Chronic Car Buyers Anonymous

carnaught

@breld nice addition to your garage. Congrats!

Michaell

Member needs help deciding on a used car

oldfarmer50

Michaell said:

Member needs help deciding on a used car

It says discussion not found.

tjc78

@carnaught
Great color combo. Sweet Camry. Congrats!

laurasdada

breld said:

tifighter said:

@breld Congrats on the deal. Curious, did you ever drive the Lucid?

I did drive the Lucid and was really impressed. It was my top choice for a while, but lease deals weakened considerably from June to July (and into August).

I replied to the Lucid saleslady that due to travel, unanticipated dental work (two crowns replaced and a root canal! July was an expensive month, when you throw in new tires (went with the Bridgestone Duelers RFT) for the wife's X3 and a "bauble" I bought for my better 7/8th as an early birthday present. Which, of course, doesn't excuse me from having a present for her on her actual birthday) as well as jury duty this week, I'm not sure when I can make the road trip to Natick to test drive. I've not heard from her since.

I'm also trying to figure out a use case to replace the A7 with an EV. But your quick impression above has me thinking if I don't spend the rest of my summer on the jury, maybe it's worth at least a test drive? The reviews for this new car/brand have been so universally good... Lease deals have somewhat improved for August, and as we know, the Fed incentive clock is ticking.

And speaking of Audi, the A6 ETron looks fairly interesting too. I just continue to be so impressed with the interior of my A7 and the technology. The graphics are fabulous, the layout quite esthetically pleasing, but distracting at the center console level. Hence the multi-configurable IP is an outstanding feature (and boy does it make the X3 IP look like the mess that it is). The Conti DWS 06+ so far have been great in wet and dry.

There is an Audi dealer a few miles down from the Lucid store. Perhaps a day to be spent there...

jmonroe1

oldfarmer50 said:

Michaell said:

Member needs help deciding on a used car

It says discussion not found.

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Same here.

jmonroe

Michaell

jmonroe1 said:

oldfarmer50 said:

Michaell said:

Member needs help deciding on a used car

It says discussion not found.

————————————————
Same here.

jmonroe

Try this link

Tried to copy it initially from my iPad.

breld

@laurasdada - you’ll definitely want to try out the S6 Etron in addition to the A6. It may hit more of the sweet spot for you.

breld

Congrats @carnaught! Sharp looking Camry.

Sandman6472

Noticed where they bought that Nissan Rogue in Florida. Called Performance Nissan now but years ago, was named Endicott Nissan where we bought our 2001 Altima Special Edition and that awful 2003 Sentra SE. The Nissan dealer near the house is so much closer, but so hard to deal with so going closer to the beach store was so much better. But since then, we usually buy from the dealers right outside our housing development. Being within 5 minutes of the house, makes things so much easier.

On another note, we've been really discussing our plans for the next few years. Our middle child in St. Augustine really wants to stay up there & buy something. And now that my wife is off from TurboTax till the end of the year, she'll be making more trips up there it seems to help with the house search. Her schedule is better then mine in this respect as I can't take off that much. The idea of us all living together is still on the table but doubt it will happen. Rather be a few minutes away & have our privacy to be honest. Luckily, they've found a few new construction areas so finding two places should be easier. But after being in the Ft. Lauderale/Pompano Beach area for so long, we both moved down to Florida in 1969, not sure if I really want to move to a new strange area where I don't know my way around. Have only been there three times now and still have no idea where N,S,E,W are! I feel so lost up there and feel so comfortable down South here. But, I know it's the right thing to do now, moving that is, but it's going to be a daunting task for me going forward. Just thinking about packing up this place stresses me out! July 1st was 38 years we've been living in this house which is a long time. I have started making a list of where to start purging so trying to organize things in my mind. Guess I'm just going to make up my mind to just do it! But, it's really hard for me as I do love where we currently live.

stickguy

Purging first is smart. And liberating. And a good investment is hiring someone to do the bulk of the packing.

qbrozen

My son is begging me to come get a job at the dealership. UCM just left and they also announced they are opening a Jeep division on the same lot. It is tempting but I just can’t see myself dealing with so many people in person each day. I’m not cut out for it.

tjc78

stickguy said:

Purging first is smart. And liberating. And a good investment is hiring someone to do the bulk of the packing.

