What Did You Do With Your Kizashi Today?

[KuroNekko]

Regarding the flex pipe scrape:
I took a good look at it when I had the car up on ramps for the LED headlight installation.
This was what it looked like.

005.JPG (309.11 KiB) Viewed 5143 times

As you can see, the wire mesh was damaged and a bit of the pipe was too, but no serious damage or punctures to the actual pipe.

I also noticed that some of my plastic undercovers were cracked and a bumper screw was missing. I checked the area where I ran over the parking block but could not find the screw. Thinking back, I did hear an odd noise of what sounded like a small object falling from my car. That was on the freeway. No recovery of that screw. I may look around for a replacement on the internet, but reallocated a less important bumper screw in place of the one that is missing.
Overall, not too much damage no real issues to worry about.

[SamirD]

Got stuck in snow.

Took the car out for a drive this evening and decided to go to a place where I've never been before that's close to home. The roads weren't plowed, but they were matted down pretty well from other people driving on them. Made it to this well-lit parking lot where it's pretty obvious people did donuts. I didn't partake as I don't know how long its been since the last diff fluid change, or if the first one was ever done. No need to risk any carnage.

Decided to leave by the exit of the parking lot vs going back out the way I came in--mistake. That snow was waaay higher than I thought it was, and by the time I felt like I was losing traction, I was already stuck.

It took aaa about 2-3hrs to get to me, which in the meantime an Audi, Jeep, and Navigator came by to do donuts in the parking lot (I was stuck a safe distance away from them). The Audi driver never stopped to help, the Jeep guy offered but didn't get out of his Jeep, the Navigator guys jumped out and helped push, but it wasn't enough.

I was able to rock the car back and forth about an inch, but I was very cautious when doing this since I don't want a cvt issue or any other problems. I made some progress by the time aaa showed up, but not even close to how much needed to get out.

AAA hooked up a winch to rear pull under the car and then slowsly pulled the car out when it was in neutral. When it seemed like it had some grip, I hopped in and slowly applied some power in reverse. It came out quite easily and was back running.

The only thing that was odd was a smell of coolant after all this. I didn't get a chance to see if the car had a puddle on the snow (I could probably go back since I just got home), and I did have a coolant smell when parking the car tonight. The temp guage never went above normal, which is slightly under halfway. Of course, I've seen from monitoring direct coolant temp sensors that the dash guage will not really reflect what is going on. It might have gotten hot from all that idling and movement in between.

All in all, learned a lesson--carry traction mats in the trunk. If I would have had these, I would have been out in 10 minutes. I'll check the coolant level before driving the car tommorrow morning. I'll also check all the different hoses and such as there might be a clue there somewhere.

[SamirD]

Checked the coolant level and overflow level this morning--normal.

Went back to where I got stuck this morning after dropping off the wife because the idea that I left a puddle of coolant didn't set too well in my mind as I laid down to sleep. Went there to find someone else stuck in the exact same spot, getting help to get out. Made me feel a bit better. I arrived just in time for them to pull the car back and find the small 'tray' of ice that had formed from my idleing last night. But there was no coolant.

I went home and immediately popped the hood and smelled coolant again. Grabbed a flashlight and started looking for the telltale drips or stains. I didn't find anything until I saw two very tiny drops on the fan shroud coming from the connection of the overflow tube to the bottom of the overflow tank. Looks like that little clamp has lost its tension as I could move it with my finger. I think this solves the mystery of the coolant smell. Maybe it's been there the whole time and I never noticed it. Maybe it's something new. Who knows. I'm just glad I found it.

[bootymac]

Glad to hear everyone's Kizashis are alright. Seems like our cars are cursed, which is fitting based on what Kizashi means...

[KuroNekko]

Glad to hear everyone's Kizashis are alright. Seems like our cars are cursed, which is fitting based on what Kizashi means...

When I read that, this song immediately popped into my head. It's a Japanese electronicore band's cover of Prodigy's song, "Omen".
[youtube][/youtube]

But "Kizashi" doesn't necessarily mean a bad omen. It can be translated to something like "harbinger" as well.


