Locate an Auto Repair Shop in Bear Branch, Kentucky

Bear Branch, KY Car Consumer Discussions

It's been a while, indeed...

by m4d_cow on Mon Apr 20 10:35:29 PDT 2009

And threads been going way too fast forward I decided not to read whatever I missed :P I've been assigned to a foreign branch in Indonesia for the next 2 years, never thought moving can be a seriously pain in the neck process (bills, visa, passport, bills... visa... bills... the usual drill) :P I'm no fan of this reassignment, but there's good money in it (a healthy 55% raise for 2 years, and permanent 20% raise from the time I go back, owww yeah...) This way I'm sure I can get my hands on the upcoming S5 cabrio when I get home, or perhaps even a 911? Can't wait already Upside? Well, besides the money there's a free apartment and car (a Camry that cost a heart stopping $55k!!!!). Yeah a Camry cost north of 50k here and is considered a quasi-luxo car. What about something like..err BMW 530? Yours for a mere $95k here. Oh and food's darn cheap here, approx. $10-15/day for a full course meal (unless you eat at 5star restaurants 3 times a day). Downside? Internet here is painfully slow, traffic jam's worse than NYC on new year's eve, there's more smog than LA and NY combined, and (gasp...) it floods like hell here. Oh well, I'll bear with it, thnk about the money... think about the money.... just dont think of anything else :P Anyways, did I miss anything significant???

Re: DD, Out of touch on so many issues [dallasdude1]

by grbeck on Tue Dec 02 09:00:38 PST 2008

dallasdude: The judicial branch is independent of the executive branch. Back to UAW business. You keep trying to suggest that because Bush was friends with Ken Lay, that he was responsible for Enron's collapse, and that Enron executives got away with fraud. This is false. Bush did not run Enron. He bears no responsibility for what happened. Second, Enron executives - including Ken Lay - were prosecuted and convicted during the Bush presidency. If you think that the president has no influence over who is and isn't prosecuted by federal attorneys, you are kidding yourself. Incidentally, the interview that you linked to noted that Lay was friends with Ann Richards, the Democratic governor of Texas, and he supported her bid for governor. Sooo...does this mean that she is responsible for what happened at Enron? I agree with you on one thing - you should stick to discussing the UAW. ;)

Re: 03 Camry LE V6 [210delray]

by ray_h1 on Fri Aug 11 10:33:08 PDT 2006

"So it would technically be okay to mix Dexron III and Ford Type F in the power steering system of a Camry?" In a purely hydraulic application such as PS systems, there'd be no problem either way. Both fluids use a light 5W base oil for cold weather operation and both have appropriate elastomeric seal swell agents to maintain leak-free operation as well as extreme pressure anti-wear agents to protect wear metal parts. The presence or absence of boundary layer friction modifiers* in the fluid has no bearing in hydraulic applications because there're no clutch facing materials involved. How did Ford get away without using friction modifiers in their earliest ATs? The company's friction facings were VERY hard - controlled slippage was a designed-in attribute. Eventually (~1975-ish) Ford "learned" from that "mistake" - hence FM doped Mercon, Mercon V, and Mercon SP ATFs... *This chemistry allows initial controlled slippage and then "locks" the driving and driven pieces as they heat up for full engagement. FMs got their start with GM "Type A, Suffix A" ATF fluid and then progressed with the various Dexrons. The Japanese and Europeans signed on to Dexron initially, but eventully realized if they branched out with their own clutch facing materials (and specified proprietary ATFs ;)), they could catch a ride on the gravy train for field service. Now proprietary $6.00/qt. automaker ATFs are a reality. Ain't progress jist wunnerful?... For another take, though, Ford appears to backtrack (or at least not aggressively recommend) Ford Type F ATF for non-Ford PS systems. Your call.