+1 - When we moved in 2020 we purged before we even put the house on the market. It felt so good, we had absorbed so much stuff (crap) from my Grandfather's house and my Moms it was just too much to bring to a new home. Rented a dumpster and anything of value (we had a lot of nice kid stuff double strollers etc) I put outside of it for a day. If was still there the next morning it got tossed.

We have been in the new house five years in Oct and I want to do it again. I feel like when we buy new the old never goes away. Linens for instance... between the two houses I swear we could cover a football field.

suydam

We lived in the same house for over 30 years. Downsized and moved across the country. Purged about 90% of our belongings. It was so liberating! The difference is we were moving back to a familiar place that we couldn’t afford to live in when we were younger, and so it felt like coming home. Maybe rent a place in St. Augustine for awhile and test it out? It is such a beautiful area!

tjc78

Went down a rabbit hole of sorts today...

I was driving to the office from the shore today and there was slow poke on one of the back roads I take. So... once a spot opened up and I had a dotted line to pass I did so. Gave the truck a nice full throttle hit at about 45 and ran her up to 80 or so. Dashboard displayed a message something along the lines of "refer to manual for proper fuel and oil specs"... Hmm. I had just gotten gas at Wawa where I always do. No check engine light.

So I went to the Google Mechanic and came upon a thread where others had seen this message and many people said that it was due to using 87 octane. Well I doubled checked the manual and for the standard version of the Hurricane (what I have) 87 is allowed while 91 is for "enhanced performance". The HO version requires 91.

So many people said they swear the truck runs better on 91 while a bunch of others have noticed no difference. I guess I'll just keep using 87 and if this message pops up again I'll think about upgrading to 91.

oldfarmer50

Sandman6472 said:

Noticed where they bought that Nissan Rogue in Florida. Called Performance Nissan now but years ago, was named Endicott Nissan where we bought our 2001 Altima Special Edition and that awful 2003 Sentra SE. The Nissan dealer near the house is so much closer, but so hard to deal with so going closer to the beach store was so much better. But since then, we usually buy from the dealers right outside our housing development. Being within 5 minutes of the house, makes things so much easier.

On another note, we've been really discussing our plans for the next few years. Our middle child in St. Augustine really wants to stay up there & buy something. And now that my wife is off from TurboTax till the end of the year, she'll be making more trips up there it seems to help with the house search. Her schedule is better then mine in this respect as I can't take off that much. The idea of us all living together is still on the table but doubt it will happen. Rather be a few minutes away & have our privacy to be honest. Luckily, they've found a few new construction areas so finding two places should be easier. But after being in the Ft. Lauderale/Pompano Beach area for so long, we both moved down to Florida in 1969, not sure if I really want to move to a new strange area where I don't know my way around. Have only been there three times now and still have no idea where N,S,E,W are! I feel so lost up there and feel so comfortable down South here. But, I know it's the right thing to do now, moving that is, but it's going to be a daunting task for me going forward. Just thinking about packing up this place stresses me out! July 1st was 38 years we've been living in this house which is a long time. I have started making a list of where to start purging so trying to organize things in my mind. Guess I'm just going to make up my mind to just do it! But, it's really hard for me as I do love where we currently live.

Just use your GPS like you do at work.😊

sda

tjc78 said:

Went down a rabbit hole of sorts today...

I was driving to the office from the shore today and there was slow poke on one of the back roads I take. So... once a spot opened up and I had a dotted line to pass I did so. Gave the truck a nice full throttle hit at about 45 and ran her up to 80 or so. Dashboard displayed a message something along the lines of "refer to manual for proper fuel and oil specs"... Hmm. I had just gotten gas at Wawa where I always do. No check engine light.

