I hope I never see the Mini like this ever again.

My power steering stopped working late Sunday night. I could barely turn the steering wheel 90 degrees. And I smelled something burning (electrical, not oil) coming from the engine. From what I could gather from the Mini forums, it was either the alternator or the power steering pump or both. Since everything was closed on Monday for Memorial Day, I had to wait till today to get it towed to my shop in Dublin, Edge Motorworks. And they gave me the damage report.

Dood.....when my car breaks, it really BREAKS. No joke. The power steering fan went out, causing the power steering pump to overheat and fail, which burned through its wiring harness (source of the burning smell). That wire harness is connected to the alternator, so that too may been affected. They have to run some tests on it, but hopefully it'll still be good, cause if not, the repair costs are gonna sky rocket (from it's already high amount). From what I read on the forums, I was sorta prepared for this. Apparently this is a very common problem with 1st gen Minis like mine. I thought I was safe though, because most people run into this problem around 50-60K miles and I have 128K on mine and hadn't had any issues with it. Yet.

So yeah, this repair job is gonna break the bank big time and be a major setback in operation "get out of debt". To look at it optimistically, it could've been way worse. This same problem has often resulted in engine fires. So at least that didn't happen. And other than this and the thermostat (which I had replaced 50K miles ago), there are no other major known issues with the Mini. So in theory, it should be smooth sailing from here on out, aside from some kind of catastrophic engine failure (knock on wood). As long as I keep up with the regular maintenance, this thing should better run forever. If something else major were to happen, that would really test my love/patience for it. I hope I never have to find out.

edit:
Here are the two connectors that were connected to the power steering pump when it overheated. Super toasted. That thing must've gotten really hot.

The also showed me the old power steering fan, and how it really wasn't spinning freely anymore. Stupid fan......well, at least we didn't need to replace the alternator (for now). They tested it and it's not really charging to max capacity, but it's still charging enough to maintain the engine and the battery. So yeah. I'll probably have to get it replaced eventually, but hopefully not for at least a couple of years.

The Alpine head unit.

The Slap. Two Rockford Fosgate 12s powered by a 250W amp. It freakin' knocks! All my messy wiring is hidden behind the grey panels. I should've taken a pic of the panels off, for a before/after. It was a giant mess, but now you can't even tell I was even there. Super clean install.

My Old Angel Eyes. I love this look.

It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. It me two days to finish, but everything turned out great. As happy as I was (am) that I got everything working, it was still sorta sad for me to work on his car. It hella reminds me of my all old car, which is essentially the same car (a 4-door E36) but with a different engine. Over two years after the accident, I still miss my car.

I'm watching the Bones season 6 finale, game 4 of the Mavs/Thunder series streaming on ESPN 3, and viewing the live ESPN GameCast of the A's/Angels game. While eating dinner. I'm sorta glad I sprung for the 26" monitor.

Kev, Haile, & I went to this Chevy driving event in Alameda at the old air base. It was right on the bay, with a pretty nice view of the city in the background.

Chevy brought most of their cars and some of their competition to drive around small test tracks. We drove a Chevy Cruze, but only cause we had to in order to drive the Volt. The Cruze sucked, but the Volt was ok, for an electric car w/ gas engine assist. By the end of the day, all the Volts were running low on battery. I also drove a Nissan Maxima, which was fast, and a Lexus ES300, which was surprisingly smooth.

But of course, everyone was there to drive the Camero and Corvette on the "performance highway".

Both were pretty fast, with the Corvette being really really fast, but they didn't have manual transmissions for any cars this time. Last time, I think maybe 5-6 years ago, they did, so I asked someone, and they said last time they burnt through every single clutch, so they weren't making the same mistake this time. Too bad, but hey, I can still say I drove a Camero SS and a Corvette.

The Giants didn't win. The A's LOST, 1-2. And it took the Giants 10 innings to do it. Psshh....It was more like the battle of the anemic offenses or battle of the super awesome-o pitching. At one point, we were losing a no hitter (we had 3 hits, they had 0, but they were up 1-0). We stranded a dude on 3rd base twice, and with the bases loaded and NO outs, we only managed to score only 1 run. We'll get them back in Oakland next month. It's totally gonna be like last year, where we got swept in SF, but then swept them in Oakland.

View from our seats in section 330 row 5. There were 2 A's fans in the row behind us, but that was more or less it. I was wearing green in a sea of orange, with it being Orange Friday and Orange Snuggie night.

The Blue Man Group sang drummed the National Anthem. They were awesome.

Doesn't it look like a scared smile? Like, someone off camera is holding a gun pointed at his balls telling him to smile for the camera. Oh, and he's a former A (but it's ok that he's on the Giants now cause he hella sucks).

Mel & I after the game. In retrospect, I shouldn't even be smiling.

I'm soo ready for part 2 on Saturday, June 18.

