Total Recall
(Be Afraid • )
I remember this like it was yesterday…wait, it was yesterday…
Got up early and drove off in the dark before the coffee was ready, because “Tammy” at the Toyota dealership advised me that if I got there by 6:50, I’d be the first one in line. See, my 2007 Camry was subject to two recalls, Tammy said, one having to do with an accelerator pedal that apparently periodically grows, extending down into the floor mat and getting stuck. The other recall involves an accelerator pedal that doesn’t bother changing in size – it just sticks itself to the floorboards til you hit 120 MPH. But only in extremely rare circumstances, so no worries really – it’s like playing Russian roulette with a gun that only has one bullet, but holds 187.
I pull in to the dealer’s service area in the early morning darkness, and park the car amongst several others. Four people are inside ahead of me and I take my place in line. I notice the ceilings all over the dealership are covered in helium-filled balloons. It’s amazing how much that makes me want to buy a new car.
When I finally get to sit down at the service desk, some guy comes around the corner and stares straight at me while speaking to my service dude. “Excuse me, but I’ve been outside waiting for at least 10 minutes before anyone else even got here.,” he whines. I guess he thinks I’m going to get up and tell him to please take my seat as a Good Do-Bee award so that I can wait some more. I give him a brief primer on how doors and lines work and that makes him unhappy. A woman in line behind me looks like a frightened rabbit and apparently thinks we’re going to uncork our concealed handguns right there in the dealership.
My service guy looks like he knows it’s going to be another crappy day. He takes my paperwork and goes outside. The goofball who was out sitting in his car waiting for an invitation to get in line just continues standing there, still looking at me, but out of the corner of his eye. I haven’t had any coffee yet and feel like picking a fight. I tell him he could’ve come inside like the rest of us, and sorry, but he’s not cutting in line now. “It’s not a matter of cutting in line,” he says, and then whines some more about how long he’s been sitting outside and how the dealership wasn’t even open yet when he got there. The lady behind me is actually starting to shake. Everything that immediately comes to mind to say to the guy includes swear words, and in the span of a couple of seconds my mind rejects all of them because I think if I utter them the lady behind me will have a stroke. So I revert to the brilliant come-back my 6- and 8-year-old hurl at each other a dozen times each day.
“Whatever.”
He stomps off and goes back outside. As the door closes I can hear him whining to another service guy about how he and a whole bunch of other people have been waiting like good boys and girls outside in their cars, and they aren’t being taken care of properly like the important people they are.
My service guy comes back inside and wants me to look at something. We go out to my car, and he bends down inside the driver’s area and shines a flashlight on the accelerator pedal. My car doesn’t have the pedal-to-the-metal recall problem, he says. It just has the pedal that mysteriously grows longer and embeds itself in the floor mat. That, my service guy tells me, will take three or four hours to fix.
Tammy told me both problems together would be fixed in an hour and 15 minutes, but what does she know?
I took the floor mat out a couple of months ago, even though there was at least a full 2 inches between it and the accelerator. I am not waiting four hours without coffee for these guys to grind off the bottom of the pedal. I tell the service guy to pull the pickup truck over in front of me, and I drive between the rows of cars lined up for the Great Recall and make my escape.
The sun still isn’t up, but I’m driving around in the dark outside a car dealership. There’s an HEB grocery store just up the street, and we’re out of grub, so I find myself shopping at 7 a.m. As I do, I think about how, when I pushed down the accelerator on my cars from years past, the pedal was physically attached to the engine, and there was an actual physical relationship between the amount of pressure you put on the pedal and the speed at which the car accelerated.
But now pushing the pedal is supposed to activate a computer sensor, or something approximately like that, which in turn interacts with the car’s on-board computer system and prompts the car to go faster. So when Toyota first comes out with this idea that the accelerator pedal grows all long and gangly and gets tangled in the floor mat, I think, this is bullshit. And then, when Toyota says, no, now we need to put a metal rod in your accelerator assembly to keep the plastic part from wearing down, I think, OK, no one bought the floor mat thing, so now they’re making up more expensive bullshit to do, but it’s still probably bullshit.
Because the acceleration is more logically controlled by a flawed on-board computer and/or some flawed car computer software (but please lets not tell her OK? She’s flighty enough as it is). Fixing that probably would cost Toyota 20 times more than the “solutions” the company’s come up with so far.
Whatever.
The Toyota service guy says I am absolved from worry (no floor mats, please), and if he’s wrong, all of you are my witnesses that the company steered me in this direction. Lawsuits and good times all around.
→ B.Dunn, Feb 06, 2010, 12 30 pm
Add a comment [4]
Brazos Bulks Up
(River • Richmond)
About 30 feet and rising, still contained within its banks…
(Click photo for a very large version.)
While the river’s getting big for sure, this is not anything approaching a flood event or even a big deal.
This is what happens when the Brazos climbs out of its banks, but even that fell short of flood stage.
There’s just a lot of flex in this river. When it’s down, it trickles. When it’s up, it roars.
→ B.Dunn, Feb 02, 2010, 05 20 pm
River Report: Wet With A Chance Of More
(River • )
I’d been idly following the progress of a rather sudden rise in the Brazos River water level beginning up around Waco a few days ago and, sure as gravity, it showed up here beginning Saturday. Yesterday we noted whatever that foam is that floats on the river whenever it’s about to assert itself. The river had been running at about 13 feet, but then it was 18 feet and rising, and I see that the boys down at the Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service say it’ll reach above 35 feet at Richmond by Wednesday.
That means it might top the banks around here, and my really good collection of pecan and sycamore sticks will probably end up in Freeport somewhere. Actually, we’re planning about four days of rain on top of the extra water Waco sent us, so Freeport might even end up with a few abandoned Rosharon appliances, too.
That’s how I judge the seriousness of a Brazos River episode. If 4-foot-diameter tree trunks and washing machines are chugging down the center channel faster than I can run, surf’s up.
→ B.Dunn, Feb 01, 2010, 05 53 am
Add a comment [4]
Toyota Recall: All You Really Need To Know
(Be Afraid • Business)
Toyota Chief Executive Officer Akio Toyoda, quoted in the New York Times: “We’re extremely sorry to have made customers uneasy. We plan to establish the facts and give an explanation that will restore confidence as soon as possible. Truly, we think of our customers as a priority and we guarantee their safety,” Mr. Toyoda said. He was seen driving off in a black Audi…
→ B.Dunn, Jan 29, 2010, 07 07 pm
Add a comment [1]
