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2QuickZ's

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Everything posted by 2QuickZ's

  1. You know, a funny thing happened recently. It magically started working again before I got a chance to replace it. It basically did not work for a year, got charged up by the tail end of a 1000+ mile journey to Florida only to stop working again shortly after we got there. Then it charged back up again on the way back and worked for a day or two and then nothing. Now for no discernible reason it just randomly started working again a week or so ago. Very strange. If it stops working again, I will see if there is a Lithium Ion replacement battery for it. That is a good suggestion.
  2. Update on the Canyon. Still going strong. No real issues to speak of. I thought I had an annoying rattle on the rear sliding window pop up but it turned out the gaskets on the tri-fold tonneau cover compressed enough over time to allow it to shift slightly and one of the plastic clips was tapping on the back window. That was a 5 minute fix to loosen it up, reposition it and re-tighten. Fuel economy was pretty abysmal over the winter. To the point where I wonder if a V8 full size would have done any worse. A lot of it had to do with the fact that I am still working from home so with no commute, most of my trips are short and the engine barely had time to get warm. Still, I think I had one tank come in at 14.9 mpg. That was a bit of an outlier and most were in the high 15's or low 16's. Now that it is warm, it is generally averaging low to mid 17's and any longer trips I have taken with it have been more in the 21-22 mpg range. It still annoys the crap out of me that a Denali does not have a Homelink garage door opener built in. I also continued to be annoyed by actually having to get the keys out of my pocket to unlock the doors and start it. I know that may sound ridiculous but once you have a number of cars in a row that have passive entry and push button start, its annoying to live with out. Call me spoiled. haha I do wonder if I would have been better off with a full size truck. What appealed to me most about the Canyon (its size) is also my biggest problem with it. The front seats are fine but my long legged son is not too comfortable in the back seat. We also have a dog we take with us on our camping trips and it doesn't work very well for her. She's a bit of a nervous traveler so the floor is the best spot for her but there is no room there in the truck so she has to sit on someone's lap. That said, while those areas would be better in a full size, I know my wife would hate parking one. I also know since it stays parked in the driveway, I would have had to make my driveway a little wider to make it easier to get the other vehicles in and out of the garage and while I would have liked the interior room in the full size much better, the Canyon overall just fits us better.
  3. Wow. It's been a year since I have updated this. We still have the van and it is still going strong. No real issues since the last update. The suspension creaking is back but you only hear it at low speeds so not that big of a deal. The only other issue is that the start/stop battery needs replaced again. It hasn't actually died like last time but it almost never has enough charge to work. I'd guess for a lot of you this would be ideal but I am one of the few oddballs that actually likes stop/start. It feels so wasteful to me to sit at a light with the engine still running. I'll likely wind up spending the $100 for a new one soon and yes, I know I will never get my money back from the gas I save, even at current gas prices 😄 Anyway, it is up to 44k miles now. The wife and I still both work from home so it went from having 32k miles put on it in the first 22 months of ownership to having only 12k miles put on it in the next 26 months of ownership. That includes another trip to Florida we did back in March. I did have to buy a new set of tires. I went with Firestone Destination LE3 tires and they are working out pretty well. They are quiet and smooth riding tires but have a little less wet traction than I was hoping based on the reviews. Still not bad, though. That's about it really. I did pull the camper with it again (200 mile round trip) a month or so ago even though I have a Canyon now. The Canyon was busy at the time. The trans temp is always steady and the brakes are more than adequate to stop our 2000 lb pop up. The thought is we will likely keep this another year. Its a bit tricky because we would like to take advantage of the ridiculous used car market, especially since it will show two accidents on a Carfax but at the same time what is the difference if we wind up just spending that extra money and then some on a new vehicle with no real discounts.
  4. I'm no Tesla stan. In fact, I'm not really even a fan. That said, the sales model of the traditional OEMs, especially the Big 3, allows for easy price adjustments without having to bump MSRP's monthly like Tesla. Why? Because they normally have big fat incentives on them. If they want to adjust prices month to month, they can (and do) simply adjust rebates. Once inventories started to dry up, so did the rebates. Tesla, on the other hand, had to raise prices to take advantage of the current market. When the market changes again, they may have to drop them back down.
  5. You missed something. 🙃 More than likely my fault since I gave both threads similar names.
  6. Final, final update: Got the last statement from GM Financial. Was surprised to see they were going to charge me $900 or so dollars but since the car sold at auction for more than the buyout + the charge, they waived it. I am assuming the charge was for the tires. The only rule to replacing the tires is they have to be the same performance rating or better and even though I knew that and thought what I was buying was the same rating, they actually were not. At the end of the day, it didn't matter. In case any one is curious, the car sold at auction for $31,000 and the dealership down south that bought it had it on their lot for $34,500!!! There really is some COVID madness there. You could bought one in similar condition (age, mileage) a year or so ago for around $26k. Oh, and it still has the same tires on it so I guess they couldn't have been too bad 😀
  7. I'd have to rank them like this: 1) Audi eTron GT 2) Audi eTron GT 🙃 3) Lucid Air 4) Porsche Taycan (tie) 4) Tesla Model S (tie) 6) Mercedes EQS I really, really like the look of that Audi. The proportions and styling of that car really do it for me. I also am a big fan of both the Rivian and the Hummer. I don't think the Mustang Mach-e looks that bad either. Someone in my neighborhood had a cyber orange GT parked in their driveway when I went for my lunch time walk yesterday and it didn't look half bad. Truth be told, the only one of these that would have even the smallest chance of ever winding up in my driveway is the Rivian. Maybe a Lyriq if that back end ever grows on me.
  8. Not sure if this is the most current available or not but it is the most free to use 😀 Bit of light SAE reading for you on legroom measurements. I'm not going to lie, I did not read it in detail but I am guessing what you are looking for is in there somewhere. https://law.resource.org/pub/us/cfr/ibr/005/sae.j1100.2001.html
  9. Came across one of these in the wild today. It was a black one and appeared to be full production spec. We were on the road so I did not get a chance to check it out but it looked pretty good moving down the road. Wish I would have paid a little more attention to the size as I pulled up next to it at a light. It didn't seem any bigger than my Canyon from what I recall.
  10. The real wood trim certainly says luxury. You generally only find it on the luxury marques though it has started to move into the higher trims of the more mainstream brands like Ford, Chevrolet and GMC. My Canyon Denali, for example, has both authentic aluminum and open pore wood accents throughout. On the Rivian, though, some of the spots that they put the wood, while looking nice, are definitely going to get beat up over time because they are high touch areas. I'm specifically referring to the wood around the wireless charger on the console and also on the seat backs where I could see them getting scratched with hangars or poorly aimed USB connectors.
  11. These are the regular cab shortbeds I see the most in my area. I even knew a guy that leased one a number of years ago (a DS) and drag raced it a few times. IIRC, it was running high 13's in the 1/4. Ford F150's are probably second. They are getting popular with the racing crowd as people are buying them up with Coyotes in them and slapping Whipple superchargers on them. It is very, very rare to see a regular cab short bed Silverado, though I have seen one or two. Not as rare as the previously mentioned Tundra. I didn't even know they made a regular cab until I saw the one in my 'hood.
  12. Someone in my neighborhood has a regular cab short box Tundra. Every time I see it I marvel a bit because I don't know that I have ever seen another one. Keep in mind I live in SE Michigan, though. 😀
  13. This is a nice looking truck. They did a good job with it inside and out. If I was going to go this route, I would do either Limestone or Compass Yellow though to charge as much as they do for colors seems a bit absurd considering the starting price of the truck. Ocean Coast interior with the Adventure Package. Forest Edge is an intriguing interior color option but I don't think it is going to age well. Kind of like avocado color appliances from the 1960's and 70's.
  14. Toyota's interior and exterior styling just does not do it for me. At least when they first showed the Silverado LD my initial thought was that it was quite ungainly but that the styling might grow on me (it did). This is more like when they first showed the Silverado HD and my initial thought was "that is ugly and I can't imagine it ever growing on me." I still think it's ugly and it has been out for a couple of years and I think the same thing is going to happen here. It is like after years of doing boring vanilla Toyota decided to be stylish and some how mistook ugly for stylish. It started when the grilles on all their products started to get big. What is even going on with that tailgate area? Why is the interior so busy? The exterior might look okay in dark colors without the chrome horseshoe mustache on the grille but otherwise 🤮 That grille reminds me of this:
  15. You definitely should! It looks lonely on your carversary in that otherwise empty lot.
  16. We have almost 800 miles on the truck already! Was trying hard to get it through the 500 mile break-in period before leaving for our trip but fell a bit short. Here are my initial driving impressions after our couple hundred mile round trip camping adventure last weekend: As expected, it pulled our 2100 lb popup camper like a champ. It even got decent gas mileage doing it. It came in at around 17 mpg with 75% to 25% split between 2 lane 55 mph highway and 70 mph Interstate on the way out due to being diverted by construction traffic combined with 95% interstate driving on the way back. It is also averaging around 17.5 mpg around town since we got back. I expect the mileage to get even better as I get even more miles on it. I'm not sure if these had stop/start prior to the chip shortage and it got removed or if they never had it but after our last two new vehicles having it, it seems almost odd and wasteful to not have it. I didn't necessarily like the feature at first but once I got used to it, it didn't bother me. While my complaints of missing features mentioned in the first post are still valid, I like the interior more than I initially thought I would. I am very happy with my choice of cocoa/dark atmosphere over black. I think it looks quite nice. The seats were also more comfortable than I initially thought they were going to be. So far all the features I have used have been pretty intuitive and have worked as expected with the exception of the trailer brake and I am pretty sure that is due to them being out of adjustment on the camper, not due to a problem with the truck. I've never used them before and I doubt the first owner of the camper did either since they were towing it with an Escape. One more minor annoyance that I noticed on the trip: the HVAC blower makes more noise than I would expect at just a medium fan speed. And it isn't a wind noise but more of a weird, almost whistle sound. Not sure if that is something specific to my truck or common on all of these. Overall, the build quality seems pretty good. The dealership had to fix the front fascia that was not installed correctly (they did this before I took delivery) but everything else seems fine. These trucks were initially built with missing parts due to the chip shortage so I wonder if they had to remove the fascia to install something prior to shipment and didn't get it reinstalled correctly. Lastly, I did buy some GM accessories so I guess I can comment on those. I bought the front and rear floor liners. The quality seems good and the fronts fit very well but the rears don't fit quite as well. The fronts definitely fit better than the WeatherTech liners my Dad bought for his Terrain. I also bought the tri-fold tonneau cover. It seems to fit quite well and everything stayed dry in a serious downpour the other day. It was easy to install and is easy to unclamp and fold. No complaints. Let me know if you guys have any questions about the truck I can answer!
  17. A 2021 GMC Canyon Denali - White with Cocoa/Dark Atmosphere interior. Big change from the CTS but not the first truck I have had. It's been a number of years now but I have had two S10's and two Rangers through the years. So why a Canyon you ask? Well, I decided I wanted a truck for towing the camper and full size, while very nice, just didn't suit our needs. It doesn't fit in the garage and would be hard to get around when parked in the driveway. I did really want the 3.0L Duramax, though, so I gave it some serious thought. I was either going to get a truck or buy the Cadillac. Eventually decided on either a Colorado or Canyon but the initial stop at a Chevy and GMC dealer did not result in encouraging leasing rates for either. I had decided to order a 2022 Canyon Elevation pretty well loaded up and just extend the Cadillac lease until it came in if necessary. I prefer the no chrome look and bright blue of the Elevation and was going to go that route. Then I received a mailer from another local GMC dealership offering an attractive lease price on a Canyon Denali so I went and talked to them. The out the door deal wound up reasonable enough that I decided to pull the trigger. I generally prefer brighter exterior colors but after having several cars in a row with black interiors I decided to prioritize the interior color over the exterior color. Since inventories are tight, I had to go with what the dealership had so white it is! While not my first choice (I would have preferred Hunter Metallic as you can't get the Denali in blue), I actually do think it looks pretty good in white. I have only put a couple hundred miles on it so far so too early to offer in depth driving impressions. I am a bit disappointed with some missing features on this "loaded" truck that I hope GM addresses on the next iteration. Call me spoiled but I haven't had a car that required me to get my keys out of my pocket for close to 10 years. They have all been proximity keyless entry and push button start. Now I have to lock/unlock with a FOB and use a key to start it. First world, problems, I know! There is no garage door opener, no blind spot monitoring and no memory seating. All of those are features I would expect on a top trim vehicle these days. I don't particularly love the old school, dim incandescent interior lighting either. I'll be towing my camper a 100 miles or so this weekend so I'll circle back in a week or two and give my driving/towing impressions. My initial impressions is that it is a bit bouncy like you would expect an unloaded truck to be but overall it rides and drives pretty nicely.
  18. GM only cares that you turn it back into a GM dealership. They don't care which brand. XT6 was the leading contender (would have been my wife's vehicle) until GM pulled some of the returning lease holder rebate money off the table right before we were ready to pull the trigger. Once that happened, my wife lost interest and told me to go get something for myself. I'll start a new thread tonight. I haven't taken any pictures of it yet to post.
