Mostly Harmless

I’m surprised it took this long to get pulled over for speeding in my WRX. I’m more surprised that I didn’t get a ticket. (Thank you nice Police man.)

I’m really glad I didn’t say anything like “Hah! That’s nothing! You should see this sucker move!” That woulda been bad.

He said that a ticket for 24 mph over the limit also includes a mandatory court appearance. I’m glad I didn’t ask him what 55 over the limit (on the highway) would get me. I’m assuming that it would get me an arrest and a revoked license. Possibly a severe beating.

Just yesterday, coincidentally less than 100 yards from where I was pulled over today, I was curious about how fast my car would accelerate from 50 to 60. The answer is: virtually instantaneously. Therein lies the crux of the matter — if the turbo is engaged (i.e. anything above 3k RPM) and you’re in the right gear, the car will accelerate as if controlled by telepathy (i.e. as soon as you think it).

Such telepathic acceleration is wonderful when you’re behind a car with stinky exhaust and don’t want to sit behind it while you’re stuck waiting for the train. Merely think about passing it and *presto* you’re in front of it. That passing maneuver was such a non-event that I thought the cop was pulling me over for not coming to a complete stop at the stop sign (it was marginal…).

This is how a WRX works: from a dead stop you accelerate for 2-3 seconds and then you coast back down to the speed limit, or whatever is generally accepted as the speed limit. That’s not even the fast WRX, the STi. That’s the standard WRX. The STi is a lot faster. The STi screams “Please write me a speeding ticket! If you can catch me. Punk.” Also the STi is not available as a wagon.

A high performance car will let you drive around other cars as if they are parked, even though they are, apparently, moving. This is a good thing. Speed lets you maneuver. It is far, far better than having a P.O.S. that can’t get out of its own way. I don’t know how far that argument will get you in court, and happily I don’t need to find that out… at least this week.

Tomorrow I need to remember to keep it below, say 40-ish, on that stretch of road, or go the slightly longer route where the limit actually is 50 (probably).

bring-the-noise

After quite a lot of dicking around I finally have a functional subwoofer in my car. I ordered an Infinity Basslink powered subwoofer from CarDomain.com on the 9th and received it on the 14th. Since I neglected to use the intervening time to order a cheap amplifier install kit from Crutchfield — or CarDomain, for that matter — or check the stores in town, I ended up going to three different places that night before settling on a Monster amp wiring kit. It appears that you’re going to end up spending $50+ to get one locally. If you buy the first thing the salesman puts in your hand you’ll spend $100+. I bought the 200-watt amp wiring kit (8 ga. wire + remote turn on + misc. bits) and some RCA cables. I could have had the sub installed at Best Buy for $60 but I opted to spend $54 on wires and spend hours doing it myself ‘cuz I’m a glutton for punishment.

Step #1 in any WRX stereo install should be ‘remove glove compartment’. It just saves a bunch of time when it comes to fishing wires through the dash. (I generally don’t do that until I’ve spent at least 20 minutes attempting to do it the hard way.) A corollary to that might be ‘remove engine’ if you’re running a new power cable to the battery. Since that wasn’t really, what’s the word… ‘convenient’, I muddled through and ran the wire with the engine in place. Getting that power to the back of the car isn’t too difficult, all the side molding bits come off if you yank on ‘em the right way. It does help to remove the back seat too, it’s only held in with two bolts and the whole thing weighs about 5 pounds.

Back at the head unit… I had to remove my factory subwoofer harness and hook up the RCAs for the new sub. The four main speakers are still powered by the head unit and the sub has it’s own amp. The nice thing is that the head unit (Pioneer DEH8600) has front, rear, and subwoofer outputs and can do much crossover voodoo inside the unit itself.

So, with the car still partially dismantled, I could finally plug in the subwoofer. I barely turned up the gain and had plenty of bass. I closed the rear hatch and settled in to the driver’s seat for the first listen. Five minutes later… the subwoofer let out a loud FOOP!! and blew a fuse. Oh, the humanity.

I was a little… disphoric. I wasn’t entirely surprised, however, as I had read a review at epinions.com from someone who’d had the same problem.

I reassembled the car and drove to the all-night “misc. auto fuse” store up the road. SuperAmerica. The new fuse didn’t help. It turned on but produced no sound. So that sucked.

I called CarDomain the next day and they offered to exchange it but the Basslink is backordered so they didn’t have anything to send to me. I called Fast-Trak and they said they’d fix it for free (liars). I schlepped it over to Ultimate Electronics (Fast-Trak drop off point) and within a couple of hours received a phone call saying that they wouldn’t work on it at all — for reasons unknown. I drove back and picked it up that night.

Time passes.

