I brought my truck to the dealership today for the
rear diff. seal... apparently the person who took my
name for an appointment put me down for Thursday!!! I
didn't want to drive it anymore, and because it's a 1
day repair, DC won't pay for a rental car...
CRUD! So I bit the bullet and got a rental...
Choices: 1) Toyota Corolla (nope.. we use to have
one.. nice 'little' car, no thanks.) 2) Ferd Focus
(Sorry, 4 cyl, UGLY car, no thanks.) or 3) Ferd
Contour, V6, power everything... Hmm.. Okay, I'll try
the Countour.
First impression-- you have to REALLY push the gas
pedal down hard to get it to even make the engine idle
up.. Fly by wire??? Quiet...at first... Controls are
arranged okay. Brakes are WAY touchy vs. the very
HARD gas pedal. A weird difference between the two.
Finally reaching the fwy I tried to get up to speed...
Punched the throttle to the floor (almost took both
feet), and NOTHING happened.. I was expecting a 'carb'
backfire or something (I know it doesn't have a
carb.).. then it took off... The tach spins from
about 4000 rpm to 6800 rpm... and the engine sounded
like a Mercury Outboard (EFI 150 or something)... Some
good power, surprising, but with all of the racket it
made engine wise, it didn't live up to what I expected
from it. It MUST be fly-by wire, as when I did my
proven street light to the 45 mph sign, it
wouldn't/shouldn't/couldn't spin the tires... and
managed a measily 58 mph... compared to the RT's 65-66
mph to the same sign (so now you know what kind of
power it has). The weird thing was locking the
doors... The electric locks are like little servos in
each door, not like on/off switches in Dodge/Toyota/GM
cars. Lock the doors, and you hear 4 servos (4 doors)
whine for about 2 seconds. Sounded CHEAP to me.
Anyway, dropped the roll pan off for paint, and having
rearend seal replaced, AMSOIL installed for the fluid
w/chrome rear cover installed, and door ding in
passenger side fixed by some door ding guy that the
dealership swears by.
I think now at lunch I'll go looking for some
'Intrepid' owner and try to stir up a race.. from the
'Other side'.. he he.
Sam '00 RT
FYI-- PT Cruisers just arrived at the dealership...
about 30 of them all at once. Now that I've seen it
Green/Red... I think it's ugly.. I'd only go for
Silver myself.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 11:49:57 EDT