claidheamhmor | Entries tagged with fusion

Wilfried serviced my Fusion today. Parts prices have gone up a bit - it was R1613 from Ford for air filter, oil filter, pollen filter, and sump plug and washer (Wilfried reckoned it was time for a new one - that was over R500!). It's at 127000 or so km, so it's just under 15000km since the last service last year. That means I'm driving around 15000km per year, much less than the 25000km per year before Covid (and that extra 10000km would have all been short distance rush-hour traffic, much higher in running cost).

Some stats from Acar/Fuelly, which I use to track all of my car expenses, over the 2 years and 9 months I've owned the car. These include fuel, services, repairs, insurance, and other expenses.
Total running costs: R141731
Running cost/day: R138.14
Running cost/km: R3.99 (lower than the South African reimbursable AA rate, which is R4.18/km)
Fuel cost/km: R1.66
Total distance: 35512km
Average distance per day: 35km
Fuel-ups: 69
Min l/100km: 6 l/100km
Max l/100km: 11.6 l/100km
Total fuel cost: R58672
Total fuel: 3231 litres
Lowest fuel price: R12.86 per litre
Highest fuel price: R27.23 per litre (ouch!!!)

My car had been experiencing a bit of vibration around 80kph, so I suspected a bent wheel rim again, thanks to the ever-present potholes on the road. I went in to Tiger Wheel & Tyre to check. It turned that out one tyre was entirely bald (and bear in mind that they were all legal in Nov/Dec last year when I had the wheels balanced), and he other three were only barely legal. So I had to get a set of four new tyres (I chose Continental Premium Contact 6 tyres because the Contis have always been decent tyres, and fairly quiet), one wheel rim straightened, and the wheels aligned. That lot came to R15600/$1023 (*wince*). The previous tyres, Apollo Aspires, were much cheaper (at about R6500 for four), but they lasted only 25000km. Shocking. They were not great tyres in any way.

The car feels a lot safer on the Contis now, especially in the wet.

Some numbers for 2021, nicked from my Twitter post:

1801km run/walked in 360 activities

21507m in elevation climbed during runs and walks

10986km driven in my car (yay for WFH)

130 books read (roughly)
32 D&D sessions DMed virtually
10 Parkruns run

11 races run (and 3 twice)

2 model aircraft built

1 new pet (Abby)

2 Covid vaccinations

1 case of Covid

Crossposts: https://claidheamhmor.livejournal.com/980967.html

The dogs and kids got me a Huawei wireless car charger for Father's Day, so I spent some time on the weekend fitting it to the car. Luckily I already had a reasonably decent clamp fitted to the centre console, but I needed to use epoxy and some double sided tape to mate the car charger to the mount. Of course, there was some cable routing too; the Huawei wireless charger is a high-speed charger, so it has its own power socket charger, and I still needed to provide power to the dashcam, so I ran cables under the edge of the console, where they're not visible; the wireless charger went to the socket in the rear. My car has three charger sockets inside the car, plus a 240V power socket, which is handy.

Here's the result:

The Huawei charger has motorised arms. If I put my phone in front of it, the arms open up, and clasp the phone. If I touch a spot on the left of the charge, the arms open up. Very convenient. Charging is fast, as expected, and works even through the protective skin on the phone. The phone is in a good spot to be able to browse twitter or view the maps on Waze while driving.

Crossposts: https://claidheamhmor.livejournal.com/963440.html

For the last couple of weeks I'd been hearing a little noise coming from near the back seat of my car when I went around corners or over bumps - a little click. It was driving me a little mad. So last week I unclipped the rear seat, and poked around. Right next to the seatbelt latch I found a stray wheel nut. I sighed with relief!

The sound was back the next day. Again after a day, I found time to dig around, this time with seats folded down. I found another wheel nut. Also my car's towing ring. And also an ancient Nokia phone charger.

Bizarre...

Crossposts: https://claidheamhmor.livejournal.com/931552.html

Claymore

Netizen of the Galaxy

Entries tagged with fusion

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