jeffpollard.net

Truck back, still not the end

Yesterday afternoon, I got the call from Haley Toyota that I had been anticipating for 15 days. Yes, my truck was ready.

I left work really early so that I could get down there while their service technicians were still working. Since they could not find any weird noises coming from the A/C, I figured I'd have to demonstrate it for them. I arrived just in time for the Thursday evening rush in the service department. They had four service representatives (desk workers) helping people, and the lines were still backing up. I don't think that they're inefficient, but maybe just overwhelmed with customers.

I finally made it up to the desk and the lady handed me the key to my truck and told me to sign for the warranty work. I about chocked when I saw the total for the work already performed: $412!! How could replacing a seat part and fixing the steering wheel cost $412??? Well, at least I didn't have to pay for it. I signed for the free work and headed outside to find my truck. This may seem funny, but finding my truck in a sea of other Toyota wasn't as easy as you might expect. There were actually 2 other Lunar Mist Tacomas in the service lot, one of them another double cab. But, it had a bedliner, so I knew she wasn't mine.

Before even opening it up, I walked around it, inspecting the new bumper and checking for any obvious dings, dents, and scratches that may have been inflicted upon it by a careless technician or fellow customer. Nothing. Perfect. I got in and started it up. My plan was to let it run for a little bit, then go back inside and get a technician to come out and listen to the odd noise. After letting it idle for a few minutes with the A/C running, it still wasn't making the noise. "Great," I thought "Just like I feared. Nothing." But I wasn't giving up. I just knew that sound would return if I drove it down the road. So, I did. traffic was really heavy on Midlothian Turnpike, which was actually a good thing because it tends to do it during stop-and-go driving conditions. Sure enough, it started doing it a few blocks from the dealership.

I whipped the truck around and headed back to Haley. As I got closer to my destination, it made the noise more consistantly. Yes! I pulled back in the service area and left it running. there was no way I was going to jeopardize my chances of them hearing it. A service guy immediately came out and hopped in. And what happened next simply amazed me. As we were turning around in the parking lot, it made the noise REALLY LOUD. I think at that point I rubbed the dash a little and thanked the truck for being agreeable and exhibiting the behavior for the technician. He probably thought I was weird. We pulled out on to Midlothian Turnpike and it did it loud once more. Every time it would do it, I'd turn to the technician and say, "See??! There it was!" Yeh, he definitely thought I was a freak.

He agreed that the sound was abnormal and told me that I could turn around ad head back to the dealership. He said that he figures that it's either a bad A/C compressor or clutch, and that he'd order the parts and replace them both. I dropped him off, made a quick trip back to the service desk to set up an appointment for next week and I was off.

Driving the truck kinda feels weird after not driving it for TWO WEEKS. I'm finding that it feels kinda like a big, clumsy grizzly bear compared the the agile Rav4 loaner that I had been driving. But don't get me wrong. It's great and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. Except maybe one that didn't have the problems that this one has had.

So, it goes back to Haley Monday night. I SHOULD (key word) have it back Tuesday night, so that's not too bad. And then, folks, this drama will be over.

And for all of you wondering about my dentist appointment today, It actually got moved to next Friday. So, no dentist appointment until next week this time. I'm getting nervous already. Going to the dentist can be a nerve-wracking experience.

Hopefully we can get our patio finished this weekend. If the rain will hold off.

Day 15

Day 15 without the truck. The delusions of getting it back in a timely manner are fading.

We're waiting on a seat part. Other than that, life is ok.

Day 9

Day nine without the truck. The Rav4 has become increasingly useful for hauling large objects, large quantities of recyclables, and plowing through really deep mud puddles. Side note: it even handles well at around 90.

Photoshop Programer of the Week

..And this week's Photoshop programer of the week is.....Todor Georgiev!!! Congratulations!! You win my undying respect and enthusiasm for your work.

That is all.

Customer Satisfaction Our #1 Goal

I told myself that I wasn't going to complain on here about this. I told myself that I'd just be patient and wait for things to be fixed. And here I sit, a week later, complaining about it. I think it's justified.

I dropped the new truck off at Haley Toyota last Wednesday afternoon to have a few things fixed. Among those are the dented front bumper, the rattling passenger seat, the noisy A/C, the mysterious steering wheel honking horn, and the well-known and documented axle wrap problem that I knew they wouldn't be able to fix. When I dropped the truck off with them I told them that I didn't want to see the truck until everything was fixed and that I didn't want this to turn into one of those multiple-trip catastrophe. The service lady agreed and said that they would make sure they got things all fixed up for me.

