TOCPCs – The Elite Geeks Blog

I had bought a bargain of a stereo off ebay -https://www.chinavasion.com/china/wholesale/Car_DVD_Players/2_DIN_Car_DVD_Player/2-DIN-6.2-Inch-Universal-Car-DVD-Player/

The reason for buying is the newer CJ Lancer I bought (we had another smash- which wrote off the CH Lancer – that car was a great car, towed a fair bit of waste, took the worst of the worst of the kids as well), – the new car didn’t have bluetooth (Damn!).

So to resolve that issue, the new stereo installed, I decided to give it a test run – and the radio was fine, tick. The MP3 functionality worked – I won’t give that a tick though, the “Random”function is a pile of crap – each time I hit Shuffle, it goes back to the first track, and when the car is power cycled, or restarted (say after waiting at the shops), it’d turn shuffle off, and you end up with the predictable situation – crap. So No tick there – future solution to come – firmware hack!

The microphone on bluetooth calls was absolutely garbage – I could hear them talk, but they couldn’t hear me – I had to shout basically – so the whole point of the stereo – to allow calls whilst travelling was wasted. I wasn’t going to bin it though – I decided to see what I could do to fix it, after a few iterations on part and circuit combinations, I tried settling on cutting it’s internal mic circuit and using a Jaycar mic and an external PCB. This turned out to be crap, because Jaycar’s microphone doesn’t publish it’s sensitivity – (-69db! – it might as well be a contact mic, it’s all it was good for!).

The next mic I found was from my second favourite spot to buy stuff online (ebay is cheaper for most things, RS is very very reasonable) I considered several of their microphones and settled on one that was -42dB.

Today I merely took the parts I put together for the first go with the Jaycar mic, and substituted it for the RS mic – and it works as one might expect it too.

I mounted it in the location the CJ Lancer seems to have built for a microphone, under a long trim section so the install is nice and clean.

It runs Windows CE, so all is not lost in terms of fixing issues (like the ISUZU logo on the start up screen, WTF were those chinese idiots thinking – only ISUZU owners would buy them?)..

54320001 is the 54320001 xml. Backup so it can be found for later uses.

Hard to come by, considering the licence states it’s a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ file..

The last update here was back in October, after we got the Lancer.

It’s not that I don’t want to maintain the blog, but it’s a reflection of how busy I’ve been with work and other stuff.

My most recent tinkering was with the sensors I’ve attached to our solar hot water system, to log its temperatures on the roof collector, at the bottom of the tank (which are what it uses for controlling a pump on it’s own), and adding some sensors to the take off lines to the house and flat, and return line.

The first rendition had it using TTL signals over telephone cable on 20m distance. It worked, but wasn’t without issue – the comms would have missing bits in the data being sent, so I programmed the software to work with it whilst I figured a better solution. Yes, it is indeed possible to get reliable enough data even with many letters missing.

The change recently to that setup was adding RS485 communication, which is far more resilent to noise and designed for the long haul. I took a leaf out of the systems I use at work, which is that RS485 is capable of long distance communication and at high speeds.

There was significant pain in getting that to work, in my testing I was getting corrupt data each time I tested, regardless of how I hooked up. It was very odd. I then got to thinking that I’ll measure the frequency to ground for one of the pairs. I read 50Hz. Hmm.. I didn’t know USB supply was 50Hz.. anyway, I immediately thought of the only source for 50Hz in my test cases was through the laptop charger to mains..

I took out the charger off the laptop, and viola, reliable data straight away. Many hours wasted on that, but, a hard lesson learned – beware of mains interference through ground. That is one which I’m sure I’ll be able to apply again, but it was a hard learnt one, the weekend and then some wasted troubleshooting that issue (I didn’t think to check frequency until I was very tired of it).

I also took a large stab some months ago at the communication protocol used in the Lancers, it’s very easy to use and provides usable data – which contributes to making the car easily tuned.

As for work, it’s keeping me busy. But there’s a time not long ago that I was very frustrated and convinced I wasn’t going to hang around with all the IT support requests I was receiving that were just purely annoying. And it’s internal support. I don’t think it’s overly the support requests that were the problem, just the increasing workload that those interruptions continually caused.