So I went to the Google Mechanic and came upon a thread where others had seen this message and many people said that it was due to using 87 octane. Well I doubled checked the manual and for the standard version of the Hurricane (what I have) 87 is allowed while 91 is for "enhanced performance". The HO version requires 91.

So many people said they swear the truck runs better on 91 while a bunch of others have noticed no difference. I guess I'll just keep using 87 and if this message pops up again I'll think about upgrading to 91.

Despite the warning light, did it accelerate quickly?

tjc78

@sda said:
Despite the warning light, did it accelerate quickly?

@sda said:
Despite the warning light, did it accelerate quickly?

Yes - as it’s breaking in I swear it’s getting quicker.

Must have been a one off. When traffic thinned out tonight I did five 55-85 pulls with no messages and it ran awesome. I had the radio off and no pinging or anything.

corvette

If your usage is consistent, you could try running a tank of premium to see whether MPGs improve. If your usage is not consistent, you could do pulls on the Fastr or Dragy app to see whether 0-60 is improved on premium.

tjc78

@corvette said:
If your usage is consistent, you could try running a tank of premium to see whether MPGs improve. If your usage is not consistent, you could do pulls on the Fastr or Dragy app to see whether 0-60 is improved on premium.

I was thinking of running a tank of premium. Not sure if MPG will be conclusive, but not a bad idea to use a 0-60 app.

explorerx4

Just some thoughts.
NA engines don' care too much about octane.
Last time I was up in Wisconsin, I was excited because one of the local chains sold non ethanol premium.
Filled up the F-150, NA V8, but it didn't seem to make any difference on the trip home.
Turbo engines are a whole other can of worms.
They seem to be sensitive to brand of fuel and octane.
Try to use Top Tier brands but have not had much luck with Shell or Sunoco.
BP seems to work well but it's not Top Tier.
On a long trip, I usually just fill up with RUG because I figure that's the freshest stuff and I'm going to burn through it in a few hours.

roadburner

As far as moving goes, someone will have to offer me an obscene amount of money to sell my home. I don't see it happening and I don't really care. I am clearing out what my wife describes as "thousands" of car magazines. I'm only keeping one complete set (BMW Car/Total BMW) . Everything else I only keep if they contain an article or two I like. I also have quite a few model kits to build and I'm starting on them this winter:

stickguy

we did get rid of a lot when we left the long term house. not as much as we should of though. and somehow collected more at the temporary house up here. And way more at the current place. Probably easier to just stay here until we get wheeled out, and let the kids deal with it. But I am pretty sure that at some point we will downsize again so a lot of furniture and crap will have to go someplace. I'm thinking estate sale this time!

we have hit high tide on big stuff, so this winter need to get back to thinning out excess. I hope. or at least get it better organized and packed away. At least boxes on shelves and a clear floor don't look bad.

imidazol97

There's a reason that for many of the homes in our area built in the 70s-80s, when the original owner dies, a large dumpster shows up in the driveway for several weeks as the accumulation is purged by the heirs or whoever is doing it. Our 3 bedroom ranch probably would need two dumpsters to clear out things.

graphicguy

carnaught said:

The HR-V is no more. A few random pics of the new dd, FWIW:

Cool. Congrats! You had me at "red"!

graphicguy

@breld ...did I miss it? What did you end up getting?

graphicguy

My EV6 is a year old. No trips to the dealer for anything. No real complaints. Nothing to report, so I guess it really is true, no news is good news.

breld

graphicguy said:

@breld ...did I miss it? What did you end up getting?

My post was kinda confusing. I listed my final candidates, but wasn't very clear on where I landed.

I selected an available Polestar 3 that should arrive within the next week or two. That will replace my Audi Q8 E-tron that gets handed back in off lease next month.

corvette

@imidazol97 - yeah, I've been involved in two family estates that were like that. The first one, the solid waste company gave my mom the runaround about needing to survey the site for power lines, etc., before providing a dumpster. She got annoyed with them and told them to deliver a second trash can and we'd deal with it. Worked out fine, since it took a while to clean out the house and do some freshening up like painting before selling it.

