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I’ve been in the process (about 2 years) of ‘any day now I’ll get a new car’ – but have struggled to find one that I actually like. There’s too many cars I just don’t get that feeling of ‘it’s the one’ – and I’ve driven everything from Subarus, BMW’s, Lexus, to Nissan, Hondas and Mazdas. However, I’m starting to narrow my focus to some Mazda 6’s. I just happen to find one that matched a lot of what I was looking for, so I took it for a drive and had a mechanic check it out.

Well, let me just say that before I dropped it off – there were a few things that were bothering me mechanically about the car – but I decided to just let the mechanic check it out for me. Needless to say, when I got back, we discovered that it had likely been flooded. There was a water line about half-way up in the trunk. The carpet under the rear floor mats was wet underneath (had to pull up part of the carpet to feel it) but they had dried out the front carpet areas to where they weren’t wet at all – however it was obvious they had pulled the carpet up and put it back (they didn’t even snap all the molding back). They did a rotten job trying to hide the damage. They didn’t even try to dry under the back. They just threw away the trunk carpet all together.

But the shocking part was how non-visible the damage was. In the trunk, the water line was just a little coating of white pills – kind of the like little balls of white lint you get on a coat. Unfortunately, those white lint balls were really the glue that had leeched through. Try as I might, I couldn’t find any brown mud or rust on bolt heads. I looked inside frame mounts and didn’t see any other obvious water or rust marks. If they had done a better job of cleaning the car up (or putting it back together) – it would have been very hard to spot.

So, here’s some tips to look for in checking a car out for water damage:

• They’ve tossed all the original floor mats and/or the trunk floor liner
• Open the spare tire well – mine had little puddles of water in it because the holes that normally let the water out were plugged (probably from being submerged).
• check under ALL the carpets – front and back. This requires taking some of the plastic floor and kick-well plastics out – but do it. My fronts were perfectly dry, but the rears were wet.
• The front carpets clearly had ‘air bubbles’ under them. In other words, the carpet had been lifted up, then put back, but it was no longer sticking to the metal floor – so it slide around and had areas that popped up.
• Use your nose – but it is subtle. I smelled perfumes but underneath that there was still a faint wet/musty smell. Put the windows up and blast the heat for a better effect.
• See if the plastic molding around the door – especially the lower moldings – have recently been removed. Look for little pry marks or broken/missing plastic fasteners. The ones on this weren’t even put back all the way. Clearly they’d been mucking around down there.
• Do a VIN check – and see if it came from a recently flooded area – but don’t trust it to say flooded. Here’s the report I got for the car from experian/carfax. You’ll note there is no mention of flood damage and it still qualified for their title protection. Renton is where I-5 flooded shut about 2 months ago.
• Check the electrical plugs under the dash or under the car in low-hanging areas. Get the big plugs with multiple wires or thick connectors and unplug them. If it’s sat in water, the water will have seeped in and gotten stuck. They can’t have cleaned them all out. Water in the plugs = totally sat in water for some period.
• The transmission fluid was black. Like used motor oil. This alone is enough to make one run. Check the oil for foam or discolorations too. But don’t count on it – an oil change and transmission change would have made this not visible.
• Check the brake pads and brake assembly out. That’s raw metal. If theres lots of rust that looks unusual, the brakes squeak a lot or feel odd, odds are good it sat in water. You might even get lucky and see a water line on parts of the rotor if it hasn’t been test driven much.
• Check for ticks or weird feel from the steering column. When turning from a start, I could feel a tick in the steering column. This might just mean bad CV joints if the mileage is high enough, or it could mean the CV joints sat in water and are starting to rust. Either way CV joints = $500.
• Don’t trust looking for rust around bolts or mud lines. I didn’t see ANY. I looked inside frame plugs too – no dice.

My dad worked insurance for many years – and he confirmed it can be very hard to spot a flooded car if they did a good job cleaning it up. These guys did such a poor job trying to hide the damage that it was pretty obvious. If they’d changed the tranny fluid and really dried it out (front and back), and put the plastics back right – it would have been very unlikely to have been spotted. ALWAYS find a mechanic who is good to check these things out. My $80 saved me thousands. Always always always get an inspection. They cost under $100 and they usually can spot at least $100 worth of stuff that you can use to deduct from the price of the car – making the inspection almost free.

If you suspect it’s been in water – RUN, don’t walk. Don’t even both no matter how much you like the car. The mechanic said this would be the likely progression of woes from this car: you’d do the transmission oil but it would likely start failing within a year. Odds are good the electronics would start dying within 6 months – lights stop working, fuel pumps, anything electrical would die or go wonky as the wires and electronics rusted and shorted. The CV joints/axles would likely need replacing within about 6 months, and probably the calipers and brake systems too. If you’re lucky, water didn’t get into the oil pan. If unlucky – get ready for an engine rebuild. In other words – this thing would have totally self destructed.

