Old News from October 2006
Autumn is here posted Sunday, October 29, 2006 by Dave

I had my Hankook Ice Bears installed on the Rotas last weekend, and swapped the Prodrive/Falken combo for them. Unfortunately, a silly mistake of mine last year at a local 7-11 might have actually bent one of the rims. I had a wobble in the steering at speeds over 45MPH with the old Falkens, but noticed that it went away when I switched the tires front to back. That same wobble is back with completely different tires, so I guess it's the wheel. I am disappointed that the tire place didn't mention it, because there's no way it could have been balanced properly.

The Prodrives are back on until I can get those wheels checked and get a replacement wheel.

For the past two or three months, I'd had an intermittent CEL, which I'd mentioned in the last post. This kept me from registering my car, because I didn't seem to be able to find the time to get it diagnosed. Reseting the ECU will clear the light, but the car must be driven a certain number of miles in certain conditions to make sure that the OBDII system is working, and that might well have resulted in the return of the CEL.

Yesterday the CEL was gone, and remained that way as I drove towards a local shop that does the OBDII tests. Pass or fail, I was going to see. My luck, the CEL stayed off and nothing in it's memory prevented the check from passing. Excellent.

I was finally able to get some JDM taillights, and they'll be showing up soon. Very excited for this stuff.

Finally, I've got a Subaru OE under-seat sub that I've half installed. The wiring needs to be run under the carpet and the sub mounted to the seat rail, but it's in and working. Not a lot of extra bass, but it does fill in the sound nicely on a lot of music.


Sight and Sound posted Monday, October 2, 2006 by Dave

It's that time of year when I have to think about inspection and making sure that I don't have any check engine lights. I do have a CEL, and it's probably related to my high-flow cat, but I'm going to reset the ECU, drive it for a while and see if it will stay away. Hopefully it's nothing else.

I did have a HUGE crack in my windshield, from the top and around to the bottom, but that was taken care of this afternoon by a local place that does it mobile. 20 minutes was all it took to get a new one installed.

I like the Falkens even more now. I got a chance to do some brief canyon driving this weekend and chased a 911 around in some nice sweeping bends. It was good fun and pretty safe, and the tires were grippy and quiet. I'm still amazed at how well this suspension corners.