The leading coach and bus industry news source. Connecting you to the latest coach and bus market reports, features, comment and analysis. If youre a fan of automotive personality Matt Farah andor his show, The Smoking Tire, you probably know that Matt recently bought a 1996 Lexus. Bring Out the GIMP Girls in Merciless Peril November 2013 Archives. Discussion Forum for Extreme Bondage Fantasy Video. DVDs or Web. One month of many years of. Armed And Dangerous German 2004 Pcv' title='Armed And Dangerous German 2004 Pcv' />No Fixed Abode You gotta be rich to own a cheap car. If youre a fan of automotive personality Matt Farah andor his show, The Smoking Tire, you probably know that Matt recently bought a 1. Lexus LS4. 00 with 8. Thats right. Do not adjust your television. Thats nearly a million. You might also know that The Driver, Alex Roy, and I took the Lexus from Long Beach to Texas and beyond, finally coming to a halt in my hometown of Powell, Ohio. DAA7B00000578-4816820-image-a-1_1503503291522.jpg' alt='Armed And Dangerous German 2004 Pcv' title='Armed And Dangerous German 2004 Pcv' />If youre really up to speed on the adventures of the Million Mile Lexus, you know that its currently in the hands of Jalopnik contributor Tavarish, who drove it from Upper Arlington, Ohio to New York. Take a minute and read the above paragraph again. I drove it to Powell Tavarish drove it from Upper Arlington. And thereby hangs a tale. My new friend Tavarish is well known on Jalopnik for writing articles on used cars that manage to combine honest advice, shameless clickbaiting, and hurricane force trollin in neatly wrapped little packages. Hes a big fan of paying cash for old cars and being personally able to fix your own car no matter what, kind of like the TTAC reader whose response to Barks article on subprime buyers was to straight facedly suggest that a working father swap his own minivan transmission in his apartment parking lot. If you check out Tavarishs stuff, theres a lot of DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU CAN GET AN S6. AMG FOR THE PRICE OF A FORD FIESTA and whatnot. Prior to meeting the guy I thought he was engaged in some elaborate Exit Through The Gift Shop hoax at the expense of the notoriously stupid Jalopnik commentariat. I mean, nobody really thinks its a good idea for someone with a 1. Maserati, right Having worked on a few different sides of the car business for nearly a decade in my misspent youth, I believe that I have a thorough understanding of why people buy the cars they do and I believe that the market is remarkably efficient when it comes to pricing used cars. Nearly new Civics often sell for close to their original dealer invoice price because the risk of purchasing one is exceptionally low. A Mercedes S6. 5 AMG, on the other hand, can be had for one tenth of the original MSRP because owning one past the warranty is an invitation to enter a Boschian nightmare and I mean Robert Bosch, not Hieronymus Bosch. The number of ways in which you can spend fifteen or twenty grand in parts on one of those cars has to be experienced to be believed. Hell, even my R1. SL, which should have been about as thoroughly debugged as a car design could possibly be, was chock full of stuff that was NLA no longer available from dealers or the aftermarket but RFN remarkably fucking necessary to the vehicles satisfactory operation. For that reason, I consider Tavarishs Hey College Students You Should Consider A Six Cylinder Jaguar XJR As A Right Priced Alternative To A Honda Ruckus 5. Bay Motors. Theyre fun to read, and theyre fun to write. Theyre also a good way for him to demonstrate his talent to the audience. As many a would be famous auto blogger has found out, its tough to consistently churn out new content about cars if you dont have much access to new cars. Most of the people who try to break into the business have enough personal experience for about five worthwhile articles. Maybe ten. After that youre either making up stories about how you insert ridiculous story here, leavened with enough self deprecation to make it vaguely believable or youre second guessing billion dollar corporations on the strength of no education or business experience other than watching your helicopter dad bail out your West Coast lemonade stand. Compared to that stuff, telling people they can own a La. Forza for the price of an 0. CR V is relatively harmless and entertaining. Nonetheless, when I saw the steam exiting the LS4. State Route 3. 15 last Saturday morning, I permitted a slight smile of satisfaction to appear on my lips. This would be a chance for Tavarish to eat his own dog food, so to speak. Id been on my way to Tim Hortons when the Million Mile Lexus decided to experience a temporary interruption in Toyota reliability. This was doubly ironic because Id just driven the thing across the country, right into the teeth of a major Southwestern winter storm, without any mechanical issues besides an increasing reluctance on the part of the transmission to shift properly and a slug trail of oil drips stretching some 2,1. I considered the trip a bit of a vindication of the Tavarish philosophy, actually. The Lexus has been serviced correctly since new, and Matt spent about 1,5. A V 8 Toyota with all the stamps in the service book and a solid check out by a respected mechanic Every know it all on the Internet will tell you that such a car is as good as nay, better than a leased 2. Ford Focus. And so it had proven to be, right up to that moment. I pulled off the freeway and fancy parked in an apartment complex. My breath froze in the air as I indulged in the time honored masculine ritual of popping the hood and taking a look. Oh. Upper radiator hose popped off. Not a problem. Thats twenty bucks and ten minutes. Wait theres something in the hose. Oh, thats the plastic tube to which the hose attached, fragmented and roasted. It might have been possible to emergency fix it by Dremeling the remaining part of the tube on the radiator smooth then reattaching the hose, but I knew that Tavarish would be driving it to New York and I didnt want him to do it on a jury rigged radiator. So I called home to get a ride, and I called Advance Auto Parts. Upper hose, lower hose for good measure and a new radiator for a Lexus LS4. Just 1. 