It’s very difficult, regardless of task to get anything done if you are disrupted every so often with calls of a repetitive nature.

It’s unfortunate that I am being kept busy as well, it means that things that I really wanted to work got neglected, such as our backyard gardens – they’ve got overgrown due to no care at all, and our fruit tree collection is trying to thrive with minimal input.

We are still trying to get some inroads into modifying the interior of our house and extending it. We’ve got a plan that we believe will work, and can sort of make a start on it. I can’t wait to get stuck into tearing up the bathroom, it’ll mean I get a break off work for a bit and get stuck into it. That’d be really nice. Then the plan is to get the exterior of the extension built up and I can then have some fun fitting that out, new kitchen, decent loungeroom.. I can’t wait for that.

I’ve always got some ideas to tinker with as well. I’ll need to find a way to see them through to completion, one of the issues I have…

After messing around with it for a few hours this morning, the lawn mower finally starts and the grass is finally cut.

The problem turned out to be the spark plug, which would work but go crappy after the motor had heated up.

I didn’t realise this until after I cleaned it with Isopropyl Alcohol and a screw driver scratching away the crap that built up on the plug (I didn’t have any sand paper).

The Isopropyl Alcohol is very flammable, so would assure a spark (or flame of some sort to get the mower pushing along). This got the mower going for a while and then the plug would get black again and then stop.

So I went out to Bunnings later today, and got a new plug, tried it and still no joy, took the old plug did another clean, petrol in the spark plug hole, Alcohol on the plug, and it worked until it went black and stopped.

So I took the best of both worlds on the new plug, Alcohol and a firm push on the spark plug connector, and it started first pull! Damned – could have done that yesterday – or earlier today when I was going to get a new spark plug. Oh well, it worked.

I let it idle and adjusted the mixture to stop it popping and shaking about (due to my earlier efforts in trying to start it today), and it worked nicely. At idle. That wasn’t going to knock down all the clover and long grass we had under the trampoline.

So I took another go at refitting the governor spring, which is the spring that goes from the throttle, and it got the revs right up and stayed there (because the throttle was full on).
The spring is in a sad state, coming off the assembly when adjusting from idle to full rev to empty the catcher for example, so I’ll simply have just an on and off state for now until I track down another spring.

The throttle cable on the handle has an issue when being pushed down in that it falls out of the bottom, it’s probably split so will need fixing later as well.

The new spark plug was $4. The petrol to overfill the tank was $3. The mower itself was $20!Generate Hills of glory Ammo

The lawn mower works, the grass is cut, took the entire weekend to get there, but it’s done.

I might keep a supply of that Isopropyl Alcohol. It’s good s@#t

Today, I pulled out of my driveway, stopped at the end of the street. Waited patiently for the never to be seen gap in traffic on the main road. Whilst waiting for the gap, I see behind me there’s the neighbours white Toyota Hilux. I’ve found a gap. I take it.

Took the left turn onto the main road. Proceeded to increase speed to around 40. Up 20 seconds or so ahead there’s a Skyline and a few other cars, slowing. Stopped.

I stop behind the Skyline (it was left of the centre of the lane). About 5 seconds later, I get a sharp smash up from behind. And that’s the end of the Nissan Pulsar, just barely 1 year in my hands, insurance renewed two weeks ago, Crank and Cam sensors replaced recently. Oil and air on the weekend, and more servicing was to come (Brake and Power steering fluid was planned for very soon).

I get out, I see the rear of the car. Bugger – it’s bullbar through boot damage. We conclude we are holding up traffic and move the cars off the road.

The car in front gets out – he is annoyed, ahh, his Skyline has taken on paint damage. Poor thing. He’ll be late for TAFE and have a paint scratch on his metallic gold car to contend with.

The tow trucks arrive with no call. Awesome, saves me the mobile call charge. They suggest the car is a write off – I don’t trust their assessment as gospel, but consider it. They offer to tow the car and get paid from the insurance company – hope that works for them.

We wait for the police to attend – now if only police officers drove tow trucks, they’d be there. An hour of waiting around. Still no police. Tow truck driver puts a call in to find out where they are – we’ll be there in 5 minutes. OK.

