Quest: Real world impressions
So we've had the quest for a few weeks now and just took our first
trip down to NY. In 200 or so miles we averaged 60 MPH and 26.2 MPG
according to the car's trip computer. Given that this was on regular
gas, this seems pretty good. (Nissan suggests premium but says that
regular is OK but will result in lower gas milage)
Overall, the quest has lived up to hopes and expectations. The 3.5L
6-cylinder engine is more than powerful enough -- it might even be
more than is needed for around-the-town trips. Getting the kids in
and out is a breeze, and the amount of storage space is just plain
crazy! The DVD player and 6-CD changer makes long trips go much faster.
There are a few minor nits... There is a flip-down center console
which itself is handy -- you can store a bag or other stuff between
the front seats -- but it has the only cup holders available for the
front seats. So when you have it down, no cup holders. The DVD
player for kids old enough to controll it themselves would be fine,
but is very hard to controll from the front seats since you can't see
the monitor. Like I said, minor nits.
All in all the transition to the dread mini-van has been a success.
(22:13) [/Misc]
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My Car Purchase Story
Short version: The Internet is your
friend, Costco is your ally, and
promise yourself that you won't buy the car the same day you do a test
drive.
Now on to the details of how I purchased a new 2007 Nissan Quest S.
First, why a minivan? Well with two kids the trusty 2001 Subaru
Outback was starting to buckle under the load after 130K miles. On
the financial side, between the alternator dying in the middle of
Connecticut, a $2K head-gasket repair and an upcoming need to replace
the catalytic converter it sure wasn't feeling like we weren't making
car payments every month. On top of that the rear seat was just big
enough to accommodate the two child car seats and left no room for a
fifth passenger, let alone a friend for the kids.
This didn't leave many options. SUV's were out of the question.
Really not much more practical than the Subaru wagon, more money, more
gas and not very convenient for loading small kids into car seats and
such.
The only real choice was a minivan. I have a number of friends that
have already taken the plunge and joined the Minivan Club so the
stigma wasn't really an issue but it did affect our purchasing
decision.
The first step in buying a car is picking the one to buy. I'd
originally hoped that the Subaru Tribecca would be a salvation but
after giving it a test drive my impression was that it was going to be
a lot of money to be very cramped (8 cu ft cargo with all seats up).
Ok a minivan, but which one? We had the big players (Honda Odyssey,
Toyota Sienna), the domestics (Dodge Grand Caravan, Chrysler Town &
Country) and the niche players (Nissan Quest, Kia Sedona). We settled
on three choices to focus on:
- Nissan Quest. Frankly it was the exterior styling. And they have
nice commercials. Sad, but true.
- Honda Odyssey. If everyone else is driving one, maybe there's a
reason?
- Chrysler Pacifica. A last gasp attempt at not buying a minivan.
So with that list in hand I called some local dealers to make
appointments to test drive each on the last Saturday of the month.
Last Saturday? Yes, all things being equal the Internet-wisdom seems
to suggest buying in the last week of the month is your best chance at
getting a deal. This end of month happened to also be end of quarter
which made it even better.
The key to the test-drive day is to promise yourself that you will not
buy a car that day. No matter what the sales guy (or gal) says, stick
to your plan. You have 3 potential choices, you're going to test
drive each and then go home and think/talk/sleep on it. Be firm and
don't be afraid to get up and walk out.
The first appointment was with Honda. But due to some dumb planning
on my part we ended up at the wrong Honda dealer and didn't realize it
until we'd unpacked the kids and entered the dealership. Talk about
plans being the first casualties of war! We were already starting off
on the wrong foot. So no appointment in hand we were shown to the
"up" sales-woman who took our name and brief info and asked what we
were looking for. She proceeded to say "sure I'll go get one" and 20
minutes later came back with the next higher trim than we'd requested
which just happened to come with leather seats and the nicer engine.
But she said "oh, it's the same other than the leather. hop in!". We
dutifully drove it (just walking out is much harder than I implied
earlier, but we should have) and it was very nice. Everything seemed
where you would want it and felt good. Back inside the dealership we
regained our game face and politely told her that we had another
appointment. If I hadn't asked for her card I probably wouldn't have
gotten it. The car was nice, but the sales technique was lacking.
After a trip to Dunkin Donuts to kill time and compare thoughts on the
Honda, we drove over to the (correct) Nissan dealer to try out the
Quest. The salesman I'd gotten on the phone to set up the appointment
was Joe the Internet Sales Manager (or one of the two or so). He was
much more the expected car salesman (not in a bad way) and had the
model we'd asked for ready to go. The Quest felt just like the
Odyssey and from the test drive I really couldn't feel the
difference. There were interior differences. The Honda has more seat
configurations for example, but the Nissan felt just as put together.
