1995 Pontiac Trans Am FORSALE!

It’s a sad day but it’s time to part with the Trans Am. I put it up on craigslist tonight. If you’re interested let me know

More pictures here.

1997 Trans Am WS6

Wish my Trans Am still sounded this good.

Trans Am going up for sale

Yes, you read it right. After buying the Mazdaspeed3, I don’t see the need for keeping the Trans Am. A part of me wants to keep it and restore it, but the likelihood of me actually doing it are slim to none. The boys are still little 6 & 4. I’ll be putting it up on eBay this week seems to be a market for not so good 1995 Pontiac Trans Ams.

2007 Mazda Mazdaspeed3

Tonight I bought a used 2007 Mazda Mazdaspeed3. I finally got the last bit of life out of my 1995 Pontiac Trans Am, 12 years for an American car is great, in my opinion. But then again the one thing American car makers do well is make good V-8’s (not the juice) and it probably would’ve been fine a bit longer if I didn’t have the accident back in 2004.

The Mazda has both performance and practicality, the latter is something the Trans Am had none of. I haven’t driven a different stick shift in a long time so it took a bit of getting used to the Mazdaspeed’s clutch and brakes, very touchy and it moves too.

Here are some pictures (I took them from the dealer’s website):

For more pictures check out my flickr set: 2007 Mazdaspeed3. Ok off to go read the manual to see what all the things can do. Yes I read car manuals, there are a lot of little jewels you can find in them sometimes features you didn’t know the car had.

Knight Rider

I DVR’d the NBC television movie “Knight Rider”. I didn’t have very high expectations because they went with a freakin’ MUSTANG for KITT. But I have to say that’s one bad @$$ Mustang. Makes me want to trade in the Trans Am for a new Mustang :).

F-body strikes another owner :)

Looks like Dennis had issues with his Camaro.

I jumped in my car to head home when I arrived in Bloomington. Car wouldn’t start. Great, I really know little about cars. I knew it wasn’t a dead battery, the engine was turning over fine.

…Currently I drive a 1996 Chevy Camero.

Weekend summary

This weekend we drove to Maryland, yes again. While in Maryland I lost my only set of keys for my car. It’s yet another sign that it’s time for a new car. But getting a set of new keys is $170 compared to a new car So we put off the inevitable a little longer.

But that was the only bad news from this weekend. The reason we made the trip at all was to see Frank, my father-in-law, through his surgery for prostate cancer. He had the surgery done at NIH by a surgeon formerly from John Hopkins. We felt he was in good hands with that combination as opposed to his crappy insurance: Kaiser Permanente.

Frank is doing well after surgery. He had his entire family present to make sure he was ok. Hopefully he’ll be going home tomorrow.

update

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. Marco & Iliana have been sick the past week or two. Marco’s gotten better, Iliana continues to as well. Today she started CRAWLING! It was awesome to see.

Adan & I had a little spat on Tuesday night while at the family night at his school. It was over a book of all things. They had a book fair and Adan really wanted to buy a book about foam airplanes. It wasn’t a how too book though, it had 10 foam “pages” each with popout foam pieces to make foam airplanes. I felt that I had to “help” him make a better decision for buying a book. It was a book fair, not a toy fair. After my suggestions didn’t work, I went the brut force method, “No, I am *NOT* buying that book. Period.”

After sleeping on it, I realized that the real point of the book fair was to allow him to actually make a decision and get whatever book he wanted even if it was a bad one. So I told him he could get it today when his class goes back to the book fair. Turns out Elizabeth found a better book about making paper airplanes which came with several sheets of designer paper to make very cool paper airplanes. The best part of this book is you can use any paper and it will last a lot longer.

In the end, Adan gave the foam book to another boy who really really wanted it, and he made the right decision and got the paper airplane book.

On the car front, yes the saga continues. A week after I got the car back from my major repair, the A/C compressor started to squeal like a banshee when the car started or idled. I ignored it as I always do hoping it would go away. Well, yesterday morning the car wouldn’t turn over. The starter and battery were doing their best, but with a stuck pulley it’s hard to keep the engine running. I scored the alternator, power steering and A/C pulleys to see which one was stuck. And sure enough the A/C compressor was the culprit. Not much of a surprise as it hasn’t cooled the car for almost a year now, and the mechanics at Carolina Auto Masters said it was shot. But $700 - $900 isn’t worth fixing the A/C. Thankfully, the fourth gen f-body’s have a nice A/C delete pulley that can be used to replace it. I don’t get any A/C, but the car loses like 12lbs and gains more horsepower.

A friend of mine mentioned a nice mechanic shop called Ronnie White’s in Youngsville. I used these guys the last time to tow my car, so I figured I’d give them a try. They’ve been very communicative and are working on the car. I went with the A/C delete because it’s only $250 worth of work

That’s it for the going’s on in my neck of the woods. It’s time for bed, it’s been a long week.

It’s alive!

After 2.5 weeks, I finally got my car back from the shop. The following things were fixed:

• overheating
  • flushed coolant
  • fan relay
  • reprogrammed computer to turn on fans earlier to compensate for a 40 degree delta between the temp gauge sensor and the water pump sensor
• rough idle
  • “fixed” the cat
• maintenance
  • changed rear diff fluid (it was overdue)
• wouldn’t start
  • new starter
  • new Optima battery (kick ass battery to replace my 6 year old Diehard)

A special thanks to Carolina Auto Masters for great work as usual.

Week 3?

I’m starting to lose track of how long it’s been since I’ve had my car. I think it’s been 3 weeks already. It is Tuesday (what’s left of it anyway) and the car remains in the shop as of this morning. Looks like the final piece was being worked on today, the AC. All the other issues seemed to have been fixed.  I’m really hoping and praying it’ll be ready tomorrow. But knowing my luck it’ll be longer.