Greetings and Salutations!
Whew. Still employed for now. Also my thanks to everyone who entered for the Raffle. A great turnout thus far, so I appreciate it. Sapper spent the ENTIRE morning busting knuckles and turning wrenches, only to give up. Seems that there’s a few issues that he didn’t expect to contend with.
One is where the fuel pump is located in relation to the rest of the truck. He’s got a 4 Door Tacoma. Because of this, this eliminates our ability to do it ‘the easy way’ as -I- call it, namely removing the bed and going from there. The pump is, according to the diagrams and our own observations, under the front cab. That makes the ‘lift and switch’ idea a nonstarter.
Then, he’s got over 1/2 a tank of fuel in the tank. That’s about 10+/- gallons of benzine man… call it 60-65 pounds worth of gas. And since the vehicle is a post 2005, draining it is… shall we say… problematic? Straight up IMO it’s a pain in the ass. Never mind the fact that dropping the tank is going to require a LOT more resources than we have collectively on-hand. We need a ‘cradle’ or lift of some form, some other ‘stuff… Overall it’s so bad that Sapper cried “ENDEX!” at about 11am.
ENDEX being DotMilSpeak for “End of Exercise”. I’ll give him credit… he tried like Hell and worked diligently from sunrise until 11. He started early as that’s the best time around here before the mid-day heat and hooo-midity comes up and cooks you in your own juices so to speak. And like I said, around 11-11:30 he came in all dirt covered and grease smeared, and asked for my Triple A Card.
“Fuck this noise man, I’m taking it to the shop around the corner! Gimme your AAA card!” Unlike Saturday night, the tow truck dude showed up in about an hour (and who also wasn’t a weed smelling Jamaican like the last dude) which beat the other night timewise by a long shot. Sapper went with him, and I then punched for lunch, and went and picked him up in our Rent-a-Putt-Putt… And as far as the rental? They gave us a 2023 Kia Soul… it’s an ‘Itty Bitty Thang’ so to speak…
Amazingly I do do fit in it. I knew I would when we went to pick it up the other day, as Gretchen’s parents have one that I’ve driven before, so I’m not completely unfamiliar with the ride. It’s as ugly as the day is long, a boxy utilitarian ride at best, but hey…. as basic transportation? I’ll take it. One observation however is that man…. I hate some of these ‘new cars’ and their features. This thing has two of the worst.
One thing it’s got, which OrangeManBad and his Merry Crew of Chaos and Destruction is apparently getting rid of, is the automatic engine start-stop system. For those unfamiliar, this a devious piece of shit device hoisted on us without any input from the consumer. Start-stop systems are designed to automatically shut off a vehicle’s engine when it stops—at a red light, for example—and restart it when the driver releases the brake. Ranger Jay had one on his Ford a few years back, and I was loathe to drive his ride or even ride in it because of it…
According to Zerohedge, the new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin is pulling the plug on this particularly odious and wholly unnecessary forced addition to a vehicle. No one asked for it… it was essentially implemented via fiat under the Rule of the Obummermessiah. Link to the article is HERE Thankfully shutting it down was merely a push of a button, designed specifically to shut it off, as oh so many hate it with a passion.
Now that feature is going to go away (Thank GOD!)
Personally I hated the fucking thing in every vehicle I’ve ever driven that had it. I personally was terrified that the car would not start up in a critical moment, leaving me with my ass in a sling or my balls in the wind. Either choice? Not cool.
BUT THEN:
Whereas the other particularly concerning feature this buggy has is a “Lane Assist System” which includes a ‘Lane Keeping Assist’ and a ‘Lane Departure Warning’. LKA helps prevent the vehicle from unintentionally drifting out of its lane, while the LDW alerts you if the vehicle is about to leave the lane without a turn signal. The ‘warning’ is just that… an annoying assed ‘beep’… and because of that, I got no issue there.
