01 April 2026

Cautious Optimism

Moxie is back!

She's perky compared to how she drove before.

The problem appears to have been the VVT solenoids.

OEM solenoids die in a way that shorts them to ground and that sets off the code associated with them.

Aftermarket solenoids mostly die the same way, but occasionally will fail mechanically so the computer will think they are working and notice it's getting out of range information from other sensors.

They don't fail all the way, so you get a long time of spurious and intermittent fails.

That's our story and we're sticking to it!

The shop put 20 miles into a test drive.  I just did 10 running around.

Related:  All three cars have new wiper blades.  My house is also out of equity from buying them...

Left Hand Is Unaware Of What The Right Hand Is Doing

Peddle sent me a text telling me that the driver was on the way to pick up Noxious.

"Odd," I thought, "We dropped her off at the towing company yesterday."

Moments later, they texted me that our driver, Steve, was at the location of our car.

Ah!  Steve just clocked in, because Noxious is at his workplace.

Moments later, they texted me that our car had been picked up by Steve.

We're thinking these transmissions are entirely automated in nature and are required to be sent regardless of how silly circumstances have made them. 

Silly Purchase

There's a company, 2nd Amendment Bourbon, that packages their whisky in faux gun cases.

We succumbed to the marketing gimmick.

We've seen three different colored cases, hunter orange, OD green and S&W blue.  We'd just come back from shooting our S&W's so...

 The little metal shot glass is patterned like a revolver cylinder!


 The stopper is embossed with the S&W logo, should you wish to display the bottle outside the case.

But, how is it?

Oh my!  It's good!  I think I have a new favorite bourbon.

Connector Difference

 

Zev connector on top, standard Glock connector on the bottom.

The Zev has just a bit more angle to make the trigger bar drop more easily.