goose bumps

just watched a cars scene at breakfast - the one in which doc hudson has his little all-alone-race around willy's butte, and for better sound, i switched on my stereo.

what i like most about this scene is the moment when doc starts and revves up his engine... i love the deep, rich motor sound.
gives me goose bumps.

it's a pity that the german TÜV doesn't authorize borla stinger exhausts.

strange noise, resolved

...just a simple screw!
i guess its purpose is to fasten the vette butt hull-piece to the frame, if i'm not mistaken.

took the chance for a little night ride.
the noise is gone, everything seems to be o.k. now.
oomph.

strange noise

on driving today, i noticed a strange rattling noise at the rear end. something seems to vibrate there. and when i tapped with my fingers against the lower part of the hull, just about where the grey strip is located, something clanked inside.


hmmm, i'll have to check on that...

this is crazy...

http://www.motorauthority.com/news/supercars/coachbuilt-karvajal-designs-zx-1-c6-corvette/

the matte/glossy paint effects are interesting. looks pretty cool.
but the rest...

to be honest, i don't like the hood design. and as for the rest of the chassis - well, that might be everything, but hardly a vette anymore.

maybe i just dislike it because it's a convertible.
never understood the craze about having one.
i prefer cars with proper roofs ;-)

problems of the underpowered

a question to all of you who are lucky to have 400 horsepower and more: do you ever experience small cars tailgating, following you over quite some distance and coming so close that they might crash into your trunk?
it's annoying, but normally i tend to ignore them...
how do you react?

okay, corvettes are still somewhat "exotic" in germany. but if you are driving one of the well-known brands, i. e. lotuses, lambos or ferraris - do you experience the same?

easter chocolate frenzy

instead of chocolate easter bunnies, i've got easter cars (what else?!).

on the other hand, bunnies, without easter and chocolate, ain't bad, too.
maybe i should rethink the whole thing... ;-)

unfortunately they didn't have chocolate corvettes. and if you take a closer look, you will notice that the ferrari fraction within this batch is strongest, closely followed by the beemer fraction...

gloomy monday

well, surely i shouldn't complain... i'm still alive & kicking, and still got my baby.
just got the feeling that life sucks at the moment.
maybe i should get more social - should go out and meet people instead of sitting at home, think about "now" and not about the future.
and then again, maybe that's it.

no, wheather is still bad. rainstorms announced for the weekend, which means "no driving".
my so-called one week of "holidays" - gone before i could say "corvette c6", wasted on dreary stuff which was necessary but not nice.
my creativity got stuck, haven't written a single line for a long time. even translating becomes hard at the moment. no input, no ideas, no mood to draw up the slightest scribblings.
my slalom car having a broken catalyzer and trouble with the TÜV. boy, that was expensive. and the slalom suspensions not yet ready. bit by bit i'm running out of time, slalom season starts in april.
still need new tires.

yuck.
just let me whimper for a while.

ah yes... the garage...

forgot to mention that i paid a short visit to the frankfurt corvette garage last week.
since the battery failure, the windows didn't close properly when closing the doors. additionally, i wanted to get rid of that obscure alert called "service column lock" which isn't mentioned in the german user's manual and surely had been triggered by the battery blackout. and third, it was time for the yearly inspection.
well, so far, so good...

to be honest, there really was some improvement compared to my previous visits:

• the passenger compartment wasn't dirty this time
• they also knew the correct amount of motor oil
• they'll get me a new targa roof (oops, i gotta order a new "stickers" sticker - the other one is on my helmet now)
• my baby got a car wash
• they got new staff which obviously did a better job than the people i met last year

nevertheless, i'll be watching them. too many things went wrong last year. i don't trust them - yet.
let's see.

thanks!

...he he... this is what happens when people know you're a cars enthusiast.


;-) thanks, rainier!

v-day, or "size matters!"

did you ever break into your own car?
with a battery as dead as a doornail, you'll have to... or at least the procedure for getting access is pretty weird and comes very close to "breakin' into..."

the c6's doors don't have a keyhole. the doors are opened and locked electronically, but without any electricity, it's just bad luck, the doors remain shut.
that means: open the trunk - manually, with the physical key, because this is the only compartment accessible with a key - and try to climb through the trunk into the passenger compartment, where you'll have to open the hood.
for the first time, i was glad that nature had built me somewhat short - i'm only 1.70 m; a guy of 1.90 m surely would have had more problems... so much for "size matters"! (what struck me excactly in this moment, was the fact that if someone would be nasty enough to close the trunk again, then you're locked inside your car. that ain't funny.)

in my case, my old buddy v6-rainier had come to the rescue with his eta beemer and provided the electricity necessary for the restart. so we connected both cars as described in the vette handbook, and then the engine started without hesitation.

i drove for nearly 1 1/2 hours to reload the battery.
that's been my v-day...

v-day?

today is supposed to be v-day - it's march now, i'm allowed to drive again.
but the wheather didn't take that into consideration. we've got heavy rainstorms, things keep on falling down on the tiny balcony which is attached to my appartment, and warnings have been given on the radio that driving might be dangerous (because of "flying objects").
so i've got to tell you about my slalom car again...

now i got one - not quite a bargain, but also not expensive.
it's a 318 bmw ti compact, with 140 (european) hp and a complete m-package (which is only for the looks and not for the perfomance), in dark blue metallic.
it's a used car, 10 years old such as my red one, for the only reason that until model year 9/1998 you can install a power lock differential to the rear axle (i'll do that later). but first i've got to take it to the bmw garage - it didn't pass the TÜV test because somewhere under the hood, a little bit of oil is leaking, and the german street safety guys are crazy about that, and also the catalytic converter is in the dubs.
next comes a visit at the chassis specialist, because this baby will get a specially customized slalom suspension.

and at the moment, i'm keeping my fingers crossed that the garage doesn't show up with more bad news (my funds are badly limited, i'm quite short on cash at the moment!)... before buying, i'd been scrutinizing the beemer from top to tires, peeping into every corner and poking around under the hood, but i neither detected the oil leak nor the catalyzer problem.
shame on me...

and in the meantime i'll get my jumper cables, just in case my vette doesn't want to say "hello" to me as soon as it gets dry again.