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SUV Talk; Also, Persian Rugs (Page 12)
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My Defender has that, the prospect of climbing under it to remove the thing isn't on my top 10 list. I like the OEM orientation, having them attached above the rear bumper.
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but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
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It comes with a winch, so I'm hoping it's not too big of a drag.
Also, I always end up calling AAA. I've never had a good jack.
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Originally Posted by andi*pandi
Surprised there isn't a hideyhole already designed for a spare? under the back somewhere?
Umm... nailed it!
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Originally Posted by P
Had an old Peugeot that did that. The entire thing was in a cage underneath, and to let it down you released a hook from under the luggage compartment carpet. Very clever, because you could reach that hook with the luggage full of other stuff.
Getting knocked around would be the big concern, but the van has pretty good ground clearance.
That's one of the funny bits about them "Americanizing" the van... they jacked the whole thing up because, in the words of Eddie Izzard, "infrastructure's ****ed".
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Now I have all this OEM stuff to install (tire, going to get an alarm, they still owe me backup sensors and a camera), and I haven't done the rustproofing yet, is there any reason to do one first?
Rustproofing first means they have less in the way, but then what they leave behind could interfere with the installs.
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Originally Posted by subego
Holy crap... I'm looking at the directions for this thing, and it stores the tire under the van.
That's either a horrible idea or the best thing ever.
Maybe both.
That's been the default location for pickup trucks for, roughly, ever. It's pretty handy. Unless you have to get down there in some nasty muddy roadside.
My wife is driving around in a Nissan Versa (a rental, while her Fit sits at the Honda dealer waiting for the airbag parts to come in.) The Versa has the spare underneath, too. I didn't look too close, but it looked a lot like a full-size spare, too.
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Didn't occur to me until you mentioned it that I've never seen a spare on a pickup.
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My XC90 has the spare underneath, where was the spare on your X5?
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It's in the trunk in the X5......you wouldn't expect a BMW owner to get dirty changing their tire, right? Hopefully they don't step in any mud while waiting for CAA...
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It was under the "floor" of the trunk. You needed to empty the trunk to get at it.
It was a pretty decent hidey-hole for your stash.
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The Kangoo got baby's first safety recall.
Apparently, a corroded computer connector can suddenly throw the van into neutral, and it won't come back out until it gets fixed.
That doesn't sound good.
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Meh. Every car has a recall nowadays. On the bright side, at least this kind of stuff is getting fixed!
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I left that last sentence a little more ambiguous than I intended.
Having that problem actually happen to you wouldn't be good. I'm not worried it's going to happen to me before I take it in, know recalls happen all the time, glad for it to get a bug fix point upgrade, etc., etc.
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Yep, the great BMW airbag recall of 2016 is in full swing, my dealer is all in a lather trying to get cars down there. I think it's BS and they just want to find other shit to fix, sneaky buggers.
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"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
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Naw, the dealer is getting paid to do it by BMW - guaranteed shop work! - and it's likely getting huge pressure from BMW because of liability/PR fears. Hell, Honda was all over me for the Takada airbag in my old Civic a couple years back and there's no real concern up here in cooler climates I understand.
Toyota spent, what, a few billion dollars on that "unintended acceleration" issue that didn't even exist? I imagine everyone is pretty on-edge about getting out in front of these things now.
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I haven't received the recall notice for my BMW yet. I think they are still perpetually low on replacement airbags.
-t
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Yeah, it's the Takata airbag fiasco, at the shop we were being called every day last week over it. The problem is, with older cars (15 yrs+) the plastic snaps that hold the dash together don't like being bent and more often than not they simply break. That means you have new squeaks and rattles that will only get worse with time, unless you replace the whole dash assembly (which isn't covered by the recall). Those cars are far from being daily drivers anyway, so for me it isn't worth doing.
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"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
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It's been awhile since I took a dash apart. I take it it's not practical to replace each plastic snap with new during the process?
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Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants
Yeah, it's the Takata airbag fiasco, at the shop we were being called every day last week over it. The problem is, with older cars (15 yrs+) the plastic snaps that hold the dash together don't like being bent and more often than not they simply break. That means you have new squeaks and rattles that will only get worse with time, unless you replace the whole dash assembly (which isn't covered by the recall). Those cars are far from being daily drivers anyway, so for me it isn't worth doing.
I didn't think the Takata recall affects cars older than 2001 anyway.
Edit: how about that, looks like the earliest are some 3-series from 2000. Didn't know BMW had gotten in ahead of Honda.
My question is if it's "not worth doing", are you willing to just scrap the cars? That's one way to do it I guess.
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Scrap them? Of course not, I'll just disable the passenger airbag. It's just a couple of older E46 M3s, we'll just insure that no one rides as a passenger in them.