Yesterday — as opposed to the previous night when it would have been convenient — I decided to see if U.E. would match CarDomain’s price, before I called up CarDomain to exchange it — and potentially wait weeks for a replacement. The guy said he would — so long as I buy the 3-year extended warranty. At that point I wanted the extra warranty anyway… I called CarDomain and set up an RMA. They e-mailed me a pre-paid return label which I couldn’t print for want of a functioning print cartridge, so I faxed that sucker to the local UPS Store (nee Mailboxes etc.) over my Vonage phone line (yay) and hauled the subwoofer across town (yet again).

Bereft of the dead-weight Basslink I strode purposefully (not really) into Ultimate Electronics and strode out with a brand new Basslink. Elapsed time from dropping off the dead one to having a new one: less than 20 minutes. Not too bad.

(Weeks from now I’ll have my original $254.95 back from CarDomain, with any luck.)

I hooked up the new subwoofer in the parking lot, just to save yet another trip in case it decided to implode immediately. Happily it did not die and I had tons of bass for the drive home.

I redid the 8600’s automatic calibration with the subwoofer installed and got a much nicer looking (i.e. flatter) frequency curve than the previous times. I think it helped that I positioned the mic a bit differently (seat back upright so it’s closer to where my ears are, and the mic against the headrest instead of hanging over the hole in the headrest).

Here’s where the magic happens.

The automatic calibration did all this: set the front high-pass filter to 100Hz, set the slope to 6 db (I think), set the rear high-pass filter to 160Hz (smaller speakers), set the slope. Set the subwoofer crossover to 100 Hz, the slope to 18db, the level to -11, and reversed the phase. And it set the AutoEQ and the Time Alignment of all the speakers, of course.

Armed with a freshly charged iPod, containing 265+ hours of music, a freshly calibrated stereo, and an almost full tank of gas, I set out on a TWO HUNDRED MILE, 3-hour+ subwoofer shakedown run (no pun intended). I sampled countless dozens of songs while circling the entire metro area, repeatedly. Instead of anemic low-end response and distortion I have virtually unlimited, effortless bass and nary a hint of distortion at any comfortable volume level.

It sounds really nice… but I think I’m going to run the calibration again because the built-in crossover on the sub wasn’t turned up to 120 Hz, and I think I want the sub to handle that instead of the front speakers. I might just tweak the high-pass filters manually first to see what that does. I’ve got a funky resonance issue with the front speakers that shows up rarely. There should be a couple of ways to fix that. I haven’t adjusted the EQ yet other than to set the level on the “Powerful” setting to -2, that’s how good the calibration was — just about everything sounds really good by default.

With the subwoofer’s amp handling the major power demands I am free to crank the stereo to the moon. If an unexpectedly loud passage comes along it will just shake the entire car instead of clipping. It’s pretty sweet.

These are some pretty decent speakers. If I can find my receipt from Comp USA I’ll get $20 or $30 back. (Receipt search not going so well…)

To say that they’re a upgrade from my previous computer speakers would be a huge understatement. They’re actually an upgrade from just about all the other speakers in the house.

The subwoofer is bigger than my car. Well, that’s an exaggeration. The subwoofer is bigger than my car’s subwoofer. Which really means that I need a proper subwoofer in the car, as opposed to the “factory” subwoofer.

I am, however, pleased by how the car stereo upgrade (stage 1) has turned out. I put a Pioneer 8600 and four new speakers in. Took freakin’ forever to install the speakers, btw. The nice thing with the 8600 is that is has a built-in 13-band EQ and a calibration mic. After you calibrate you can tweak many, many more things. I haven’t really begun to fine tune it, but it already has moments of greatness.

Car stereo upgrade, Stage 2, will involve multiple amps and a proper subwoofer. I should have gone for more expensive speakers, I suppose, but I don’t have an immediate desire to replace them. The head unit doesn’t have quite enough power to push them properly, which is more of a problem than the slight brassiness. I think I can tweak that out, given some time.

The speakers were the only ones that Crutchfield said would “fit.” Which basically means the depth is not so great that you have to use heroic measures to install them. It still took drilling new holes and some fancy Dremel work, and several hours time, to get the speakers in.

At this point I can practically dismantle the entire interior in a few minutes with a phillips screwdriver and a butter knife — since I’ve installed speakers in all four doors, the subwoofer, a new head unit, alarm system, and the auto-dimming rear view mirror. The only thing I haven’t installed is the extended armrest, because I haven’t decided to get that yet.

Back to the THX computer speakers… I only got 2.1 due to the lack of any real 5.1 support for my computer. I can get a 5.1 audio card but it appears the fancy surround stuff only happens with the PC drivers. Plus the card would add $100 to the cost, and the 5.1 speakers are $100+ more expensive too. Good stereo speakers with a subwoofer work fine for me.

The first thing I listened to with the new speakers was “The Legend of Earthsea” on SciFi (as my computer is acting as my only functional TV). The movie had much rain and thunder, which sounded spectacular with the big subwoofer. It’s really kicked ass on the DVDs I’ve watched too, and music sounds mighty fine as well.

