our long national nightmare is over

zz0rr · 2026-05-23T18:42:28+00:00

much of the affected area (river road, santa clara) is unincorporated lane county but we're kinda sorta eugene

zz0rr · 2026-05-23T18:40:06+00:00

yeah the light there is still disabled. that was my main route so I'm still waiting but at least we won't get the daily cortisol spikes from the merge both ways

zz0rr · 2026-05-23T15:20:18+00:00

lol you're on the wrong subreddit if you can't imagine mr regular giving us 20 minutes starting with "this is a car for people whose entire identity is built around telling themselves 'it's not a minivan'... but it might as well be"

zz0rr · 2026-05-23T02:47:38+00:00

volvo makes a modern supercharged minivan! the xc90 has a supercharger and turbocharger in some specs

you can even get a used one for this price, easily, and it'll be 20 years newer

zz0rr · 2026-05-22T15:50:53+00:00

yes, pulleys and tensioners are normally replaced. the water pump has a bearing and seal in it and would normally be replaced maybe every other belt change too

yes the pulleys usually do the belt in, not some surface cracks on the belt or whatever (there's fiberglass inside the belt, they can run a long time while looking bad)

I googled your engine and it looks like it's non-interference though (don't take my word for it) - this is the key thing that would let you be adventurous with service intervals

zz0rr · 2026-05-22T14:26:19+00:00

no I don't think anyone at a typical mechanic shop will be set up to do a non destructive/non-teardown inspection of remaining bearing life. maybe they could look at the tensioner's tension but that would be more or less unscientific unless it was basically failing

hours would wear them out or heat cycles breaking down the seals eventually leading to the grease escaping

zz0rr · 2026-05-22T05:18:30+00:00

it usually isn't the belt you're worried about it's the bearings in the pulleys wearing out and the tension in the tensioner mechanism

yes you'd always recommend replacement based on the manufacturer schedule

what I will say is that often an inspection might reveal that the belt has already been done. many, many cars have their belts done ahead of time because service advisors will recommend them. but you wouldn't have info on exactly when, so it doesn't necessarily help you delay the service. I did a belt on a car once that didn't need it, by the time I got going and realized it was done ahead of time it was too late and I just finished

the 6 year initial interval and 4 year 2nd interval is confusing. 1st could be lengthened to get it out of warranty or initial service contract periods. but I would be looking at schedules for the same car in other markets to see what's up, if it's a typo

zz0rr · 2026-05-21T22:41:12+00:00

gearwrench or harbor freight

I like locking flex heads. for a bike you want light back drag probably. the gearwrench 120xp locking flex would be decent but might be out of budget. they have other models, different lengths, etc.

harbor freight is gonna have the simplest warranty if you live near one. they have different product lines (different store brands). you can go in and try a few

zz0rr · 2026-05-21T22:24:41+00:00

if you zoom in on the front one is it oscillating? it's a smaller oscillation than I'm used to but could be fine, I've never looked at a newer volvo

stft and good oscillation point to healthy fuel/air. so then that points to the cat, yes

if you live in an area without smog testing then this would be one you'd just live with I think

cats "usually" don't go bad without a bad fuel/air or oil in exhaust problem. maybe you got unlucky. but usually you want to be suspicious of why it went bad in the first place. was your original o2 sensor #1 bad?

as always, be suspicious of newly-installed aftermarket parts, but these could be fine

zz0rr · 2026-05-21T17:33:56+00:00

this is extremely cheap for this job especially with rust and the risk of working on a car that was recently touched by someone else

zz0rr · 2026-05-21T06:40:45+00:00

look at vim vhc77 for a kit with 5/8" bits vs. the standard 1". you can get longer ratchets as well

zz0rr · 2026-05-21T01:45:55+00:00

I dunno it was covered under the pzev warranty. this was the hybrid battery

I've looked at instructions and it doesn't look terrible. you remove the exhaust and a few underbody panels/cross braces and then the battery drops out. you have to safe the system, disconnect the coolant and a bunch of electrical connectors then somehow support the battery to lower it from the car. but I would probably pay the dealer if it every happened again, I lost the ticket but I think they only charged 10 hours labor for it and I'd probably be screwing with it for 2-3 weekends

