Minor rant thread. Post your rants o' the day here!

I think this was discussed in the past few weeks:

My rental is a 2023 or 24 Nissan Rogue.  Its fine.  The shifter is weird though.  The position of R relative to D is fine, however relative to P, its odd.  From P to go into reverse, you have to push foward, which is unnatural.  To go into P, you don't push foward, you press the button on the top of the shifter.

In general I don't see how this is an improvement over any current automatic patern.  Since they already have the ability to go fwd/back, why not maintain the PRND "standard"?

In reply to TravisTheHuman :

What standard? 

Part of what damaged my Volvo's transmission in 2018 was me trying to upshift and failing, because the manual gate is backwards to a performance transmission.  Although I suppose that after six more years of driving it, if I haven't rewired it to work correctly, I'll probably never do it.

As far as the separate park button, that does seem to be the new "standard" as these things go. Mercedes and Toyota both use a similar paradigm.  They really want you to get into the habit of a specific, non-ambiguous motion to put a vehicle in Park, instead of possibly missing it and leaving it in Reverse.  This is probably super important when you can't be forced to put it in Park to take your key out because there's no mechanical key.

Mercedes, of course, will also slam it into Park if you open the door, even if the thing is rolling.  Ford will too when you shut the engine off in gear.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

One of the things that I love the most about my GL350 is that when I turn the car off and remove the key, it automatically puts the transmission in Park.  The downside, of course, is that I'm forever needing to remember that I need to put other automatic cars into park before I can get the key out...

In reply to wae :

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

In reply to TravisTheHuman :

 

What standard? 

 

Yeah, that's why its in quotes.
 

That said, I have never owned an automatic vehicle that wasn't PRNDxx, and I think aside from this rental and maybe one other very recent vehicle (Chevy Bolt comes to mind), I've never driven one that doesn't follow that convention.

In reply to TravisTheHuman :

We recently had a rental Rogue and that shifter set up is bizarre. I suppose after a few weeks of ownership you would get used to it. I drove it probably 20 trips and I usually did something I hadn't intended to when reversing or parking. Not a huge fan of the electric parking brake either. Damn new fangled cars, get off my lawn!

ShawnG said:

That is a fuel sending unit grommet on a ski-doo. Yes, a grommet, below fuel level. Idiots.

Half an hour of disassembly later, here's what the rotten one looks like.

So, yeah. Fuel rots the grommet, which is in the bottom of the tank. Rotten grommet falls out and dumps 10 gallons of fuel on my customers floor.

Bloody stupid design.

Didn't Holley teach everyone "no gaskets below fuel level" 70 years ago?

Old habits die hard...

Skidoo has been putting grommets in tanks below the fuel level for probably over 50 years. It used to be for the fuel pick-up line to run through when the fuel gage was in the cap or a sight glass on the side of the tank. 

Well this has turned out to be a terrible Christmas for the mtn family. Not-so-minor rant/ramblings/trying to make sense of anything: 
 

This Christmas started Saturday with kiddo being sick, fever of 103-104. Turns out it's influenza A. Apparently the flu shot missed this particular strain.

Monday I am running all around to the vet, doctor, pharmacy, another errand I can't remember... when I was home, it was either walking the dog or taking care of kiddo... and wife is starting to feel it too. Obviously have to cancel Christmas Dinner with the in-laws that was supposed to be that night. Didn't get anything done that I was supposed to.

Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the year. My favorite family party, and one that basically everyone wants to go to. But no way it was happening yesterday for us. I had to run to pick up my wife's Christmas gift that finally got delivered to the store; grocery for pedialyte which was the busiest I've seen this grocery store, walk the dog, take care of 2 sick people... both were puking after they were in bed... not a great day. And I ended up staying up until 2am despite being exhausted to clean the house and let Santa in.