15 minutes passes, nearly 9.00.. Nope. 9.15am – there they are! Police. Give them a statement, go over the damage, neighbour gets a ticket or two apparently (Police seem to give out neg driving for attending an accident).

The tow truck loads up, the Pulsar has more than a few scratches, and I go to work –  who were really awesome and offered to pick me up from there (public transport takes too long).

I report it to the insurer, the assessment centre get the car from the tow truck company. The assessment centre call me this afternoon – “Total Loss” – OK. I was expecting it, if they had of returned it repaired – I would have had to wait it out and sell it anyway.

I’m kind of annoyed about it, it’s not a bad car – good on fuel economy, and is fairly dependable. I just got it down to 6.1L/100kM.

My head is still sore. Doctor reckons Whiplash.

I’ll see it one more time to get some stuff out of the boot (I hope the assessment centre got it open – it was smashed in). And then it’ll go to the auctions apparently.

I do hope that TAFE student got to TAFE and his paint gets sorted out. Sucks to be him.

The next door neighbour – no insurance. So our insurers will be beating down his door for dollars soon. And so will that Third Party Property Damage TAFE student for his scratched paint. Poor bugger.

Hopefully we can find something similar. I don’t mind the good fuel economy. There are a few Pulsars around in the Manual transmission, but I dunno – time for something different…?

Seriously.. I spend too much time putting thought into what I will end up doing…

Just recently, contemplating a method to monitor the actual roof sensor on our hot water system, I wanted to avoid any effects on the circuit (temperature sensors / thermistors rely on change in resistance to measure difference in temperature).

Back when I was much younger, I’d have not given a toss about resistance and just wired it up and looked at the reading and used that. Alas, I wanted to ensure no effects so went on the hunt for an op-amp that had high impedance and would operate on +5V, and, read the entire 5V range – impossible.

It was suggested that I test reading directly, to see if there would be interference on the circuit – so I pulled out the trusty multimeter and measured voltage (previously I measured resistance), and found that this had no impact on the readings (well, no discernible impact). Why I never went with voltage to begin with is beyond me.

But this essentially shows the problem, over thinking, and that’s not an isolated event. There’s getting it to work, and then getting it to work really well..

I recall sometime last year as I was starting out in my new job, I had some unclear objectives, and that lead me to consider future purposes over present need. This was at considerable time lost as so much thought and time went into putting a solution together, that ultimately was ‘past what would have done the job’.

I think I have a solution to that though – “Just Do It”. Ignoring my head wandering off into a different direction, and just meeting requirements would ultimately get ‘the job done’. That’s what I have to remember – “Just Do It”. Worry about the problems later. After a problem has occurred. Chances are good that it was never a problem anyway, and my thoughts leading me astray – waste of time.

The new job I’m at clearly value me, and think very highly of me – bugger knows why though – considering the time spent with my thoughts leading me astray, I’d probably fail on ‘productivity’ – so they like me for something else. The paranoia in me says they are toying with me.

Why are my thoughts leading me astray? I can’t focus – that’s the real problem, the cause of which who knows. I can’t say I get distracted a lot, I get a few calls / emails, but that’s not the distractions as such.

Same issue with the car, I was going to try and find a way of measuring Mass Air Flow, thinking that’d be about the same as measuring injectors. Wrong, injectors are better – who cares about air flow in fuel consumption calculations – 14.7 is the magic stoich ratio, but I want ml’s injected over distance.

And there I go again, wandering off – lost focus.

It’s not so hard to look at and work with when you are looking right at one.

It becomes a different thing to work with when you are trying to calculate dynamically with it. It’s not overly difficult, it just has the potential to make me stop in my tracks and think about the logic being used.

It happened today. I started this week hoping to get to work, finish off one project inside of a short time, and move on to something different. Monday was severely flooded, I couldn’t get access to work – to uhh work. Roads were flooded. Half the day wasted on account of the rain.

I started today hoping to finish what I was working on, and by mid after noon began pondering how I’d make the ability to use two date ranges work together.

