The High Cost of Materialism

As some of you are already aware, I am the proud owner of a “Last of the Breed”, 2002 Pontiac Trans-Am Firehawk. A bright red one! Not only do I own this vehicle (I’ve named her Precious although I must admit that it’s not a very good name…) but I have recently come to the rather unexpected decision of actually driving her not too long ago. And by that I mean driving her as my daily vehicle whilst living here in southern California. As some of you may have already read (back in my Vegas, Baby… post), I drove Precious back to California after my latest trip home.

Okay, so what? I’ve decided to drive a car that I bought a bit over five years ago – what’s the big deal…? I’ll tell you what the big deal is – this car is my baby! I purchased her back in April of ’03 brand spanking new. As a matter of fact, I still don’t completely own her as I still owe a bit over a grand on my loan. So basically I guess I will soon actually own her; but that’s just semantics. I adopted her (and yes, I have the birth certificate to prove it) with the intention of taking very good care of her. I’ve always been a fan of the F-body line of cars (GM’s Camaro/Firebird line) and Precious is actually the 3rd F-body that I’ve owned. (A rather in-depth history of my vehicle ownership is available on a much earlier post, A Man and His Cars.) Being that she is one of the rare Firehawk editions (approximately 1500 Firehawks where created by SLP in 2002 – at least twice the number than any previous years…), I’m hoping to keep her as close to pristine as I can … hoping…

Lately, however, I’m beginning to wonder how anybody can keep a car pristine and actually drive it. Heck, I’ll go as far as to say it just can’t be done. Don’t get me wrong – I am planning on taking the best possible care of Precious that I can; unfortunately a few issues have already arisen that have caused me to worry quite a bit. The first problem popped up just after taking Precious in for an oil change. I decided to take her to Bunnin Buick Pontiac GMC Cadillac in Oxnard, CA. I’ve always taken this vehicle to a dealer for any service (every time before Bunnin was to Fisher Chevrolet & Honda in Boulder, CO) to guarantee authentic GM parts would be used as well as to keep the audit-trail on service records clean. It’s also the only place that I have been able to find that would use Mobil 1 and I’m a bit (perhaps misguidedly…) picky when it comes to the oil I put in my vehicle. And, since it states “Mobil 1 factory fill” on my engine oil cap (granted this was not the original oil cap but a replacement for a ’95 Vette – if memory serves me correctly – that I ordered from GM online) I always use Mobil 1.

Now my insistence on Mobil 1 synthetic ends up costing a bit more. Back in ’03 I was paying somewhere around $50 for an oil change and tire rotation. I believe the last visit to Fisher (must have been last October prior to my initial flight to California) cost me somewhere around $70 … inflation, I guess… Bunnin, however, set a new record – $117 and change! For an oil change, mind you!! Oh well, whatever … I’m willing to pay what I need to pay for Precious; and at those prices I would expect nothing less than high quality service. Funny thing is that I noticed a rather interesting new sound from Precious after leaving Bunnin – it was this rather faint yet very noticeable thumping that increased and decreased with respect to the car’s velocity. Like an idiot, I decided to ignore it…

It was somewhere around 2 ½ weeks later that I finally came to the realization that ignoring this new sound was not a good choice. The sound got progressively louder with time and I decided to call back Bunnin and inquire about it. One of the features on my Firehawk that distinguishes it from the standard Trans-Am is its rear differential. SLP replaced the standard Trans-Am differential with a high-torque, performance model from Auburn Gear. What this does is, “enhance traction and help reduce differential operating temperatures under certain driving conditions by detecting variance in the gripping force of each rear tire and redistributing the engine load as road conditions change, thereby enhancing vehicle performance and stability.” What it also does is drastically change the standard service schedule and routine on the Auburn diff as opposed to the standard diff – one major difference being the required lubrication. I called Bunnin to inquire whether they may have changed the differential fluid without informing me (I really doubted it, but with a $117 oil change, you never know…) and possibly used a synthetic differential fluid. They claim that they didn’t and I do actually believe them about this…

Of course the reason I asked about the differential was because I had a pretty good hunch that the noise I was now hearing quite loudly and clearly was coming from the differential. I was instructed to head back to Bunnin and take one of the service techs out for a ride for their expert opinion. I did this. It was a very short ride. The service tech instantly knew the problem – the noise was coming from the front bearing on my differential. He asked me how many miles I had on the car (a bit over 14,500 at the time) and seemed to be shocked that the front bearing was going with such low mileage. We set up an appointment a couple days later for the differential to be inspected and repaired. I asked the technician for a ballpark figure at what this would be coasting me and was told $1400-$1500 worst-case. I never showed up for that appointment.

