Saturday, November 27, 2010
Two scoops, please!
I bought an AFE dual cone cold air intake a while back but it just collected dust in my garage for over a month since I was still on the fence about installing it. I've seen various dyno results that show anywhere from +0hp gain to +20hp gain so I guess the performance benefit really depends on your overall set up and tune. I'm not planning to squeeze out every last bit of power from the car or constantly tweak stuff so I started leaning towards getting rid of it. I figured their popularity was attributed to being easy to install, being fairly inexpensive, adding some sound, and making the engine bay look cooler...all of which weren't really that exciting to me.
So what made me pull the trigger? Easy...my hands were already dirty! Earlier in the day a friend and I attempted to replace the idle air control valve in my old Accord and I was a little shocked that it actually worked. We got rid of the idle surge, the check engine light disappeared, and I ended up saving more than $200 compared to what the shop quoted me. I felt fucking invincible! So when my friend pulled the intake out of its box and started tinkering with it we both looked at each other and knew what was next.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
I hate cats.
I was never really fond of cats. They always struck me as a little creepy, they walk around showing off their butt holes like they own the world, and they definitely don't provide the type of affection another animal would considering you're providing them with food and shelter. It's almost like they expect it! Anyway, despite my feelings towards cats I thought it might be good to have one in the house to (1) give my parents something to do and (2) because I've never really had a pet and cats are supposed to be easy to take care of. To be quite honest, if we messed up and the pet got sick or died, I'd feel a lot worse if it were a dog. LOL is that bad?
So here I am, being righteous and benevolent driving to an animal shelter to adopt a cat, and on the way there I get pulled over AGAIN - my second speeding ticket in a month! The cop got me at 90 while merging onto the freeway but I swear I felt like I was doing 80. I wasn't weaving through traffic or anything crazy but I guess 90mph is still 90mph. This is going to make me sound like a douchebag but cars that are built to drive fast should have higher speed limits. A late-model BMW doing 90 is a lot less dangerous than a 1983 Corolla doing 90 in my opinion.
Then to make things worse when I got to the shelter I had to wait two hours to speak to an adoption counselor. When I finally got called, the lady informed me that everyone in the house needs to come "meet" the cat before we can take it home!!! WTF is that!? First of all, why didn't you tell me this BEFORE I waited two hours? And secondly, I'm doing the shelter and the cat a favor and you want me to jump through all these hoops? Keep the f'ing cat then!
Mr. Ticket and I are going to be on a first name basis...
Sunday, November 7, 2010
"Yous must play for a Anaheim baseball teams cuz yous AAAAANGELS"
It took about 5 hours to get the LED halo bulbs in and rewiring the daytime running lights but it was well worth the effort! Compare the pic above to my previous post and you'll see the old halos which were a hideous yellow. The difference with the new wiring is that now only the halos turn on as the DRLs whereas before the halos and the inner halogen beam would turn on. The wiring process went surprisingly smooth minus the fact that we ended up with two extra screws and upon first start the engine fan turned on and wouldn't turn off. The fan eventually fixed itself after restarting the car...I'm guessing the ECU was just confused after re-connecting the battery.
I'm learning a lot about this car and BMWs in general and it's amazing how differently things are engineered compared to Japanese cars. Even the small stuff like panel access and plastic cover latches are complicated and require a lot of knowledge to work with - if it wasn't for the forums and the people who post instructions I definitely would've been hostage to the dealer or a professional more often than I'd like.
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