Two fun things showed up on my daily drivers over the weekend. First, I drove the Daytona to my mother's place, which Mapquest says is 3.13 miles, and the trip and whole odometers stayed at 350.3 and 184885 the whole way. Neither one moved until after I got gas and reset the tripometer. Then they sat on 30.1 and whatever for the first nine miles of my drive home from work Monday before starting to move again. Then, on Sunday, I was running some errands in the Stratus and noticed that I suddenly have some mottling on the trunk lid. I initially thought it was water spotting, but no, it looks like the clear coat has somehow been compromised since last Monday (didn't use it Tuesday through Thursday and it rained all day Friday and Saturday). It's almost like someone put some chemical on the decklid and it ate through the clear, but then there'd be a trail where it ran off and there's nothing like that. And it's nowhere near the deep scratch I stupidly inflicted clearing snow off the car in the winter of 2002, either. Guess I'll have to throw some wax on it and then look into getting the decklid repainted next Spring. No way am I letting the clearcoat peel off this not-even-six-year-old car.
Joined: Sun Oct 09 2005, 09:31PM
Location: NE USA
Posts: 288
Ahhh, the modern car...
My '00 Neon exterior nameplates have all lost their chrome tape. Now they just look flat grey. And, actually it doesn't look too bad. The wonders of plastic!
The upside is 30+ mpg on both of them with my 54-mile round-trip commute. The Stratus does amazingly well, considering its heavier weight, higher bhp and automatic trans. It only gives up about 2 mpg to the lighter, less-powerful, five-speed Daytona.
Of course, to see what I'd get if I lived closer to work, I need only look at my mother's identically-equipped Stratus, which is only getting low 20s. But then, I've put 38,000 miles on mine in four and a half years, driving it only every other day, while she's only put 12,000 on hers in three years, driving it exclusively. I'll bet if we traded for a week hers would start breaking 30 and mine would drop to 22-23.
Joined: Fri Oct 14 2005, 07:26PM
Location: Pittsburgh,PA
Posts: 481
I've seen 2 month old cars with the plastic chrome peeling off, nothing beets the old fashion show chromed metal over the cheep plastic crap. Then again the factory chrome rims are even worse, put new center caps on a customers Jeep Grand Cherokee, and the chrome was peeling off the exterior of the rims around the center caps Tom
The mileage on my Daytona took a dump when I went from a 50-mile round trip commute to a 10-mile round trip. Used to get right at 30 on a 80-0-80mph long highway commute (gotta love DFW traffic), but she's now cracking 20 with 50% side streets, 50% highway. She's barely warmed up by the time I park, so I guess that's to be expected. It's nice going two weeks between fillups, though. My Valiant won't be getting that kind of mileage when I start driving her again... but the Valiant will be more fun!
On the odometer issue, I strongly suspect that the little nylon odometer gear has broken. Happened to me several times, and they're a REAL pain in the butt to fix. It's one of those common problems that these cars have, right up there with the headlight motor relay crapping out. I can tell you how to fix the odometer, but it would be easier to find another one in the salvage yard with similar miles. Just look for one where the trip meter isn't reading close to all zeros...
If the odometer had just stopped moving entirely, I'd be ready to blame it on a broken gear, but sometimes it moves and sometimes it doesn't. For example, this morning on the way to work it was fine. I mentioned this on the Daytona/Laser board over at Allpar.com and two members immediately came back with a bad speed sensor as the culprit. I guess this is what happens when you buy a new car and then keep it long enough for it to become an old car.
My cruise quit working, but my speedo and odo still work fine... Although I suspect that my speed sensor may have some "issues", it still keeps the revs up until the car stops moving, so I think the issues must not be bad issues...
Odometer's been working on the Daytona lately, which is good. What's even better is that I hit some local yards yesterday and found a turn signal switch! As an added bonus, the '93 LeBaron it came from still ran, so I was able to test it before it was pulled, and now that I've seen it come out I know how to get my dash apart.