This car was being pushed by Nissan of the Eastside in Belleview, WA. These guys had clearly seen the damage and tried to cover it up. When I got back – it was pretty clear they knew what I’d found. I told them I was going to get a thorough inspection of the thing, and they still insisted it was fine. Total sleazes from a very up-scale place. It just goes to show how awful car dealerships are – no matter how high-end they look.

 Opens up a fascinating new methodology in cracking encryption and reading data you shouldn’t:

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1257

“There are men who can think no deeper than a fact.”

“The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.”

If you’ve been in the loop, you know that I’ve been ‘just about’ to get a new car for about 2 years now. I get into some test drives, kind of narrow it down, then decide I’m just as happy with the old car and don’t want to have car payments again. Yep, the 15 year old Nissan is still running strong and this year I should top the 200k mile mark. But to help myself along the process, I’ve been fixing all the little niggling problems that I would need to in order to sell my old car. One of which has been a problem I’ve had for the last two years – and this one turned out to be really cool.

The problem was that on very cold mornings (i.e. only in winter), when you turned it on, the speedometer would jump to 30-40mph – while you were still in park. If you put it in gear, it had no power and wouldn’t shift into overdrive. On REALLY cold days it would be stuck at 0mph and wouldn’t even shift out of first. You had to wait about 5 minutes for it to warm up and then it would be perfectly normal. At first I thought it was a transmission problem – so I didn’t do much with it as a rebuilt tranny would be about 1/2 the value of the car. But with a possible sale pending, I knew I needed to at least know what the problem was for full disclosure to the person buying it.

I took it to a great transmission guy I know – and he said there was nothing wrong with the transmission at all. No codes, everything is fine. Instead, he said, what was happening is when the speedometer was reading 30, the car thought it was going 30, and shifted to 3rd gear (hence no power). When it was stuck at 0, it wouldn’t shift because the car thought it was going – well – zero mph and should stay in first. He sent me to an electrical guy that reproduced the problem and found that all the speed sensors and engine sensors were working fine. It wasn’t in the sensors or wiring – it was in the actual speed cluster itself (pictures are from when I tore the heater core out – how’s that for lucky!). Huh? The actual instrument cluster was causing bad shifts? I had a hard time swallowing that at first, but he seemed sure. Problem was that a new speedometer cluster was $950 – that’s more than what it would have cost to get a rebuilt transmission put in my car. Sigh. He didn’t have a line on any used or refurbished ones because I have a really unique speedometer cluster – one that has a heads up display. Yep, my 15 year old car has a fighter-pilot era polarized glass/heads up display. I wasn’t ready to dump that kind of money – so I told him to hold on while I made a few phone calls.

I called my favorite junk yard – and they happened to have a 93 nissan altima in the lot. I had them pull the cluster and they charged me a much more reasonable $50. I took it to the mechanic guy who put it in, but it then wouldn’t read any speed, nor shift out of first. Huh. It was from an automatic car – but the junk car didn’t have a HUD. Could it make that much of a difference? The backs were almost identical – minus the HUD sending unit. I also picked up an interior light dimmer switch for $5 from the same junk car because mine seem to have a short in it and would blink the interior lights when it went wacky.

Off to the Nissan forums, posted the question/pics, and got an answer back – better than an answer actually. Answer is that in Altimas, the non-HUD clusters don’t work in HUD cars and vice-versa because the speed sending units are analog vs digital (respectively). But this guy actually has a HUD cluster he’ll sell me for $60. I buy it and go to a speedometer shop (because I was very unsatisfied with the previous shop as they left my dimmer unplugged so I had no interior/console lights when driving at night and they were very slow/a day late on the work they did) where he rolled the odometer to match the old mileage and plugged it in (I also leaned over and put the new dimmer switch in at this point and verified the old one had a short). Voila. It shifted (and the lights dimmed!), but would it solve the problem? I would need to wait for a cold morning. Note on this kind of work: I would have done it myself (20 minutes worth of work), but you need a shop that will officially vouch for the mileage or you get nailed by DMV brands your car as having invalid or odometer tampered mileage – usually knocking 1/2 its value off.

Next cold morning – 100% success! Shifting problem fixed. In fact, it shifts more cleanly in everyday driving too. Who would have thought a speed cluster would cause a shifting problem. Live and learn. Now to get out and make sure it’s up to snuff.

Finally – Here is the map by county with real numbers. This is what I’ve been curious about for some time

RealtyTrac has reported the numbers of mortgage foreclosures for 2007 – by county/state. It appears the Portland area is pink to red – higher than I originally expected. The rates of change are dramatic- the number of forclosures from 05-07 increased dramatically – and this year is shaping up to be even more than last. This is a problem that will only get worse before better by most experts accounts.

