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Month: August 2022

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

Monday, August 29, 2022

Donna’s Birthday Eve Edition of SORT
As of Monday, August 29, 2022 at 6:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
1950 Allard J2 1976 Mercedes-Benz Unimog 1962 Lincoln Continental
Leather helmet? Check. Goggles? Check. Silk Scarf? Check. Okay, start ‘er up. Roads? We don’t need no stinkin’ roads, this thing makes its own roads. If you can’t be comfortable touring in this thing, you need a better chiropractor.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sports: 1997 Panoz AIV Roadster Sold for $51,000 on 8/24/22
Off-Road: 1959 Willys Jeep FC-170 Bid to $30,000 on 8/26/22
Touring: 1970 Cadillac Eldorado Sold for $11,000 on 8/24/22

Tagged: Cars, Sport-Off Road-Touring

Third Times The Charm

Saturday, August 27, 2022

We have been ordering Donna Celestial Seasonings DECAF Green Tea K-Cups from Amazon since before we moved to Oregon in 2019. There have been several different K-cup quantities over that period, but sometime late last year or early this year we started buying them in 96 count boxes. A few of months ago we couldn’t get the big boxes anymore so we found a seller that was selling the same thing, but they were listing it as 4 boxes of 24. This worked out well until early this month we repeated the usual order and when it was delivered it was a single box of 24…

We contacted the seller and they told us they even though they were the seller, the order was fulfilled by Amazon and we needed to contact them. Well, as you might expect, with Amazon there is no way to contact a real person by phone. Returns are dead easy, but because the tea is food item, returns were not allowed. After fumbling around their help center, I finally found a bot thingy and it took a couple of wrong selections before I did find a way to get it to refund our money or more accurately, added the total purchase price to a virtual gift card and we even got to keep the single 24 count box.

After the money showed up as a gift card in the Amazon account we reordered the 4 boxes of 24. It wasn’t two day delivery, but it was still free, so a few days later the order arrived. As you could tell from the title of this post, this second order once again contained just one box of 24 K-cups where we ordered and paid for ninety-six. This time when I found the bot there was no option that I could find to pick that would give us the purchase price and keep the money. I did find a way to have it put me in a queue to chat with an actual human. After a few minutes I was connected and after repeating my problem in a couple different ways, I got the same results as the first time, keep the 24 and the full purchase price in a gift card. Plus a guarantee that it wouldn’t happen again.

This time, thinking that the problem was the Amazon fulfilling part, we opted for a seller said that it was fulfilled by them not Amazon. We waited with baited breath to see whether we would get 1 or 4 boxes of 24, but when the packed showed up on our doorstep several days there was a large box that contained 4 boxes of 24 K-cups.

Was it the different seller or that guarantee from a chat bot? I don’t know, but we’ll see in a couple months when we order tea again from Amazon.

Tagged: Amazon, Online Ordering, Rants

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

Monday, August 22, 2022

And Now For Something Completely Different Edition of SORT
As of Monday, August 22, 2022 at 6:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
1997 Panoz AIV Roadster 1959 Willys Jeep FC-170 1970 Cadillac Eldorado
I had several of the usual suspects lined up for these categories this week, but hesitated. Instead, I decided to go ahead and pick 3 cars that I have never picked off BAT before.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sports: 2006 Lotus Elise Sold for $48,500 on 8/17/22
Off-Road: 1966 Ford Bronco Sold for $78,000 on 8/21/22
Touring: 2001 BMW 525i Wagon Sold for $13,250 on 8/17/22

Tagged: Cars, Sport-Off Road-Touring

I’ve Fallen Down A Hole In The Internet

Wednesday, August 17, 2022

I normally check in everyday on Jalopnik to get a dose of automotive content and Tuesday last week I got sucked into a huge time “waster.” One of the posts referenced a fellow in California that is engine swapping a Honda K24 motor into a 1979 Ferrari 308GTBi. Not just any old Honda 4-cylinder engine either, the plan is to add a big ol’ turbo and get 1,000 horse power.