I left there in an 2001 black Toyota Rav4 that reeked of cigarette smoke. After a few days of hearing nothing (Friday), I called them to find out what the deal was. They said that the new bumper had been installed, but the truck hadn't gone into the service shop to have the other problems

No word Monday by late afternoon, so I called them. They told me that they had fixed the steering wheel horn honking ("the contacts were too close, we bent them out"), but they didn't find anything wrong with the A/C and the seat rattle was normal. In fact, she attributed the seat rattle to not having the seat locked into a certain position. So at this point they had had the truck for two days and only had half of the problems fixed. I reminded her that the A/C noise could only be heard after running the truck for a few minutes with it in drive and stopped. I also told her that the rattling seat noise didn't sound like any "locking into place" noise I had ever heard. She said that she'd have her techs look at it again the next day, sticking to my "I don't want to see it until it's fixed" philosophy.

So I sat around yesterday afternoon hoping to hear something. As I was in the middle of rush hour traffic, my mobile phone rang and it was the lady at Haley Toyota. She said that they found something wrong with the passenger seat and that they'd have to order a part that would be arriving this Thursday. I said, "OK, what about the A/C noise?" She stated that the noise I was hearing was a pressure equalization and that it was normal. I told her that my '99 Tacoma never made the noise that I had been hearing. She replied by saying that the trucks had changed over the years. I then asked her to explain the "pressure equalization" noise that she attributed my problem to. She replied by saying that it was a hissing sound and happened every once in a while. Well, duh! That IS normal. I told her that I knew of that sound and that I knew that was a normal A/C noise and that my noise was something totally different. I told her "Fine, when I come in there to pick up the truck Thursday I'll take it out and drive it until it makes the noise and then come back and let your service technicians listen." That was pretty much the end of that conversation. She said that it would be ready Thursday.

It's pretty sad, but I've been driving this rental Rav4 for just a day or two short of the total number of days that I drove my new truck. As of this afternoon they will have had the truck for a full week and my problems are still not all solved.

Over the years, I've learned to exercise patience. But it becomes very difficult to do that under these circumstances. It's a good thing I've got Shania singing to me this morning to calm me down as I type this. :)

Hotlanta Road Trip

Whew. What a weekend. It was one of the best and most memorable ones to date.

The 6 of us (Me, Mike, Brian, Chris H, Paul, and Eric) piled in a rental van Saturday morning and drove about 8 hours to Atlanta. It ended up feeling like a longer trip than I expected, but it wasn't too bad.

We had a great dinner at The Cheesecake Factory and then spent the rest of the night, ummm... playing bingo. Yeh, that's it. Bingo.

Ya know, spending a weekend away from town with 5 of my best friends really taught me something: It really doesn't matter what we do or where we do it, as long as our friends are together, we have the more fun than a barrel of monkeys. My friends are the best. You guys rule.

I'm already getting excited about Mike and Lauren's wedding. Should be great.

No Viagra For Me

Ok, for the last time: I don't want to order Viagra online. Not even if it's "discreetly delivered to my door." I don't want to reduce my debt. I don't want to consolodate any student loans, nor do I want to refinance the mortgage on my house. I don't want to buy flowers online. I don't want to sign up for some porno site, especially if it involves farm animals. I don't want to increase my breast size. I don't want to buy perscription drugs online, even if I can save up to 40%. And finally, I don't want to lose 50 pounds using safe and effective organic drugs.

I'm seriously thinking about changing email addresses. It almost seems worth it.

Dr. Strange Luck

I'm beginning to think that maybe I have a weird curse right now that prevents anything in my life from being simple and, as a side effect, I have really weird luck. I'll take a little blame for the lack of simplicity, but the rest is pure fate I guess. Lemme 'splain:

Remember a little more than month ago I ordered a set of new headllight assemblies for my truck from some company out in California. I ordered the headlights, they refunded my money and then shipped the lights out anyway. I receive the lights only to find that they're the wrong part. So, I work it out with the companmy and we cross-ship them, meaning that I send them the wrong ones, they send me the right ones. That worked fine, too. They even paid for shipping BOTH sets of lights to and from the west coast. I received the lights and they were the right thing. But then I sold my truck. Ok, so I sold the lights to a guy on CustomTacos. So I arrive home yesterday and there's a box sitting on my front porch. I said (out loud) to myself "This can't be good.." (side bar) I've been selling all of my custom parts off of my old truck over the past couple weeks and so I feared that one of my shipped packages had been returned (/side bar) So, I get the box inside and discover something pretty funny: It's another set of Tacoma crystal headlights!!! So, I put them up for sale on CustomTacos last night. Maybe I'm now somehow subscribed to the "Headlights of the Month" club.