Even though people are supposed to be getting reprieves from the government for a month or two, most experts (and I would agree) don’t think this will help.  When the average behind mortgage owner about 5-9 months behind in payments; a month – or even 6 – probably won’t matter.  They bought too much house with too little money.  They simply must refinance to a reasonable rate, or they need to get out.  And I hate to say this, but probably most of them need to get out of homes they can’t, and never could, afford.

As someone that is saving up money for a down payment on a house, here’s what I’m thinking (to all you experts). I’m sitting on my money. And I’m going to sit on it at least a year or two. There is still way to much danger of these mortgage problems spreading and with recession on the lips of many – prices are NOT going to go up any substantial amount. There is simply NO good reason for me to pull my money off the sideline right now. You might quote that Portland area property values are holding strong – if not seeing a small 2-3% increase even last year. Interest rates are at and even LOWER low than they were during the boom. One might point on that mortgage interest is deductible and a house is a great tax shelter. Again true, but if the house you’re buying today for $300,000 is worth $250,000 next year – no amount of tax deductions will offset that.  On top of that, if it depreciates  more than 5-10%, then it’ll take me 3-5 years to recoup that lost equity.  Also, even if the average growth for last year was 2-3%, there is still a lot of properties that are overdue for an adjustment based on location and I am getting an FDIC backed 4.5% on my savings account -right now.  Finally, interest rates aren’t likely to go up any significant amount anytime soon; so there is no rush to lock in now.

On the bright side of things, houses that are priced reasonably sell very well and quickly in Portland. I’ve been watching houses come up and get sold or sit for months around my neighborhood. If you’re overpriced, you’ll be sitting there a long time. One arrogant fool started by asking 1.3 million for a condo nearby about a year ago. It’s now a year later and she/he is down to 950k and it still isn’t even close to selling. Meanwhile, in the same complex, I’ve seen 3 units sell for 350-550k in just 1-2 months. However, one thing is for sure – I’m actually seeing for sale signs. Up until about a year ago, stuff sold so fast that they didn’t even put the sign up before a bidding war was on. I had friends tell me they had to put bids on things sight unseen just to get a chance to look at the property. I taught me again that one should never buy during a boom/high demand period – that is the definition of high. Instead, buy at times like now – when people are licking their wounds, people are losing their property, etc. That’s what buy low and sell high looks like – at least in this case – and it isn’t pretty.

Anyway, here’s where Oregon is:

State rank in # of foreclosures:	22
Total # foreclosure filings:	10,746
% Change from 2006:	12.25%
% Change from 2005:	56.76%
Total proprties with filings:	8,461
% Households (foreclosure rate):	0.543%

So, that’s the story. Feedback?

Fall colors are here – at least the first round. I went up to the japanese gardens here in portland, renewed my membership, and took a few shots. This year’s colors look better than last years by a good measure. More pictures coming, but here’s one to whet your appetite. Click for a larger image.

Watched this movie last night at the Laurelhurst. It’s about the race to the highest score for the classic arcade game Donkey Kong by Steve Wiebe (a laid-off Boeing employee, now HS science teacher in Bellvue, WA) and Billy Mitchell (a hot-sauce vendor with a long history of classic arcade game record scores). This really is a great movie to watch since it also includes commentary and a walk through the contests/rivalries between Mitchell and Wiebe.

However, it is also very painful to watch. I can only liken it to the ‘Best in Show’ movie about the crazy dog show people. Wiebe comes off as an average guy trying to become great in something. Billy comes off as one of the most arrogant, self-delusional, and (in my unprofessional opinion) emotionally/behaviorally manipulative guys you’d ever hope not to meet. Yet it’s the whole cast of other professional game players and the sadly myopic interactions they have with each other that’s even more painful. The Filthy Critic captures the feel of this movie almost perfectly. The best quote of movie that sums up a lot of what’s going on: Steve Wiebe is driving to a contest to play Kong, and his 10-ish year old daughter in a fit of insight says,

Daughter: “I didn’t know that book (Guinness Book of World Records) was that important”
Steve: “Well, yeah, it’s important for some folks”
Daughter: “I think a lot of people probably ruin their lives trying to get into that book”

Brilliant. A 10-year old girl sees what all these guys in the 30’s and 40’s did not.

I went to the fireworks display downtown Portland as part of the celebration of the Rose festival.  You can see some of the pictures I took here, or you can look at the schedule of Rose festival events at their official website here.  Since I’m still in the middle of moving; I’m doing all my photo editing for this site on my laptop – which is NOT optimal.  Flat-panel displays are still very much lacking in the ability of proper color/brightness/contrast calibration.  I’m really hoping to get a new monitor sometime soon because even my old CRT is starting to fade and die. 🙁  But as is, it’s in a friend’s attic right now. :)Anyway, The Rose festival is a really big, mutli-day festival here in Portland each year. It’s shaping up to be some nice weather this year and it’ll be fun to get to some of the events.