HOWEVER
The ‘Lane Keeping Assist’?
Holy fucking shit! OK… I’m not exaggerating as is my wont as a Storytelling Irishman. No joke… we were driving on I-75 in an area that’s been under some serious construction as of late. I didn’t (at the time) know how to turn off this confounded device, and found myself literally wrestling with the steering wheel as IT (the Lane Keeping Assist and/or the Vehicle) tried to ‘keep us in the lanes’ despite me having other ideas. Namely that due to all the recent construction, the optical sensors were reading the lines that no longer had meaning and in fact would have kil’t us dead if I had allowed this thing to proceed!
As in some of the lines radically changed lanes where you no longer needed to change lanes…so said-optical sensors, seeing the line go ‘hard right’ tried to force the car into the right lane, despite the traffic and or anyone who was IN the right lane at the time… No joke, the fucking car had me fighting it until I finally pulled over, brought up the Google, and found out just how to disconnect this infernal device. Which in itself was an issue… It should have been as easy to shut down as the start-stop system… instead I had to pull over and find the info online…
By the time I got done, my wrists were sore as fuck from fighting the steering wheel. It really sucked.
And just as an add-on to this observation: I’ll be perfectly honest, I’ve always thought people who drove Kia Souls were full-on mentally retarded. It seemed like an inordinate amount of them were always lurching around on the roads… lots of drifting… lane changes without signaling… I mean for real… they seemed utterly clueless and dangerous.
To the point I noticed that people driving/owning in that particular model of car must attract a brain damaged group of fans and followers and because of this, I mentally made a note so to speak that went so far as to say when I saw one on the road:
“People who drive Kia Souls don’t know how to drive!”
And reacted with extreme care when around said-vehicle.
But now? After this experience? NOW? I wonder if these poor folks were driving without knowing how to turn off the over-eager ‘Autocorrect’ if you will. That their poor driving wasn’t so much them as it was their vehicle being ‘possessed’ so to speak by this app? Surely there has to be numbers out there regarding accidents due to people having a lack of intel and/or knowledge vis-a-vis this fucking supposed ‘assistant’ and how to disable it?
Shades of “Christine” I suppose.
What’s particularly odious about all of this is that ALL of these ‘features’ were foisted on us by people who claim to ‘know better’ and ‘understand the broader picture’. To my perspective and as things have progressed, I, as well as the majority of y’all have realized that the self proclaimed ‘so called betters/elites’ are in reality a bunch of slack-jawed, low foreheaded mouthbreathers who’ve all interbred to the point that it defines the concept of “The Law of Diminishing Returns”. Too much ‘pissing in the gene pool’ if you will… I mean look at Chelsea Clinton as a prime example…
And no, I’m not going to insert an Arkansas joke here… besides being born to those fucking pig-ignorant hillybilly grifters made good, to be truthful, she’s uglier than a bag of broken rusty hammers and has a lower IQ than a room full of retarded streetshitting Pajeets. There’s plenty of reasons that you have literally never heard that broad speak publically at length but the primary reason is that she’s been found that she’s genuinely stupid and that because of that, she is utterly incapable of having a Cognizant and/or Coherent thought that anyone could understand. Think Kamala X10.
And because Mumsie and Dadums realized she was worthless politically speaking (i.e. capable of running for orifice) She essentially was ‘sold off’ to a member of the “Tribe” a dude named Marc Mezvinsky, who’s a ‘connected’ member of the “Elites” in that he’s a Wall Street ‘moneyman’ (i.e. a money launderer). Interestingly enough his BOTH his parents, Marjorie Margolies and Edward Mezvinsky, are both former members of Congress!!! Huh…..
What are the fucking odds Aye?
So THESE are the ‘types’ of people who’re ‘shot callers’ for stuff like I mentioned if you will. Thankfully Cankles and the Whoremaster seem to be on the outs across the board, and their demonspawn doesn’t appear to have any drive to follow in their demonic footsteps… so that’s a plus… but anyway….
