Someone has emailed me and let me know that Bestbuy USA has the Garmin 205W variant onsale for just under 90 dollars. When I compared it to the model I reviewed earlier this month, it appears to be almost exactly the same. Minus the Voice option. I honestly think this is a great GPS , probably the best one I ever bought.
Check it out 
In someways I think I have beat to death this topic, but since I keep getting emails about them, I think I will take another shot. I will come right out and say it. When it comes to lighting, I am not the smartest guy in the world, far from it. Everything I learned the old fashion way. Trial and error. And Trial and Error = money wasted.
10 Years ago I got my very first car, and like alot of cars out there it was an import. Great car, bulletproof you could say, but one of the biggest pains in the ass is the headlights would always blow out, more so on the passenger side than the driver side. Funny thing was, that it wasnt the OEM bulb that was blowing out, but the aftermarket (cool looking at the time) halogen bulbs. I tried bulbs from ebay, Eurolights, and other no name brands and slowly worked my way up the chain to find quality bulbs that A) looked good B) last longer than a year. I finally arrived at what I thought was the top quality stuff. Stuff from PIAA. And once you said PIAA 10 years ago… everyone said it, they were the top dog. Or so i thought. My choice, the Super Plasma GT-X from PIAA.
Word on the street is that they enhanced lighting much better over OEM. and for a while it did. Gave me maybe 30% more light and they were alot better looking at as well. Unfortuantely, 2 months later one of the bulbs failed. (damn) so i went back to the Big box store I bought them from (Canadian Tire) and put thru a warranty claim. Keystone sent a new set, and then bang. off the races again. Low and behold, another blow out. &#*#. Went back to Canadian Tire did the same thing. It was on my 3rd blow out without a year that made me say to myself I just wasted 69 bucks. *they are price bulb. Was it the technology? was it the brand? what the hell was wrong. It was when I asked around and digged deeper I discovered the problem. And it was something that the ordinary and even the smart guys would have missed. And this comes down to the main part of this article.
Now I will start off by saying, Different manufacturers have different levels of manufacturering and tolerance quality. The reason why I say this is because I found it funny that my OEM bulbs (now 4 years old at the time) were still working no problems, everytime I had a blow out i would put them in and they would work no problem. Why was that GE OEM bulbs. And thats because no one on earth mades so many bulbs, they go thru layers and layers of batch testing. its one business they are good at and thats why they score so many OEM contracts. But why,? why is that? Because GE tests these bulbs for all conditions possible when in the hands of a car owner. And one of the things that just kills bulbs, and I mean kills a halogen bulb is voltage / power variations. What do i mean?
Let me give you more specs to work with. We will take my old (now burried) honda Accord car. I had a stereo system in it for like 3 years, a 200 watt amp one 12″ sub in the back, and a nice indash sony deck. Sweet (well for 2001 it was) . And I would turn that thing up and just soak up the music. What I did know is that I was murdering my headlights via the voltage spikes and drops happening during each beat of the song. See when I was buying the stereo, I wasnt sure if I should get a capacitor or not. When I mentioned it to the Futureshop installers (bestbuy company now) he first laughed and said, this thing isnt pulling anywhere near the amount of power where you would need a capacitor. So I beleived him and installed it just as is. (BIG FRIGGING MISTAKE)
I murdered not only PIAA bulbs (3 sets) Euro lights (2 sets) and my favorite halogen bulbs at the time (about 5 sets) over the span of 4 years. I figured, this is what these bulbs have to offer, its just the nature of the beast, you want nice looking lights, you just have to keep buying replacements. And that was just sooooo wrong. I didnt realize that power variation kills bulb filaments. This is why they tell you in school when your young not to play with the lights by flicking them on and off. But let me go deeper and explain.
Crutchfield.com use to have great articles over the time, stuff with diagrams packed with alot of information, lately over the years they have updated things and made it more basic. But I remember a great diagram that illustrated what happend in a car when you had an audio system that was to powerful for your amp. It was great it would show / explain how your power system worked in your car and how it would attempt to balance / compensate for any drops or dips in your power requirements.