Other than the A's getting swept by the Giants, this weekend was pretty awesome.

friday:
A's @ Giants - orange snuggie night (slight consolation for the loss)

saturday:
Chevy Main Street in Motion - I drove a Camero SS & a Corvette!
Sushi House -  yummy sushi
No Rapture-  yay!
Stadium Pub - watched the games (A's/Giants & Mavs/Thunder)
Naia Gelato - yummy gelato

sunday:
volunteered @ Glide - met new people & went out to lunch afterwards
bday party for Lianne

So I went to the gym today, and the 2 loud girls showed up maybe more than halfway through my usual routine, but this time they brought a kid, maybe 6 years old or so. I'm assuming one of the girls is the mother, because the kid was also loud, if not louder, than both of them. I was in the middle of watching an episode of Big Bang Theory on my phone, and even with my headphones turned all the way up, I could not hear anything other than the kid singing God Bless America (which for some reason she started singing almost immediately upon arrival). You'd think it'd be cute, but it wasn't. She was singing it very obnoxiously, being really loud and off-key, sorta like how Rosanne Barr sang the National Anthem at that Padres game back in the 90's (if you don't recall, it was possibly THE worst rendition of all-time). And neither of the girls said anything to the kid to be quiet or anything. Of course this was annoying the sh!t out of me, so maybe after a minute or so I literally hop off the treadmill and turn towards the door to leave. It was at that instant that one of the girls finally told the kid "be quiet or your grounded". But it was too late. I was already pissed, didn't feel like working out anymore, and had resigned to finishing the episode back at the apartment. Freakin' Merced, man. Even working out sucks here.

Well, in this case, less MPH = more MPG. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it till now, but I’ve discovered that if I drive slower, I get better gas mileage. I normally used to drive 75-80 mph, and that got me 27-28 miles per gallon. For one reason or another, last week I started driving between 65-70 mph, and that got me 29-30 mpg. That’s an exta 26 miles between fill ups. Gas prices aren’t getting any cheaper (yet), so I’ll take any kind of savings I can get.

So now I’m going to drive slower. Well, at least try to. It sounds easy, but I’m so accustomed to
driving faster since I’ve been doing it for so long, I'll slip into my lead foot ways if I’m not paying attention. It totally wouldn’t even be an issue if I had cruise control in the Mini, but I don’t (one of the options I regret not getting). I guess I’ll just speed when I need to, like if I’m running late for work or for an appointment or something.

in my 48 hours in Vallejo this weekend, I managed to do the following:

-Preventive maintenance on the Mini: I did an oil change, transmission fluid change, & tire rotation. I wanted to change out my spark plugs & fuel filter too, but I ran out of time. Maybe next weekend. I also helped Kev do oil change on his car.

-Installed front door camera: I mounted the camera outside the front door & mounted the lcd tv at the bottom of the staircase above the window. I ran all the video and power wires through the walls & stuff, which happened to be way harder and took longer than it should've. But it was worth it cause it totally works, better than I had hoped.

-Watched Bridesmaids with Jaymi, Jacqueline, Albert, Chris, & Kay Ann on Friday night, then Thor with Jaymi, Jacqueline, & Kev on Saturday night. If I could've, I would've watched Fast Five on Sunday, but I couldn't squeeze it in.

-Did the “bleach fix” on Jaymi’s iPhone. It was another thing that should've been really simple, but I ran into a minor complication (stupid power button), but it ended up not mattering cause she still got it replaced at the Apple Store, as originally planned. So that makes me 2-for-2 in doing "fixes" to otherwise voided-warranty iPhones and getting Apple to replace them under warranty.

-Attended Uncle Elcid’s bday party @ Auntie Minda’s Sunday evening. Good food, good times.

I also managed to get approximately 14 hours of (what I consider) good sleep. But the highlight of my weekend, of course, was Bud’s Burger. I don't know why, but it was exceptionally better than usual. They screwed up my order (cheese-less cheeseburger), but it didn't matter. It was still hella good. And they actually got the fries right this time: double-fried, crispy oily goodness.

Next weekend, it continues. The perfectionist in me tells me that I have to re-do one of the mounting screws on the camera, and then run the power & video cables nicely with the help of a staple gun. I should have enough time to do the Mini's spark plugs, but I don't know about the fuel filter, since I've never done it before. And I want to do some heat shielding in the engine bay, to try to keep the temps down. Some guy in the Mini forums has done it, and it looks easy, so I wanna give it a shot.

I have an extra day, too, since I'm taking Friday off. I'm going to the A's / Giants game (in SF) on Friday with Mel & Uncle Ernie. It also happens to be wearable blanket (aka snuggie) night. It's not the green A's "sluggie" that I missed out on last year, but it'll do (I guess).

Then on Sunday, I'm volunteering at Glide again. I'll also try to squeeze in some gym time. And then there's a GM driving event in Alameda on Saturday, but I haven't signed up for it yet. I'm not sure if I have the time to do it. And Tj wants me to check out this one car audio sale in El Cerrito, to check out stuff for his car.

So I got a lot on my plate for next weekend. I actually kinda like having a full schedule. It feels good to not waste my time.

Love Alone by miss A

Continuing my trend of listening to sad but catchy kpop songs. I've got this on repeat, after 2NE1's Lonely. miss A's a korean group, but they sing this entire song in English. And their English isn't even that bad, you could hardly tell. I've heard way worse.