The thing is, I have absolutely no evidence of foul-play at that dealer; however, the differential was making absolutely no inappropriate noise prior to taking Precious for her very expensive oil change. I spoke with Todd (who, by the way, has worked at several dealerships) about this little incident and he suggested that my car might have been taken for a joyride by someone at the dealer. How this would mess up my differential is still a question; however I guess anything’s possible when a car is driven by someone with no concern for its well-being… As I said though, I have no proof whatsoever – just circumstantial evidence of something gone wrong.

Heck, it might have been the initial differential work I had done at Fisher in Boulder. I know for a fact that, at 6,000 miles – the first scheduled maintenance on the Auburn diff – synthetic differential fluid was used. This was done even after I took the initiative of showing the guy that wrote up my work ticket what was written in the Firehawk addendum to the owner’s manual about the correct fluid to use (GM part # and everything) and how it states NOT to use synthetic on the differential. Luckily for me, the work receipt I received when picking up my car clearly stated “Synthetic Differential Fluid” which I quickly showed to the tech I was speaking with earlier. He tried to claim that the synthetic was standard for my vehicle and I needed to remind him that my vehicle isn’t standard for my vehicle. After once again showing him the clearly written instructions in the Firehawk addendum, he gave in and told me that they would re-do the flush with the correct fluid. Something now tells me that they might not have…

Whatever the case, I wasn’t very impressed with Bunnin’s service department (for more reasons than the possible foul-play on my vehicle) and decided to go elsewhere to get this differential issue fixed. I figured the best solution would be to find a dealer (yeah, I know … but it’s Precious…) nearby that both sold and serviced Corvettes. After all, the Firehawk is pretty much the closest thing you’re going to find to basically a Corvette disguised as an F-body. I then gave Courtesy Chevrolet (in Thousand Oaks) a call. They sold and serviced Corvettes regularly. Not only that, but after explaining my situation, they were able to squeeze me in the next day at 7:00 in the morning. As I said, I never showed up for my appointment at Bunnin…

The next morning I dropped Precious off at Courtesy Chevrolet, explained the differential problem and ordered a new set of tires. My original Firestone Firehawk tires were in pretty bad shape (not to mention the left rear tire had a nail in it) and, as it always is with these cars, needed to be replaced much earlier than most people are used to. Heck, 14.5k miles isn’t bad when you consider my Z-28 needed new shoes at slightly over 12k… It was decided that I would get a set of Goodyear Eagle F1 GS tires for the low-low cost of somewhere around $1600 (yeah, I know, dealership prices…) as well as the required differential work. This was turning out to be rather expensive…

Upon reaching work (I was able to get a ride with Naoko – our outstanding HR rep at AltaSens) I decided to do a bit of research into the new tires that I had ordered. I discovered, quickly enough, that I really didn’t want the Eagle F1 GS tires. Although these are actually original equipment tires on Corvettes and Mustangs, I found nothing but bad reviews for them on the web. They are apparently rather loud, decent performance tires that wear very poorly. The tires that I actually wanted were the Eagle F1 GS-D3’s. It’s amazing how much of a difference that little added “D3” has on the quality of the tire – they’re both from Goodyear however they appear to be anything but related to each other where customer reviews are concerned. As opposed to the standard GS’s, I wasn’t able to find any bad reviews on the GS-D3’s. Unfortunately, upon checking my service order from Courtesy, it appeared that I had ordered the standard GS tires. I quickly called Bryon (my service consultant), verified that the standard GS tires where ordered and changed the order to the GS-D3’s. It was going to cost something like $100 more but I’ve got my standards…

A few hours later I received a call from Bryon to inform me that it was, in fact, the front bearing on my differential making the noise. I was told that the bearing was basically pulverized and in desperate need of replacement. He said that the gears in the diff were still fine and, after cleaning out the metal shreddings, the differential could be saved. All this for a mere $1200… I really had no choice, so I asked him to take the new set of tires that I was also purchasing into consideration and see if he could maybe make a bit of a deal on the costs for this repair. It ended up coming to a little over $2400 for everything. Not cheap, but actually a good deal less than the estimates (they ended up taking somewhere between $400 and $500 off the price of the tires…).