For the sake of making a over simplified point.
Jim buys a audio system, its rated 1000 watts, and he drives a 1.7 accord or something. When he starts kicking that music hard, in the beginning his car is fine but as time goes by, he car alternator has to work harder and supply power to compensate for the drop in battery power. Generally your alternators job is to run the car and charge the battery, thats it, but in this case, the battery was being so depleted in an uneven kinda way that it was constantly switching back and forth to charge the battery and meet the requirements of the audio system, in some cases, what might happen if the battery drops too low, your audio will just trip out and stop working until power comes back up. But what you dont see happening on the micro level is. Your headlights are being surged with power on every beat. And that is something that will decrease the life of your halogen bulbs.
But you dont need a killer audio system to see that happen. If you drive a slightly older car, say 2002. If you sit there in park say in a dark garage, with the A/C on, and just wait, you will see that when your cooling radiator fan kicks on your headlights will slightly dim. when the fan stops (30 seconds later) your headlights might be slightly brighter then when you started. This all has to do with the load placed on the battery. Remember the job of your alternator is to recharge the battery. thats a load on your car and it will be visible.
One final example, similar to the previous. be in a dark place like a garage, sit there with the car running. While in park give the car a bit of gas, you should see your headlights get a bit brighter as you tug on the gas. Remember your alternator generates more power as the RPMs climb. This is what I would discribe as variation in power. Even if its 2% or 5% or in some really old cars 10 to 15% that takes a toll on your headlights.
Getting back to what I said about build quality and tolerance. PIAA or any other company may hook up 1000 bulbs from a lot and test to see how long they will last. to make an over simplified example, run them for 3 months straight, maybe only 10 might fail, and they might say, ok thats pretty good, failure rate is low, and its acceptable. But you now know, its not. for people that put a higher demand on their car. now thats just PIAA, what about companys that do even weaker tests, and have higher failure rates, they might not car and push bulbs out the door anyway. Hense why when it comes to no name brand bulbs, they kill them selves left and right.
Pretty Depressing story right? But there are steps you can take to preserve your halogen based stuff if you find yourself in the same boat as I was in, and I will review what this stuff has to do with HID based technology. ;) thats enough for now.
I have been testing both the Conti DWS tire out and I have the General Exlaims on one of my older cars. I am happy with both. But cant figure out if I want comfort and long life (DWS) or if i want maximum performance and good dry handling with the General Tire Exclaims. :( sigh…. winter ends in march / april, so i gotta decide
Let you guys know what I decide.
Now its starting to be a canadian tradition that on the first day of holiday shopping, you drive across the USA border and line up at the Walden Galleria Mall and wait for your chance to grab all the low cost items your arms / legs can carry. And I had a chance to do that again this year, errr meaning Nov 2009. 2 months back. Me, girlfriend and a few guys from the local car club braved the weather and arrived in front of a Bestbuy store at midnight with about 30 people ahead of us. Not bad in most respects.
When the doors opened at 4 or 5am first thing i went for was the 179$ net book laptop, then a 79 dollar Acer TV. But the next item that I grabbed has saved me a lot of headaches over the past 2 months, and that was the Garmin 255W GPS. I grabbed it for 129 in store and to me its money well spent. Now I have used GPS systems before, and over the years the technology was ok but always had huge drawbacks, not having updated maps, not understanding the directions, not being able to tell the damn device that you dont want to use Toll Roads, etc… But this Garmin unit I picked up was a good balance of all the features I was looking for with very few negatives. In brief the only thing that bothered me was sometimes the perspective was zoomed to close by default when your following directions, so you couldnt get that birds eye view. It was more of a preference thing vs. a need. What I loved is the thing comes with free Traffic updates and free mapupdates. Its worked on short and long haul Trips doesnt give you any fuss. If you miss your turn off it will retask your trip and give you the next best option. Its pretty smart. Unlike some of the older GPS systems, once you miss your stop the damn thing will not retask the route and bitch until you get back on path. For what I paid, it was a great deal, but then again on Black Friday everything is a damn good deal. But I will say this, I scouted around and found that best buy has the unit on sale for $149 but even the regular price of 179 is still pretty good. Battery Life is stellar, I some times leave it unplugged for days on end and use it in the span. When the battery is low, it still gives you time to figure out where you gotta go. There is one other downside but its minor. You must have your unit plugged in, in order to utilize the traffic feature. I this has to do with the additional power drain operating the receiver. A very small price to pay.
