Satty wags

Well due to my ADD my satty wag is for sale. I thought you might get a laugh from the ad. 

I have for sale the sweetest sports wagon ever produced, this side of the Atlantic, in the USA, in 2000. It's a genuine 2000 Saturn SW2 5-speed twin cam powerhouse. a stubby 5 speed and a raging 124 naturally aspirated horses when new! She may be a lot of car but for a young guy or gal it's motoring heaven!

Sporty enough in a party your face off kinda way! Room for 5 shortys or 4 normal people, room in the back for all your gear! Speaking of gear this wagon has all your party rock'in on lock. JVC deck with I-thingy support and USB for serious tunes? Check! 10" subwoofer in an old school bandpass box with a new sub woofer dedicated amp for that old skool sound? Fo shizzle! When your buds are partied out and do a face plant into the door, NO WORRIES! Nice soft polymer will cushion the blow, and wont retain your friends face imprint. Plus the added bonus she'll always look bitchen because plastic can't rust.
                              
You're thinkin' now but it's still just a wagon... or is it? Damn this may as well be a lambo for real life! It's lowered but not too much on CM2.0 drop springs to give it that tuck but let you into the drive. What does it ride on, what shoes does she wear? They are the finest selection of TSW blades (no really they are called blades) tucked, no.. wraped inside of new and I mean new 205/50R15 BFG G-force tires. When Jackie Frost comes lookin for us you wont have any worries because the Satrun-ghini comes with snows on steel.

  For you because you're serious I'll certify and E-test it plus give it a fresh splash of oil. Act now and I'll let this legend go for only $2500.00!

52 weeks

Well it's been some time since my last post on here, a spring full of offroad adventures, and major changes have left me little time to record my auto thoughts.

Luckily or not however I have entered into a 52 weeks for 52 stories challenge with a somewhat better versed friend of mine, so fans of my blog will have lots to read. Looks like i stepped in it deep this time but we'll see how it turns out.

Next week my grand adventures to date.

Yep in it deep for sure.

Getting back to the trail.

The season is almost upon us in Ontario. Anyone with a Jeep or off-road truck, is just buttoning up any last minute projects, or giving it a once over after the strain of winter. In your rush to make it back to the trails it's a great idea to make a checklist of things to pack in, and go over before you head out.

Most important is the truck itself. You may have gotten the mods you wanted done but have you overlooked something simple? Check out all your suspension joints and bushings for play or cracking, take a look at your U-joints, and ball joints. Make sure your fluids are fresh and full. Ensure you haven't developed any new fluid leaks over the winter. Clean filters are a good idea as they soon won't be after a few weekends of fun. Have a look at your belts and hoses. Cracked belts and old hoses are better replaced at home then on the side of the road. Give your old reliable rig a big splash of grease.

Beat your rust. No really, beat on it! Use a hammer, scraper, screwdriver, pry bar, whatever you have and test your metal. Don't be gentle. Look for holes in the body and get them fixed. Make sure your frame will hold up to a big tug, or a sharp hit. Finding out the hard way can ruin your day... Or worse.

Then there's the question of what to bring. What do you pack in for a day or weekend out on the trail? First you need to pack the static inventory of the truck. Things that always need to be with the vehicle. A medical kit is a good idea, tools, and spare parts. I keep all sorts of stuff with me, a spare T-case chain, spider gears, axle shafts, a drive shaft, bearings, fluids, and U-joints. A fire extinguisher isn't a bad idea either. Think lumberjack tools as well as truck tools. You may need to dig to get yourself free or trim away a fallen tree.

Next is what to pack for the outing, things that need to be removed when you're done. Water, and food is often overlooked as must haves even for a day outing, warm clothes, and blankets because you don't know what might happen. A CAA card is a worthy investment. A cellphone is worth having but may not always work in the bush.

The last and most important thing to bring is a friend, and his rig. NEVER GO ALONE. Period. Full stop. You need someone else with a rig. In case you get stuck, need a pull or something happens to you or your truck and you need to be driven out.

Get out there, have fun, and be prepared to make the trip enjoyable and worry free.

Your dirty green car.

So you're thinking about being a little greener and picking up that new electric car? You are going to be so green it'll give Kermit a run for his money!

Slow down Cap, you may not be the hero you thought you were.

The electric car is still in it's infancy and as such is underdeveloped to take over for the dinosaurs just now, if it ever can. I'm not saying it can't or we don't need to break our dependency on oil because we do. What I'm saying is coming off gas for electricity right now is like coming off cocaine, for heroine. Let me explain.

The first issue with electricity is the practical application for everyday use. To have an electric means you cannot travel more then 169km maximum on a charge not including such lavish luxuries such as heat, air conditioning, or a radio, you find that range is quickly reduced with the examples cited.