And so this weird luck that I'm having. It sucks. I won't dwell on it too long, but here's an interesting story: My new truck has been having it's share of strange problems. The A/C compressor makes a strange whining noise when sitting at a stoplight, my passenger seat rattles on rough spots in the road, and (most annoying) my horn sometimes honks when I turn a sharp corner. Yeh, really annoying...and scary the first couple times it did it. So, I've been working out a time to take my truck into the service shop at Haley Toyota, but had removed the fuse for my horn in the meantime so that I wouldn't scare myself or piss off other drivers who thought I might be honking at them.

Yesterday evening was the time we decided upon to drop my truck off at the dealership to be fixed. As I'm driving through the parking deck leaving work (on my way to Haley), I see a red car with its brake lights on up ahead. I slow down, but notice that the car's reverse lights are not on. So, I proceed with caution. (the next few seconds happend in slow motion) Just about the time my front bumper gets behind the red car's bumper, the backup lights come on, and back comes the car. I immediately stopped, but my bumper and fender were squarely in the red car's path. I begin freaking out and slamming my hand on the middle of the sterring wheel. Nothing. No horn. No fuse makes horn not blow. I begin screeming at the red car. "HEY!!!! HEY!!!!!! HEY!!!!!!! STOP!!!!!!! STOP!!!! STOP!!!!!!!" The car continues coming back towards my truck. More yelling. More horn pounding - more nothing. With a mere two feet between my bumper and the red car's bumper, the girl in the driver's seat finally turns around and sees me and stops. In my frantic panic, I yelled at her, "YOU GOTTA WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING!!! YOU GOTTA WATCH OUT!!" She just stared at me with a scared look. She turned back around and slowly drove back into her parking spot. I sat there for a second, reeling from what just happened, and then continued on.

The interesting thing with this is that this is the first time that this has happened to me in the three years I've been parking in that deck. So, what are the chances that it would happen on the ONLY DAY when I had no horn. I'm sure she would have stopped sooner (and I wouldn't have soiled my drawers) if I could have blown the horn. What are the chances? That's been my luck lately.

Back to work, back to reality

Ya know, I feel like I come on here and do nothing but bitch and complain lately. I'm sure all of you readers (if there are any left after my extended absence) are tired of hearing about it.

With my grandmopther passing away this past weekend, the scheduled Sunday trip to Bridgewater took on a little different meaning. The funeral was nice and I got to see some family that I hadn't seen in years and others whom I didn't recognize at all. All in all, it wasn't as sad as I thought it might be. She lived a good, long life and it was just her time.

I took yesterday off from work as a "mental health day". And it was just what the doctor ordered. I relaxed, had lunch with Olivia, and then returned home just in time for our paving blocks to be delivered, finally. So, I spent the remainder of the afternoon in the back yard, working the dirt around to make it as level as possible. I think we're just about ready to begin laying the stones down.

And today, I'm back at work with a long to-do list of things to get done, both personal and work-related. The fun never stops! :)

Finally back on the air

Yes, I'm finally back up and running. After some DNS confusion with my host, everything seems to be back to nermal--err normal.

Everything is great with the truck. I still need to get my bumper fixed from the minor sents that it incurred while in route from the assembly line, but the dealership has me down to get that replaced. There's so much to tell..so much water has gone under the bridge since I last wrote on here. But, there's just no time for it right now.

Double Cab..In Da House

Here she is!

Ain't she pretty?

After all of the mixed emotions including happy, sad, excited, and scared, I sit here tonight feeling happy about my purchase with only small amounts of sadness for the absence of my old truck.

I had a good chance to take it out on the town tonight, Olivia and I went out and got dinner at Arby's, then made a trip to Home Depot to look at their patio pavers and then Wal-Mart to pick up some new floor mats for my new truck.

I'm really happy with it so far. I was pretty sad for the first few minutes after leaving the dealership, but I was a little better by the time I arrived home. I arrived home, we took some photos and then immediately removed the plastic bedliner. There's no way I was going to let that contraption scratch up my new truck's bed. For those of you in the dark, plastic bedliners are NOTORIOUS for rubbing the bed that they are "protecting" and trapping water underneath them, causing rust. I should be able to find a buyer for it around here, hopefully.

Less than 24 hours to go

So here I am..24 hours later. My mood is slightly more melancholy than this time last night. I think I was just in shock last night. Well, the shock is over and I'm now faced with the sad reality that I'm parting with my 1999 Tacoma tomorrow evening after work.

I left work early so that I could come home and make some necessary changes to the truck before tomorrow's trade-in. Things like replacing the custom corner lights and tail lights with their factory counterparts, removing all of my custom stereo equipment and installing a Toyota tape deck from out of Jennifer's old car - a 1998 Camry. (By the way, it worked WONDERFULLY. Sounded pretty good, too!) I removed the rubber bed mat that I'll cut down to size and install in the third truck that it will have "lived" in. I removed the short shifter kit and installed all of the original factory equipment, including the shift knob. I switched out the wheels with my factory "steelies" with the brand new snow tires from Jennifer.

