Adelard of Bath

It's cool Pickles; I know how easy it is to misconstrue what people say on the internet Actually, the only speaker wires I have ever replaced were in this 81 Toyota Celica. and that was cuz way back then, for some reason, they had shared grounds or something, like the speakers grounded through the chassis or something...and the new cd player DID NOT like that one bit And actually I haven't replaced my pathy tapedeck yet I kinda like it! But when I do I will run new speaker wires so I don't have to deal with those old amps back there

Ooh I guess I shoulda put my flamesuit on BEFORE I attempted to voice my opinion to people that I assumed would be open to different ideas... Oh well I have it on now heh All I know is, every single time I take one of my cars or a friend's car or relative's car, and they are like "help me put a cd player in here" and we rip out the stocker and put in whatever deck they decided upon, and leave the wiring and speakers all stock, the lights on the deck dim when I turn it way up. Then I pull it out again and see the 22 awg wires in there that they used in the factory cuz they are good enough for stock radios...and I run a dedicated power lead from the battery, and a dedicated ground, the problem goes away. 12 guage is a little big, but the weatherproof blade fuse things I buy have 12guage wire on them, so I just run with that. And who knows when I might have to put a little under-seat amp on that same line or something I guess the "dimming" didn't happen on my 97 Malibu, so maybe the wires were okay in there.

Plus then, in the future, if you or someone ever pulls that stereo out again, they will find nice new wires! And you won't have to use the tiny wires. That said, I almost ALWAYS run a nice fused lead directly from the battery to the stereo, the main power for the stereo...that factory one is usually too small for my tastes, you can tell when you crank up the new stereo and the face starts to dim with the beat....12gauge seems to be sufficient for all but the huge-class stuff.

Somewhat unrelated but back when i was a mailman, in the winter, I had snowtires on a minivan and I would run them 8psi....probably up to 55mph for a few minutes at a time....then I noticed that when I came out in the morning, the heat in the tire had melted the snow/ice I parked on and overnight froze it into a tireshaped piece of ice that locked me down to the driveway....one time I could hardly break out so I stopped running them so low Wasn't underinflation the root cause of the whole Ford Explorer/etc rollover fiasco of a few years back?

I just bought this stuff called "Gunk Liquid Wrench LS4" or something, anyway it said "foaming" on it....liquid wrench is usually crap but I am a sucker for anything foamy so I got it...plus liquid wrench has been around since my Grandpa's days (in those little square cans, I still have a few!) so they must know something. Cost more than PB, like $4.50 a can or something...but like I said, it said "foamy" on the can..... Anyway hooked the straw up and it was not what I expected...I was hoping it would shoot out and hit the rust and start bubbling...no, what REALLY happens is this white foam kinda oozes out the straw, so "shooting" it at bolts is out of the question...but it really seems to work great, actually I like it better than PB (except I can't shoot it so I still have PB around too) and if I foam a bolt or nut, I can come back the next day and the foam will have changed to this nice pool of oil...that will still be there days later, if I leave it that long without wiping it up, but usually the bolt just pops off so I just wipe up my socket and viola. Foamy! Just this evening I was replacing suspention bushings on my 79 Volvo, they were the originals, and 25 year old bolts on the underside of a car is not my idea of fun...but I foamed all the bolts the night before, and the next day, they came out with just box-end wrenches...like they were brand new. I like the way Blaster will melt styrofoam though

Or some plastic tubing from the hardware store? Cut an inch long piece, slit it down the middle, slip it on there...worked for me on the door strikers of an old truck once I unplugged the switch in the Pathfinder though

Yeah blue is definetly the way to go! Or yellow... I used to have this Dodge Ramcharger and I rebuilt the engine and painted it neon green like slimer from ghostbusters...then one day, I saw somebody sold those boots in the same neon green and I was like "yum yum" (more time spent wondering what colour to paint that truck, than realising it was a huge POS)

I got Opera a few years ago because I was tired of the way the Big Two were like 700meg to d/l....plus opera is from Sweden or something like that heh and you can do almost everything with the keyboard! and to me, it seems faster than MSIE....for instance, when I hit "back" (or in my case, cntl-left arrow, or if I am using the mouse, just click "right button left button" quickly) it goes back...instantly, without reloading the page like some do. And I can even scroll around links with the keyboard which is good for me since my elbow aches when I have to use the mouse...that's what you get for being in industrial spray paint for a few years. And I figured out how to make it open with like eight windows, each with my daily comics (from the newspapers)!! But I have heard that the new one, is it Firefox? by the people who left netscape? or something....wait I am thinking mozilla. whatever that new one is supposed to be all that. and a bag o chips as they used to say.