SamirD,
Did you disengage the ESP when attempting to rock the car out? I actually deliberately got my car stuck in snow to try it out. Without disengaging the ESP, the car refuses to spin the wheels too much. However, without some wheel spin, it's hard to get the momentum to rock out of and power through a rut. I know that the button's main purpose is to allow drivers to disengage it for purposes such as rocking out of snow or mud. It helped and I got out of the snow.
However, given that your vehicle is AWD, I'm sure the snow you were in was much deeper.

[SamirD]

SamirD,
Did you disengage the ESP when attempting to rock the car out? I actually deliberately got my car stuck in snow to try it out. Without disengaging the ESP, the car refuses to spin the wheels too much. However, without some wheel spin, it's hard to get the momentum to rock out of and power through a rut. I know that the button's main purpose is to allow drivers to disengage it for purposes such as rocking out of snow or mud. It helped and I got out of the snow.
However, given that your vehicle is AWD, I'm sure the snow you were in was much deeper.

I did, but not on first attempts.

I tried all sorts of things--setting to fwd, which interestingly enough, still spun the rear wheels in reverse, but not as quickly as when awd was engaged. Turning off esp, which helped keep traction control from cutting the power to the right front wheel. I tried slowly applying power which worked really well, but there were times when I was at 2100rpm before the tires would spin! Finally, after working on going backwards out of it, I tried going forward and noticed I moved about an inch. So I would go forward until I hit that small ridge, then backwards until I hit the other ridge. I think I increased the gap by about 1/2 an inch in about 10 minutes. But I was worried about the cvt the whole time doing this. I'd make sure I was on the brakes, giving the rpms and the transmission a chance to settle before going in the other direction. When aaa finally arrived, it was kind of nice to hear his professional opinion of 'you're stuck good'. At least I got stuck in a way that was worthy of an awd car with snow tires.

After briefly trying all sorts of pushing and whatnot, he said he's going to 'stop messing around' and hooked up the winch to the car. It was out pretty quickly and I was on my way.

But I learned--I need traction mats, the stuff we bought at sam's isn't going to cut it for getting stuck like this, and we need a towel to keep the car from getting soaked. That reminds me that I still need to reclean the leather now.

[sx4rocious]

Glad to hear everyone's Kizashis are alright. Seems like our cars are cursed, which is fitting based on what Kizashi means...

When I read that, this song immediately popped into my head. It's a Japanese electronicore band's cover of Prodigy's song, "Omen".
[youtube][/youtube]

But "Kizashi" doesn't necessarily mean a bad omen. It can be translated to something like "harbinger" as well.

.

And I thought I was the only one that listened to this type of music!! You're my new best friend!!

[~tc~]

You might want to try lightly holding the brakes while applying the gas - can make the diff act more like a limited slip and apply power to the wheel with traction

[KuroNekko]

And I thought I was the only one that listened to this type of music!! You're my new best friend!!

Oh, I knew you listened to the harder stuff when we were all discussing music in another thread. I like metal and hardcore and I also like electronic so "electronicore" is a good hybrid for my tastes (or lack of it as many would say). Many people hate on this kind of music, but whenever I turn on the radio I hear Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and Nickelback. Nope, I just turn that shit right off and go back to my iPod.

The song "Omen" is a Prodigy cover and I think Crossfaith covered it really well. Despite being from Japan, they sing in English, if you can call that singing. I like the sound of technical metal (hello, double bass drums!) so these guys are quite interesting.
Check out this song. It's great for getting lost into with a 425W RF system when you are stuck in traffic.

Crossfaith - Monolith
[youtube][/youtube]

[bootymac]

Finished installing my remaining LEDs in the trunk and license plate lights. You can see pictures here:
http://www.kizashiclub.com/forum/viewto ... 562#p25562
http://www.kizashiclub.com/forum/viewto ... 565#p25565