1st Gen. Lunch Table - General Discussion

I know a guy who is always tempted by these sort of posts. Makes him wonder just how much he really loves his truck.

 

Personally I would prefer to only have one fob for both remote start, doors/windows and the alarm. Two fobs is too many for me.

 

I read this with definitive snark

I personally prefer anything in DEI's umbrella of companies (note DEI just got bought by Voxx). Main shop I worked at primarily installed Avital and Clifford. Avital usually ended up being picked by customers more because it was no-nonsense and less expensive than Clifford, with Clifford having more higher-end options back then. If I were to go with anything in my truck today (I don't need it), I'd personally go Clifford. A nice full-featured Clifford system will probably run you around $300-400 for the system, and 120-180 for install depending on how much the shop charges on their hourly (we quoted 2hrs normally @ $50/hr, note those are close to Y2K rates)

 

I'm butthurt (we can admit our faults can't we) b/c I plunked down $1k for a deposit on a 3 when 'lon announced them at 35k as I figured there was a wing and a prayer of getting the full tax credit and having a pretty nice 28k EV. Of course that was not possible, only the higher priced option was available so I pulled the plug as 30k felt like my ceiling and I had a 2013 prius at the time with 40k miles so why fix what isn't broken. The m-f'ers sent my deposit via ach to my father's checking account and not even a checking account he normally uses. Took us months to track that down and I was pretty unhappy about both the lack of customer service, the lack of ability of any human to see what happened, and the lack of accountability for what was essentially giving away my deposit to a third party who just happened to share my name. I was tempted to pursue small claims but being busy with kids and stuff I just let sleeping dogs lie. I promised myself I would not give them a cent ever again.

So, yeah, I'm biased, sadly. The funny thing is, I think all the vehicles (possibly with the exception of the cybertruck but we'll see) are fantastic, I just kind of hate the brand. I'm in the minority on that though.

 

Not knowing Jack shit about how the company runs, nor treatment of people, or longevity of vehicles, etc...

I really liked the idea of the Cybertruck and actually wanted one for a little while. Then I saw that story about a lady who had a Brank spanking new T(3?) sedan delivered that was completely missing a brake pad.

Supposedly she sent videos in to a dealership, because it was making an odd grinding type sound. They said "sounds fine for your model vehicle." Brakes got worse. She went to an independent shop and they told her she did not have a brake pad. The rotor had been rubbing on something, and the brake caliper was fucked.

She contacted the "company" and they weren't very helpful. Saying those parts would take 3 or so months to come in. She asked them how they can make cars without these parts and asked for a new brake caliper and pads.

I believe they drug their feet on it, and I think there is a lawsuit she is filing against them.

Oh also, $22k for new batteries in an 8 year old car? Fuck that. I'll keep driving the corolla.

 

Now I'm getting your previous Elon comments, at the time I took them more as anti capitalism. I also made a deposit for one because of the low price and planned on using it as an extra car. Obviously I wasn't paying 50k or whatever they ended up being, garbage move on Tesla's part. The good news is that Prius is nails and the real money saver. My dad ran a 12 model to 300k miles with no problems. Replaced it with a 16 model, and loves it. I am a beef castle and find it very comfortable.

 

I sold the prius to my sister for $4k. She beat me up about it, thought I was scamming her. But demanded to pay. I was stuck, would have given it away b/c family and she has less financial security and one more kid but it just really soured things with us as I had to jump through hoops. Family, right? They own 3 now but one is in really rough shape. Her oldest is close to driving age.

The prius is a great vehicle if you use it but I was putting no miles on during covid and it seemed like the wrong vehicle, depreciating in my driveway and not serving it's purpose of high MPG.

 

I don't think you'll find many on this forum who are anti-capitalist. However, there are probably quite a few folks here who don't like self-centered greedy douchebags, which makes Elon a pretty significant target.

 

Hanging out with those Compton gangstas, eh?

 

I have problems with people who are intelligent but make dumb moves, especially when hyping products or services. And I have problems with people who control large sums of wealth.

Part of my enjoyment with dabbling in this business stuff is so I can do things my own damn way. No marketing. No discounts. No bs. Good service and responses. It’s interesting to see how people react to it compared to a regular company.

 

I can understand the sentiment, but don't have a problem with large sums of wealth if on the up and up. That's how capitalism works. I definitely agree with the self centered douche stuff. I don't care for Elon myself, but he's probably one of the least evil of the uber wealthy. One of the only ones that doesn't want to control what you are allowed to think or take away our personal freedoms. You want to get mad at some wealthy folk, do some investigating on Pfizer's CEO. Zuckerberg is a ridiculously obvious example.