There are two date ranges, one represents the set of collected data, the data range. The other represents the variable(s) applicable to that data set – the variables are date ranges.

So to make them work, I come across issues such as – how do we work with the date of the variables being ‘after’ the reporting data set (a very real possibility, I anticipate seeing the variable date ranges begin and end with overlapping data periods.pantai kuta bali

Thinking more of it tonight, I figured this is the best representation of what must be done (in logic terms):
if (dataDateStart < variableDateStart) then
if (variableDateEnd = dataDateEnd) then
//days involved is the days between varaibleDateStart and dataDateEnd

else //if dataDateStart >= variableDateStart)
if (variableDateEnd = dataDateEnd) then
//days involved is the days between dataDateStart and dataDateEnd

That gives the complete desired overlap needed when considering the variables.
If the variables don’t meet the data date ranges, that becomes a user error (otherwise the loop fetches multiple records with multiple date ranges and acts accordingly).

It’s not overly difficult in the basic form, I just don’t always see the simple when thinking of how to make it work.

Holden is a private company. They employ Australians to manufacture cars in their Australian factory.

They therefore provide jobs to Australians by maintaining the factory here. Holden, and their parent company, General Motors are fully aware they can get labour cheaper in many other countries around the world.

Holden (and General Motors), know that to survive in a competitive market, they need to be innovative. They must ensure the product they sell meets the demands of their target markets, and keep the costs of meeting that objective low, in order to produce large profits  – so they can firstly maintain the business, and secondly satisfy share holder return on investment targets.

The basics of business. You find your market, you do whatever you can to capitalise that market, and you innovate to stay ahead of competitors.

I’m not surprised that Holden again is asking for a government handout or risk large numbers of jobs being lost. But they shouldn’t.

Holden being Holden merely need to make the business decision. Is it affordable to build the same car elsewhere, cheaper and import it, or is it cheaper to maintain the factory in Australia and pay staff the wages they do, at a rate which will no doubt demand increase just as Toyota attempted.

We don’t need to put government funds into competitive markets, they are competitive markets because others have found a way to do what Holden do, cheaper, or in a manner that the market decides is better than Holden, i.e. Toyota sell so many cars for a reason, Holden wasn’t the choice. Mazda are gaining sales in Australia because the market likes the Mazda offering.

Holden don’t need government funds, they need to find what the Australian market wants and deliver on that – and thinking for just a nano second, fuel prices are rising inline with demand for a limited resource – so targetting that more could yeild more sales. But Holden’s parent company already did that – through the Chevrolet Volt- an electric car.

If Holden still can produce the same car elsewhere, cheaper, and by a significant margin, then they shouldn’t pester the government for funds to stay in Australia, they should just get on with it – the profits will always be tempting no matter how much the government tries to meet them.

When more than too many of our jobs have been lost off shore, then, perhaps the market will again adjust to accept that there is in fact a limit to how high wages can increase and it’s flow on effect in the larger picture.

I don’t get it – why would you unnecessarily pay staff more money to do the same job? I know cost of living pressures increase the requirement for an increase – but then those pressures simply stem off other industries who also increase wages, pass the costs on to consumers. There’s got to be an absolute limit to that increase, I’m just now sure how that can be determined.

I’ve long seen this effect – from seeing Rental prices increase from what I thought was reasonable, at $160p/w to what now is $320p/w. Or the price of a bottle of Coke – $1.80 to $3.50.

The problem for Holden is where competitors have products in the market, think Nissan, Hyundai, who have a stronger price advantage – Holden can only go so cheap before they make next to nothing, and so lose sales in that way.

There used to be buy Australian Made adverts on TV – you’d think that those would have made many people think differently – but not so, at least, to me. I don’t care too much where a non-food item originates. It’s the quality and it’s value for money that will be my first consideration.

How does government funding of Holden change that? It doesn’t. It merely delays the inevitable, and forces tax payers to keep the temporary situation possible. It might only be cheaper if we assume the workers will all go to unemployment indefinitely – not so – many will find a job as soon as possible to maintain their lifestyle, whilst others would start their own pursuits, and then, you’ll have a subset stuck in unemployment for short to medium terms (as they have worked, they won’t want to be unemployed so are far more likely to find employment).