The first thing he did to anger the Ferrari enthusiasts was of course removing the Ferrari V-8. He is weighing almost everything he has removed from the car and the 800lb V-8 is about five hundred pounds heavier than the I-4 Honda motor.

The second thing he did was to order a Liberty Walk body kit for it. He plans on using this for a Time Attack car, so the kit allows him to run a lot wider tire. Plus he will be streeting it as well so, I’m with him, I think the kit will look cool and it will differentiate the car from the rest of the Southern California Ferraris he might encounter.

There are 107 videos in the YouTube Playlist. And because I’m kind of a numbers geek I added the times for all one hundred and seven videos and so far there is 25 hours & 51 minutes of which I have watched 20 hours and 39 minutes worth. The shortest episode is the very first one at 5 minutes and 54 seconds and the longest is #3 at one second over twenty-seven minutes. The average episode length is a palatable fifteen and a half minutes. I just finished number eighty-five which means in the last nine days I have watched 20 hours and 39 minutes. That is about 2-1/2 hours or around 9 episodes a day.

I have a little over 5 hours left to watch and I’ll be done, but Mike Burroughs, founder of StanceWorks is not. He started working on this project in December of 2020 with the original goal of finishing it up in time for SEMA in November of 2021, but SEMA was cancelled and pandemic supply chain issues have held him up. This is apparently the third thing he did to generate some anger, not necessarily Ferrari owners, but more like the people following the build, he is taking too long for finish. Whatever. I have subscribed to the channel, so after I finish the 107 current episodes I’ll still watch the rest of them as he finishes them.

Tagged: Cars, Internet, YouTube

Lack of Attention to Detail

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

About a month ago we were in Walmart, shopping for some groceries that we like, but Fred Meyers stopped carrying them or never did. When we got back to the car to put our purchases in the trunk an employee out gathering carts stopped and said, “You know you have your tires on the wrong side of the car?”

I looked down at the rears tire I was closest to, sure enough the tread pattern was facing the wrong way. Doh! “Wow, I must have messed up when I swapped the summer tires for the winter all-seasons back in March”, I told him. The fellow said he noticed because he also has a Miata, a ’90, and has run these tires on his car in the past.

I thanked him and the next day I swapped the tires to their correct sides. This was not a real big deal because the tread pattern is that way to improve wet traction by channeling water from out from under the tire and I don’t think the Miata has been in the rain since we have lived in Oregon. Well maybe I had the wipers on intermittent once last year…

Today was another one of those Walmart runs and when we pulled into the lot I noticed a white early model Miata, so I parked next to it figuring it might be that guy’s car. When we here last time and I asked him where his car was he had pointed over in the side of the lot. When I got out and looked at it I noticed he had a “Share the Road” license plate too.

Tagged: Dumb Things I've Done, Miata

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

Monday, August 15, 2022

The Ides of August Edition of SORT
As of Monday, August 15, 2022 at 6:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
2006 Lotus Elise 1966 Ford Bronco 2001 BMW 525i Wagon
This is a hardcore sports car in spite of the creature comforts of A/C, Alpine stereo and noise-insulated black soft top. This is a hardcore off-roader in spite of the creature comforts of A/C, an audio system and black hard top. This tourer is the antithesis of the previous 2 vehicles. It is smooth, comfy with lots of room for your luggage and any souvenirs you buy.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sports: 2000 Honda S2000 Sold for $35,500 on 8/10/22
Off-Road: 2003 Land Rover Discovery II HSE Sold for $15,000 on 8/11/22
Touring: 1977 Honda Accord Sold for $12,250 on 8/10/22

Tagged: Cars, Sport-Off Road-Touring

Sport, Off-Road, Touring: Year 2 by the Numbers

Tuesday, August 9, 2022

Well, another year has come and gone of my selecting each week the perfect 3-car garage from Bring A Trailer. One is a dedicated sportscar, one off-road vehicle and a car that is suitable for road-tripping.