The second, I didn't have any issue getting a dumpster. I think we only filled it once.

roadburner

@carnaught White over red is one of my favorite color combinations. Congrats!

roadburner

imidazol97 said:

There's a reason that for many of the homes in our area built in the 70s-80s, when the original owner dies, a large dumpster shows up in the driveway for several weeks as the accumulation is purged by the heirs or whoever is doing it. Our 3 bedroom ranch probably would need two dumpsters to clear out things.

After my father died we traded houses with my mother; we ended up using 3 30 yard dumpsters to clean everything out- and they had only lived there 18 years. This year marks 33 years since we moved in, and we don't want our son to deal with a similar mountain of cr*p.

jmonroe1

roadburner said:

@carnaught White over red is one of my favorite color combinations. Congrats!

————————————————
You might have to get in line behind @graphicguy about that. I’m a little surprised he didn’t ask @carnaught for his address after seeing it sitting so innocently in his driveway.

jmonroe

ab348

My neighbor across the street has had dumpsters in his driveway for the last month. Bit of a story: he has owned his house for well over 30 years, but sometime in the late ‘90s/early ‘00s he got caught up in his employers being bought and sold several times and things were tough financially for a long time. After his mom died a few years ago I think he came into some money at last and bought a new to him M-B SUV after driving junkers for years and now is doing home renovations.

His old frugal ways must be hard to shake though because everybody he hired was through friends who could hook him up with guys doing work off the books on the cheap. First thing he did was replace all the windows. Two guys arrived and managed to do maybe 1 per day. When I asked him after the first week why there was so much sawing and hammering going on, he told me they mismeasured the old openings and all the frames were too tight for the windows they ordered so they had to construct and install new ones. Jeebus! Hope he wasn’t paying them by the hour.

The last two weeks there is a new crew there tearing off his old vinyl siding and replacing it with new. They are into their second week and I still do not see any new siding yet. Some days they leave early, some days they don’t show up at all. The most visible parts I can see from my place just have the old siding stripped off as high up as they can reach without using a ladder. This job might take a while. In contrast, back about 6 months ago I had 4 new windows installed in about 6 hours, and my house got re-sided a couple of months ago in just under a week.

qbrozen

@explorerx4 said:
Just some thoughts.
NA engines don' care too much about octane.
Last time I was up in Wisconsin, I was excited because one of the local chains sold non ethanol premium.
Filled up the F-150, NA V8, but it didn't seem to make any difference on the trip home.
Turbo engines are a whole other can of worms.
They seem to be sensitive to brand of fuel and octane.
Try to use Top Tier brands but have not had much luck with Shell or Sunoco.
BP seems to work well but it's not Top Tier.
On a long trip, I usually just fill up with RUG because I figure that's the freshest stuff and I'm going to burn through it in a few hours.

Kind of aligns with what I was going to say. I wouldn’t use regular in a turbo engine. It may be OK at low rpm’s and/or load, but turbo engines are notoriously inconsistent with boost when pushed, so it is better to be over-octaned (in my experience).

Michaell

Our Outback gets 87, which is mid grade here at altitude.

The Sportage, as it’s a turbo hybrid, gets 91.

kyfdx

The GTI is getting new shoes on Thursday

explorerx4

@fintail,
Here's you chance to get a bargain 2025 G63.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qGd5OBbQ8N0

corvette

@kyfdx - Discount Tire? What did you choose for the replacement? I’m taking a look at the Sumitomo HTR A/S P03 because I really liked the previous version I had on my Murano, and the company I work for owns a minority stake in Sumitomo.

stickguy

If I play my cards right I might not have to ever buy tires again!

explorerx4

These are my 2009 tires on the Mustang.

kyfdx

corvette said:

@kyfdx - Discount Tire? What did you choose for the replacement? I’m taking a look at the Sumitomo HTR A/S P03 because I really liked the previous version I had on my Murano, and the company I work for owns a minority stake in Sumitomo.