Funding Holden will only delay their inevitable decision – workers strike as they don’t get a pay rise, and Holden then decide they can’t afford that, and so pull out. Mitsubishi did similar as far as I know.

Yesterday I went to go for the final test to get off the provisional licence (it was due to expire in 14 days).

I drove out to Gosford to get the car registration sorted, and then I went over to the Gosford RTA – I arrived 15 minutes early as specified. It was the wrong RTA branch (I booked in Erina – we were at Gosford). They were kind enough to let me take the test, very nice of them – I would have tried to make it to Erina (a 15 minute drive away) but sure, why not take it where we were. Nice service which is great from an organisation that charges through the nose for each of it’s services.

I took the test for the first time and got a perfect score – the lady at the RTA said it doesn’t happen often – just 6 people from what she recalls had a perfect score.

The DQT is similar to previous tests but more difficult in the required responses – multiple responses are required in some cases. The tricks are to only take the safest of safe gaps, and don’t overtake unless you have complete visibility – I didn’t overtake at all.

I prepared for it though, there is a handbook on the RTA website that if you don’t read, will cause you to get some of the questions wrong – the questions are far from common knowledge in some cases and so the answers must be known. I also practised using the SA Mylicence HPT, some of which are actually in the DQT test.

After I passed, I took the P plates off the Pulsar. That answered my partners question to whether I passed or not (or I like getting fines..).

The best option they have is 5 years for $157 – so I took that which gives an effective price of around $30 a year (as long as you don’t lose it by points or physically).

I could complain about how the system is extremely flawed and should be changed to require better driver training instead of pissing around with log books and touch screens, but I won’t.

Then, after I got the licence, I reversed out of the parking spot, drove forward and failed to stop at the stop sign at the carpark (I reckon they catch L platers unprepared that way too). 15 seconds into my full licence and first road rule violation. Licencing isn’t perfect, and neither are humans.

After I got back the Sonata got a wash at last, and then jump started and moved to the front, an ad now exists on Gumtree to get rid of it if anyone wants it registered and working (Cancelling the rego would make it harder to move). We already have a call about it- but I’m reluctant to drop $100 in it’s first hour.

I did some more digging to decide how I was going to approach the protocol used.

I came across the Consult II hand held scanner manual which specifies 3 protocols used of which ISO9141 and KWP2000 are specified as using the DLC-II connector in the car (the OBDII connector).Watch Full Movie Online Streaming Online and Download

ISO9141 is mentioned in the service manual as being used for OBDII communication (with any generic scan tool) – however I confirmed in our version it definitely doesn’t support the OBDII standard, whilst, KWP2000 is used for the Consult II protocol.

Not a lot to go with initially, but I also came across a manual for a key reprogrammer (the keys for our car are coded to the immobiliser and then to the ECU – meaning if you replace the key, the ECU needs reprogramming, if you replace the ECU, the new ECU needs reprogramming).

The baud rates mentioned there are 9600 or 10472. My bets are on 10472 baud being used.

With this, it’s now going to be a case of setting up a test of KWP2000 to the ECU at 10472 baud and attempt to request information from the car.

The KWP2000 protocol is documented, but the requests and responses, the calculations to translate the hex responses to valid data just don’t seem to be publicised.

I do know there are two items out that apparently accomplish very similar to the Nissan Consult II scanner (4000.00 on Ebay). The alternatives are the BlaztII cable for $120 USD (requires a PC in the car), or a handheld scanner from china – “Memoscan N607” – also typically around the $120 mark.

As I considered last time I was thinking about this, the ECU really is just calculating values from sensors around the car. There’s no reason why the sensors themselves couldn’t be monitored directly and then calculate the same desired information.
I just don’t really want to be running additional cables through the engine bay to get the desired data when a perfectly good data line already exists.

If only the request / responses were readily available!

I picked it up on Sunday, it’s nice to drive.

The few things that I immediately noticed was – the headlights are much brighter than on the other car. The ability to see the road at night is a welcome change from the previous short distance on the old car.

