Archive for the ‘Suburban Maintenance’ Category

Hey all of my readers,

First of all I’m so glad to report that the visit statistics to my blog have been rising since day one and it keeps going up each month. I’m very happy about it because this here is something that I created purely for my own fun and for your pleasure without any business ideas in mind unlike most of my projects that I start. But enough about this, I’m sure this is something you don’t want to hear very much about! Let’s show you some pictures, then:

That’s what we had to cope with about a week ago… We had such snow basically out of nowhere because it was constantly around +7 C during daytime and no snow could survive on the ground with such temperature for long. That day the temperature stayed below zero even during daytime and it created some serious winter conditions on the roads. Since I drive the Audi A6 on daily basis now and the Suburban stays in the countryside, I decided to take the Chevy out and experience the “awesomeness” again that it so easily provides in slippery conditions. If you want some adrenaline, get a rear wheel drive Chevy with mid-aged M+S tires and have a ride in winter on roads which have not been plowed/melted. I guarantee you a lot of fun or your money back :) Driving the Suburban in such conditions is challenging to say the least. Especially if you come from a near perfectly engineered 4WD german automobile. The first thing you notice is that it’s really complicated to get going without spinning the rear wheels + having the rear end turning either left or right due to slightly banking road, differential behaviour or whatever else the physics can come up with. I’d say that if you try to accelerate to cruising speed at such throttle that you’re used to on a dry road, the steering experience will be similar to that of a speed-boat. Alright now, you’re at cruising speed on a straight road and everything seems alright. But there’s a curve, or even worse, a roundabout ahead! You brake and it could easily be that nothing really happens except under your foot where the pedal begins vibrating thanks to ABS. You really need to plan the braking with this vehicle or you will cause trouble. I rear ended a guy last Winter in the morning on a little slope downhill. It had snowed all night and all the critical roads were not properly maintained yet. The speed was just around 15-20 km/h and I saw that there’s an Opel Zafira waiting on the stoplight ahead at the end of the slope. I began braking soon but there was just no chance of stopping in time. I heard a collision noise a million feet in front of me where the bumper guard happens to be :) I didn’t feel anything and once I stopped I had pushed the Zafira a couple of meters forward. His tail was nicely smashed in and the insurance paid a nice 1200 EUR fee to fix his car. I just caught some of his paint on my bumper guard. It ruined my color setup though since the bumper guard was supposed to be ALL BLACK and now it had purple on it!

It’s especially embarrassing with the Chevy here in Estonia during winter time since everybody thinks that it’s an offroad vehicle and is not supposed to get stuck. Last winter I was stuck absolutely everywhere you can possibly get stuck in a vehicle with more than 3 wheels. It was a nightmare. Every morning I had to go to work I woke up an hour earlier just to see what had happened outside over the night and to prepare for any contingency. We lived one period of winter in a flat with my girlfriend and you have to park the car outside. In addition to the fact that I had always taken the space of two normal cars, I often needed to shovel a hole somewhere in the snow for my Chevy and oh God it took time… Imagine that you work for at least an hour to make a spot for your car and the next day some idiot has parked his Corolla there. Oh you would have seen some swearing from my end these moments… I had thoughts from speeding into that spot “without noticing” the Corolla there to installing a CRIME SCENE tape around that spot or placing a sign saying “CHEVY PARKING ONLY – All others will be towed and sold for scrap”. I didn’t do any of that though since in the end I’ve still got a good person somewhere inside me.

So, the Suburban is a nice little car but lately it began causing problems to us. I don’t know why – it just has to mess with our minds periodically. Over the winter it’s just plain easy to get stuck in the snow with no big effort but right now when there’s not much chance for that yet, it has to find some other way to get on our nerves. One day I refueled it with 98 Octane instead of 95 which shouldn’t really cause any issues. But somehow it did. Right after that I got the Check Engine light and when starting up the engine next time, it started real rough. I put 95 on top of it and that then made things even worse. I’m not saying that there’s any connection between the refueling and engine issues but somehow they happened at the same time. A few days ago I wanted to have a ride in the Chevy and it didn’t start at all. There was like no ignition… The starter kept rotating very nicely but no chance of starting it. I finally managed to fire it up by removing the air filter, having my girlfriend crank the starter and me spraying some brake cleaner spray to the air intake at the same time. I can start it without doing this once the engine is warm although I really need to give some throttle with my foot and it shoots some black smoke out from the exhaust. It acts like an old diesel although it’s actually gasoline! Will see about this, don’t really have time to mess with it all my free time. I’m letting the Suburban feel a bit guilty before doing anything myself. Maybe that will help?

A couple of weeks ago we had lovely foggy weather here in the countryside and we decided to take a few photos of the Suburban. Here’s what we got:

Hey all,

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…

Hi all,

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.

Alrighty! I thought it was about time to order something cool for the Suburban exterior and this time I decided the accessories to be bumper guides. These are the shiny posts attached to the front bumper which look real good on any truck with hood and they also carry yellow lamps on top which function as corner markers and turn signals. I ordered the guides from the best known American manufacturer of such items named Bores Manufacturing, Inc. Here’s a list of what they are offering.

For those who don’t know, here’s what they look like: