Car thoughts

[davidn]

I swear to you, I was behind a car with the number plate "CANHAZCHZ" on the way back from work today. But I suppose "TWAT" would be too short for a vehicle registration.

I also finally worked out how to use the cruise control on the car - to cut a long story short, I had been pressing the wrong button every time I'd tried it before. Once you've got it on, you really feel it - it's weirdly like being tugged along on an invisible rope for the first few minutes, and it's nice not to have to worry about accidentally drifting either over or under the speed limit. I'm aware that everyone else has probably had this as standard for the last ten years already, but the last vehicle I drove was a Ford Fiesta from about 1995, and this still hasn't got any less like driving a spaceship by comparison - even having a working headlight alarm frankly feels like a whole new world.

It occurs to me that I've never done anything to the car at all apart from filling it up with petrol occasionally - the last one regularly needed its evaporating brake fluid reservoir topped up or lights replaced. But our current vehicle always tells you exactly how much longer it is before it wants serviced or an oil change, and you can hardly open the bonnet up without getting the dealership to do it for you if you want to keep your warranty - it's not so much driving as moving a computer about, and if that analogy holds true, this one's definitely a Mac.

Comments

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

While my car seems to know just how long it is until the oil needs to be changed, it still doesn't tell the dealership to stop calling as they decide that "3 months is the standard", despite the fact they know everything else about my car, including the fact that my car has an oil change monitor and I don't drive from out-of-town for work like so many people do these days.

I took the car in recently to get said oilchange done, but as it was getting close to its four-year anniversary, I looked into the things that I neglected to do while the car was out-and-about. As such, I had a fairly nasty bill at the end of it all, and sometimes it makes me somewhat regret buying a new car when I heard that a co-worker bought their first car for less than my total bill that day, and hasn't had to put nearly as much money into keeping it running.

However, on the flip side, I took the car in just under the 60,000km warranty, so at least some of the stuff that needed to be done was covered.

In an actually-related-to-your-post comment, I love the cruise control when I'm taking long trips. it lefts me stretch my legs a little bit, since holding them in that one particular position for an hour is definitely strenuous. But yes, that sudden lurch is a little disconcerting.

[davidn]

The car is still yet to become the huge money sink that everyone warned me it would be, and I'm very glad of that :) I haven't yet had to take it in for servicing - I'm to do that when the oil life indicator reached 15%, and it's going to take a while for it to reach that because my commute is only a couple of miles long (also the reason why I'm spending less than half as much as I had calculated on America's incredibly cheap petrol per month). Though I know from some very knowledgeable and outspoken people (above) that it's still a good idea to do it earlier than normal that first time...