Mich. future now more tied to autos

by rockylee on Wed Apr 19 03:08:31 PDT 2006

Plant closures outside the region concentrate production in the state, for better or worse. Now that Detroit's largest automakers are retrenching their U.S. manufacturing operations to the Midwest, Michigan will bear an even greater share of the hardship if General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. keep losing sales. By the same token, the state will reap the benefits if the U.S. automakers succeed in their turnaround efforts, a Federal Reserve Bank economist said. "Since their restructurings, their production is more concentrated in this region than it has been in a long, long time," said Thomas Klier, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. "So the fortunes of this region are more than ever tied to the market success of these three companies," he said, referring to GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group. Michigan's government is struggling to diversify the economy and reduce its reliance on the domestic auto industry. Between 2002 and 2005, Michigan lost nearly 50,000 auto jobs, or 18 percent, even though the U.S. economy was expanding. "One could argue these are structural job losses -- this isn't a cyclical issue," Klier said. The reduction in jobs partly reflects productivity increases that enable fewer people to produce the same amount. But the fall is due primarily to the steady decline in U.S. market share of the Big Three -- to 56.5 percent from 62 percent five years ago. Many Wall Street analysts expect the slide will continue, but Klier was reluctant to make a prediction. "Three years from now, we'll see whether the downward trends we're seeing are reversible or not," he said. GM and Ford are now downsizing their North American operations to reflect their reduced share of the U.S. vehicle market. After abandoning its goal to recover a 29 percent market share, GM is hoping to stabilize in the low- to mid-20s. Ford is trying to slow the rate at which its U.S. market share -- now 19 percent -- is contracting. Last week, it announced plans to close truck plants in St. Paul, Minn., and in Norfolk, Va. It is expected to ramp up pickup truck output in Michigan to make up some of the shortfall. GM also has targeted more outlying factories than Midwestern plants in its restructuring plans. Chrysler, the only U.S. automaker to have gained market share in recent years, did not close U.S. assembly plants during its recent restructuring. Its manufacturing network was less far-flung than those of its larger rivals. If the U.S. automakers cannot halt the decline in their market share, the Midwestern operations will be more exposed to future cutbacks. On the other hand, "if it turns around, the upside development will be concentrated in this region, as well," Klier said at a conference organized by the Chicago Fed's Detroit branch. The number of auto assembly plants in the United States has declined to 50 from 55 since 1979. But it has tripled in the South to 15. Japan's Toyota Motor Corp. has just built a truck plant in San Antonio, and expects to be producing 2 million vehicles annually in North America by 2008. Dennis Cuneo, senior vice president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America, said 65 percent of those vehicles would be assembled at plants in the range of its supplier base in the Great Lakes area. Toyota is considering Michigan as a site for an engine plant.

Re: rings [bman33]

by c_hunter on Tue Jan 24 09:40:45 PST 2006

I think we need to make a distinction between generic wheels and specialized wheels here. Because Subaru has traditionally had offsets that were very different from most other makes, especially for 5-lug wheels, most of the Subaru tuner community has been buying Subaru-specific wheels with the proper offset and bore (brands like Rota, Prodrive, SSR, etc...). These have traditionally been bolt on replacements. If you head over to the Nabisco forums, you'll see plenty of descriptions of problems when people start to branch out to generic wheels with lug centricity and/or incorrect offset. Sure, these wheels can be made to fit and look good, but people have run into a lot of ride/handling quality issues as well as bearing failures. So the general consensus on Nabisco is to stick with the right wheel specs or stay close. I agree that you can balance a wheel/tire to be lug centric, but the tolerances of lugs from machine to car, or car to car, or hub to hub on the same car still come into play. There are also tolerances with the hub-wheel alignment, of course, but a well machined hub/wheel combo will always offer better alignment than the same tolerances on a 5-lug setup. It's a physical reality of mechanical parts -- the more pins and holes you have to line up, the harder it is to attain "absolute" positioning with a fixed tolerance. All it means in the end is that lug-centric wheels would require tighter tolerances and better balancing than a hub-centric wheel, to get the same alignment. And they would also need to be installed more carefully -- the wheel lugs have to be torqued while the vehicle is still jacked up and there is no weight on the lugs, since there is no center hub support to take the load. As long as I have been buying cars, the factory wheels, even when they have been exotic racing wheels that are part of a limited production vehicle, have always been hub-centric. So obviously the manufacturers are trying to avoid the hassles that come with lug-centric mounts. I also think it's interesting that all the wheels I have bought from the TireRack have been hub-centric, either with the proper bore or through the use of centering rings. They have some good articles about this on their website. Craig

Re: Cylinder head cracked [david57]

by shipo on Mon Dec 05 10:01:21 PST 2005

Hmmm, a defect in the casting? That seems a bit rare. Having said that, back in the late 1980s I happened to be home visiting my folks when I heard my Mom (or rather her Eldorado) pull into the driveway. My ear detected a mild bearing knock, which I guessed to be a rod bearing as the car had about 97,000 on the clock. When she took it in to have the noise examined, the dealership pulled the oil pan and noticed that the engine was missing one of its to bolts on the rear main bearing cap, and that the portion of the casting in the engine skirt that held the threads was missing as well. Given the miles on the engine, there was no way that Cadillac was going to replace the engine, however, her car was spotless and she really liked it, so in went a brand new engine, on her nickel. :-( Since she had many contacts in the "Autos" (she was first a sales person selling midrange computer systems in Detroit, then a Branch Manager, and then a Region Manager), she did a little investigation and found out that her engine was immediately packaged up and shipped to one of GM's metallurgy labs for analysis. Turns out that the crack in the casting was determined to have been there from the start. Did they offer to pay for her new mill? Nope. Best Regards, Shipo