The image below should take you to the best buy webpage where to buy this unit. Try looking around to find it cheaper elsewhere, but I think this is a pretty good deal either way. And the one bonus with bestbuy is, if you dont like it, you return it no problem. Message me with you own feedback of the device
For all you guys lucky enough to be out near LA, Rally Innovations will be showcasing their RalliArt and EVO X at a Local Dealership. If you live around there and havent had the chance to checkout what they got cooking … now is the time to do it.
here are the details provided to me from John @ Rally Innovations.
For all those who are fortunate enough to live in Canada (lol), you will or should know that the service requirements for our blessed cars is a little different than in the USA. They will tell you its due to the harsh environmental / weather conditions. And I say ya, sure it is. But My beef with that argument is, living in Toronto, my weather is no worse than it is in Buffalo or in Alaska. So what the reason for me to change my CVT fluid every 50,000km vs. the 100k to 160k the tranny fluid is rated for in the United States. I ask this question but I felt I wasnt getting anywhere.
Now that my car is beyond that half way point for the warranty life, its time for me to start thinking about my cars older years lol, not retirement, but just upping the level of protection to make sure that this car like all my other cars make it to that 500,000km point. One way to do that is to improve the fluids put in the car. Mobil 1 may make a good engine oil, but unfortunately they dont have anything for CVTs. But that story goes for just about every North American fluid company out there. Very few have CVT applications. Instead we have to look to Japan where the CVT tranny was born or at the very least is in wide production with Nissan. And that brings us to ENEOS. I mentioned this before, but didnt drive it home. That Eneos makes a performance oriented tranny fluid for the CVT. Remember the transmission has a pulley system and a steel belt, so there is still alot of metal on metal contact. and if your the type to abuse your tranny with hard pulls at the track and Turbo Charging the engine, your going to want to fight heat head one. ENEOS’s fluid has heat resistance in mind as well as additives that compliment the frictions involved with this sort of operation.
The only problem that remains is the fact that I live in Canada. And Eneos, doesnt have any distributors close enough to me to make it worth while. Which is frustrating. Eneos is a Japanese Company which is owned by Mitsubishi Chemical. You should also know that the OEM tranny fluid used is also made by Mitsubishi Chemical, see where I am going with this?
I think it would be wise for Mitsubishi to at least make some effort to bridge the gap here. Ok you may like selling OEM fluid by why not at least give the car owner the ability to choose, even if its at higher cost. Make the supply available. I am going to work the phones today to see if and where I can get my hands on this fluid.
Wish me luck, I will report back if something comes about from this. Further specs on the fluid can be find on Eneos’s website, here is a snippet pulled from there.
In Japan, the share of automobiles equipped with continuously variable transmissions (CVTs) has reached five percent of all automatic transmission vehicles, and that share is continuing to increase. Where automatic transmissions use fluid torque converters, CVTs use metal belts and pulleys to transmit the engine’s power. Thanks to their outstanding power transmission ratios and better fuel-economy performance than regular automatic transmissions, many car makers have been adopting CVTs in more and more models. Blended from high-performance base oils and carefully selected additives, including friction modifiers, detergent-dispersants, oxidation inhibitors, viscosity index improvers, corrosion inhibitors, and defoaming agents, ENEOS CVT Fluid is a well-balanced fluid specially designed for automobiles with metal-belt CVTs.
Continue reading ‘96,000km already? Crap… More Service requiredrgb’
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