thecars

The Cars

      Since I was three years old or so, I have had a great interest in anything with wheels. I played with toy cars and trucks (as all male children will tend to do), and even built my own toy cars out of wood in my father's woodshop when I was about 10 (including an amphibious vehicle, with four wooden wheels and a rubber-band paddle, which was well-tested in the Hub Electric Dam's waters, until it paddled under rubber-band power about twenty meters out...and it's still there, if it hasn't been smashed to smithereens by the dam's turbines). My first interest in the mechanical operation of a car was when I discovered in my parents' library, a book titled "The AA Book of the Car." This was published by the British Automobile Association in the early 1970's sometime, and I have yet to see a more thorough book on the automobile. From "The history of the car" to "How to calculate how much insurance coverage you need," this book was IT from a ten-year old's perspective. Anyhow, this book showed, over the course of about maybe 500 pages, how to nearly completely take apart, and reassemble, a 1960's Morris Minor. In addition, how to add a windshield washer fluid reservoir to your VW Beetle, and so on and so forth. Obviously printed for someone living in Europe. I inhaled this book cover to cover about twenty times. By the time I was 11, I knew quite a lot about Morris Minors.

      I tried out my newfound knowledge for the first time when I was nearly 11 (1992), when our faithful 1982 Toyota Corolla (which I remember cost Pakistani Rs.150,000 in 1989) was severly misfiring. I told our driver, Zamarrud Khan, to pop the hood. He laughed and complied. I counted the cylinders from front to back, and traced the ignition wires to the corresponding cylinders. Cylinder number three had had it's ignition wire switched with that of cylinder number two. I switched them back. Problem solved. He had probably reattached them to the wrong plugs when cleaning them. Zamarrud Khan never laughed again when I poked around the engine.

Here is a rear-wheel drive 1982 Corolla, exactly what ours was, and looked like. It had a four-speed manual transmission, and I believe, a 1.8-litre engine (4-cylinder). I remember when we got radial tires for it for the first time, in 1992, and what a big deal that was for me. Improved roadholding! Oh my! The driver didn't like them, though. He thought the car "handled heavier."

Last Page Update: April 2, 2006.

When we returned to the United States in 1995/96, my uncle sold our family his about-to-be-donated 1988 Toyota Camry which had about 80,000 miles on it. My mother drove it for another 60,000 miles until around 140,000, when it was involved in a bad accident where nearly the entire front subframe was ripped off by a speeding van that ran a red light. What happened to the van driver, I don't know, but my mother banged her shins on the dashboard, which left bloody abrasions about the size of a quarter on both. The Camry was declared totalled, and we were given about $3,000 from the insurance company for it.

This is what the Camry looked like, minus the rust-through on the front fender. It was slightly rusted on all fenders, though, and light grey in colour. It had an automatic transmission, and a four-cylinder, 2-litre engine.

The Camry was followed by a 1995 Nissan Pathfinder, bought used in February 1997 with 32,000 miles. In 2004, when it had 195,000 miles, this SUV underwent a major rust-through repair on the rear floor and under the rear seats. In February 2007, when it had 243,000 miles, and a serious electrical problem I couldn't figure out, it was sold for $750 to someone who thought he could fix it. This is what it looked like when it was sold by us.

The details of the repair on the Pathfinder's body you can find here:

DETAILS OF PATHFINDER RUST-THROUGH REPAIR
(updated March 2007!)