tjameswhite.com

I have a 2002 model year car. It has a broken strut for the rear hatch. Normally this isn’t a problem, a trip to a local parts store and $20 later a new strut. Except for my Mazda.

Yet it seems that no one makes an after-market replacement strut (at least not a direct replacement), which I find hard to believe given the age of the car. So I called the Mazda dealer. “Yes sir, we can order those,” the left one cost a measly $58 and the right one $62. Hrm? I sort of figured on the struts being more expensive from the dealer, but two different prices? From what I can tell the struts are the same (except for the right and left-ness of them). What gives Mazda?

The next step will be to take my broken strut to the parts store to see if I can find a strut that is close and easily adapted to work. If not, I’ll for suitable salvage parts.

Yes, the easy thing would be to suck up the expense and buy from the dealer. But I hardly ever do things the easy way.

By the way, more holiday and other photos are up.

At 120,000 miles, the Mazda was due for it’s third set of tires. Some 3 years and 60,000 miles ago I replaced the original Dunlops with some really cheap and crappy General tires. I hated them the minute I drove off.

This time around she has been shod with Kumho Ultra High Performance ECSTA ASX all season tires. They are fantastic and affoardable ($400 for 4, mounted and balanced).

First thing I noticed is how much crisper they are on initial turn-in. Second thing I noticed is how much less road noise they generate. And, of course, they have tons more grip than the junk that came off. The grip level is like the original Dunlops, if not better.

I was also impressed with the grip in snowy conditions. Leaving from a light the other day I put the spurs to it to see how much they slipped and slided. With the old tires, the Mazda typically spun the front wheels and yawed left and right with very little forward motion. The Kumhos, on the other hand, spun (as expected) but the car accelerated in a straight line. It wasn’t drag racing fast acceleration, but I was moving much better and in a more stable manner than before.

Me, and the Mazda, are very happy with the purchase.

So instead of blogging I’ve been Twittering. I plan on updating this site with a Twitter feed, but I also been planning on rebuilding this site for something like a year now; so don’t hold your breath.

The computer is still DOA. Or rather, the new motherboard was. Hopefully TigerDirect will send me a replacement without hassle and we will get things up and running before 2009 rolls around.

The only other big thing so far this year (yeah, ’so far’ like we’ve had a lot of time to try out 2008) is that Olivia is about 80% potty trained. The past 3 days we have been aggressively working on it and she has been marvelous. Today we went to the mall and didn’t have any accidents. I believe, in fact, that she only had two accidents all day. Let’s hope we can keep the trend going when we get back to day care starting tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, I’ve been off work for something like 3 weeks now, and that all ends tomorrow. Sarah and I both go back. She has students, I have in-service for the week then students next week.