Tag: car

Categories
video

Car related YouTube channels I recommend end of year 2024

Reading Time: 3 minutes

The car and DIY channels that I subscribe to them and watch them often.

Cars and DIY

Waldo’s World: he is a young technician/mechanic/engineer who has fixed quite a few larger European luxury cars and other equipments (some are huge). I like his troubleshooting analysis, logics and approaches. Hint: not “parts fodder”. I watched some of his videos, including this Land Rover LR3 Project. It was a success, as you can see from near the end of this part 4. I never drove off-road, although I know some people do like it, e.g., some Jeep drivers and some ATV (Polaris and Honda came to mind) people like to go off-road.

Now I just realized, for a YT creator, making a playlist has almost the same effect as the Netflix “binge watching” a new series.

Some background: I studied engineering in my undergraduate. But I really didn’t have much hands on experience working on things so far, because I switched to my software engineer career about 24 years ago. I was usually impressed by people who are handy, basically any guy or girls who are hands on, fix things, or get things working. Things don’t have to complex. For example, last night at a friend’s house, I saw this Tramontina Induction Cooking System the first time. I wasn’t sure how it works: and googled 1st. A friend just took the pot and put it there, and it seems starts working. Another time, long time ago, I recall a fraternity brother took apart his Toyota Celica engine or something, and put it back (he is Mechanical Engineering major too).

So far, my automotive repair or hands-on experience is limited to replacing the batteries (for the Camry and Sienna), replacing head lights bulb. I did put on spare tire once (Subaru Forester, a while ago). I also diagnose the rodent or squirrel issue in my Sienna, and the gas cap (interfere with the sliding door) issue. For the former issue (rodent got under the hood, made a nest, and chew up cables etc.), I found the lint paper for dryer is the way to go. It appears rodent or squirrel didn’t like the small of that paper. For Sienna, I also empties some acorn shells from the AC fan (behind the cabin air filter) as I heard noise, ordered the new fan (motor) from Amazon, before i found out the noise was really caused by the left over acorn shells.

I like to learn more, and if not working on the European luxury sedan (which seems hard to ramp up that skill), as a minimum I like to do more more to my Camry and Sienna: replacing cabin air filter may be something I will do.

The Car Care Nut: the founder is an immigrant from Iraq, and he is also the owner of TCCN Automotive (Chicago Suburb). He is Toyota certified master diagnostic technician (highest level among Toyota technician community). He is probably one of the car channel on YT that has highest subscribers. He started the channel during pandemic (due to shutdown), and later he started his own shop as the US quickly reopened. He is also quite technical. He occasionally did review of other Japanese brand including: Mazda, Nissan and Subaru. But the main focus of the channel and his shop are still Toyota and Lexus.

Royalty Auto Service:

I found this channel recently. He is also pretty good. Some of the videos I watched:

Ranking The Top 5 Least Expensive Vehicles To Maintain That We Work On At Our Shop!

Ranking The Top 5 Most Expensive Vehicles To Maintain That We Work On At Our Shop!

Single Dad Opens a Repair Shop – His Story

The 3 Biggest Scams We See In The Auto Repair Industry

It’s Time To Talk About Extended Warranty Companies! (I tend to agree, also from my personal experience I only bought extended warranty once, and felt it’s not good use of the money).

How To Find A Great Auto Repair Shop That You Can Trust!

Chinese 中文

Below are all technicians. And they speak in Mandarin Chinese. I believe they are all from mainland.

小韩修车：“入行十几年的修理工，分享汽车维修知识🚗🔧”

小徐的汽车生活：“我将在这里分享我的日常汽车维修工作，分享二手车整备的过程与汽车相关知识。”

车二哥说车：“大家好，我是车二哥， 我是一个干了16年的汽车修理工。。。”

Pundits or Journalists 媒体和记者

Note I prefer technicians or engineers (hands on, handy, DIY) over pundits or theories.

