Locate an Auto Repair Shop in Baker City, Oregon

Baker City, OR Car Consumer Discussions

Result of 60 mph on vacation

by euphonium on Mon Aug 25 11:43:05 PDT 2008

Start Miles 86746 Gallons AMPG Baker, OR 87093 12.1 28.67 Ogden, UT 87535 14.9 29.66 Steamboat 87924 14.1 27.58 Leadville 88256 13.1 25.34 (includes Boulder city driving) Durango 88625 13.0 28.38 Grnd Juntn 88979 13.2 26.81 Tremonton 89340 12.3 29.34 Baker, OR 89734 12.5 31.52 ’95 T Bird LX, 4.6L V8, AT, AC, Cruising Speed 60 MPH. (Used CC) Still driving on Baker gas since arrival @ home last Saturday. Less stress than cruising @ 75 and better viewing of the areas traveled. Colorado is high in more than altitude. :) :)

Re: 1999 Honda Accord --> 211k miles [mary36]

by euphonium on Sun Aug 24 21:48:04 PDT 2008

$1500 is worth not having to pour out Thousands for a replacement depreciating asset. While in Boulder, CO on vacation after descending Rocky Mt. N.P. our 95 T Bird required two new front rotors, pads, rear rotors were turned, + new pads, but the major unexpected expense was having to replace the heater core. The core was only $99, but the labor was very high due to having to remove the front bucket seat and pull back the dash board to get to the core. Had we traded it on the spot for a late Mustang, they wouldn't give much as is. Were we to sell it to a friend back home, we'd have to fix it first, so after doing the repairs, why not drive it ourselves. It's a 4.6 V8 and at 60 mph we got 31.5 mpg between Tremonton, UT and Baker City, OR. Mileage on the car = 113,657. :) :)

Re: 1999 Sonata [beachhockey]

by tntbaker on Thu May 22 06:43:42 PDT 2008

Please check you engine cradle for rust where the control arms bolt on. This is a very serious safty issue. I have a 2000 where the engine cradle rusted and broke and have talked to over 30 peolpe and the nhtsa.gov has 40 complaints on the same issue. These cars have been rusting from the inside out on the subframe and Hyundai has been replacing them with some persuasion. If you find this corrosion you need to file a cliam with nhtsa.gov and hyundai consumer affairs. If you have any questions I can be contacted directly at tntnknb@juno.com. I have been collecting this information ever since NOV 2006. Tom Baker Kansas CIty, MO

1999- 2001 Sonata owners

by tntbaker on Mon May 05 10:57:47 PDT 2008

Since November 2006 I have been contacted by 25 different people who have all experienced a failure with the right front subframe rusting apart and actually breaking. Approximately 18 people have been settled with, either Hyundai repairing the car or reimbursing for the repair. Most people have been on the eastern have of the United States. I have been working with an attorney building a case for a class action Lawsuit. We are currently looking for anyone who has had this problem and not contacted me. The NHTSA Number PE08029 is an active investigation that report 40 known failures. I am especial interested in anyone from California. If you own a 1999-2001 Hyundai Sonata I suggest inspecting your subframe for rust. If you are not sure where to look, you should turn your steering wheel all the way to the right. Look where the A-Arm bolts to the frame. You will probably find severe rust. If you do, I would like to hear from you at tntnknb@juno.com Even if it has not failed yet, I suggest taking it to a Hyundai dealer and filing a claim with Hyundai Consumer affairs. My hope is that Hyundai, who has admitted to a problem by paying for repairs will soon address this obvious safety issue. Tom Baker, Kansas City, MO

Re: Ebay time [fintail]

by Mr_Shiftright on Fri May 02 19:49:33 PDT 2008

1918 Baker Electric -- funny thing is, it has about the same range as many of the new ones (the cheaper ones) ---35 miles at city street speeds---so there hasn't been tons of progress in 90 years. 62 Bonnie -- it's worth the money, or so it seems from the photos, but the top fit sucks--that'll need attention. Seems like a solid #2 car although the instrument bezels look a little funkier than i'd like to see. also no shots of underneath. I might change my mind if i saw it in person. Too bad it's not a 4-speed tri-power. Factory AC is worth $2,500 at least. Down side? You'll get about 8 -10 mpg if you're lucky. So that's .50 cents a mile. That's gonna hurt. They should have rated these cars in gallons per hour. Mighty good lookin' car though. Nothing in '62 is that handsome IMO.