  19. Final update on the Caddy as the lease is up and after initially contemplating buying it, I decided to turn it in for something different. Inventory is tight but I was able to swing a deal on something I wanted so I pulled the trigger. More info coming on the new ride in a few days. As for the Cadillac, I really had no issues with it. Final mileage was around 33k. I was 3K miles ahead of where I should have been when Covid hit but even using this as our primary family vehicle since then resulted in being well below mileage. You just don't put a lot on when you are work from home so I left 6k miles on the table. It still had the occasional 1-2 funky shift on the first shift after a cold start but the 8 speed is known for that. It would not do it again after that initial shift. Never bothered me enough to take it in to the dealer. I did notice a slight bubble in the sidewall of one of the Nankang's but keeping my fingers crossed I don't get charged for that since the rest of the car is so clean. Those tires held up extremely well and even after 10k miles of use had no appreciable loss of tread depth. All in all, very pleased with this vehicle. The 4-cylinder performed well enough that I never really felt like I missed out by not getting the 3.6 V6. The interior held up really well and was very clean. The front fascia had more stone chips than I would have expected (I don't live on a gravel road and never really travel on any) but they weren't super noticeable since what was underneath almost matched the paint color. I suspect since it was a demo when I leased it, the dealer may have repainted the fascia before I got it. Summary: Enjoyed my 3 years with the car very much. I will miss it. I would not hesitate to buy one used. Before the Covid used car price craziness, they were actually a pretty good used car value.
  20. I saw this info on one of the blogs (Autoblog maybe) a week or two ago when it was first released. I had not noticed previously that there was already a configurator out but I was checking out the link you provided and low and behold, there it is. It looks like they kept many/most of the interior design elements that were shown in the earlier prototypes. I get a kick out of the latest catch phrase of "vegan leather." Back in the old days we just called it "pleather." 😀 Can also now confirm that the nice open pore wood trim is reserved for the up level trim which is to be expected, I guess. They have a nice selection of exterior colors including a few bright ones. It's good to see they didn't just stick with the white/silver/grey/black options. There are also a half dozen different wheel options which is nice. The Rivian wall charger seems like a bit of a disappointment at only 25 miles of range per hour. Overall it seems like a very compelling package. Will be interesting to see where their quality is at during launch and the first model year.
  21. Update on the Caddy - still cruising along and doing well. No warranty work since the last report and no more tire issues once the Pirelli run flats were replaced with something different. I still enjoy driving this car a lot. The lease is up soon and if I can't get a good lease deal on its replacement (likely a GMC Canyon for the wife) then I may just buy out the lease and keep it a while longer. Regarding the Nankang tires - After almost a year I am actually still pretty impressed with them. Had I known for certain I was going to keep the car I would have more likely than not bought something better (I'm a fan of Continental tires) but that said, they really have been good tires. They do well in the dry and the rain. I didn't drive them much in the snow last winter but on the rare occasions I did, they did okay. They actually seem to perform better than the factory Pirelli run flats. Even after hitting more than a few big pot holes (thanks MDOT!), they have not gotten any sidewall bubbles or shown any signs of belt separation. If you are on a tight budget, they are definitely worth giving a try.
  22. More updates: Little more warranty work. I wanted to address the creaking/groaning noise in the front suspension before the warranty was out. They wound up replacing the lower control arms. Poor thing also got rear ended again. Not sure how people can't see a big red van. Thankfully it was a minor accident and just the rear hatch and fascia needed to be replaced. Ironically neither accident has resulted in any damage to the trailer hitch. Minor accident or not, Carfax is still going to show two accidents so I can't wait to see how that affects the value when we sell it in a year or so. 😪 Still pulls the pop-up camper like a champ! And it gets 20+ mpg while doing it. After putting 32k miles on it in the first 22 months we owned it, due to COVID and subsequently working from home, it has only had around 4k miles put on it in the last 15 months or so. My lease is almost up on my Cadillac so as soon as the COVID shutdown started, that became the primary family vehicle to try and get as many miles on it as we can before turning it back in. Still a possibility I will buy it instead of turning it in but if we can get a decent lease on a Canyon Denali, that may wind up replacing it.
  23. This exactly. A Pacifica with towing package is rated for 3500 lbs. The GMC Acadia is good for 4000 lbs. The Traverse or Enclave go to 5000 lbs. The Durango is the three row unibody towing champ. It will pull 6200 lbs with the V6 and up to 8700 lbs with a V8 but it is an outlier. As far as off roading, sure a Pacifica doesn't have the ground clearance to tackle some of the terrain an SUV can but lets be honest, how many people are actually taking their SUV off road someplace a Pacifica can't go? I would bet it is pretty rare. On road where it will be used 99% of the time the Pacifica (or most minivans for that matter) do everything an SUV does but better. Just my opinion.
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