Little Red Terror! (Pictures)

[Reswob]

Hi SET23L,

I've always been into the older cars. They have more character. I haven't driven anything made later than 1991. I agree with Kimmo "More stuff = more stuff to go wrong." I read about newer cars and all the problems they have just because of some sensor going bad. I don't want to deal with that. I think all the extra gizmos also suck away fuel efficiency. I'm hoping I can learn some mechanics so that I am not completely clueless and get ripped off by people.

I am very satisfied with my car. The only thing I wish I had was air conditioning. When I have to park in the sun in the 35 degree heat, it can get unbearable. However, I am willing to trade some comfort for a reliable car. I have bought a steering wheel cover so the vinyl doesn't fry my hands this coming summer. I have become a Datsun-style shade seeker. This car teaches me to be more in touch with my environment. There is something very raw about this N12 Pulsar's nature.

Many people have some queer ideas about cars. I was talking to one of my flatmates who has a 2005 Toyota Rav 4. She said that she likes SUVs because of the seating position; it's just like sitting at a table. It's as if people want cars to be like moving lounge rooms with all the creature comforts of a hotel. The sound of the engine, the frame rattling around or road noise is just a rude intrusion. I don't think they know how to enjoy a car's nature for what it is.

Sure my car roars a lot.
Sure all the windows rattle as I bounce over uneven roads.
Sure the gearbox clanks around.
Sure the engine makes the dash dance a jig.....

......but I think it's amusing.

[TurboZ.Dude]

That's the spirit! Couldn't agree more!

[SET23L]

I don't think they know how to enjoy a car's nature for what it is.

Sure my car roars a lot.
Sure all the windows rattle as I bounce over uneven roads.
Sure the gearbox clanks around.
Sure the engine makes the dash dance a jig.....

......but I think it's amusing.

i totally agree with you there Reswob.
my car is the same.
all the cars that i have owned have been old except for one, my old evo 3.
the most enjoyable was my XD falcon with my et a very close second.
all the ratles and noises make the car more interesting.

[Reswob]

Yesterday I went out to get some new tyres. I found a good place where the guys appreciate my curiosity about what's going on under the bonnet. Hopefully I'll get to have some fun with that. Anyway, the guys told me that the tyres have been on the car since 2001! Didn't my Uncle care about my safety at all?! Ah, my poor little neglected beastie. She handles much, much better now. I'm not bouncing off every bump in the road now. I thought that was my dying shocks.

I mentioned the squealing to them. She was squealing like a stuck pig on steroids as I pulled into the tyre shop. They showed me this trick of putting water on the belt in question to see if the noise stops. They told me to bring the car in tomorrow and they'd tighten up the belt for me.

One of them also asked me if this was my first car and told me I was lucky. It was a good car and the engine was in good condition. He said that N12 Pulsars like mine were very hard to get. I will show you when I get a camera. Maybe someone can label up a photo of the engine bay for me.

...............

Today I went out to the car to get this alternater belt issue sorted out. I had moved the car from my previous parking spot to a more raised position as the other spot turned into a pond whenever it rained heavily. Unfortunately, I had to park near this grate and I absent-mindedly dropped my keys through the grate when I was trying to fish them out of my pocket! Gosh I can be such a clumsy fool! It felt like an episode out of Mr. Bean.
After a great deal of effort I was able to lift the cast iron grate and I tried to fish the keys out. There was all this water with a thick slick of dirty engine oil coating it. I managed to ALMOST get the keys but they fell off my stick. I think my further attempts have buried it into the thick sediment below. After my frantic attempts to rescue my keys, my arms were covered in this awful oil. Thank goodness for sunlight soap!! I'm going to have to get a plumber to help me with this.

I looked at my car and thought, "we're going to have a lot of interesting adventures, aren't we?"