RFT + desert(ed) road + nighttime = bogus (long)

by actualsize on Fri Mar 07 17:59:23 PST 2008

The following happened yesterday. The situation is very similar to the RFT incident we had with out long-term Mini Cooper S. Except this time it happened at night and further away from any city. So we were testing a new version of a BMW 3-series in Pahrump, Nevada. Go ahead, make your own joke and get it out of your system. Ready? There isn't much in Pahrump, and there is even less (read: nothing) when you take the two-lane blacktop south toward Shoshone, California, (near Death Valley,) on your way back to Los Angeles. Some miles down the road, the low-pressure warning lamp comes on at 8:30 pm. Shoshone is one of those places where the population is lower than the elevation--by a lot. We could go back to Pahrump, but that's the opposite direction of home. And we've just come from Pahrump, so we know they'll neither have an RFT in this size nor an open tire store. Las Vegas lies a further 55 miles beyond that, but now we're talking further from home, a driving distance close to the assumed 100-mile limit of the RFTs and a guaranteed overnight stay. Going south along our intended path is no better. 70 miles down the road lies Baker, California, another place not likely to have ANY 35-series tires of any sort during broad daylight, let alone a RFT at 10:00 pm or so. There are no towns to the east. Death Valley awaits to the west. Since we are automotive professionals and we're geared-up for track testing, we have an ace up our sleeves: A high-capacity, off-road, direct-to-battery air compressor. We decide to blow the offending tire up to 45 psi (it had been at 20-something) and see how far we can get before the light comes back on. Answer: 35 miles. But now we're between Shoshone and Baker and we still have 240 miles 'til we get home. It's even darker, we're STILL in the middle of the desert, and even if we do find a tire store it's so late we won't find one tonight. At least there are 4 of us in a convoy. More air, back on the road. Another 35 miles, another warning lamp. This time, it should be noted, the warning lamp came on at 33 psi. That's 25% below the 45psi we set the tire to, not 25% below the door sticker. BMW must have some crazy software in their TPMS. We could have gone farther, but it’s still a leaker and we can't see the nail, so we re-air it to 45 psi. We do this three or four more times, working our way closer to home. But the distance between warnings drops to 30, then 25, then 20 miles. We're not getting into the RFT's mileage limit, because, so far, we haven't run below 30 psi for any length of time, let alone zero pressure. When the nav system says we've got less than 100 miles to go, air is leaking out in 6 miles. We're in Victorville now, with tire stores a plenty, but it is 11:30 pm and they're all closed. We decide to go with the nuclear option: After checking three "gas marts" we find one with a can of fix-a-flat (FAF). I know, I know. Here's our logic. If we don't do this, the next 100 miles of airless operation will get us home, but the tire will be junk because it'll have run its RFT distance limit. But we're not sure that 100 miles is the magic number; this BMW has no FM to R (fine manual to read,) as it's a loaner and the prep shops frequently forget to leave them in the car. If we do use FAF, we might save the tire--no run-flat mileage means we might be able to patch it after we scrape the FAF out. We'll need a new pressure sensor because FAF clogs the mechanism, but they're cheaper than a tire. If it doesn't work, we're no worse-off for trying. We just want to get ourselves home. After squirting-in the FAF, the pressure still drops in the next 10-miles. The TPMS sensor doesn't say so, because we couldn't re-set the system on account of it being plugged with FAF, but a precautionary stop to check the pressure manually tells the tale. We top off one more time and drive the last 80-something miles at 55 mph. We finally get back bleary-eyed at 2:00 am--some 3.5 hours later than expected. The southwestern USA is full of wide-open spaces and this could happen many, many such places. The day before we'd driven through Death Valley, where multiple stretches of 70+ miles have nothing more than a simple fuel station. None of them were service stations--they sold fuel and junk-food, that's it. Getting a tire, especially an exact replacement of this RFT, would be impossible in many of the places (city, town or village do not apply) we could have stopped for fuel. We never saw any place with mounting equipment the entire day. BMW engineers just HAVE to know this. We see them testing in great numbers in Death Valley every summer. The same thing must have happened to them. At the very least, they must have imagined the scenario. Why this didn't have an effect on the BMW brass in Germany is beyond me. This would have been such a non-story if we'd only had a spare. Five minutes and we'd have been on our way. If we hadn't had the compressor, we'd have been stranded in some garden spot like Baker. I might still have been there, waiting for a tire, right now. With this state of affairs, I find it impossible to recommend a new BMW (or Mini) to anyone, no matter how much I personally like them and relish what they can do. No more RFT-equipped cars! At least not without spares, that is. RFTs should never be anything more than a stand-alone option, and I'm no longer a fan of spareless running with GFTs and a Conti kit, either.