Eric Peters rails on this sort of DotGov overreach and Implementation of unwanted/unneeded regulations on the regular on his libertarian weblog. I do recommend it.
Hopefully we’ll see some changes in the future
So that my Frens is tonights ‘stuff’.
I’ll be going into some other chain of brain-thoughts later.
More Later
Big Country
Chelsea Clinton is so ugly that when she gives head (ok, she’s married, so we know she doesn’t, but just go with it here for a minute), it counts as anal.
With that outfit to the way, yeah, the proliferation of nanny-ass “safety” features on cars is out of control. Not only does it make the driving experience more frustrating, it makes people who get accustomed to all this bullshit even poorer drivers than they likely already were, since now they depend on the tech to cover their ass and out even less effort into trying to drive defensively.
And since they don’t have to exercise those skills any longer, their instinctive driving skills atrophy, and they become truly dangerous idiots. Look how standard ABS has made it so no one under a certain age (those of us old enough to have driven cars with only conventional brakes) knows how to brake properly in bad conditions like heavy rain, snow, etc. If one truly learned proper braking technique in the old school manner, they’d be prepared (and have the presence of mind) to usually outperform ABS. Yeah, ABS has covered my butt a couple of times, but has also complicated dangerous sudden stops many times. All my present vehicles have it, but I learned to drive on old shit boxes that didn’t, and spent years driving vehicles without ABS.
Right now my newest vehicle is from 1995, since my 2004 pickup truck ate it (still searching for a decent used replacement for that). All my vehicles are well maintained, and I do 98% of my own repairs and maintenance. But on current cars, much of the work I’d do is damn near impossible without access to dealer tools and diagnostics aids, so screw the new stuff, which is largely made like garbage anyway.
I assume y’all checked the fuel pump relay and fuses. You can jump the relay to provide continuous power to the pump with the fuel line disconnected to see if it’s functioning. Too late now I suppose. For future reference, they make several devices to drain fuel tanks. I use a simple shaker siphon hose.
Nah, about the Kia Soul …
1) They have wheel torque requirements that most mechanics ignore (even dealers).
2) When wheels are overtorqued the motor driven power steering (MDPS) unit goes into constant seeking mode.
3) This leads owners to multiple expensive visits to dealers for alignments.
4) Those alignments may eventually be correct, but the MDPS misguidance usually causes the vehicle to shred its tires and wobble down the road anyway.
5) Some daring DIYers drop the steering column on advice it’s a coupler in the MDPS unit.
6) So they do that and are likely to discover a completely new or minimally worn coupler.
7) After reinstalling MDPS and the entire steering column, including the world’s worst 14mm bolt, with near guaranteed blood loss, they go online and …
8) They find some guys who work as actual honest Kia mechanics who tell them about the wheel torque.
9) Lo and behold, setting the lug nuts to 70-75 ft-lb fixes the mistracking.
10) A tire rotation with automatic TPMS relearn (no way to do manually, just rotate the damn tires), and it’s mostly fixed.
11) But it’ll still bounce down the road until their shredded tires give out and they go get new ones after as little as 7k miles.
12) High tread for these tires is 11/32″ so tires don’t last long.
13) Go long enough with the MDPS mistracking and there will be suspension problems as well to deal with.
14) A “chattering” or “squirrel squeaking” sound in the steering column probably means the MDPS is overworked doing continuous compensating because it can’t find the neutral/zero point in the steering arc when going straight much less any other time.
15) Most of the time, fixing the torque one lug nut at a time does the job, but with a caveat: spring for the McGard lug nuts because even fucking idiot impact wrench monkeys at Walmart can’t fuck these up, whereas OEM, that’s kinda where the problems start.
Provided the Kia Soul owner fixes all of this shit and some other stuff Kia/Hyundai doesn’t want to admit to, it will hold to a racetrack at a max speed of a little over 120 mph for the 1.6L standard without killing the driver.