北美张小车

AutomotivePress: I noticed him from The Car Care Nut

savagegeese: I think I came across them both independently (cannot find the Mustang mach e video for some reason), and also from The Car Care Nut

Categories
Fun gadgets Life Life Tips

My cars over the years

Reading Time: 4 minutes

(Update 11-08-2025) 美国二手丰田太贵啦！日系SUV车价/市场/行情/TOYOTA/车市 RAV4/4Runner/Highlander/Grand Highlander/CH-R

(Original) No I don’t drive the Rivian but I drive the Toyota Sienna next to it: owned it for 9 years now (since summer 2013). It was the main car (minivan) I drove in last 9 years, with the exception of sometimes I drove my wife’s Camry for the purpose of saving gasoline, or taking care of maintenance issue.


Recently I also bought a certified pre owned Toyota Camry for my wife as I totaled her older Camry during an accident (I was not hurt).


The clear water blue 2012 Camry was the one we had for 10 years: we owned her from new. Serenity (when she was 2 years old) liked the color. The girls (my wife and 2 daughters) liked her very much too, at the day before the car was towed away, I told my girls to take some pictures. And they did. I was hoping Serenity can learn to drive on the 2012 blue Camry, but sometimes things unpredictable do happen, and the accident was not the worst as I was fine (I was the only person in the car). I think she will likely learn to drive on the white (ice cap) 2020 Camry, or if she likes, hopefully I can get her whatever cool car / SUV she wants when she is 16 (or 15 and a half 🙂

Again we all liked blue Camry very much, especially my wife. It was my wife’s main car, and since she preferred Camry, I got her replacement Camry in a week. The only complaint she had so far is the noise during initial acceleration, which from google it seems quite normal. Camry was known for its quietness, btw. Both Camry and Sienna were fairly reliable. I make sure fixing necessary wear and tear, things such as oil change, tire, wiper blades, breaks and battery. And some other occasional breakages: for Sienna, one recent example is the drive shaft.

Before those 2012 Toyotas, I owned Nissan Altima 2001 (from new) and Subaru Forester 2006 (bought used from Craigslist, in 2010). I regret bought the Altima, at the time I liked its leather and lower price tag compared to Camry. But it’s also a bit smaller than Camry, and it has more maintenance issues in the later years, also the resell value was not as great. Below is the email I sent to the owner of Subaru back in 2010 when I was trying to buy it:

=======

Minjie Xu minjie.xu@gmail.com
Thu, Jul 22, 2010, 11:38 AM
to sale-p5b98–1854914704
Hi, there,
 
I saw the Ad at St. Louis Craigslist, I would like to know whether the vehicle is still available, and if yes, when is a good time to take a look?
 
http://stlouis.craigslist.org/cto/1854914704.html (this link is no longer available, btw)
 
BTW, from the picture, it is a stick-shift (manual transmission), correct?
 
Thanks,…

========

In Summer 2013 I traded in the Subaru for the Sienna I mentioned above. I recall I did not lose money from it, because like Toyota, Subaru also holds value pretty well.

Old Cars

Before those two, when I was in graduate school in Rolla and was new to the USA, I drove a 1991 Toyota Corolla manual (stick shift). And before Corolla (about $3,000, bought in 1998 or 1999), my first car was black 1984 Toyota Celica 1984 ($450, paid in 1998, also stick shift). I learned how to drive on the Celica in early 1998. I got pulled over by police a few times due to various reasons, one occasion was I could not stay on the lane very well, it was probably in the middle of night, I drove from Rolla Walmart to my fraternity. Now I think about it, if I had the 2020 Camry LDA feature (lane departure alerts, YouTube video – How does Toyota’s Lane Departure Alert With Steering Assist work?), this won’t happen.

EV next?