Yes. Getting Continental DWS-06. I have Pilot Sport A/S, now.
Continentals were about $100 less for the set.

I’m really overdue. What got me moving is Ohio has a sales tax holiday for back to school, and virtually any item under $500 is sales tax free. (Dumb, but.. 🤷‍♂️)

Otherwise, I was going to join Costco, again, and get the Michelins. But by the time I paid sales tax in KY and the $65 membership, it made more sense to just get them in Ohio at Discount Tire.

Sandman6472

Figure that if the kid really does buy a house in 2026, she'll get either a 3/2 or a 4/2 and we can stay there for a bit before we buy ourselves. A duplex could work also. This way we'd have the money from the house sale in South Florida so we wouldn't need a mortgage or to dip into our portfolio's to finance the new place. This might be easier since the only joint asset we have is our house right now. We do have our own individual monies though. Did find out that money & a dysfunctional family are a bad mixture. Money was always used as a control weapon growing up which only got worse after dad passed.

But, looking more & more like St. Augustine will be where we end up. From what I've seen, they have all the same retail places as we do down south here but will be a big learning curve getting to find our ways around. After 56 years down here, kind of familiar with the area. But as we age, think it best to be near the kids.

fintail

explorerx4 said:

@fintail,
Here's you chance to get a bargain 2025 G63.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qGd5OBbQ8N0

I'm gonna have to pass, I need "China Blue" for mine, and I might not be the target for the AMG. That no-sale green one might be a pain.

Sandman6472

My bud looked at my wheel wells today and said there's plenty of room to go to 225/45/18 tire when the current ones need replacement. The 40's on there now are awful in that I feel everything...in a bad way. I like a higher sidewall.
About using a higher octane petrol on a turbo. Never did that in my 2015 Golf and it drove fine...eventually the turbo lag disappeared. Haven't thought about using 91 or 93 in the new GTI though. Thoughts???

Sandman6472

Have had our smart t v for over a year and finally tonight, I set up my google account on it. Want to see about getting rid of the cable tv as they keep raising the price. Think I could do better with Sling tv or Pluto tv and save a bit. But I have a lot to learn before we do any switching as there must be some free stations out there. I'm not tech savvy at all so this could take me awhile! Just looking for a cheaper alternative but have all the shows we like to watch.

Nice white over red Camry there! Have always liked the Camry, heck, we owned a couple in the 90's. Toyota does make a nice vehicle.

stickguy

you can try premium and see if you notice a difference, but no reason you need to. As to the tires, you can go to higher profile. it will throw off your speedometer though. if you really want to get a cushier ride usually you need to do a -1 and go to 225/45-17 (which of course needs new wheels!). that change would only be .1" difference in overall diameter

corvette

@stickguy - you're right... I did the same search before I saw yours and was shocked to see that it sounds like the GTI is now tuned for regular. My Maverick definitely gets a kick from filling up with premium.

kyfdx

My 2018 GTI only requires RUG.

stickguy

I might have tried it once on my ecoboost and saw no difference. Ran the same, didn't get better MPG. Plus I never ran it up near redline which is where I assume any difference would be. Loafing around town or cruising at 2K on the highway, I just saved the $1 per gallon.

tifighter

@kyfdx said:
Yes. Getting Continental DWS-06. I have Pilot Sport A/S, now.
Continentals were about $100 less for the set.

I’m really overdue. What got me moving is Ohio has a sales tax holiday for back to school, and virtually any item under $500 is sales tax free. (Dumb, but.. 🤷‍♂️)

Otherwise, I was going to join Costco, again, and get the Michelins. But by the time I paid sales tax in KY and the $65 membership, it made more sense to just get them in Ohio at Discount Tire.

Had a set of DWS06 on the M2C, and now the Type R. Solid all season. Then again, for the Type R, there are only two choices for an all season in its stock size. But, trust me, it’s the best one!