 

Everything seems to go down the crapper once things get to a point where person behind the "thing" is pushed so high up in the food chain they must detach from both the "thing" and the consumers who love the thing. But the reality is, at some point, if you can't let go of the "thing" and its consumers, you're micromanaging and operations go to hell.

There's an argument to be made for remaining small-scale, the mom-and-pop shops of the world, they typically outputs things I tend fall-in-love with: Really well-made stuff without the concern and hassles found with large-scale demand items like rush-to-market, volume demands, meeting milestones, etc.

I think it's what makes our FGT so special. Toyota wasn't putting out huge numbers of them like GM and Ford were in the same timeframe. If they'd made as many FGT as Ford was pumping out F150s during those years, I'm sure there would've been all kinds of issues with our trucks. Instead, we landed the gems we all drive today.

Obviously, Toyota is a global giant, though. It's not lost on me. They managed to scale well and - I think - stay in touch with their customer base while also continuing to put out a very reliable product. I don't believe Tesla has managed to do the same. And the Boring project ... one more disaster in a long line of disasters.

 

Elon is a genius. Not a fan boy but statement of fact. He’s also a very gifted engineer. He is in the trenches with his companies solving problems as they arise and will not settle for no. He built an electric car company (not a real thing then) from scratch. He built a private rocket yo ass to space company (not a real thing then) from scratch. I think we should appreciate people like him more. Is Tesla perfect? No. Is Tesla the reason any pure EV exists as a commercially available vehicle today? Absolutely yes. He did what other car manufacturers had no interest in doing. History will look back on what he has been able to accomplish and he will be mentioned with the likes of Nikola himself (absolutely a genius), Thomas Edison, and many others who pioneered technology. Did he invent the lightbulb? No. Nor did he invent the electric car. But he has accomplished some amazing things and he is no puppet CEO.

 

Oh, I'll give him credit for that. Definitely a genius.

But also definitely a douchebag. Been following the guy since his PayPal days when he was far more humble than today. At some point, everyone jumps the shark.

It's unfortunate certain things have gone the way they have. When you have people using TNT to explode their Tesla because Tesla won't cover the battery and expect you to pay $22k out of pocket, or you make someone wait months to drive a vehicle because the assembly line failed to install a brake pad, how much confidence will consumers actually have taking the rockets out beyond the atmosphere?

 

I agree @KNABORES . He's basically one of us (an autist) . I'm not a fanboy myself, but many are and that's cool. No doubt he is a real deal genius and if you know much about those types they can be odd personality wise. They also are terrible at the simple stuff, lots of examples of them failing simple test's. They operate on a different wavelength

 

I'm not a big fan of EV cars. Like, at all. They make no sense to me. But, tesla has done good. Anybody remember the utter disaster called the chevy volt? It cost 40k back then so probably about the same as a base tesla now, but it was basically an electric cobalt. Fuck GM.

 

I don't want to be debbie downer but I think many people give Elon credit for the Tesla vehicles when that credit is mostly due to Peter Rawlinson, Franz von Holzhausen, and I'm sure many incredible efforts from names not so well known. The product is good in many ways. The growing pains were real and it's well documented that Elon likely made things worse by trying to be involved in stuff he had no business getting his nose into.

I cringe at calling him a genius, in an Eddie Murphy Trading Places sort of cringe, different people in different circumstances might achieve more or less than average but there are many who truly deserve the title genius who will never be known and I'm not sure Elon qualifies.

I do give him visionary and I do think he has done good things with his wealth and influence and I do think his is highly intelligent. I just don't have any real engineering respect for him, a real engineer would act entirely differently in public.

And yes, that's all my opinion. I just think we have too many billionaires and very few of them are benevolent, just like too many kings in earlier centuries. Outsized power over the masses leads to bad behavior, it's human nature.

 

Growing up, the lady across the street worked for HL&P and had a gm ev1 for a bit. It was a cool idea at the time. She traded it for a saturn sl1, and had over 300k by the time she moved.

 

Do you think he actually wrote code when he co-founded Paypal? Maybe that's his only real creation?

 

I just give him credit for being a genius. He's wicked savvy, at least, and a genius visionary at best. I had a former CEO that was similar. He could get down and write basic code, but he was much better at manipulating situations to make things very successful, while only pissing off a fraction of people, and he always took credit.

And you're ultra-right with your last paragraph. We tend to forgive/forget and give waaaay too much lenience for high-achievers, "because <insert pathetic reason>"

... Like with musicians, R Kelly for example, "Oh, he locked some teenage girls in a basement as sex slaves, meh, he's won so many accolades for his music OMFG!"
... Or if that's not your flavor, maybe Ted Nugent, "Oh, he likes to diddle underage girls, but he was the soundtrack to my younger years and supports my 2FA, we're good!"