I think my next car could be either a hybrid or an EV (Rivian hopefully :-). Joking. I think in general, if money or the gasoline is not an issue, one should get a car or a SUV (a truck) as safe as possible. That’s another reason I bought Camry, not only it her the most popular car (sedan) in the USA for many years, it’s also one of the safest: if you could ignore all the white noises in which the US government haul in the CEO / Grandson of Toyota founder, it’s only for the show (for the consumption of some ignorant US TV viewers or let’s just say some Americans. Some people in my humble opinion, should not be allowed to drive: this was the consensus I had with a few graduates at the fraternity when I was in Rolla. Sorry sometimes I have to be blunt. Especially if you consider I was hit by someone from behind recently in a traffic light intersection. Btw, it’s the 2nd time I was hit in an intersection. The first time, the other driver fled, unfortunately. I was able to do some freelance detective work myself, and unfortunately squared, the other driver had no insurance 🙁

Last but not least, I shared some of my recent car shopping experience here:

https://twitter.com/stlplace/status/1580768430755500033

Categories
car

The rodents are back to my Sienna Minivan

Reading Time: 2 minutesI talked about this last year, in this post and that post. The bad news is, they are back. Couple weeks ago, when I went to dealership and install the new battery on Sienna, the service advisor mentioned there are some biting on the cables, and I said “yeah I know, last year I have been here 3 times to fix the squirrel biting cable problem”. Looking back they already visited this year (2015).

My wife noticed the problem on Thursday afternoon when she saw the check engine and “Trac Off” light are on. So I brought the minivan to dealership on Friday, and they were able to fix it on Saturday. Needless to say, I am annoyed again. Service advisor’s advice is to put moth ball in the hood. This was essentially what I did last year. Not fail-safe and there is this moth ball smell which could be harmful to human. I did a little more research and reading (1, 2, 3), but I have not seen a perfect solution. Another possibility is the laundry dryer sheet, or spicy sauce. I may try the dryer sheet tomorrow. Here I wanted to summarize some of the possible approaches to prevent the rodents coming back. I hope this might be helpful for people in similar situation like me, last year once I recall the service advisor told me a customer came back multiple times due to this problem, in other words I am not alone.

1) Use repellent such as spicy sauce, moth ball (this is unproven and has side effect according to some);

2) Power wash the engine compartment, to get rid of the smell from rodents’ previous visits. Note there is different opinions on this topic (see one discussion here). I also noticed Waterway Car Cash offers this service. I never did that before and don’t know how they do this.

3) Don’t park in the same spot when parking outside. Keep in mind do this both in winter and spring: the rodents get in in winter because it’s warmer inside, and they chew the cable for fun, in spring it’s mating season for squirrel, the make nest there.

4) Last but not least, trade in the problem car or minivan. I did give it some thought, and I think if the problem persists, and since I could not buy a townhouse/single family house with car garage, that’s one option I may pursue.

Categories
Business China

Price war leaves bad taste to loyal customers

Reading Time: 2 minutesLast week one of the biggest news in consumer electronics arena is Apple decided to cut the iPhone price. Consider Apple just started shipping iPhone in late June, this move is a blow to its most loyal customers (early adopters). Apple quickly responded to the angry customers by offering $100 credit (source: Apple.com).

From my own experience, US car makers do those kind of price cut all the time. They carry out price wars mainly in two ways: rebate and/or low interest loan. Sometimes I saw a $8000 rebate on a 20 to 30 k truck or SUV. One side effect of those kind of promotion is the lower residual value of pre-owned cars (trucks), compared to similar model Japanese cars/trucks.

Interestingly, this car price wars are now extended in China, for the good or bad of consumer. On the good side, the new customers can buy the cars on the cheap; on the other hand, the early (loyal) customers paid a premium for the car. This is an Chinese article talking about Hyundai cars. The war is not limited to Korean car makers. It appears to me low end car makers have most to lose; while high end cars such as BMW still have much price power. (Picture below: Hyundai Coupe).

hyundai cars pic

PS, after I wrote the above, I realized there is difference between price cut and price war. But I think there is a strong connection between the two: price cut is the tactics of a price war, e.g., Apple announced a price war against its competitors (Motorola, Palm, RIM etc.) by cutting the iPhone price. Now the competitors will have to respond by cutting their prices if they don’t want to give up market share.