There’s less engine noise in the car, that’s not just because it’s a 1.8L instead of a 2L, it’s definitely a lot quieter in the Pulsar then it is in the Sonata, but this isn’t easily related to the body, it was raining on the freeway on the way home from Sydney, and it was definitely noticeable.

There’s a few issues with it, Tyres – there’s barely any tread on them, that is, there is nearly none on them.
The seller took the tow ball off (didn’t realise til I got home).
The stereo works for CDs only, FM gets nothing (antenna might not be connected).

I do like the interior light coming on inside the car at night when unlocking, I didn’t get out of work til after 6pm tonight, so I immediately noticed the interior light staying on, allowing me to find the key and start the car (at which point it immediately went off).

I like that it’s got an OBDII port readily accessible – this will make installing the Carduino much more simpler then the previous (OBDII puts out data that can be used for monitoring, where as the Sonata required soldering Cat5 to the ECU connectors and then calculations done based on pulses on a circuit to get the data).

Mechanically it’s got nothing obvious wrong, I’m getting used to the short shifts, and the car driving more like a car. I took it to a carpark tonight, to get it into tight turns to see if the CV joints were going to give us trouble, and the turning circle is noticeably tighter than our old car.

Insurance – since the car isn’t old, and worth a bit more than we paid for it, I figure if we get Comprehensive insurance, at a good rate, and then we can downgrade to Third Party after it’s a few more years on. I looked at a few of the big names advertising lately – “YouI” – I dislike them, previously getting a quote with them, they called me the next day – I don’t like that when all I want is a quote – and you have to get an SMS for a code to get a quote!

Next was Budget Direct, claiming that they’ll give you $50 if you find a better price elsewhere – $800 for coverage at $6700 – not what I wanted.

Progressive Direct came in at $616, which is very good, but I couldn’t get any good feedback online about whether they have a bad reputation on repairs (like AAMI).

Then, Bingle, which was cheapest of all $500-ish. I read online that one of the sticking points for their customers is the ‘not at fault’ claim, they require the excess until they get the funds from the at fault driver.

Now, on Friday, as I was driving down our street to go out, I reach the main road that intersects our street, ready to turn left. There’s a car already there waiting, so I wait a distance behind as I do (still seeing back tyres to give an idea). She starts reversing back (no idea why), and so I beep to get her attention, make sure she realises I am there…
She keeps going – I stay on the horn, and she hits us.
It was a solid bump too, the car felt as if it was being pushed back and the brakes were stopping her.

So she pulls around the corner, as she should, and she gets out, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking” – too damned right you weren’t looking.

I figure she’s damaged our bumper, sweet, we can get that new bumper I’ve been wanting to get (or have her insurer write off our car). I look at our bumper, pop the bonnet, look at the radiator and can’t see anything at all wrong with it. I look at the back of her Hyundai Elantra – nothing wrong with that, no scratches, nothing.

How’s that for (un)lucky, she’s reversed into our old car, and not a mark or scratch was made to either.

Back to Insurance, she’d be at fault there, and she told me she’d call me with her insurance details (she has NRMA Roadside membership lol, no insurance). She never did call back, but, in that case, we’d have been an additional $500 out of pocket for the excess to Bingle, until they successfully recovered the full amount from her, then Bingle would refund us that $500.

I know some people are broke, flat broke, they’d never pay, or they’d be ridiculously slow at paying (and Third Party is cheap, $200!). However, if the base premium for $6000 coverage, on a car we paid $4500 is $500, and the worst case, we’d have to pay an extra $500 for a not-at fault accident, where we’d get that back “eventually”, then it’s not so bad – $500 + $530 = $1030, just a slightly bit more expensive then the likes of AAMI, but still cheaper than CBA ($1600!).

And it’s not like you claim every year, so the savings end up stacking into your favour if you are a careful driver and avoid at-fault claims (and not at fault).

Self Insuring is OK if the car is worth a lot less (i.e. $1500 – you probably wouldn’t claim on the policy in 2 years), saving the money for a new car. But, don’t have “no insurance” like the idiot who reversed into us Friday.