Well I certainly am not pretending that Minnesota gets as cold as North Dakota or Canada...I just haven't felt the whole "super slow clutch" thing before... And just so everyone can sleep better at night, I do change motor oil regularly, so I am not driving around with 30k on my motor oil...that would be bad! Speaking of your foot sliding on the pedal....my old 79 volvo is missing the rubber on the clutch pedal....if there is one snowflake on your shoe, you have to be super careful not to have your foot slide off that clutch and launch the car into a wall or another car or something!! Oh speaking of the 79 Volvo, it has manual tranny and solid rear axle, not unlike the Pathfinder....but when I drive it in the exact same weather as when people say their manual trans is super stiff and the axles don't want to roll in the driveway? I can't tell any difference from when I drive it and it is 90 degrees out. THAT is why I started this whole thread....cuz obviously yes, oil gets thicker as it gets colder, that's why they call it "oil"....and thicker means more friction...but I don't notice it in any other car as much as I do in the Pathfinder and I wanted to see what others thought. But I guess the old Volvo doesn't have a hydraulic clutch, just a cable, so I wouldn't have a problem with that....and no power steering hee hee but it rolls around the driveway just fine, and the tires don't get square, (I noticed that in my pathy yesterday too) and the seat stays soft... Maybe since it was engineered in Sweden heh During the six months of darkness. wee!

I would be in the southern part of the state, Rochester to be precise, and actually I do my best to remain ignorant of the whole "sports" thing hee hee! But it is interesting to hear others have the thickness problem (i have a personal thickness problem as well, i blame it on cookies!) but I should see about changing my oils anyway as it has been long enough. Except for the engine, just did that...although it does crank kinda slow maybe I should change that to something thinner like you said...I think I put 10-30 in it last time

I'm working on it, but I'm scared of the body breaking in half while I am in the middle of nowhere! (unibody, so much you would have a heart attack, I had to fabricate new mounts for the linkages on the axle and find a place to weld them to the body...or what's left of it) As for the oils in my Pathy, I've probably had the truck not quite 30k, and I would have to assume that the dealer didn't change them all before I bought it, so I suppose it is about that time. Sadly, I don't have a manual! It was missing, which is too bad cuz it probably would have been French and fun to pretend to read...the buttons on the power windows and stuff are in french cuz the truck came from Canada, and the speedo is in km/hr with the mph in the small inner ring, I like it, it starts conversations But I DO have a Haynes, is the oil weight/type info in there reliable? Sometimes that book is totally useless...And I have read on here in other subjects that if you don't get just the exact type of oil in your tranny or whatever you will be in serious trouble

Mine is doing that to...actually it makes the "tick" sound and at first I was all "arms in the air" like "oh i gotta fix it gotta fix it" but then I thought about it and decided to just let it go...cuz it could be who knows how long? Nothing might ever come of it....and when it finally DOES get really bad I will pull the heads or whatever and extract broken studs, or the machine shop can, and then I can put the headers on yeah baby!!!!!! headers yum! yum yummy yum! Or it could happen tomorrow...better not, it is five degrees outside.

I actually haven't been driving the Pathfinder all that much lately, but just hit some 10+ degree days in the ole Minnesota here, and I fired it up this evening and was surprised to find, among other things, the clutch pedal was very thick to push, and when I let off it came out slowly...eventually went away after some driving but I didn't really like it...so I got to thinking, does anyone ever change the hydraulic clutch fluid? It is just a miniature brake system and you have to change that fluid, so what about the clutch? I have never ever heard anyone say anything about it though, for any car ever. Well except one guy on an old toyota I helped him flush out his clutch slave cyl in the middle of the nevada desert cuz he dind't like the way the clutch "felt" hehehehheh but aside from that.... And also, all the oil felt very thick and cold....the truck didn't want to roll easily around the driveway like it usually does, and the tranny was very stiff....truck has like 115k miles on it and as far as I know, those fluids have never been changed, although I have checked them all recently and they are nice and full. Should I change those? Is it the kind of thing where if the fluids were new, they wouldn't get so thick? I don't feel the cold effects nearly so much in other cars I drive; some, but not too much. Oh and if anyone here with more knowledge than me knows the answer to this non-Pathy question, I would like to hear it: I have this junkyard-ready toyota with a manual tranny that is totally shot, and alot of times it is hard to get the thing into first gear or sometimes second, until I drive it alot...anyone konw if I could drain that thing and put some thinner fluid in there or anything? i'm not too worried cuz like I said, well....it SHOULD be in the junkyard now but I am stringing it along like that dude on tv all the time living in the hospital bed with tubes in him.

Maybe someday I will want one, and I will be at walmart, and I won't have to make a special trip to checkers or autozone? both of which I avoid and all costs. I DID have to break down and go there the other day for some fuel line tho dammit cuz I just can't find that at a normal store. Walmart should start carrying that stuff hee hee they USED TO have 1/8" vacuum line on the shelf above the windshield wipers, it was officially for your washer fluid but it was also vacuum line

Surely I am not the only one...My 95 did it and my 93 does it now...either the springs are too weak to retract the belts, or something needs to be cleaned/lubed... basically I am too lazy to take it apart and figure out what the dilly is so I thought I would bring it up here first!