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I posted a bit a while back about starting to take apart my car and remove some aftermarket bits and replace with OEM (where needed)… I took a giant step in that direction last night. I’m not well past  the mid-point of my teardown. So much so that I probably have only 4 or 5 things left to do. And the hardest part will just be removing the wiring from my amp.

Last night, since the dealer didn’t have the pricing available yet for me to put in my order, I decided to remove my seats. And the harnesses. And the harness bar. And while I was in there, my rear strut bar.

What a job… overall, including a quick run to Home Depot a couple miles away, and a short break for some Applebees chicken fingers, it took about 2.5 hours to put everything back together with OEM parts.

It feels weird.  I’m back to OEM seats and seatbelts. What a change. Though driving home from Jen’s parents place last night in my “new” seats, it really kind of set in that this car is going bye-bye. I may be a touch sad about it… being my first brand new car… and one that I’ve certainly done the most work to, it holds a little place in my heart.

That’s not to say it won’t be kind of nice to see it go – in favor of something awesomer… but hey, a guy can have attachments too.

The next step though is to try to sell all of the crap I just took off. That money will then hopefully go towards the down payment of my new car. Whenever that will actually be.

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My idiot light is starting to nag me. Stupid Maintenance Required. Yes, I know. Stop blinking at me!

Thing is that my oil change is definitely due but I’ve got quite a few other things that really need to be taken care of soon. I’m not very good at maintenance intervals aside from the oil changes. I’m more or less referring to my transmission there though.

I did replace the fluid a couple years ago with some Redline MT-90, but it has to have been another 30k since I did the first flush. And I’m not sure if it was even flushed before that. I had scheduled maintenance done at the dealer – but don’t know if it was ever flushed by them or not. So worst case, my transmission has only been flushed once in nearly 80k miles. Fail.

Today I ordered another 3 quarts of MT-90 from JEG’S. They were a few $$ cheaper than Summit Racing – where I bought it before. Need to get this done before autox this year but would like to flush that when I do the regular maintenance in a week or two.

Also on the agenda are spark plugs. And of course those aren’t cheap either. These particular Toyota engines use Denso iridiums as OEM plugs (leagues better than the stupid platinum 4 crap you get at autozone). So they’re about $10 each – but yay for only a 4 cyl engine. But there goes another $43. These OEM plugs are supposed to be good for around 100k miles but I’m going to be replacing them right around 80k. Figured that I might as well get it out of the way now – especially if they help with the efficiency and such.

Now… all I have to do is find a place and a time to get all of this crap done.

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I got my inspection recently. Turns out I had a license plate bulb out. Wellll it seems there’s a bad connection in there or something because I noticed on Friday that I had another one out (same one?).

Figured wth… might as well upgrade to something a little more appealing. LEDs FTW. Garage1217 hooked me up with some serious aluminum LED bulbs at lightening speed.

Really… I ordered Friday evening around 9pm. The bulbs were here TODAY when I got home. That’s AZ to NY in under 72 hours OVER A WEEKEND – including the weekend days.

ANYWAY, these bulbs look freakin’ awesome! So awesome in fact that I’ll likely be ordering a full set for the interior to match. Not ’til Thursday though. Need to get paid again.

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Except when it involves my money.

My revolving debt is up again. Or at least since May. I don’t know what my June numbers looked like, but probably not great. Sad part is I can’t even speak to what exactly the money was spent on. Regardless, the total is going up and it sucks.

On the other side of the seesaw, my other debts are dropping. I only owe about $6200 on my car (yes, I still owe that much). Thankfully it’s worth anywhere from $7k-9k for trade in (depending on what site you ask). My student loan is just above $33k and my collection is account is right around $2k. That will be paid off June of next year… thankfully. Even my car is going down pretty quickly. I’ve been paying about $35 more per month than minimum.

So… progress on one side, but not so much the other. Always just comes to the same issue. I have to watch my spending. Harder than it seems I guess. Patience.

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Apparently my inspection was due at the end of June. Just noticed it today when driving to FasTrac. Oops I guess. I think I did this a few years ago as well. Just kind of forgot or didn’t notice. There isn’t really any sort of notification that it would be due.

I changed my oil today too. I have a reminder thing for that from my car – and it was blinking at me – so I changed it.

Guess I’ll be making an appointment ASAP to get that taken care of…

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I know a lot of people have the “kids these days” mentality… but holy shit I might just ring someone’s neck.

Sitting here in the living room, my car alarm goes off. Strange b/c there are no trees or anything over it and it is LITERALLY right outside the window. I turn it off and then go out to look at why… there is a ROCK sitting on my windshield… about the size of a small bouncy ball – and two marks on my windshield. WTF?!

I look up and there is a group of 3 kids about 30 yards away looking my way. I start to walk towards them and one rides my way on a bike (one was on a skateboard and the other was walking). I ask him if he knows anything about the rock that just hit my car. I’m not super pissed yet, but I have my suspicions. He says that “they” threw it but told him not to say anything. I thanked him and ran inside to get my sandals on (socks ftl).

By the time I got back outside the kids had started to make their way down the little alley road away from me. I start running and chase them down. I demand to know which one of the little shits throw the rock at my car… this time a bit more angry. The little one walking (probably 7, 8 yrs old maybe) shyly raises his hand and said he did it.

I continue to rant to him on how wrong that is and how stupid it was. I even went into asking if his parents have taught him anything about right or wrong. He says he doesn’t know why he did it (not shocked). He does eventually say he was sorry (after I prompted him for it).. and I continue on about how he’s lucky I don’t call the cops and see what his parents think of the situation.

In the end, as furious as I was, I let him off pretty damn easy. Though the whole time there was some guy working on his truck or in his back yard the whole time – probably 15 feet away.

This prompted me to add the Painted Post Police, Steuben County Sheriff, and NY State Police to my phone. That shit happens again and I’m on the phone immediately.

GRRR!

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