And then I stood back and looked at it. It really was one of those moments when a million memories from over the past 4 years came rushing back through my head. From picking the truck up off the lot on that fine day in May 1999 to installing the lowering kit in June of 2001, to installing the cold air intake in the dark with Olivia's help, and so on and so forth. Damn, I can't even type this without getting teary-eyed thinking about all of the great memories I've had with that truck.

And so I was driving home from work this afternoon and as I turned the corner onto Hunton Park Boulevard, I realized that I would never have the chance to ride through the parking lot at any local strip mall and admire my clean, lowered Taco in the reflection of all of the store windows. And I so wanted to turn the truck around and drive to the closest strip mall so that I could enjoy that satisfaction one last time. But alas, I had a ton of work to do and not much time to do it.

I pulled into my parking space here at the house and sat and listened to my stereo for a few minutes. With the double cab not having much "extra" room for subwoofers, I wasn't sure how long it would be before I'd be able to rattle my brain with Linkin Park again.

So I got all of the stuff done to the truck that needed to be done. And, after a quick trip over to Charlottesville to meet Mom for some Double Cab paper signing, we returned home to finish up the work on the truck.

Taking it out for a test-drive felt really weird. With the factory shifter and knob and a factory Toyota head unit, I was taken back to May 1999 again. A quick trip down Hunton Park Boulevard, U-turn and then a quick little final burnout. I had to do it. I tached it up to 4 or 5k, dumped the clutch, and then just let em' eat for a few yards up the road. I finally gave in and shifted to second and continued up the road to complete the 1/4" mile drag strip run that I never got to experience with this truck. So many unexplored dreams.

One day I will come back to this - the life of driving a lowered mini truck. But not now. And not that many others that read this understand, but I'll continue to be a mini trucker at heart.

Lunar Double Cab

If you're the superstitious type, then you might be a little weirded out if you were here right now. Outside it's lighting-ing and thundering. But sitting here in the living room I'm relaxing with a computer on my lap with Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" playing. "...I wanna fall in love..with you..."

I'm in shock. I'm having a difficult time coming to the realization of what I did this evening. Since it's late, I feel like I should just get to bed, but this needs to be documented if for no other reason but so I can look back on it one day in the future.

As many of you know, I've been agonizingly contemplating buying a new truck. Sometimes vocally contemplating. Sometimes silently contemplating. In fact, I told Olivia tonight that I've been doing even more thinking about this decision than even SHE knows...and I'm sure I've bugged her enough with this ordeal. But it all came to a head this evening. I bought a new truck.

I realized this afternoon that today was April 30th which means that today was the last day that Toyota was offering their special 3.9% financing. Over the weekend, I had drooled over a good deal on a truck in Staunton. So today I figured I'd call some local dealerships and see if they were willing to go as low as McDonough in Staunton. And surprisingly, they were. What none of them were willing to do, however, was give me the truck they had in stock with the options that I craved. What one of them, Haley Toyota, did offer was offer to get me a truck with the options that I wanted for the same price as I had found in Staunton. In fact, the truck they found for me is more truck for the same $$deal$$. So, I decided to drive over there after work and see what kind of a trade-in deal they would give me on my truck.

Their appraiser gave the response I expected. A "hey, that's a nice truck..but it's customized..and I'll have a hard time selling that." His only suggestion was that he would have an easier time selling it if it was put back to factory height with factory wheels and tires. When he asked me if I had all of the parts to get the truck put back to factory height, I proudly replied "Yes." His only requirement was that I would take care of getting back to stock. And, his offer wasn't anything stunning, either.

But then it hit me. He wants the truck back to stock. OK, so I keep the wheels and tires. I keep all of the stereo stuff. They become mine to do with as I please, including sell on eBay to make up for the difference in trade-in offer that I was hoping for.

And that's when it all started to seem like it could work.

I went back in and told them that we would have a deal if they would pay to have the truck put back to stock. They declined, but said that they'd split the cost with me. Total cost = $300. My half would be $150. Not too shabby. And, they would take care of taking it to a shop and getting the work done. I couldn't argue too much with that. They told me that I would get free inspections for the life of the truck and that just about sealed the deal. I know..small things.

So the truck is actually in Virginia Beach right now. It will be delivered on Friday and I will be dropping off the lowered Taco at that time. It will be an emotional day. Ever try to be happy and sad at the same time? Not an easy task.

But, before then, I have LOTS of work to do. It is my goal to remove the wheels and tires and all stereo equipment before Friday. The aftermarket intake also needs to come off..but I may let them take care of that if I run out of time. Either way, I'm getting ready to have a butt-load of parts going up for sale soon.

And now I'll go to bed and agonize over waiting for Friday.