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"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
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I'll let you in on a little secret: the passenger side airbag does very little to improve safety on average. It does help if you sit up straight and don't move, but it is also a huge negative if you happen to have your head too far forward when it blows. Yes, having the airbag in there is slightly better on average, but it is really small effect. Make sure that the passenger wears the seat belt, always, and doesn't have the seat in the fully forward position and you're quite safe - more so if the passenger airbag is an optional extra on some market.
Airbag design for the North American market is quite a bit more tricky than that for the rest of the world, because you have to design the bag so it works even if the users don't wear a seat belt. For all other markets, seat belts are mandatory, and the design is focused on only that scenario, which makes them more effective in that single case than the jack-of-all-trades NA bags.
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The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
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Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants
Scrap them? Of course not, I'll just disable the passenger airbag. It's just a couple of older E46 M3s, we'll just insure that no one rides as a passenger in them.
You sure it's only passenger? I thought there may have been a second driver's-side recalling at least some of those E46 M3s.
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Originally Posted by P
I'll let you in on a little secret: the passenger side airbag does very little to improve safety on average. It does help if you sit up straight and don't move, but it is also a huge negative if you happen to have your head too far forward when it blows. Yes, having the airbag in there is slightly better on average, but it is really small effect. Make sure that the passenger wears the seat belt, always, and doesn't have the seat in the fully forward position and you're quite safe - more so if the passenger airbag is an optional extra on some market.
Airbag design for the North American market is quite a bit more tricky than that for the rest of the world, because you have to design the bag so it works even if the users don't wear a seat belt. For all other markets, seat belts are mandatory, and the design is focused on only that scenario, which makes them more effective in that single case than the jack-of-all-trades NA bags.
Where are seat belts not mandatory in North America? I've never heard of this.
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Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton
Where are seat belts not mandatory in North America? I've never heard of this.
That's a well-known fact (have a look here or here).
In Australia, where safety belt use has reached 95%, airbags are designed as “Supplemental Restraint Systems”, that is, to supplement a 3-point seat-belt system. This difference in design philosophy has led to different airbag systems in the two countries. Airbags in the United States are larger and deploy faster at lower crash thresholds than in Australia.
Although there are differences between airbag systems in individual cars in both countries, US airbags tend to be more aggressive in the rate of inflation compared to the Australian airbag. In addition, the US bag is typically quite large (70–80litres), while the Australian bag is generally smaller (30–60litres). The driver’s airbag is in the same position in both countries, with the module centred in the steering wheel. The driver sits directly in front of the module with the seat and the steering wheel placed in any position that he or she deems comfortable.
It's not that wearing seat belts isn't mandatory, it's just that less people are wearing them. Hence, US airbags are designed differently, because a non-US airbag would be potentially dangerous to someone who isn't buckled up. That's because the explosion of an airbag has to be carefully timed so that on the one hand the airbag is fully inflated when the driver's head and upper body impact the steering wheel. If the explosion is too early, the airbag might no longer be fully inflated. If it is triggered too late, the airbag literally explodes into the drivers face — which could injure the driver critically. Evidently, the time of impact for people wearing and not wearing a seat belt is very different, the unrestrained driver arrives earlier. A non-US airbag would explode in the driver's face.
Since too many people in the US do not regularly wear seat belts (between 13 and 22 % in urban and rural areas), car manufacturers have to take that scenario into account. Note that US airbags are less effective for people who are wearing a seat belt, because they have to strike a balance between protecting people who do and who do not wear a seat belt.
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I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
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Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton
Where are seat belts not mandatory in North America? I've never heard of this.
New Hampshire - but there are also quite a lot of places where it is only required in the front, or where there is only secondary enforcement (meaning, you get an extra fine if you're not wearing the belt, but you must have been speeding or something for them to take action in the first place).
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The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
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Originally Posted by OreoCookie
Since too many people in the US do not regularly wear seat belts (between 13 and 22 % in urban and rural areas), car manufacturers have to take that scenario into account. N ote that US airbags are less effective for people who are wearing a seat belt, because they have to strike a balance between protecting people who do and who do not wear a seat belt.
This right here is the kicker - if you do everything right and wear your seat belt, you are less safe in the US than in the rest of the world.
Because the airbags (by NHTSA rules) have to take care of people who don't wear their seat belts, they're bigger and more aggressive. Because this might be dangerous, there is all sorts of logic to limit those airbags when they might actually kill you. The car has to have a sensor to tell where the seat is, so that if it is too far forward, the airbag deploys differently. Ever seen an OWS, occupant weight sensor? Take a chance before they go away, we're finally getting ready to switch to a more reliable system, but for now there is actually a big bladder of liquid in the front seat to try detect the weight of the person sitting in it, to deploy the airbag differently if it is a child. Cars in the rest of the world don't have all of these things, because they're all designed around working only when the occupants wear seat belts.
Wear your seat belts, put children in the back seat and while I'm at it, don't stick anything to the steering wheel or the dashboard in front of the passenger. Whatever you put there is going to become shrapnel flying at your face when that big bomb in there goes off.