Suggestion: buy one in mostly OK shape from someone who hasn’t let the oil go low, then fix this kind of stuff, and you have a Korean econoshitbox “gray man” vehicle.
But drive by wire via MDPS is evil, refuse to have it in any vehicle you have to give a shit about.
Hmpfffff!
My peeve is anything with a CVT transmission. They are pretty much throw aways if you have problems with them. There is no repairing them. They don’t even sell aftermarket spare parts for them.
And who oh WHO pressured the car makers to put CVTs in all of their cars for “better gas mileage” and “better for the environment” ?
Oh yes, the on the down low secret homo himself Obama.
Regarding that turning my truck off when I stop, my 2020 Honda Ridgeline has a button where I can turn that shit off but it puts a yellow alert on the dash. Fine, then after Joe Biden got into office they did a “recall” on my truck when it was in for service and now the button still works until you shut the engine off then it resets and is active again. Of course you don’t remember half the time to turn it off.
Thus every time we are driving and the engine shuts off my wife hears “That SOB Obama”.
Had walmart do tpms since 30 dollars a tire tpms only & free install… and their monkey sheared off my mcguard lug nut key by using it with an impact driver… don’t underestimate stupid.
Oh, and … ever noticed how the 14mm 3/8″ drive colored socket from Harbor Freight is blood red?
That’s so you don’t notice your own blood on it as much when repairing Asian econoshitboxen.
When you decide that you like mechanical masochism and feel that Kia/Hyundai are too good to you, then you can start in on a Daihatsu. 🙂
Was in Washington state last week visiting sick older brother. 2 siblings and I rented a 2025 Nissan Rogue. We spent 1/2 hour outside Sea-tac just trying to get it to shift and having it turn ALL lights off while driving at night was a real treat. To call it a POS is a massive understatement. I will stick to buying older low mileage used without all the modern ‘conveniences”.
1. I had thought Chelsea’s husband was Soros’ nephew?
2. Would you pls check on Lt Dan.
the newest ride I have here is a 2016 Toyota 4runner. bought it end of lease. has a few things I gotten used too for my sins. that said. it also has a unreal amount of idiot lights and whatever.
sold my 1989 4runner in 2 days on Craigslist. I understand why NOW. compared to anything made in the last 10 or so years. easy to work on and fix. having some electrical problems with my 1994 4runner
that driving me a bit nuts. you need to find a good older model ride. something easy to fix.
granted they haven’t made anything like that in close to 40-50 years now. and older rides like that bring big bucks these days too. Toyota used to have a bolt down plate over the fuel pump or they did on my older 4runners just lift the back seat and get to it. 5-6 bolts on the plate and another 4-5 on the top of the pump. then too the tanks where made of steel back then and not plastic like a lot are today.
at times I wonder if we ever get back to cars/trucks like we had before the EPA and nanny state fucked them up for us? I would love to get a 68-70 GMC truck with 4 wheel drive. problem is I unable to afford one these days. find a “good” mechanic and start going to auctions to find a good cheap back up ride. I never had any luck with them myself, but some friends have made out big time with them.
Hoping to keep my 2001 Tundra (only 123k miles) for life. Seems like new cars could be remotely disabled if The Man decides to…
Lemme know if I’m wrong, it’s hard to find good info in this…
Disabled that autocorrect on my wife’s Mazda, too freaky, like get off my steering wheel.
Man you’d think the Kia would see the car next to you and NOT turn into it.
Never wanted one…
1) KIA builds tough truks, they call them SOULs. Bride runs in a couple of craft show circles and our last 3 Souls have been GREAT!! Once the Lane Keeping is set, it pays for itself after the first 500 miles on a trip.
