Oh I tell yuu!
Percy, what part of my name in my voicemail message sounds like L/Risa? And I don’t think this is the first time I got a call from this North LA number!
Author Archive for taro
Page 45 of 88
Thank goodness the horn on the FR-S is decently loud! A Porsche Cayenne/vw/audi almost backed directly into my drivers side in the Koko Marina parking lot. Came extremely close. Doesnt your fancy shamancy car have backup sensors? Sheesh!
Could they have gotten a more difficult set of call letters for a Japanese speaker? Hopefully their transmitter problems are fixed, they seemed to be on no problem the past few days. Their signal isn’t any better though, HD reception is pretty unusable in a moving car in town and anywhere east. Too bad because it seems they are slowly bringing features online, I notice the web based streaming app now lists title and artist for most of the songs. Hopefully they succeed!
OK, here by popular demand, an overall pic of the car with the PlastiDipped wheels. And to fulfill my Racer Boy image, I actually raced at today’s SCCA Solo II AutoCross. It was a learning and entertaining experience. My first run I forgot to turn off the VSC stability control. I realized as I was pulling away from start and could only manage to turn off the traction control. What a horribly frustrating excercise! Throw it into a corner and put the pedal down and the electromom kicks in and the gas goes limp. By contrast on my second run where I did turn all the techno dodads off, I was all over the place! Oh my, these Bridgestone Turanza tires featuring COCS (they need to get together with Easton with their CNT) are quite the squirrelmeisters! I dare say these might be worse than the Michellin “Prius” tires that all the reviewers got on their FR-S’. At least those were summer tires, these are all seasons. When I calmed down and tried to drive more whithin the bounds of the tires, things got better, and actually pretty fun!
One of the things I visually really didn’t like on my FR-S were the rims. The five paired shiney spokes just didn’t do it for me. A pretty popular thing to do that I’d seen someone at McB do to his tC was to paint the rims with Plastidip. Plastidip is a synthetic rubber coating, possibly known more from olden times as tool handle dip. It’s also in an aerosol form as used here. The only bummer is you can only find black, red, sometimes blue, and maybe clear locally. Too bad because they have a bunch of other colors, including disco neons, camo tones, metalics, and pearlizer finish. Anyway, the beauty of this stuff is that it is non-permanent. Get tired of it, you can peel it of. As a consequence, it’ll eventually peel on its own. We shall see how long it lasts. I only did two major coats on the front side, more is recommended. Continue reading ‘Plastidip’
So in the wide eyes of my co-worker’s young son, does Dad go to work with Asian James Bond?
My co-worker today told me how he brought his son by work one day and they saw my new car. Kids will notice little things, and at the time I hadn’t cut and fit in the trim plate so the PTunning tow hook mount in the front bumper was much more pronounced. Little guy asked Dad, what’s that?
Dad said as a matter of fact, “oh, it’s a machine gun.”
“You mean like James Bond?”
“Yup!”
I guess next time he comes in I’ll have to say, “hey kid, the name’s Hong, James Hong.” Oh wait, that’s a real persons name!
Hm, so maybe that can be my next year’s Haloween plan? Originally if I had gotten the white I had a perfect plan, I could cosplay Speed Racer! Find some red masking tape to lay out the red M, make or borrow a magnetic circle 5 for the doors.  I already have a white Racer helmet, would need to find a little too tight blue polo shirt, a red scarf, and white jeans. Pretty easy and I’m sure would work great driving around!
Oh well!
Just got back from a quick jaunt to Waimanalo and back, after first running to Napa to buy a new oil filter socket wrench. I had bought filters and gaskets at Toyota earlier, but I didn’t realize that this filter was yet a different size. I don’t have the universal fit tool Dave has. Anyway hit the magic 1000 miles. Pulled into the garage to get ready to do an oil change. I heard the infamous “crickets”. We shall see what happens after the oil change, but it looks like it’ll be going into Scion/Servco to apply the TSB. With the power of the Internet, technical issues are now quickly widely known among the enthusiasts. The chirping is an acknowledged problem with the very high pressure fuel pump for the DI. There is also a TSB regarding the ECU engine mapping that I might be needing. It manifests as uneven idling, sometimes going as far as causing the engine to die and triggering a check engine light. Mine doesn’t seem to be bad, but I do see an occasional idle dip below normal when clutching in coming to a stop.
Having a brand spaking new car, I’ve been fairly picky about finding parking, but sometimes lots are pretty full without much choice. Last night stopped by Hawaii Kai to pick up something to eat. Figured it was going to be fast so I picked a stall near far end, but not the very end. It was next to a nice BMW so I hopped less risk. Imagine my horror as I was walking back to my car, the BMW was gone, and some guy was attempting to pull into the end stall with some Buick/Chevy Centuryish thing of recent vintage. He was repeatedly bashing against the end curb trying to turn in, car bouncing around as it started to climb up. Thankfully he gave up, maybe because he saw me, and went to find another stall. Shake your head moments, like seeing a VW Beetle with scraped side. Makes you believe that people really do need back-up sensors on a Smart car.
And check out the site yourparkingsux.com for more examples of great parking skillz!
