key is inserted to the dashboard on the right side of the steering wheel and as soon as you insert the key, some of the systems power on, the LCD monitor becomes live and the stereo begins to play. The seat is really comfortable and can be adjusted in all sorts of directions, in addition you can pump or empty two separate parts of the seat back to make you feel great also on a longer trip. When you turn on the ignition, you wait for the diesel pre-heat light to extinguish and then you just need to rotate the ignition key momentarily to the start position which initiates the automatic start-up sequence. Once the engine is running, you are informed on the instrument cluster display if there are any issues with the car requiring your attention. If not, it just reminds to press the brake pedal when switching out of Park. My car has got a 6 speed automatic transmission with Tiptronic feature so it also allows you to override the Drive mode and select the preferred gear manually. The shifter moves very precisely and easily and Drive engages with no bump at all so you just release the brake and off you go. If the usage of the dedicated Parking Brake is required, this car has got a very elegant solution for this – you have no manual parking brake handle anymore but just a switch on the left side of the shifter which you either pull up to engage the brake or push down to disengage it. The mechanism is fully automated. Beginning to drive, you ofcourse feel that it isn’t a V8 gasoline engine but a turbodiesel which means that it takes a tiny bit longer response time before the demanded acceleration occurs. I got used to this very quickly. Shifting is really unnoticeable – it’s just so smooth even if you accelerate at full throttle. That is ofcourse quite a lot of power and really pretty unnecessary in your everyday driving conditions. The brakes are stunning – there’s no dead zone and whenever you touch the brake pedal, something instantly happens. I’m used to “priming” the brake with a little push on the Suburban before ANYTHING happens and then advancing it to the required level. The Audi does exactly what you wish for with no delay. Steering is extremely precise and pretty firm on faster speeds while soft to steer when maneuvering. The noise level at any  legal speed is LOW. The diesel engine is really quiet and not heard to the inside at all when accelerating normally. On highway you only hear the tire noise which is also rather low level.

Comparing to the American cars… Well, there is no comparision because they really are VERY different things. Audi is a great example of the precise German engineering to every single detail but American cars are simple, reliable and rugged although with not so many features and possibilities. The Suburban is really a truck – it takes quite a bit of time to accelerate all the weight to desired speed unless you push on the pedal which wakes up the V8 in its completeness and does what it was designed for. It’s not so simple and problem free to drive as the Audi because it is very big, has got its own little tricks you better know before going on a longer drive with it and it’s simply not so sophisticated. This is rather good since it also adds reliability.

Today I wanted to share my opinion about smoking habit. I must say that it has always been disgusting for me but when I was younger, I didn’t really know too many people who were smoking. In the past few years I met people at work who were smoking addicts and now I have several friends who do it regularily. The worst thing is that many of them are really young people and they are messing up their health already in such an early age. It’s just awful for me to see another young boy or girl lighting up a cigarette and sometimes I would really like to pull it out from their mouth although I have no legal right to do so (and I won’t). For me, smoking is a sign of lower intelligence and I think that young people who haven’t smoked for long should really quit it ASAP to avoid leaving a bad impression about themselves. When I think of smoking, I just can’t stop myself thinking about people who don’t have a good job, use vulgar language and THINK they have a big ego although they are worth nothing in my eyes. The awful thing about smoking also is that it leaves down a disgusting smell which attaches to your and nearby people clothing (also hair) and it’s a reason for people to stop working, stop studying, stop doing whatever they were doing to just go and do nothing. Come on – go and rest then, don’t overload your body with just a different kind of crap!

As a businessman I must say that cigarettes are indeed a brilliant business idea. It’s a dirty business I’d say, but it’s hugely profitable. The “good” thing about cigarettes is that they are relatively cheap to produce, they are easy to ship since they are so light, one small package is worth a nice sum of money and most important of all, they cause addiction! Every business would rise like a rocket if it caused addiction. Another interesting point is that even if one wanted to quit smoking, it becomes really hard for him or her (especially if he/she doesn’t have a very strong personality) if friends and for example co-workers still smoke all the time and provide no support whatsoever to the one trying to quit.

One day I had some free time and I had my Canon camera with me, so I decided to create some attention regarding this topic. I stepped into a supermarket, bought a bunch of expensive Marlboro cigarettes for about 35 USD and went to my Chevy Suburban. I carefully placed the packages to the asphalt in front of all the people walking by and then did a little burnout on them. My message was that at least some people who drive such big and rare cars in Estonia simply HATE smoking and since such vehicles are especially loved by younger people who are often addicted to smoking, they should see that while the car is cool, smoking simply isn’t. Our company seriously supports quitting smoking and we won’t hesitate to help our employees also financially if it was necessary for some method of quitting it. Oh, and if you say that with my action I supported Phillip Morris Corporation instead, then you’re right, but I’d say that I supported Estonian government instead. Believe me, Morris won’t even notice the difference in their financial statement from what I did.

At my company Red Rock Decals which produces high quality stickers and decals for cars, we also have a STOP SMOKING sticker in our product line and if you have the same opinion with me, why not add it to your car and make people think twice when they light up their next cigarette.

Click to visit the Red Rock Decals product page and buy one of these stickers yourself. I also added a special discount to our web store which you can feel free to use – buy it 20% cheaper! Use coupon code STOPSMOKING at checkout.

Today I thought I should write about a website which I really adore as a car fan. It’s the Jay Leno’s Garage found at jaylenosgarage.com. Most of the credit goes certainly to the master Jay Leno himself who is best known for his Tonight Show on NBC running daily in the United States. I like that show too, but it’s just incredible what kind of a car collection Jay has put together over the years. He has practically everything – simply a dream of every boy and man. One of my favorite videos there is of his 1970 Dodge Challenger HEMI 426 which is just a lovely vehicle I wish to own one day. You can watch the Challenger video here.

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.