Mrs. Tripper and I are expecting another baby! Just got the ok to tell the world. Due 7/8 and we'll be waiting til birth (like last time) to find out if it's a boy or girl, but we're all super excited! I think I'd slightly prefer another girl because I know what I'm doing there. However I'm "the third" and a boy will most definitely be Tripper IV so that's probably cool too!
And by a million bucks I mean, gasoline...
I took the "long" way to work through Valley Forge park. For whatever reason I really like driving an old car through areas where you can forget what year it is. This route takes you though a bunch of super nice properties, through VF park, and over an old wooden covered bridge. The next stretch follows a creek down a windy road that T's off back to reality.
It's the first time in a long time that I've commuted in this car and one of my colleagues said with a smile, "are you driving that to save on gas?"
Me: 
I'm lucky to get into the teens for MPG if I'm driving it the way I like to.
Happy Friday!
My automotive chi was damaged yesterday while driving an absolute piece of poop.
Today the damage has been repaired and my mind is clear. I finally checked off a corner that I have been after for a while. I've gone through this particular low speed "s" (hard left, softer right) in the wrong car hundreds of times. I went through the turn first at about 75% just chirping the tail a little bit. I pulled into the parking lot of the golf course that is nearby, snapped the pic below and headed back toward that turn in the opposite direction...the correct direction as were now going soft left to harden right. As an added bonus you can see about a half mile past the exit of the corner...if it's clear, its really clear.
Lotta golfers out today! The course runs right along the road and there's a tee box just to the right before the beginning of the soft left. There were some golfers there just chatting. I thought "eh they might not appreciate what I'm about to do" and started to back off when I noticed one guy hitting me with the double thumbs up...I wave and think, "nevermind!". Man, do I wish someone had a picture of us exiting that turn, it might have been my best work ever!
Finally, yes I have bought another car! I'm sure you'll be not at all surprised to hear that it is an E chassis BMW. After yesterdays bummer of a car shopping trip, I sent my dad to look at Tellurides and Jeep Grand Cherokees. He bought a 2020 Grand Cherokee Limited and the BMW dealer (hah) where he found it offered him $2,500 for trade on his X5. I offered $2,501...Bob.
So I'm now the proud owner of an 2004 Grey X5 3.0 that looks very similar to the one below. 95k on the clock. I take delivery on Monday and I am very excited!
Happy Christmas Everyone!
I already got the best gift. Last night my kiddo was fidgety after dinner, and my wife was exhausted. So I suggested to the munchkin that we go down to the workshop. We started playing with the train set, after a few minutes she goes, "I wanna make something on the workbench, daddy can we please do that?" Obviously I say yes and ask what she wants to make. She goes over to her little workbench and pulls out a little wooden project that we got at home depot a few weeks earlier.
Before we started to build it, I set my phone up on the workbench so it could see it all and pressed record. We're working a way for a little while and...
Her: Hey daddy, I just love you so much! You're the best daddy, I will love you forever!
Me: *heart explodes "Aw I'll love you forever, you are such a sweet little girl, I just love being your daddy. Will you always be my little girl?"
Her: "yes! And I will always play with you and you will always play with me when I ask you too!"
Me: "that's right!"
When I was a little boy, my pop-pop and I spent hours in his workshop which was very similar to mine (fancy that). When I was really little (3-4), he'd just set me up with these two little hammers, some nails, and a bunch of scrap wood and I would go to town. Well, those hammers were the only thing I wanted when he died. I got em' and his last box of brads. When I make something for family, I sink one of those in somewhere to finish the project.
Anyway, my kid put this thing together with those same hammers (they're both kinda like little rock hammers. one is short and stubby and the other long and skinny, I'll get pics). I sent the video to my mom and I'm glad I wasn't there to see the waterworks.
She is often sweet like this, but I never thought I'd get to capture one of these moments on video. I'm sure it will be great to have when she's a teen and can't stand me. Those who have kids know the deal, but I'm also super excited for people like @CarsOfFortLangley and others who have really young kids. They're adorable when they're babies too but when they can walk and talk and do stuff it is so flipping awesome.
Easy choice from my birth year:
New whip check in! Yesterday I picked up my new to me 2004 BMW X5 3.0, in Sterling Grey with just under 96k miles. My father bought this car maybe a year or two ago (I think) as sort of a "beater". I helped him fix some of the cosmetic things he wanted to fix and sent him to my top tier BMW inde for any mechanicals. My inde found more than a few problems that my father opted to have fixed. So when the local BMW dealer offered $2,500 for trade...I said "I'll be having that!" as the car has seen nearly triple that number in service only 6 months ago!
There is a lot of good, so we'll start with the bad:
The oil pan gasket is leaking. Any of you that know an M54 know that this is a real big pain in the dick. It's an $1,800+ job for a $60 gasket. I don't have the facilities to do this myself. Next the "mechatronic seal" (sounds cooler than it is) on the side of the transmission case is leaking. I found the transmission leak over the summer and I knew he hadn't had it addressed but did have it looked at, so I reached out to my inde last night to see what he thought. He responded quickly with:
Sorry to hear your dad wants to get rid of the X5 already, and what the dealer offered him is almost criminal!