Luckily I found the spare keys and I was able to get to the tyre shop. The dude had a look at the altenator belt and tried to fix it. The squealing seemed to lessen slightly but not completely disappear. He said there is something else going on and if it bothers me the next thing to do is to replace the alternator as there might be a bearing loose in there. He said that it was ok to drive about with that noise going on. It was an old car. They develop personality traits like this....but this only happened when I got it back from the other repair shop. Maybe I should ask them what's happened.

Ah, you naughty little car. I christen ye The Squealer. You are going to make me deaf before I'm 30.

I decided to go and get an extra spare cut. That was a waste of time. The dude I went to couldn't get the job done. He said my locks were worn. Well, yeah they are 24 year old locks but some other guy managed to do it. I wonder if he's faculties were failing him. He was very old, in his 70's I think. I felt sorry for him. I went though the back of his shop. Looks like he lives there in relative poverty. I saw a photo of his wife there but I did not see her. Maybe she was dead. Poor guy.

I went back home to find that I could not put the grate back in place. That thing must weigh 50 kilograms. Now there is a big hole in the parking lot. I hope no-one falls in....

[Kimmo]

I am very satisfied with my car. The only thing I wish I had was air conditioning. When I have to park in the sun in the 35 degree heat, it can get unbearable.

The aircon in my dead Exa never worked, but the sunroof solved the problem of getting into a sauna; if you can't leave it open, you can let the hot air out pretty quick anyway. In that car it was a manual sunroof with a gutter pressed into the roof, but in my spare car the electric sunroof just uses a hole cut into the roof and the gutter's part of a plastic fitting.

So you can retrofit one if you can find a Pulsar with one of these sunroofs at a wreckers... I'd make a template of the hole, too.


Also, about your keys - pull a coat hanger straight, tape it to a broom handle, and use the hook to grab em.

[Reswob]

Turbo Z. Dude, politics are there so that we can wrangle ideas. If you offend people, that's just part of the long discussion called life. Otherwise you'd be living in a police state if disagreeing with someone was a crime.

And what is a XD Falcon like SET23L?

Ah, dramas with the tyres. Three weeks after I got the new ones I dicovered that the right rear tyre had gone flat. I was suspicious, so I took it back to the tyre shop and the found a slow leak in the tyre wall. They said some kid stick a pin in there for fun. I don't know how that would happen to a car in a security parking area in some uni apartments. They charged me $25 because they put a tube in...and said that they gave me a $10 discount as it was a new tyre and they were looking after me. Feel a bit ripped off.

That was an eventful day. I somehow managed to flood the engine in the morning but I had been doing what I normally do to start it. The car must have been feeling miserable about that tyre and didn't want to start, "Ah-he-he-he-he!" Cough. Cough. Splutter. Splutter. It was jumping up and down on the spot. I put the peddle to the metal and turned the key. It roared into life. I knew it as going to be a crazy day after that...last time I flooded the carby I wrote off a car.

I have some minor dents in the end of my bonnet where I slap my front Green P-Plate on. Because the plate was warped it would not hug the metal and it blew off....twice, once in a road I did not know in the middle of the night.

[BADET-4]

Reswob, For future reference. DO NOT pay more than $15 tops for a simple puncture repair. You were conned.
Sorry, James.

[Reswob]

I had a feeling I was conned but what could I do when they did the job?

[TurboZ.Dude]

Turbo Z. Dude, politics are there so that we can wrangle ideas. If you offend people, that's just part of the long discussion called life. Otherwise you'd be living in a police state if disagreeing with someone was a crime.

I was exaggerating, which is one of my traits. I didn't mean at all that we should create police states. And I definitely didn't mean that disagreeing with someone is a crime. We should simply replace the politicians with educated experts who know what they are doing. Well, anyway, I hope I didn't offend you or anybody else with this 'extreme' statement, if so, I'm sorry. I was in a bad mood and didn't quite think of what I was writing. So never mind about that! I will try not to get heated up like that again about politics. I'm sorry about messing up your thread.