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The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
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Super interesting. Amazing that seat belts are still optional in a first-world country in this day and age. You just can't fix stupid.
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Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton
You sure it's only passenger? I thought there may have been a second driver's-side recalling at least some of those E46 M3s.
On mine it's just passenger.
One of the six notice brochures (so far two for each car) they've sent me:
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"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
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That's no mechanic, that's a model.
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Originally Posted by subego
That's no mechanic, that's a model.
German efficiency. They combined the two.
-t
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Originally Posted by turtle777
German efficiency. They combined the two.
-t
I bet there's a word for it like "Modelkansfixerupper".
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Finally got around to setting up a service appointment. I've waited long enough, in addition to dealing with the recall, on the list of things to do are...
Service inspection.
Spare tire kit install.
Backup camera install.
If one exists, OEM alarm install.
Once this is done, I'll finally get the rustproofing. It didn't see much use this winter so I'm hoping I've dodged a bullet as far as rust. It was only out a couple times in wet salt.
I'll then declare it as close to reaching its final form. I think I prefer the floor mats over purpose-built carpet, and I'm leaning away from shelves.
I may get an extra seat, but I don't really have a good place to store it other than in the van.
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Clinically Insane
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No luck on the OEM alarm. Dealer has a setup with the people across the street who do it though. I hope they won't send it to a place which who installs garbage.
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Well, it's mildly irritating to have to carry two fobs now, but it's more irritating I have to separately remember to trigger the alarm and lock the doors.
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I had asked previously about getting a non-POS jack, and it stalled out with a question of how heavy the van is.
Looks like (with a little padding) 5,500 pounds if it's fully laden. We'll call that 3,500 naked with a two tons of shit option.
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Originally Posted by subego
Well, it's mildly irritating to have to carry two fobs now, but it's more irritating I have to separately remember to trigger the alarm and lock the doors.
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Originally Posted by subego
Well, it's mildly irritating to have to carry two fobs now, but it's more irritating I have to separately remember to trigger the alarm and lock the doors.
Perhaps you could view this as an opportunity. Loan the van to someone. Toss them the keys, "forget" about the alarm fob. Go inside, watch the fun from a discrete location.
Optional, to be used only if you dislike this person, or if they have an exceptional sense of humor. Call cops, give anonymous tip - someone is trying to steal a van.
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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Originally Posted by subego
I had asked previously about getting a non-POS jack, and it stalled out with a question of how heavy the van is.
Looks like (with a little padding) 5,500 pounds if it's fully laden. We'll call that 3,500 naked with a two tons of shit option.
Go to any amateur track day, and you'll see these guys littered up and down the paddock. 3000lbs. is more than enough to lift any corner (or either end!) of your van. Obviously not as compact as the stocker, but "non-POS" is usually going to mean some added bulk.
You can find coupons for this jack in Popular Mechanics or similar magazines that drop the price down to $60, which is what I paid for mine.
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Clinically Insane
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The link is to the 1.5-ton jack, but you're recommending the 3-ton?
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by andi*pandi
They both fit fine on a key ring, it's more the extra bulk in the front pocket.
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by reader50
Perhaps you could view this as an opportunity. Loan the van to someone. Toss them the keys, "forget" about the alarm fob. Go inside, watch the fun from a discrete location.
Optional, to be used only if you dislike this person, or if they have an exceptional sense of humor. Call cops, give anonymous tip - someone is trying to steal a van.
I am thinking I should quit my whining and look to the advantages of being able to control them independently.
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Clinically Insane
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Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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Originally Posted by subego
The link is to the 1.5-ton jack, but you're recommending the 3-ton?
I ton is 2000lbs?
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Clinically Insane
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Yeah... I'm bad with units.
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Clinically Insane
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Ordered the jack awhile ago, but it got tied up. Should be here in a day or two.
Never needed to jack up a car. Is there a best practice as far as where you place it under the car?
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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Vehicle dependent, your owner's manual should specify jacking points.
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Dammit! Almost fits under the driver's seat.
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DO NOT PUT THINGS UNDER THE FRONT SEATS. Not joking. There are cables going under the seats, hanging loose to have margin for adjustments, and if they snag on something when moving the seat, you can pull them out of their contacts. This is a very bad thing if it causes the airbag to not fire in a crash.
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The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
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that seems like a design flaw, to leave important cables susceptible like that. I have always put things under the seats (umbrellas, ice scrapers) and in one car there was a 5cd player under the passenger seat. Then again, that car didn't have airbags...
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by P
DO NOT PUT THINGS UNDER THE FRONT SEATS. Not joking. There are cables going under the seats, hanging loose to have margin for adjustments, and if they snag on something when moving the seat, you can pull them out of their contacts. This is a very bad thing if it causes the airbag to not fire in a crash.
I'd say this is sound advice, but I looked and made sure it was clear.
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