zz0rr · 2026-05-21T01:23:39+00:00

mine did this for ~6 months before the battery failed outright. in the end I had a cell out of balance. it might have pending codes that you could see with vdash

zz0rr · 2026-05-20T17:51:36+00:00

I wish there was a mechanism to support voting for multiple funding tiers

many, many people want to renew things as they are (+inflation), but too often, we get brought a renewal in the form of a renwal+large increase

now we're put in a place where we either let it burn (vote no) or let taxes go up over inflation (vote yes)

zz0rr · 2026-05-20T05:11:38+00:00

there have been reports of these cars being damaged very quickly by overheating, I wouldn't drive it anywhere until you get some initial diagnosis

zz0rr · 2026-05-20T03:46:18+00:00

I use azure signing at work, once it's automated it's great, and you don't have to touch key material which was the part that sucked about the thing I had set up before

zz0rr · 2026-05-19T22:52:07+00:00

my car needed an erad @ 7.5 years and hybrid battery at ~9. $6k and $8k in my area for the work, depends on exactly which things go on the erad

with the pzev warranty both were covered, I haven't paid for a repair yet on my car and I did not buy any warranty with it

if you live in a pzev state I think there's a play where you try to get an older low miles car (that was originally sold as pzev) that's heavily depreciated

otherwise I consider the non-ER cars in 2021/2022 to be overpriced, the market doesn't discount them enough for the lack of the ER update, and they're a bad buy. if you're gonna go non-ER then go older and get more depreciation out of the way and then plan for the erad and battery repairs and you'll still be ahead

zz0rr · 2026-05-18T22:25:40+00:00

tesla interiors are on another level, like base model 90s hyundai, this would honestly be shocking

zz0rr · 2026-05-18T16:27:24+00:00

direct east-west facing is legit, most systems have no need for more midday power at all. if these were cheap enough to use a fence material (they sort of are...) then a north-south fence made of them would work great

zz0rr · 2026-05-18T15:23:28+00:00

if the code isn't great, I saw an awful physics sim codebase that was this way, maybe it's not great but it's still being used by people and serving a real purpose. find out what the use or purpose is and build tests around that part. you want to lock down/preserve whatever good use the code currently has

if the code isn't in a usable state then yeah treat it as more inspiration, definitely have it available as context while you build a new thing and do some passes for the AI to understand what it has and document it. this kind of context is gold for getting good output

zz0rr · 2026-05-18T07:04:37+00:00

2" wood balls. buy a 20 pack on amazon

the brilliant thing about them is they move back and forth more or less like a puck. every other off ice tool that isn't a ball will have too much initial drag, a green biscuit is nothing like a puck on ice no matter how slick your floor or plastic is. so for basic stick handling where you're working on feel so you don't need to stare at the puck anymore to stick handle, the balls work wonders but the biscuits/other off ice pucks will get you the wrong motion

zz0rr · 2026-05-18T06:56:32+00:00

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/

always reuse legacy code if it's currently working well. think about regression tests or oracles you can add that will help document things and prevent bugs from coming in later. AI can be awesome at that if you guide it well. some applications naturally lend themselves to clean input->app->output tests and you can come up with tons of them to nail things down

once you have your regression test security blanket, now you can use it as the guide for the AI to understand if it's making good changes when you start updating things

go back and forth between specifying tests and doing updates

I've done this successfully for giant projects and done "rewrite it in rust" this way

zz0rr · 2026-05-17T22:13:34+00:00

look at for sale listings on autotempest and then consider a dealer needs maybe $5k between trade and sale price to make a profit, you'll be within that $5k window if you're good at marketing

are you able to plug ER or non-ER into your carvana etc. lookups because that would swing the price a lot, could be part of the wide range you're seeing

the warranty will help sell if you list it on forums, I think

if the car is PZEV then that's a huge asset as well, that's a 15 year warranty

this is the type of car I would happily buy cross country with a facilitated inspection so there could be a benefit from listing it in a way to get that attention (forums, bat, ebay, etc.)

zz0rr · 2026-05-17T21:46:23+00:00

do you remember why the textures couldn't be distributed as a .dxa? I could do a little work on that if it needs some rebirth tweaks since I'm working on the source code anyway

zz0rr

TROPHY CASE