Glad you took it, that's a nice example of a first gen X5. The notes I'm seeing on the invoice are that all of the leaks are light and that we cleaned everything up so that next time the car is in, we'll see what returned.
The oil pan gasket leak is mostly a nuisance, it will leave spots on your garage or driveway, but otherwise has no effect on the car. It's somewhere around an $1800 job.
Mechatronic seal is good to fix because the transmission fluid level is usually never checked and there's no easy way to top it off. We would do a whole transmission service (which has probably never been done) at that time by replacing the pan gasket, the filter, and the fluid. That's about a $750 job.
A good inde like this is invaluable. He knows me and he knows that if he just said, "yeah we can get all of that fixed up for around 3k" (figuring on an oil change and a few other "pop ups"). That I would be like, "ok when can I drop it off." Obviously, he didn't say that. So instead of changing the oil myself in a few k miles I'll let him do it and the transmission service. He's also my most expensive Bimmer guy, so I've got the option to make an hour drive to my cheapest Bimmer guy and that oil pan job would look more like $1200.
I drove around a while before parking it for the night. No drips this morning and the ground was wet so they'd be easy to spot.
On to the good. In the last 6 months this car has had the following work done by the inde:
New rear windshield washer pump
New engine mounts (expensive)
New right front axle (the whole assembly)
New front tie rods
New left front sway bar link
New front control arm bushings
New tires x4 (Michelin CrossClimate)
Alignment
Oil Change
New passenger door carrier (had to really yank the F out of the handle to get it open from the outside)
And the following work done by me:
New (used but in perfect shape) front door cards
New drivers side mirror trim ring
New side marker lights
New wiper blades
New tailgate trim/button (it's unpainted but I've got a fresh rattle can of BMW Sterling Grey)
New plastics for any that were broken (drivers side windows switch, ash tray cover, couple other things)
The Drive:
It's a heavy SUV with the 3 liter variant of the M54 straight six sporting 240 horsepower so it's not quick. Definitely would SMOKE our forester though. The handing is that of a lifted 5 series which is honestly pretty ok! The steering is that somewhat heavy hydraulic feel that is often touted by those who have had the pleasure. It's not "laser" accurate the way it is on say an E9X M3 but it's a familiar and IMO good feeling.
There are no squeaks or rattles and I went as fast as everyone else on the 3 lane section of US 202. If you're a southeastern PA oppo...you know what I'm talking about. It's a 55mph road but you'd never know it! It was unbelievably smooth.
Cosmetics:
I need to paint the liftgate panel as well as the roof bars and the whole thing needs a real good svending but I haven't been able to find any corrosion and overall I think it looks great for what is my youngest car @ 18 years old.
Things I have now that I did not before:
Automatic headlights
Cupholders
Non-summer tires
An automatic
4 doors
A useable back seat
A useable trunk
Bluetooth/phone integration (crappy and poorly installed, but it works and I can fix the install)
I'm super pumped. Obviously I'm going to need to spend some money on it, but I'm not making any car payments these days!
This will be my dad duty/bad weather car but I will continue to daily the M3.
The dream will be realized when I post a picture of it here clean as a whistle on a beautiful day, sporting a trailer with the 02 loaded on it. The post title will read "Headed to Watkins Glen!!!".
Here it is!
@flatisflat I bet crash testing cars is an awesome job.
My new boss: "Tripper, I really appreciate your enthusiasm but could you maybe not scream "haha, BITCH!" every time we run a test"
Snail: *raises antennae "I wanna go fast"
@e90m3 probably, they’re good. I had a set of hankooks that were crap at one point otherwise the continentals and ps4s are comparable.
@e90m3 historically super sports/ps4s. Right now it’s got a set of continental extreme contacts because they were about half price and I bought them when it was not my daily. They’re not bad though!
My Dunlop Sport Classics just arrived; they'll go on next week! The Falkens that came with the car are and have been SUPER slippy! Kinda fun when you're ready for it, pretty terrifying when you're not, and just god awful in the rain.
Check out these lean meats
Utility:
I forgot to get a new tire for the spare and boy does it need one...Not even a ratio number on this bad boy.
Can't wait to see how they feel.
@CarsOfFortLangley said in Tattoos:
What are you getting? Uppu?
I have one that I really don't like that much, seriously considering adding an uppu to it to silly it up a bit.
@ash78 yeah that too! I was more thinking of it as I’m often the sort of anxious that Toad is in that story, I’m also a list maker. So kinda like go to sleep, anxiety.
@ash78 the box is a good one! I was thinking the one where they’re sleeping and toad has just crossed out “go to sleep” in the sand.
@davesaddiction wowzers! Even going to the office every weekday, I’m going to be around 5-6k miles for the year in the M3.
@Mazda616 I do, they’re all sad ones though (dead friends) all on my back. Thinking about getting a more uplifting one though. Like a big one on my back of one of the illustrations from “Frog and Toad”
@ibRAD I've not driven an E30 M3 either, but have driven a 2002 equipped with an S14