97. 5. 6, and it would be available within five hours. Come Sunday morning, I picked Tavarish and his friend Al up at the bus station. We grabbed my Craftsman tool set and went to work. The two of them had the radiator swapped in less than an hour. It was no trouble whatsoever, even in twenty degree winter weather. Nine hours later, they were safe and sound in New York. Clearly, this was further proof of the Tavarish philosophy, right You pay cash for a well maintained used car, and when problems come up you fix them yourself, and situations like this are only a minor bump in the road of financially savvy used car ownership. Except. Theres such a thing as privilege. If you read the Gawker sites youll hear about it all the time. Ibm System P5 Serial Connection Vs Parallel. Privilege is what allows rich white cisgender straight men to do whatever they want in this world while everybody else takes it in the shorts. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Normally I consider the use of the word privilege in a conversation to be the brilliant peacock plumage that identifies a third rate pseudo intellectual from ten paces away, but in the Case Of The Million Mile Lexus And Its Low Stress Repair, there was a whole lotta privilege goin on. Lets recap my experience and point it out I was on the way to see a friend when the radiator blew up. I wasnt traveling to my second Mc. Job where Id be fired for being late. I dont have jobs where you get fired for not punching a clock on time. Therefore, this didnt affect my livelihood. Privilege My son wasnt in the car with me, because I dont have to take the risk of driving him around in a crappy old car. We use my Accord or my 9. The former is nearly new, the latter is in outstanding repair and has low mileage. However, were this not the case, Id have been placed in a situation where my five year old boy would have been exposed to fifteen degree temps, maybe by the side of a dark freeway somewhere. In reality, he was at home, playing Minecraft on his i. Pad. Privilege I was able to immediately call home and get a ride, because the other person living in my house doesnt work weekends and has an expensive SUV that is available at a moments notice. Were I a single mother, Id have been forced to call around until I found someone who had the time and ability to get me, while my children froze. Isetta Tech Restoration. Heres an alphabetically arranged list of Isetta restoration topics that apply to the US Export Sliding Window Coupe. Not all information listed here carries over to the earlier bubble window models. This section of Isetta Tech will be updated on a semi regular basis. Please use the Feedback link to let us know what issues you would like to see addressed, correct us on any bogus info weve dished out or suggest otherbetter ways to get those Isettas back on the road where they belong. Revised September 2. ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZClick on a letter that corresponds to a topic that begins with that letter. AIR CLEANER CANISTERYour canister is basically an elongated coffee can that bolts to the rear fender mudsplash guard bracket and runs from side to side. It has a rear inlet tube welded on at a right angle that connects to the external air intake via angled rubber hose, an early Ram Air design if you will. The canister connects to the carburetor via a J shaped hose on the engine side. This J shaped hose clamps onto the canister cover containing the air filter. If you dont do anything else in the way of maintanence on your Isetta, make sure you change the oil and at least clean, if not replace, the air filter on a routine basis. BATTERYMany different types of batteries have been sucessfully used in Isettas. The Isetta electrical system calls for 1. We have a Harley Davidson Non spillable sealed battery in our car. Its H D part number 6. This battery measures 7 wide by 6 tall by 3 12 deep and retails for about 7. With its compact size, theres no worry about fitting in the battery box or being too tall to fit under the seat. Life expectancy is in the 3 year range. Westco Battery offers a broad range of batteries and related products that are perfect for many micromini cars. You can search on motorcycle batteries and plug in BMW to see their offerings or give them a call to see what they suggest. Other battery options that have been used include Sears and other brands riding lawn mower ATV batteries. Some models are slightly less money than other choices but may not last as long. You will probably find that most of these types of batteries have the removeable caps to add distilled water to the cells, one more maintenance issue to deal with. Most weve seen also require that the electrolyte be added to the battery once you purchase it so it may not be ready to use off the shelf. One item that we didnt care for on these units was the ventilation tube. This tube runs down one side of the battery and its name is self explanatory. Theres just something about having battery acid fumes vented under the seat of the car that isnt appealing. One could always drill a hole in the battery box and vent it outside but punching a hole in the car wasnt an option. You might consider picking up a good battery charger at the same time. Westco sells a fully automatic charger, the Accu. Mate Power Charging System. Its their model number LS61. Its a small, switchable, fully automatic charger for 6. V 1. 