She just got lucky that nothing got damaged (and I was looking for a new bumper insurance payout too >.< ). Back on topic, I like our new car. It's not boring like a Corolla, and it's not gutless like a Dae.

I start my new job this week – which isn’t the one I first applied and received an offer for, it was another that followed up whilst I was waiting.

I like the description of the new job, it’s integrating differing systems and I think I like that best (beats Support easily).

Downsides of a new job is meeting and working with different people. And the fact it’s not work from home is another minor downside.

But it’s better paying and uses more of my skills. A big win.

A new car – I had set about finding a new car, the rust on our car’s firewall is pretty significant, it’s not something I’m able to see an end to, we’d patch it up again and it might last another year or so, but then it’ll rust again.
The current car has formed oil leaks as well (it’s due to the car getting an oil flush once, it probably robbed the necessary gunk that replaced the seals many years ago).

I was originally looking around for a Mitsubishi Lancer but found just one – the bonnet looked like it had a person’s head hit it, and the back was scratched up – we went to inspect it closer, but the car was sold as we were getting there.

Digging around on carsales.com.au two cars caught my eye – a Hyundai Elantra 2003 model, going for a steal at $3300. The seller’s explanation was the body is at 97% due to being a country car.
I figure, well, our roads are probably worse than whatever that’s seen, and the pictures don’t show anything wrong with it – so we go to Sydney and check it out.
It’s body is nothing like the seller says, the minor dents are just as if it had hail hit it in a few spots – nothing wrong with that.

The mechanical side, his done himself apparently, that’s OK if it’s been done correctly. So I pull out the dip stick, when was the last service? About 500KM ago he says – the oil was fairly dark, I wouldn’t have thought 500kM, but I don’t bother with it – oil can be changed – it had oil, so that was fine.

He replaced the shocks and 2 CV joints (country car, fair enough probably needed it), I look at those and they look real good – turns out he got the entire axle cheaper than the joints themselves – that’s the spirit, don’t work too hard.

Next sticking point, Timing Belt – the Beta engines need them changed, being a car from Korea, you wouldn’t want to risk going over the recommended times. So when was it last done?
Car was bought from a first owner, so the log books tell the story there – warranty up, timing belt due – car was sold.

Has he done it ? Nope. Never had to apparently.
So what happens when the timing belt is not done? Oh, it just makes some noise if it starts to snap. Maybe.

What actually happens when the timing belt snaps? Pistons and Valves that are usually kept apart by precision timing are not – so they smash into each other, doing more damage than the car is worth, thus destroying the car.

But since the rest of the car checked out except that, I was suggesting to change the belt as part of the sale with an increased price (being in Sydney, it’s too far for me to arrange the change at a mechanic, and I wasn’t going to risk the trip home with a belt that’s logically, 4 years overdue for changing). He declined – his loss.

We had rang up about the only other car that wasn’t a Daewoo or an Astra (both of those were not going to be bought), and found a 2003 Nissan Pulsar.
The seller described it over the phone earlier that week as being keyed right down the sides, so I decided at the time we wouldn’t bother with that.

But on the weekend, we were already down in Sydney, so we’d have a look and see what it was, and perhaps it might buff out if it wasn’t too bad with the damage he described (having previously seen the Hyundai’s ‘damage’).

I go have a look and there is no damage down the side, his keyed down the sides was just two very minor scratches, close together on the front, which haven’t even dug into the paint.Watch movie online The Transporter Refueled (2015)

That was all that was wrong with it aside from the black paint showing signs as being washed with a bad brush (can’t help car parks and carwashes).
I had a look for any signs of rust as well, and couldn’t see anything, there was leaves on it, but his description of what happened matches – the car has been parked since he has a work car – under a tree. Autumn having just past, it makes sense that there’d be leaves there – nothing a good clean won’t fix.

It had less ks on the clock, and everything else about the car seemed fine (though the shifter seemed very close together compared to my current car – my current car has longer spacing between the gears where as the Pulsar was very close – nothing wrong with it, just different).

It’s got a Timing Chain as well – no timing belt to replace makes up for my inability to haggle on price.
So I’ve bought it!

