Comet!

To those who live in places with dark skies to the west, there is a comet visible for the next few nights. Barely visible to the naked eye, easy to find with binoculars, and to those who own a telescope (you know who you are) it should be pretty spectacular. From here in town in Davis, using binoculars, I can only see the head, but I have lots of light polution in that direction. It is a lovely green color.  At 8:00PM it was almost due west, about 30-45 degrees above the horizon.

More Info:

Map

Photo

Have fun!

A week of Rover brake troubles

It was a hard week of car troubles.  On Monday my Rover coughed up a whole set of error codes and turned on a lovely array of yellow warning lights in my dash.  The first was the ABS light, followed by the Traction Control light and the Hill Descent Control light!  This is actually fairly common at around this mileage, but can be caused by a wide variety of things.  Research indicated that the best case was a random vibration in the brakes caused by hitting the brakes just right (wrong) while hitting a bump.  Worst case was a failed ABS modulator that costs $1800, for the part! 

I knew my brake pads were low, so I did a brake job all around (pads were cracked), reseated the ABS sensors in the hubs, and checked the connectors in the ABS sensor cables.  Then today I took it to the dealer to have the error code read and cleared.  The lights went off and all appears well.  The error code indicated a "random output variation on the right front ABS sensor."  Hopefully this was caused by low pads and slotted rotors and the lights will stay off now that the brake pads have been replaced.  If not, it might need a new ABS sensor ($135), or possible a front hub ($375).  These I could live with, as long as it is not the modulator.

So I spent a day and a half doing brake work, but at this point all is well and I am happy.  That darn truck costs me a fortune to keep running, but I really love the thing.  Trips like my recent trip to the White Mountains for 7 days of driving on rough dirt roads in the comfort of Connolly Leather seats just reinforces that.

I do need to get one of those OBDII scanners to read these error codes though.