The ’99 S10 ZR2 I’ve had for 5 years now has been pretty much bullet proof. Replacing the water pump is all I’ve had to do other than regular maintenance. But I may have forgot about the transmission. A trip to Charlotte, NC the first of this week I knew would be an interesting one, and it was. The reason was I had noticed some clicking noises coming from around the transfer case when shifting in and out of park, not to mention rapid clicking when accelerating. Of course I did not take it in to get looked at and I’m thinking now I should have. If something was going to go wrong I figured that was the time.
The trip was somewhat eventful on the way as the transmission would not shift down out of overdrive when coming to a hill. Once in Charlotte I had the transmission flushed at a Valvoline Oil change for $100.00. At least they did a flush and not just drain the pan and refill. That did help but there is still a problem. The clicking noises went away but now the humming came about.
A humming noise at about 55 mph seems to be what’s going on. When that happened to the wife’s car it was a bearing and a $1,200.00 bill. None the less the $100.00 at Valvoline was worth felling better about getting back to Nashville but the damage is done, I think.
I can only hope it is not a new trany that is needed.
Note: Gapping spark plugs correctly can also help with getting the most (power) out of ones engine. Check twice, gap once.
I got a kick out of a CNet news article titled U.S. Copyright Office poll: IE-only OK?. It made me grin cause the DOJ goes after Microsoft on charges of being a monopoly which has dragged on for years, and other branches of the government are requiring you to use it. Of course the Copyright Office does note it plans to support other browsers in the future but the planned upgrade to Siebel7.8 will not be in time for the launch. Funny that Sieble7.8 has no plans to support Opera or Safari so non-mainstream users will be out in the cold.
Maybe since they are going to support Firefox it means other browsers that use the same engine will work ? Who knows… I’m sure at some point a PC statement will come out that admits they were right and wrong.
This also made it to Groklaw, the thread is here, so you know the open source world is buzzing.
I’v read a number of articles and watched a few TV specials that documented horror stories and spider bites. It always seemed like the Brown Recluse always got it’s nose in there somewhere. When I lived in IL I did not pay that much attention to them, didn’t seem like they (spiders) were around that much or they were smaller than a dime. Yes I know about Black Widows but I didn’t see those hardly at all.
I will pay much more attention now though.
The articles and shows would comment where spiders like to hang out and shoes seemed to be one of there favorites. Every time I’d read about or see a show where someone was bitten I’d always think twice for a few days and then it would pass. Today that changed.
I keep some shoes in the garage basically if I know they are going to get messed up, you know for mowing and things. Last night I happened to leave my regular shoes in the garage and this morning when I put them on, without socks, my foot was not the only thing in the shoe.
Yes I had company… after pulling my foot out as fast as I could, a brown recluse came scampering out. I paused stunned for a moment trying to realize what could have happened, then squashed it to a pancake. Wow that was close. I don’t mind spiders but if it has the potential to put me in a coma …well I can do without that.
MedlinePlus notes good information about a brown recluse bite. I was lucky and didn’t get a scratch. But from now on a shoe won’t go on the foot without a thorough shaking. I can get lucky once, there doesn’t need to be a second time.