Ah, dramas with the tyres. Three weeks after I got the new ones I dicovered that the right rear tyre had gone flat. I was suspicious, so I took it back to the tyre shop and the found a slow leak in the tyre wall. They said some kid stick a pin in there for fun. I don't know how that would happen to a car in a security parking area in some uni apartments. They charged me $25 because they put a tube in...and said that they gave me a $10 discount as it was a new tyre and they were looking after me. Feel a bit ripped off.

Darn.

[Reswob]

Ah, don't worry Turbo Z. Dude. I think political discussions are interesting. You did not offend me, sorry if it appeared that way. Since this my thread, maybe I can give people permission to talk about whatever they feel like. Randomness is the spice of life....just as random and misplaced an N12 is in a place where most of the other cars are under ten years old.

For the moment, it is a diary about all the misadventures of a girl lost in a big city at the mercy of the world where an N12 Pulsar is her only source of autonomy and partner in crime.

[TurboZ.Dude]

Ah, don't worry Turbo Z. Dude. I think political discussions are interesting. You did not offend me, sorry if it appeared that way.

Phew. For a moment there, I was a bit worried about your next reply... Thanks for understanding!

For the moment, it is a diary about all the misadventures of a girl lost in a big city at the mercy of the world where an N12 Pulsar is her only source of autonomy and partner in crime.

Artistically put! Almost sounds like the foreword of a long novel or a movie!

[Reswob]

Hey, I'm a big-hearted person with a long fuse...I've softened and mellowed with age. I didn't even defend myself against that idiot that side swiped me. It'll be hard to get an outburst from me.

Ah well, I am a novelist to be. I have a lot of plotlines in my head. I think that car ownership is as much about the people that own them as the mechanics of the beasts themselves. Different car models attract different kinds of people. In our little community here you have the racers, eccentric backyard mechanics, you have people like us that get N12's handed down to us from previous generations of the family and you have people who use their cars for travelling out in the bush. We have a diverse collection of narratives here all tied by one type of car and it's varients. I don't think that's common.

I never thought I'd find myself in this company when my Uncle Darryl said, "Oh here's a car, if you can drive it, you can have it." So I regard my time with the N12 as another aspect of the story or history of this car model. I may as well record this narrative regardless of how mundane it is at the time. One day we will run out of petrol and this may be interesting to people 50 years in the future. The children will probably be pointing to a rusted wreck or a museum specimen, tugging a sleeve asking, "What's that Mama?"

I plan to have a lot of adventures with my Pulsar before that time comes. Let's go fossil hunting!

[TurboZ.Dude]

Well, you can always run the Pulsar on bio-ethanol or some other replacement for gasoline... end of oil is not the end of the world for these internal combustion engines.

[Reswob]

Could do. I thought that ethanol can wear out your engine though. At the moment, the petrol I'm using has a percentage of ethanol.

Yes, I had dramas there too. I didn't quite know the conformation of the petrol tank. It seems to be more like the VK Commodore I smashed rather than an N13 Pulsar. Kinda figured that out when I over filled the tank and some of it sloshed out leaving a white bloom on the paint that I couldn't quite get off. Ah, I am so naughty!

You can get discount vouchers for fuel from Woolworths and Coles supermarkets in this country if you spend over $30. Seems that it's designed more for those people who own gas guzzling giants. My fuel guage is dodgy, so I refuel every 200 km. It takes about $20 worth of petrol or less, so I get 30 cents or a dollar back at the most. It is SOOO not worth it. I think it's a trick to induce rampant consumerism rather than a method we can save money.

[TurboZ.Dude]

Could do. I thought that ethanol can wear out your engine though.

Didn't know that. May be true. But if that is the case, they will probably invent some sort of additive that they mix together with the fuel to prevent engine damage. Or improve the existing additive if they already use one. There are always solutions to these elementary problems, it just takes time.

I think it's a trick to induce rampant consumerism rather than a method we can save money.

Most probably true.