So everything was looking positive. I was out quite a bit of money that was completely unplanned; but Precious was once again back to pristine (well, as close to pristine as could be expected) condition. She had a new set of shoes (very nice tires, by the way), the differential problem was resolved and I was able to park her in the garage where I was living. This lasted all of one evening as I noticed something very disturbing the next morning – a crack on the passenger-side door panel. I hadn’t seen it there before (at least I didn’t remember seeing it before) and it appeared to be fresh. I didn’t know it at the time, but this is actually a rather well-known problem with the late model F-body’s. I found out about this after taking the car back to Courtesy Chevrolet and basically accusing them of cracking my door panel. They didn’t, of course, but I was completely unaware of the “door-panel cracking” pandemic associated with these vehicles. A few days later, Bryon left me a voice message explaining how this was a known issue that he was able to verify on the web. Sure enough, it was…

There’s even a rather detailed, completely unofficial, step by step repair for this problem that can be found on the High Performance Pontiac website. It’s my opinion that General Motors should bite the bullet on this – issue a recall and fix these door panels; however, since this is happening on vehicles that are no longer in production, I’m doubting that will ever happen. As for me, I ended up doing the repair myself (a bit late on the passenger side) in an effort to minimize the damage. It only took a bit over four hours for both doors (and believe me, I’m not what one would refer to as a “grease monkey”…) but I am hoping that this will avoid any further cracking. (Oh, and a bit of a side note here: If you decide to do this repair to your late model F-Body, you might want to consider leaving the staple nearest the back untouched. I replaced it with the screw / nut combo and noticed that the spacing between the weather stripping on both sides of my window now seems a bit excessive. I don’t think that this is going to be an issue, but for pure aesthetics, it looks a bit strange if you see the door open with the window down…)

Another issue that began the weekend after getting the differential fixed is that, for a couple weeks so far, I haven’t been able to park in the garage. This is because Chris needed to do some work on his boat and has therefore parked it in the garage. The result of this is that he and I both need to park our vehicles on the street for a while. I’m not happy about this. The main reason is that I was under the impression that, if I chose to drive the Firehawk out to California, I would be able to park it in the garage. It seems to me that I had made it very clear that I did not want to drive Precious out here unless I was able to park her in the garage. I was completely willing and able to drive back Betsy, my ’92 Lumina, should I not have a garage to use; however I was assured that this wouldn’t be the case. Here I am now parking Precious on the street…

And it’s not so much the dirty sprinkler water that gets sprayed on her night after night leaving water spots that appear to have the staying power of acrylic paint; nor is it the fact that I’m parking my car out in public where anything “could” happen to it (accidents do happen – sometimes even maliciously…). No, to be honest, the thing that upsets me the most about this is the fact that I was assured that I would be able to park in the garage by someone that I was considering a friend. I do realize that it is Chris’ house and he can do whatever he wants as long as nothing to the contrary was written up in the rental paperwork that I signed; however I guess I was mistaken in thinking that I could perhaps count on my landlord as a friend. Oh well, whatever … I’ll park my car on the street…

Oh … and get this … somehow three of my chrome tire-valve covers magically turned into standard plastic covers. I noticed this while walking back to the car after eating dinner a few nights ago with my girlfriend. I was pointing out the missing lug-nut cap (one of the black, plastic lug-nut caps has been missing for a couple years now on the right front tire) when I noticed that the chrome tire-valve cap was a standard plastic cap. Strangely enough, this was the case on every tire except for the driver’s side rear tire – it still had the original chrome valve cap. I mean, come on people, what the hell….? It’s pretty obvious that this was done when they replaced the tires; however I can’t prove anything. It’s been a couple weeks already although I doubt anybody stealing my chrome valve caps would bother to replace them with plastic caps … and why only three…? Oh well, I’ve ordered a set of lug-nuts with the black, plastic caps to finally replace the missing cap (SLP only sells sets…) and a set of, get this, “lockable” chrome tire-valve caps from this place called Avani. Have I mentioned that keeping a car pristine seems like an impossibility?

bis später,

Coriolis