Last year I created a post that wrapped up the previous year’s cars and now I’m sort of obligated to do it again. Unlike last year when I had to look back at every week to collect data, this time I have kept the spreadsheet updated as I have gone along. This means it will get posted about a week sooner than the last one.

Like last year I once again picked 156 cars, which is three times fifty-two, but unlike last year I missed picking cars one week. We were on our second day of a two-week driving vacation and I forgot (I did remember for the second Monday though.) So how did I end up with the same number of cars? For something different on Christmas week, I decided to pick a dream garage of red & green. To get an even amount of each color I decided to go ahead and pick one of each color for each of the categories.

If I actually won all auctions of the cars I chose during the year I would have spent $9,695,567. Making it an average of $62,151 for each vehicle. This is down around $1.5 million and nine thousand respectively.

The most expensive car I picked was once again in the Sport category, a 1960 Ferrari 250 GT Pinin Farina Coupe at $491,000. The most expensive auto in the Off-Road category was, like last year, another Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG at $205,000. The highest priced auto in the Touring category was a 2021 Mercedes-Maybach GLS 600 at $253,000. There were 18 vehicles that went for over six figures. Last year there were 23, with two of those over a half million and one went for $1.1 million.

The least expensive car I picked was yet again from Off-Road category, a VW Beetle based 1977 Fargo Dune Buggy at a measly $5,100. The least expensive Touring vehicle was a no reserve 1999 Chevrolet K1500 Suburban LT 4×4 that sold for $9,300. The least expensive Sports car was a 1973 Porsche 914 that sold for $12,000. There was a 1969 Datsun 2000 Roadster that I “bid” $8,000 on, but there was no sale as the reserve wasn’t met. These four cars were the only ones that went for under five figures.

The oldest car I chose was a 1931 Ford Model A Pickup Hot Rod that set me back $68,000. There were 2 more cars selected from the 30’s, four more from the 40’s, 20 from the 50’s and twenty more from the 60’s. There were two dozen vehicles selected from the 70’s, 17 came from the 80’s, sixteen were from the 90’s and the 2000’s was the most popular decade again with a total of 25. There were 18 picked from 2010-2019 and the 2020’s accounted for the last nine of the 156 total. The newest cars were from the year 2022, and 3 of the 4 were just because one Monday for kicks I picked brand new cars and priced them to MSRP. Taking all vehicles into account, the average model year car was 1985 compared to last year’s 1986.

The cars came from 43 separate manufacturers, two more than last year. The most popular make was a tie between Porsche & Chevy with 16. The runner-up was another tie, VW & Ford came in at fourteen. Jeep was third with 11. There were 20 manufacturers with one car chosen and 10 more with just 2 models. Last year I picked only one car from Mazda, a lonely Miata, but this year there were 8 from Mazda, including four Miatas.

The most chosen model name this year was Type 2, AKA VW Bus with 7, Land Cruiser & Wrangler were the runners-up with 6 and 3rd place were Bronco, Cayman & Corvette with five picks. A little less than half, 76, were one and done model names.

Now, using fuzzy logic, the most popular car of this year, if it existed, would have been a 1957 Porsche Type 2 that costs $22,500 and the most random car, if it existed, would be a 1978 Mercedes-Benz Patrol that costs $50,500.

Tagged: Cars, Numbers, Sport-Off Road-Touring
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"Ninety Percent Of Everything Is Crap"
Derived from a quote by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once said, "Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is crud." Oddly, when Sturgeon's Law is cited, the final word is almost invariably changed to 'crap'.

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Roadside America photo 1) Big Cowboy Statue was ta Roadside America photo 1) Big Cowboy Statue was taken in Watertown, SD, way east in the state, and number 2) was the art statue of Cowboy Rides a Dinosaur in Lemmon, SD, way west in the same state.

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