2V small batteries. This unit wont allow you to accidentally reverse polarity and comes with a neat pigtail adapter that you can attach to the battery and leave under the seat. When need be, just plug the pigtail into the charger and plug the charger into the wall. When the green LED comes on, youre done. An LED will also indicate that the battery is no longer chargeable and should be replaced. It will also sit there for months and maintain a full charge without burning your car, garage andor house to the ground. They also include the old standby alligator clips too if you move it around from one vehicle to another. One word of wisdom on selecting a battery is to make sure that you dont get one thats too tall. That includes selecting one that has its posts either recessed or side mounted so theres no danger of having the bottom of the seat springs come into contact with the posts and causing a potentially disastrous short. Assuming that you intend to use the factory grounding stud in front of your battery box, you may also find that having the negative post to the right passenger side allows a neater battery cable installation too. Finally, you might want to put some sort of mat under your battery. The acid free mats seem impossible to find any more in our area. We went to the hardware store and bought a square foot of 11. Some owners, this one for instance, also cut a square of the same neoprene punched several holes around the outer perimeter and tie wrapped it to the bottom of the seat springs directly above the battery just to be safe. More than one Isetta has burned to the ground or has been severely damaged due to those seat springs shorting across the battery posts. Electric chairs have their place but your Isetta is not one of them. BATTERY BOXPublic Enemy 1 when it comes to rotting and rusting out. New battery boxes are easy to come by through parts suppliers. The target price should be around 5. Being a fairly simple item, a sheet metal shop should be able to make one up for you as well. If your floorboard has rotted away around the box, youll need to replace that sheet metal so your new box fits the same rectangular cutout in the floorboard rather than install a larger box. Why First, if you should go to a larger deeper front to back box, youll be chewing up the real estate where your voltage regulator is mounted behind the battery box. If that happens, there wont be sufficient room between the back of the box and the underseat heater for the regulator to fit. Youll have to improvise and mount it off center to the passenger side of the floorboard or the inside of the spare tire well. This will work OK. Second, there is a lateral steel brace welded to the underneath side of the floorboard behind the box. You would have to remove this brace and relocate it. One nice touch to add to that new box is a mat, preferrably of the acid resistant variety. These mats seem to be disappearing from the auto parts stores inventory these days though. We bought a 1 piece of neoprene rubber stock from the hardware store and cut one from that. Works like a charm for a buck and a half. Another area where weve seen lack of attention is the battery tie down strap. The original factory boxes had a small wing on either side where a threaded, L shaped rod was attached, threads pointing up. Once the battery is installed, a flat bracket is placed on top of the battery. The threaded part of those vertical rods goes through each end of the bracket and are secured by wing nuts on either side. That battery isnt going anywhere. Many people have stuffed foam rubber andor pieces of wood around their batteries to keep it in place. Some have rigged up a bungee cord or two to do the job as well. That may be better than nothing but the factory setup is the way to go. BRAKESOverview. Note If you have a Brighton built, British Isetta, your car has Girling brake components installed. Please disregard this section as it doesnt apply to your car The Isetta utilizes a simple design thats easy to work on. On US Export models, the front brakes use ATE wheel cylinders with a 1. The two cast aluminum brake shoes rely on riveted lining for stopping power and there are two identical springs, one top and one bottom, that tie the two together. Two adjustments can be made here. The angle of the shoelinings can be adjusted for parallel contact with the inside of the drum via small screw on each shoe. With only 5. 0 square inches of braking surface, you want these shoes perfectly parallel to the drum. The conical brake adjuster at the bottom of the assembly is used to regulate the distance between the shoelining and the drum. While BMWs Isetta sales brochure specifically states four wheel brakes, the rear has only one brake mounted on the right rear. Thats three total.