2) I can live with the on–off–on at stoplights once I figured out how to make it ready for ME and not some dweeb in WashDC. You found the easy way…
3) TRY to find a GT and wind THAT MF’r out somewhere. Similar to the old Vibe GT’s , when you get into 5th, a nd look down at the speedo you get speed shock. I absolutely LUUVED my vibe GT
Night Driver
Years ago, before she became my ex, the old lady bought a used Lexus RX350. That idiotic lane assist made me think the fuggin front end was loose. Took a minute to figure it out.
I presume you guys looked on YouToobs to see how to replace the fuel pump. I do that now so I get a sense of what I’m in for before I even start.
Not a big fan of newer cars with all the bells and whistles. When I get a rental car those damn beeps and warning bullshit are a distraction. I had a Buick rental when my truck was in the shop. I was driving as I normally do, like a competent. As I come up on a car stopped at the red light, warning buzzers and a flashing screen went off. WTF. I literally diverted my attention and nearly wrecked from looking at the thing, which was screeching because it didn’t like how fast I was approaching the car in front. The wreck prevention nearly caused me to wreck. I get it. Buick is mostly a blue-hair ride with bells and whistles to compensate for early onset dementia.
Then there are the absolutely idiotic design choices. I had a Dodge Durango rental once. I’m tooling up the road, and it started seeming like my ass and hands were on fire. Damn seat and wheel heaters were on. On most cars (that I’ve had) that feature is controlled by an actual button on the dash or console, usually with a light. You can glance down, see it, and cut it off.
Not here. I’m going up the road, weaving in and out of my lane (with no assist), stabbing at the fuggin touch screen. The setting was like 2-3 menus deep. What the actual fuck!
This is why I catch myself looking at newer cars and stop. I got a 2000 excursion. It’s big, heavy, guzzles gas (v10). But it’s paid for and still has less than 100K on the clock.
I gave my 2018 F-150 to one of my sons-in-law after I bought a 2024 version of same. He bought one of these:
https://www.obdlink.com/products/obdlink-ex/?ref=forscan
and the Forscan software intended for Ford products. He found and fixed the failed wheel speed sensor using it. Small investment, big return. The OBDLinkX also has software for other vehicle makes. Forscan is a subscription, but you get the first couple months free, cheap after that.
My 2024 F150? It’s like having my ex-mother-in-law in the back seat!
You can turn off the autostop on a Ford using the Forscan software. Other vehicles? YMMV.
Try driving a winding two lane road without shoulders using lane assist. You end up fighting the steering around the curves pulling hard to keep it from riding the white line that is on the very edge of the pavement. Then out of nowhere it will suddenly agree with you about not riding the white line and will stop fighting you. Ths results in you suddenly finding yourself about to cross the center line because you have been pulling the steering so hard to the left while fighting the lane assist.
Check the sending unit connections if you can access it, when my Yota shit the bed it was corroded connections that were the cause!
SAE member for like forever. New rules from NHTSA/NTSB/USDOT and such have to be published in the Federal Register and then have a comment period. For my company I have written a lot of comments against whatever they were proposing as all it did was increase costs and maybe increase safety but most likely not. Never heard back.
In case you didn’t know NHTSA and the NTSB was trying to get the bus industry to put sensors in the seats to let the driver know when a passenger was not wearing their seatbelt. I figured out how to do it. Have three patents (assigned to said company) on it. When it was proven to the USDOT that the solution worked, they published the new rule and three years later its now required. Costs about $25 a seat for sensors and sending unit. It works via WIFI and some sophisticated logic so a phone app can be used to display the seating floor plan with color codes for seat status. Original used RF to a dedicated display screen. Its called Seat Link. The thing is you need to have seatbelts on the seats. Seats with seatbelts weigh and cost much more than seats without belts. So a 40 seat bus cost increases by $8000-$10000. Every new over the road coach needs this now. Total lives possibly saved a year, maybe 10. Government in action.