... Like with Actors, Woody Allen maybe, "Oh, he married the adopted daughter of his girlfriend, who he'd been romantically involved with during her teen years and was 35 years younger, but OMG did you see him in XYZ movie, amazing actor!"

... Like with ultra-billionaires, Elon for example. "Oh, he's exempted himself from paying a reasonable percent of taxes, ah it's OK, he creates so many jobs!"

... Like with business sectors, Energy for example, "Oh, we spent 8-10x more in taxpayer dollars every year to subsidize fossil fuels than we spend on education while they're making money hand over fist, nah that's OK because we don't want gas prices to go up..."

Don't even get me started on what the folks in charge get away with. We've got so many pedos alone representing the masses it's bizarre. As long as they clutch onto something folks are passionate about, your average person will do marathons of mental gymnastic to explain why it doesn't count and they're OK now.

We have the ability to have many more visionaries and geniuses at the forefront. But the masses will worship anyone who's shown great promise and had great luck masqueraded as success, which is a disservice to the real talent out there who never realize their chance.

 

Ok moderate sized eff going on over here. To anyone who’s done HID’s what am i looking at here?

i ve got a pair of boxes for each light, if i remove em, the fuses and relays should be running 12v?



Im wanting to replace the factory hid’s with led’s. But whoever messed with these lights before changed all the wires to red wires.



my brain just glazed over when i saw this. And i should give my finger more time to heal, cause fingertips and needlenose are the name of the game in here.

gonna try to salvage the HID lens housing. If i can melt the e6000 i’ll just put the lens back in (now that i trust the glue), maybe touch up the inside reflector with chrome paint…

but would be cooler, right?


I dont ride this bike at night. Ever. I will sleep in a parking lot, but preferably hidden in some woods. Headlights are for inspection purposes only.

they take forever to ‘warm up’ so i cant really use em as flashers, and were dim as hell.

 

Sooooooo, a brilliant business man and engineer who takes advantage of the existing tax code to legally decrease his tax liability is the same as the three famous talented performer pedofile examples above??? Not sure there's a direct correlation there. Hell, I take advantage of every possible tax code exception to decrease my tax liability too.

 

I do too. Paying my 35% sucks. Honestly, I'd prefer - Edit, no, I WANT - a flat tax, as I've made clear to others in the past. 12-16% range. No exceptions. We all share the same potential benefits of being here, we all share the same responsibility to pay back.

And I honestly didn't realize I was using so many pedo examples. Easy targets I guess, somehow diddling kids seems to be OK (globally, not just here) as long you have talent, support the right things, or have tons of money/success/fame.

I'm an engineer. I don't know if I would call EM an engineer so much as a business architect or serial entrepreneur.

 

He's an engineer by trade for sure. Degree is in physics I believe.

 

The rectangular boxes with multiple wires going in/out look like relays. They open/close a circuit when power is applied/removed. Normally people will direct-wire power to those (or sometimes to the device being powered) and use a switch to open/close the power flow to said device.

If you take more pictures, I may be able to figure out. @daveeasa may be able to help too. Need to see where the wires go back to.

 

Yeah, I saw those photos and I'm thinking go upstream to an H4 connector and yank everything downstream?

 

Yessir. Is The flat ddm box with the co-ax looking cable above the light bracket or the 23 kv box im holding is the ?ballast?

i can ditch all that and should be down to 12v coming out of those relays? I’ll measure with my meter before attaching, just trying to understand whats happening.

is the 55w stuff or whatever fed the stock system gonna blow through these 30w leds? Should i add a fuse?

 

Yep. That would be the general M.O. of a ballast/transformer.

 

I am a fan of speed. Especially INSTANT speed that you can only get with an EV. I loved rolling up to 90mph barely touching 2nd gear on my Yamaha R6 (stupid I know, but I was young and dumb). I don't care how fast your hatch, or 2 door, or sedan is...they will never best a Tesla straight off the factory floor which is what gives it the appeal to me.
To each their own right?
I'm a sucker for tech and would love the chance to own a Tesla...or possibly a Lucid.

 

You edited after I replied, so going back here.

Do this: Pull the relays down. Look at the wiring. Black should be going to ground, one red should be supplying 12v constant (maybe from battery), one pin will likely read nothing, one should lead to the ballast. One wire should trace back to a switch somewhere, and that switch will have 12v going into it somehow.

Trace back where the 12v constant is sourced from, it'll be the pin that reads 12v even when the key is out, vehicle off.

Next, unplug the red wire going from the relay out to the ballast. Test that newly exposed pin on the relay with the IGN off and on, and with light switch on/off if present. Should only register 12v. Correct?

If yes, that's the wire you want to run to your LED and we can talk about how to surgically remove the ballast.