Today, we all slept in until 11. Did Christmas. Wife goes to nap. Meanwhile, kid pukes again. Stick her in the bath. Take her out, dry her off, put her on sofa... she passes out. I cover her up and sit next to her. Then my FIL calls... my MIL has had a heart attack. 

I go wake up my wife, she heads to the hospital.

Kid wakes up, pukes again. Missed the bowl entirely. Luckily it was basically all water and it was all over the towel from the first bath, and me and my clothes. Stick kid in the bath again.
 

And then my wife calls. My MIL did not make it. She was 66. 
 

This sucks. 

In reply to mtn :

Oof.  That's a bad week.  My sympathies.

In reply to mtn :

My condolences. Very sorry friend. 

In reply to mtn :

Wow, I'm so sorry to hear all that, man.  My sincere condolences.

In reply to mtn : I'm sorry for your loss.

In reply to dculberson :

I'm the same - why keep all this?  

Example - bought a new fuel filler neck ($105) - the rock hard 240z 52 year old original was not going back in without getting destroyed but I'm going to put it into a box and keep it. 

Why?

In reply to mtn :

I'm very sorry to hear this man

In reply to mtn :

My condolences. Really sorry to hear that.

Quoth the plumber: "In 23 years of doing this, I've never seen one of these standpipes break like this".

Happy berkeleying Holidays to me. Fortunately they're pretty confident that that dribble isn't going to turn into a geyser overnight so hopefully it'll hold until the appointment to fix it.

In reply to mtn :

I'm so sorry for your family's loss 

I was gifted a little 40" x 48" Ironton trailer by a buddy. He used it to haul his wheel and tire setup for his STR Miata. I was kinda thinking about buying a 4x8 utility trailer but decided to just use what I have. It has like a 1k lb weight limit which is fine but it has little 12x4.80 tires and slipper springs which make it extremely bouncy.

I found some 13" trailer wheels that fit the 4" x 4" hubs. The tire size I need is ST175/80D13. I want to run Load Range B tires. I don't need the extra carrying capacity of Load Range C tires. Plus the lower load range tires run a lower tire pressure which would hopefully improve the unladen bounciness.

I have found exactly ONE brand of tire in the size I need and in the load range I want. The tires are $40 MORE EACH than their load range C siblings. And the only online shop that carries them is on the other side of the county which makes shipping almost as much as the tires themselves.

Do I give up and just run load range C, which are cheaper and easily sourced?

In reply to stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) :

Yes.

Both the wife and I have been sick for five days straight, no the little ones of my sister have the same thing and friends are all coming down with it. None of us have seen each other all the same symptoms. Horrible cough, swollen and rough throat and hacking up green yellow and brown. It sucks. 

Our Australian overlords have been off since the 19th and won't be in office until January 2nd. US management has their head so far up their own ass they think we are going to get a ton done this week. Oh but we are waiting on Australia for drawings, CAM files and physical components to actually do anything.  I'm so done with this berking job, I wanted to spend this part of the year on the beach again.

Northeast winter weather. I grew up in CT and always lived here. Pepperidge Farms, I mean I remember when Winters actually got snow OR at the very least stayed moderately cold and kept what snow did fall.

Now it just seems an endless cycle of cold with no or little snow, then warm up and a ton of rain. 
 

I get that not everyone likes snow, but could we at least stop with the rain E36 M3. Have a few snowstorms with six inches of snow and then temps stay in the 20s to hold it. Maybe one big foot plus storm a year. 
 

In reply to wearymicrobe :

I've had the same thing for a couple days now. Last night I got home from work, downed some NyQuil and was in bed by 7:00. 

I'm hung down, brung down, hung up, and all kinds of mean nasty ugly things about other stuff that has nothing to do with my wife but I took it out on her by just being an shiny happy person about other other stuff.  So now I'm even more brung down and I've managed to drag her down into the pit of despair with me.  Good job, jackass.

My blue cheese salad dressing has chunks that are too big to fit through the hole in the cap...I guess the folks over at Hidden Valley have never heard of Six Sigma