My Pretty Wife’s ’23 Pathfinder has both start stop and lane keeping. The start stop has a defeat button but lane keeping, that had almost killed us on our first long highway drive has to be reduced by going into menus and reducing the range and intensity. I have them set to the lowest they will go but can’t go to zero. Most annoying. BTW the toe and caster settings are set to minimize rolling resistance. This makes the car almost undrivable. The lane keeping nanny watches and pulls the vehicle back into the lane as self centering is non existent. Driving that car is a chore now because the path of the vehicle is no longer straight lines and long curves but one incessant sin wave of 50 foot corrections. Most annoying.
Spin
Had to have my wife turn off the lane keeping feature, on my F-150, made it almost undriveable, and yes I do NOW recognize that some of the “Bad” drivers are just in badly controlled cars. Oh, and the auto high beams… I shut that off.
Time for plan “B” or maybe it is plan “C” by now.
Go find out what the pressure output spec is for the in-tank pump/
Find an el-cheapo external fuel pump that matches that flow/pressure and pipe bore from the Zon..
Order it, find a good place by the frame near the tank to wire tie the thing or bolt same to frame, splice it into the fuel line from tank to engine, power it from the same wires that go to the tank. As your truck probably has a return line for excess fuel from the engine, make darn sure you leave that line connected to the old inlet on the tank (IE don’t cut that one in error). Redneck as heck, but will probably work until you can get the truck to a proper shop with the lift and tools.
I can tell you from personal experience that this ‘fix’ does work, at least on a different vehicle that had an in-tank pump – and would probably work well enough and long enough that you could take your good time getting the ‘in-tank’ pump replaced – if ever. Just consider it an aftermarket engineering change, implemented to improve ease of service. 😉
https://bustednuckles.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/496422704_122194698770052179_4085221646188553392_n.jpg
We had been driving rav4s for years with no issues, until we foolishly parted with the 2018 model for the 2020 . . . with start/stop, lane assist, and all the other computerized f**kery. Hated it all. Had the dealer turn off every bell and whistle he legally could. Passed that rav on to one of our kids and bought a 2017 4runner Sr5 4 x 4 premium (only 50k miles) and we are much happier. Basic and simple buttons and knobs instead of everything on the steering wheel or huge 12 inch dashscreen. It does drink gas, though.
When finances permit we are looking into a used Tacoma and/or rav4 but will not consider anything newer than 2019, precisely to avoid the start/stop and other crap. Will also do our best to buy only vehicles made in Japan (they are out there if you are willing to drive a bit to get them). Not to mention the new turbo engines suck and everything now has electronic steering.
Husband used to do what work he could, but his experience was on ’70s and ’80s vehicles. Where we now live we’ve found capable and very reasonably priced service. Never had anything break on our ravs and don’t expect to have issues with the 4runner – just the constant risk of flat tires from our dirt and gravel road. I think good slightly-used (2005-2019) vehicles are going to get costly and hard to find.
Way too new for me. I have a 2004 truck & a 1998. Looking for even older. I should have kept my ’72 Cheyenne that I drove until about 10 years ago.
I hope my 70,000 mile 2009 Tacoma outlasts me as I am age 70 now. My rule of thumb for keeping an old vehicle is if the repair costs are less than the sales tax of a new one I will repair it. Which keeps me in old trucks most of the time. Toyota is my go to brand for cars and trucks. But even systems in Toys are designed by monkeys – like the fuel pump access. One would think a removable access panel in the cab or bed floor would be the norm. But then again I am not a Jap monkey.
Last Summer I made my first trip to your corner of the country. I rented a car in Orlando and they asked if I wanted a free upgrade. I figured why not. They gave my a fancy assed Beemer. I’d never driven one, will never own one so it was a nice change from my pickup. It had that lane maintain bullshit too. The first few lane changes were a bit interesting. I just started using the damn turn signal all the time so the local “policia estatal” wouldn’t take notice. Couldn’t find a manual to turn that shit off.