Next toss your greenness into stop and go. Plus it's Canada so it's damn cold which reduces capacity further....... Lets make our range 76ish kilometres. Not bad you still say? The average commute is 11km one way so 22 km/day from 76 = 54 km left over for anything else. Now 54 km doesn't sound that bad, but don't leave town... No really don't! You may not make it back. Say I went to visit a friend in Campellford a scant couple hours by car, a trip of relative distance I have made quite often, truthfully at least every other weekend since I began to drive. So from Toronto to Campbellford a trip of 180km I should run out of charge ....... well at the least 21 km outside of town. It's not a simple top off either. A three hour quick charge will get you 80% range. That makes a trip that by all law abiding speeds that takes only two hours, a five hour epic journey. But wait. The quick charge requires a quick charger, which is a piece of infrastructure that plainly does not exist in the middle of nowhere, so an 8 hour wait....... 10 hours to visit a friend less then 200km away?

That trip to Montreal by car is right out of the question.

                                               Pictured: Electricity in the middle of nowhere

OK so you're an unemployed shut-in environmentalist living in the heart of a major city with no need to leave, an electric will help you save the environment from your studio apartment filled with plastic water bottles and paper cups with plastic lids while still being able to arrive at the club in style.

Well not so fast G Q. Your carbon footprint (buzz word of the moment) may not be a hummer, but the guy beside you in the Fiesta burning barney juice ain't so bad himself. In the US a Nissan leaf will use 87g/km of carbon, but because power generation in a country dictates the footprint of an electric vehicle, somewhere less environmentally concerned, that number skyrockets. In India for example it becomes 133g/km. What does it mean in comparison? Well a diesel Fiesta creates a footprint of 98g/km universally, regardless of geographical location or power generation. Something of a comparable size petrol say a Honda Fit still only has a footprint of 101g/km. Taken across the scope and compared to population density, electrics are very comparable with similarly sized Dino dependents.

                                                 Pictured: Battery beach AKA: a brine pond.

So you think breaking away from Saudi is the idea and civilisation will march forward with no wars over commodity because the oil wars are over? Well you're dead wrong-- battery beach is smack dab in the middle of Bolivia. Bolivia just happens to have the worlds largest stretch of lithium rich salt flats in the world. Bolivia also doesn't much appreciate the rest of the world either, by this I mean they hate us. Bolivia and it's bat shit crazy dictator Evo Morales would really prefer to see you dead than to make a dime mining lithium for your Volt. 

Even if our buddy Evo let us in there's still the question of morality. Your Starbucks-fetchin'-bitchin' ride would be based on lithium from a country without the faintest idea of workers rights, or proper remuneration for exposure to carcinogenic lithium, among a myriad of toxins. Hundreds if not thousands of south America's indigenous people would need to be relocated to mine lithium, as the process kills the land by requiring chlorine to cut the Lithium from the brine, pulling scarce water from the desert floor and leaching toxins from extraction. Lithium can also be strip mined. Same toxins, deeper scar.

 
 There's also the little question on production numbers. We buy, globally, 13.6 million cars annually so let`s say we want less than half to be electric, a nice round number of six million. We will need 420,000 tonnes of Lithium carbonate, or six times the current production output. That only accounts for very small cars, more range would require more and larger batteries; in truth production needs to be expanded tenfold to account for that volume of electrics, and those production numbers do not account for other consumer electronics like cellphones and laptops.

 

                                      An abandoned lithium strip mine Kings Mountain  NC USA


Lithium once claimed has one last little problem, its completely unstable. If in contact with air it oxidises almost instantly, and burns in water. I mean like instantly white hot on fire kind of burn. It has to be transported in ..... Oil. 

                                                       Delivering lithium powered cars.



But you say there are other batteries, like current hybrids with NmHi batteries. Yeah, those aren`t a great deal better for mining either. In fact the trailings can be environmentally devestating. A little cyanide kills a whole lot.

This may look like the surface of mars but I assure you it's Sudbury Ontario. It's trailings from the nickel mine. No colour filter, that is actually what it looks like. And notice the trees..... About a KM back from this little toxic river. Nickel is also still pulled from the earth in a scarring, violent way; the evidence of our digging will be evident for tens of thousands of years.

Sudbury Ontario

I could go on about the previously mentioned power generation required to fuel these "clean" cars. You're looking at taxing a already strained electrical grid, that will require instant solutions for a lack of power. The easiest and fastest way to fill the gap is by re-firing coal powered plants, or a few more nukes. 

A cooling pond filled with nuclear waste, it'll be good in 5,000 years but so green.