Some people might call it a “spree”

I ain’t got time to Blog…

Stuff I’ve purchased in the last few months, sorted by overall cost of the category and by price within the category, more or less.

• portable audio
  • PocketDock w/line-out
  • iSkin eVo2
  • Etymotic ER-6 earphones
  • 20-gig iPod (4th generation)
• misc doodads
  • Rubik's Professor Cube (5×5x5)
  • JB spy camera
  • Hoist Prime 8 home gym
• computer upgrades
  • (another) 120-gig hard drive
  • Pioneer DVR107D 8x DVD burner
  • ATI Radeon 9000 Pro, Mac edition
  • Formac Studio TVR digital video encoder & TV tuner
  • Gigadesigns dual 1.33 GHz G4 accelerator
• vehicle
  • fluorescent work light
  • random orbital polisher/waxer
  • lots of cleaning products
  • auto fire extinguisher
  • cargo net
  • subwoofer
  • auto-dimming mirror/compass
  • security system upgrade
  • 2004 Subaru Impreza WRX

A couple of those haven’t even shipped yet, namely the iSkin iPod protector and the dual 1.33 ghz accelerator.

I just installed the Radeon 9000 on Friday night. I only did one QuakeIII time demo with the old GeForce2 mx beforehand. Got 77 fps. With the 9000 I got… 77 fps. Then I removed my maxfps cap and got… 77 fps. Then I upped the resolution from 640×480 to 1024×768 and got… 77 fps. 1152×870… 77 fps.

So that was fun.

Apparently my max fps is bound by the CPU or the AGP bus. I’m thinking it’s the CPU ‘cuz no matter how much detail I turn on I get the same results. The improvement over the GeForce is that now I can turn on all the eye-candy and run at high-res without losing any speed. The GeForce was pretty much tapped out at resolutions over 640×480, IIRC, so that would have been a bottleneck when the CPU upgrade finally gets here.

The power orbital waxer is merely the latest stage in my descent towards total auto detailing obsession. The car is almost always insanely clean, which is a shame because I got the car at the “paint damaged/overspray/acid rain” sale. The paint problems aren’t generally noticeable in daylight — and the car ain’t just white, it’s WHITE!, so it will burn the retinas from your head if you look directly at it — but in the dim fluorescent light of my garage I notice the bad spot on the door just about every day. After it rains I’ll go over the car with the car duster (the next morning when it’s dry) or dry the car off with The Absorber, if it’s actively raining during the drive home. If it’s too dirty for the car duster and not wet enough for the Absorber I can use the Armor All car wash wipes — which are pre-moistened towelettes big enough to wipe down the entire car (and they actually work very well). On Thursday after it rained I dried the car, wiped it down, cleaned the wheels, and hit the tires with some tire black stuff.

Nice -n- shiny. Ahhhh.

So, what’s my credit card balance after all of this?

$0.

We have ways to make you Tock

Dateline: Roseville. My car is on its last legs. Engine problems. Bite me.

It was bad enough when I whacked a curb a month ago and gave it a permanent alignment problem. Nice for the resale value, I presume, but I could live with that. Also nice is the slow leak in the A/C which requires a yearly $80 recharge, I can live with that.

Now it’s burning oil, at an alarming rate, and has killed yet another catalytic converter. So… $500 to fix one of the CCs and _maybe_ a $2,000 valve job. Or worse. Potentially better (valve guides). It’ll cost hundreds to find out, I think. My mechanic did say there may be a point when I might want to consider “walking away” from the car, since I may end up paying thousands of dollars to fix a car worth thousands of dollars.

Update: Used engines are cheap. Rebuilt, not so much. Cheap means $900 – $1600. I could get an engine with 45k miles on it for $1,500. For $900 I’d get an engine that’s due for the 90k maintenance. I’m liking the idea of having an engine with 70k fewer miles on it.

My mechanic was figuring $4,500 for a rebuilt engine. At that point you’re spending the trade-in value of the car to make it worth… the trade-in value of the car. (One place I found on the ‘net won’t rebuild those engines ‘cuz the walls are too thin, so I don’t think rebuilt is an option anyway.)

According to Kelley Blue Book the mileage difference between 45k and 115k gets you a $1,300 improvement in resale value. The mileage diff. between 0k (e.g., rebuilt engine) and 115k gets you… a $1,300 improvement in resale value. I suppose it’s topping out the “low-mileage” parameter in there somewhere. The whole car doesn’t magically become 70k miles newer, of course, but one could argue that the lower mileage engine adds a lot of life to the car (esp. considering it’s F*ing dying currently).

So, the Plan o’ Several Hours Ago was “buy a new, used car this weekend.”

The Plan o’ The Moment is “used engine + new cat + leisurely investigate getting a newer car sometime in the future.” But I’m still going to check out ye old WRXeses this weekend.