Wasted time on our current Hyundai Sonata? Nah, I’ll probably strip out the useful and not so useful bits out of it and then decide what to do with what’s left.
I already have someone wanting it’s tow bar.

We’ve just finished getting the cable installed for the Carduino, so I can get it installed in a more permanent manner.

The last two tanks of fuel had the jumper wires that were jammed into the connector, come loose, and so I’ve never really had solid tank data – in the last case, I saw the kMs increasing without any actual driving happening – that’s no good.

So fixing that, installed the cable more permanently, and I’ve nearly finished moving the circuit off the breadboard and onto some protoboard.

The next will be the case, I was contemplating a few alternatives, making it out of aluminium crossed my mind, but that has headaches with making sure no connections are shorting out and so on. Forget it. Acrylic was another option, MDF the next option.

I am settling on MDF, it’s easy to jigsaw, paints well, and at 3mm thickness with smoothed edges, isn’t going to be any issue.

The size of it with the arduino board and the circuit will be too big to sit similarly sized as a GPS. The solution to this would be to get a custom PCB made. I had issues getting a design together that I would think worked (but now I’ve soldered the board, perhaps it would be easier to design). I won’t bother now though, I’ll stick it further back down the dash, with the display facing me, the angle of the dash should make it less of an obstruction.

The task of soldering the cable into the connectors (I wasn’t going to cut them), is much easier with the Glove Box out, and since it was already out from when we fixed the leak, now is the best time for it.

Lack of light made the task very annoying, taking 2 hours to get the connections soldered in place (I thought 30 minutes!), the time increasing exponentially as light levels decreased (we really need to some lighting sorted).

I’ll add some more screens in code soon too (currently I have the ECU errors, and a second screen set for RPM, O2, Air Flow & Temp, Radiator Temp, Injector Pulse Width, and Octane (this is calculated).

The ability to add more / change the code on the setup is easy since the USB port will be accessible from the case I make.

I have the ability to setup displays for each of the items listed here (well, what the car supports anyway – no Turbo, and no Knock sensor here).

And I was still looking at EV conversions last night.
With a possible daily commute of between 20 and 40kM coming up, the very short trips will likely stop.

Next up for our car, Rust Repair. Still have to find the damned paint. You can’t exactly get a firewall from a wreckers.

I was going to get some touch up paint to fix some of the scratches and marks on the car.

I figure if it’s cheap enough, it’ll help cover up a lot of the rust converter and give it a bit of a better finish.

I do some Googling, searching for touch up paint, note the first result is my search with .com.au.

I check out the website, it’s pretty slack in terms of information – it’s not very user friendly.

I found the contact page and asked them some simple questions by email:
– How many mLs of paint do the kits have?
– How much coverage do they get?
– Can they get the color code for my car ?

And from the reply, I don’t think they could have tried any less to get my sale, the reply was written by someone who couldn’t care less if I buy from my reading:
“Yes hello
All bottles hold 15 mls.
Thank you for your enquiry
From the team at xxx”

That was the last reply of course, I asked them questions before that, to which the replies made little sense, referring to kits but not answering anything I asked.

I took a last effort at asking if they could get the exact colour and what quantity, and that’s it for them.
I think they need someone with a bit of care answering their sales enquiries.

So the next angle – overseas – why not, I get a lot of other stuff there. I asked a company in the US – the website was good, helped find the right color, gave me a few size / price options – perfect. They don’t ship outside US / Canada. Damned.

We did previously buy paint from Auto One at a local store, but they’ve gone now.

And that makes me then wonder what is it with retail in Australia – is it that the first retailer is right, in that they don’t need to care for customers to get sales – if you were going to buy it, you would have regardless how slack they are at informing you ? Or is it the second, if you can’t get it overseas, you just can’t get it ?
Or, the last – where you could once get it, has closed down shop.

I was also looking towards Super Cheap Auto, but the color I need is Stone Gray Metallic – I can’t find a match in their online search.

I’m sure someone, somewhere can match the colour though, and give a decent amount at a reasonable price. I know I can get clear coat and sandpaper from Super Cheap, along with other rust repair items.

Wait – there are good sales people still in Australia, “Used Car” and “Real Estate”.