 A coal mine to power your green car

I get some of the counter arguments, but to come off of petroleum, only to embrace another limited natural resource that is as toxic as the original and herald it as green is simply ignorant. To trade the surface of the earth and groundwater for a slight reduction in greenhouse gas seems backwards. Particularly when we can look at petroleum improvements, such as cleaner diesel as a stop gap until the next viable real green alternative is available. Diesels can be made to burn pre-produced carbons in the form of bio-diesel, and used cooking oil, they also have ranges that are far and above gasoline, and tenfold that of an electric vehicle, while remaining practical for true everyday use. 

Bought electric, thought it was the solution.

That`s not to say electric isn't the future, but with what we have right now it becomes an overbearingly irresponsible choice. We need to focus on extracting the required resources for battery technology in a responsible manner, both socially and environmentally. We also need to improve our infrastructure with true clean energy generation, and make fuelling safe and seamless for the consuming public. We can`t sit on our haunches and proclaim that the future is here, because frankly it isn't. Electric needs development, alongside fuel cell technology and needs to be validated before it can be proclaimed as the great successor to the evil gasoline.

Late winter AKA the home strech.

You think winter is tough? You must like everything with an engine. No nice cars, trails are closed so no offroading. No track time, slicks aren't so good on ice, but not enough this year for ice racing. Forget about snowmobiles, no snow this year....

Building to May.

Have to patch the jeep, fix the door latch and she's good to go. The wagon, gets rims ,n tires in the spring, tint, exhaust, and a stereo. But for now Automotive boredom.

Coming soon.

Is the world ready for the electric car? and how green is it really?

Recycling DAY!

Tupperware, recycling box, sixth sphere? What do they all have in common to the cars I choose to drive and the question I'm constantly asked?

Why a Saturn?

I specifically like the S-series and Delta platform (ION) models of Saturn. I currently drive a SW2 but this is my 6^th so yeah I must have something for em. 

 I drive a Saturn because it's outside the norm of regular run of the mill chassis building. I'm a sucker for alternate matereals when putting a car together. Most cars are built and skinned in steel, where the Saturn uses steel as the backbone but presents itself in plastic. Yes there is steel in these strange little machines in fact they have some of their own unique rust issues. But only some. To the outside world however they show their polymer skin. Look at a Saturn of any year and the finnish will still be very presentable if it hasn't been run down a wall, fence, other car.... ETC. No visible rust. It shelters a great deal of the structure from the elements. In all the chassis is very unique and shared among all the itterations that encompass the S-series this includes a wagon, sedan, and coupe models. 

Another upside to the S-series is the interchangeability of parts. The S-line was made from 1991 right up until 2002 and most of the components can be interchanged between a range of the years IE transmissions will work on any year from any year, same goes for suspension. Have lowering springs from your 1991? They still work on that 2002 you got for a steal. Need to make a little more oomph? There are numerous write-ups on how to take the best engine revisions from the production run of the 1.9 litre and toss together a scrapyard performer engine. Want a white cluster in your 3^rd gen? Steal it from a 04 VUE! Rims? Yep they're easy and cheap to come by. The S shares a 4x100mm bolt pattern with VW and Honda you can get a good set off E-bay or KIJIJI for very little. It's got huge potential as a tuner car if you approach it like civics 20 years ago. There is very little aftermarket for the S-series but they can be tuned with a little creativity plus the buy in is peanuts.

The Delta platform is better known as the ION, until recently I owned the 205hp Redline performance version, what a wonderful car with a ton of potential. GM themselves offers kits to make the ION run well over the 250HP mark and handle like nothing else. The ION shares the same indestructible ECOTEC engine as the Cobalt and Cobalt SS respectively, while still holing true to the unique polymer skin that made Saturn stand out from the crowd. The ION can be had from base to well appointed including Leather, XM radio, Onstar ETC for next to nothing on the used car market and they are still very well supported by their parent company. My Redline was written off while I sat waiting for a light to change. Man I miss that car.

As far as I'm concerned there is only a couple more true Saturns and I haven't owned them. The VUE still shares they polymer skin all around and carries the original Saturn feel that made the cars a cult classic. The other is the SKY a bargin two seater, with a turbo tossing you back with wreckless abandon. There are other “Saturns” but they crossed to heavily into the GM family of car building and were skinned entirely in steel, or only the fenders and a portion of the door was polymer on an Opel and in the end no effort was made to differentiate, it was just an Opel with a Saturn badge.

Now sadly unique matereals, and innovation to build a “Different kind of car” is lost to downsizing and the march of progress. Innovation and a different concept in car building, have been lost to ordinary and the almighty dollar.

PICS: '07 ION RL, '02 SL2, '00 SL1, '94 SC2, '01 LW2, SW2the day I got it, '00 SW2 now. I have owned all these cars. Only the '94 is not a picture of my actual car. Digital cams weren't around in '98 and I don't have a scanner. :p