Just different.
Next up was Chrysler. Going from the imports to a domestic really is
night and day. Or entering another country. Everything works almost
the same way but feels different. The sales guy we had an appointment
with was young and nice but was so busy he practically just threw the
keys at us and let us drive it ourselves. The Pacifica is fun to
drive. It's got a 4-liter V6 with the triptronic type auto/manual
shifting thing. Let's just say I gave it a good try-out. As expected
the quarters were as cramped as in the Tribecca but probably wouldn't
have been the end of the world. This was the only dealer that was
interested in looking at my trade-in before sitting down to talk
purchase numbers and the estimate was unsurprisingly bad. $3K when
Kelly Blue Book suggested $4.7K for fair condition.
With the drives over it was time to get rid of two options. First to
go was the Pacifica. Not practical enough and let's just say that by
not matching the manufacturers warranties of the imports (3/36 vs 5/60
drive-train) it's just hard to take them seriously.
That left the hard choice. Go with the car everyone else is driving
(and once you start looking you see Odysseys everywhere!) or the
"cool" one. Well damnit if we're going to buy a minivan at least
we'll have the cool one.
So it was the Nissan Quest. Now the nervousness sets in: how am I
going to negotiate a deal and not get raked over the coals? This is
where the Internets come in very handy. Truthfully I'd done a fair
amount of research before the test drives but that doesn't really
matter here. What does matter is that you read these before buying
your next car:
The first two are pretty old but the concepts are all still useful
today with some tweaking. The third is a contemporary experience that
applies many of the same principles.
Through sitting up at night surfing the web I also ran into a what
seems like an essential tool in buying a car. The Costco Auto Program. Costco
negotiates deals with dealerships to provide fixed markup offers to
Costco customers. In the case of the Nissan Quest that meant that I
could walk into an authorized dealer and walk out at $100 over
invoice. That's a pretty good deal in and of itself and if you aren't
interested in the work or time involved to get a better deal you could
just stop there and drive away knowing you didn't get completely
ripped off. Just remember that this doesn't help you with the
trade-in or financing or add-on offers (warranty, lowjack, life
insurance, etc).
Unfortunately there was a gotcha in my case. The closest authorized
Nissan dealers to me were about 100 miles away. There are at least 50
dealers closer than that (trust me, I know. more on that shortly). I
clicked submit on the Costco form and asked to be contacted anyway.
Worse come to worst I could drive out there to take the deal.
In the meantime I compiled a list of all the Nissan dealers within
100 miles. Luckily I'm a hacker at heart and a little python
scripting later I had my list. I
then went through and checked the inventory of each dealer to see who
had what I wanted (trim, options and color). It wasn't fun but it was
somewhat interesting to see how much inventory was in the Northeast
US. About half of the dealerships had one or two of what I was
looking for (S, with DVD, not red/blue/brown).
On Sunday I also took my Subaru to a random used car lot to get an
offer from them to compare against the trade-in offers from dealers.
This lead to the sketchy-but-fortunate series of events that make my
car buying experience unique and probably unrepeatable. This
particular used car lot sold mostly late model luxury cars and really
the only reason I stopped was it was the first one that didn't look
completely sketchy. The guys working there were all suspiciously young
and hip looking but whatever. Neil took my information, checked out
the car and another guy even drove it around the block. Eventually he
came back and explained how he could get the same thing but ready to
sell from wholesale and that all he'd be willing to offer me was
$3-3.5K. On the way out he offhandedly asked what new car I was
looking for, because "he knew guys" and might be able to broker a
deal. I told him what I was looking for and what my dream out-the-door
price I was looking to pay was. Figured I'd never hear from him again.
Now it was Monday morning. I had my list of dealerships and was
planning on walking down the list soliciting bids from the Sales
or Internet Manager at each and attempt to get a bidding war going.
But before I could start I received a call from one of the Costco
approved dealerships who told me about the $100 over invoice deal and
said he'd get back to me if he could find a model that fit my request
(he never did but that was fine).
I took this information and called Joe at Nissan and said that I'd
like to get at least the same deal from him as I'd of course like to
do business locally. Joe said he was sure they could work it out and
would call me back.
Still I was planning on calling at least a couple of other
dealerships to see what the water felt like and maybe get a better
deal. But before that could happen I got a call from used-car Neil.
He said he had a guy that would give me the price I'd asked
(essentially $2K below invoice). I
reminded him, as I had already explained the day before, that if his
guy was at the same Nissan dealership I'd test drove at we may have
a problem. Neil said not to worry and I agreed to go over with him
later in the afternoon.
At the dealership he seemed to know a number of the guys on the
floor fairly well and we managed not to run into my guy. Eventually
"Smitty" was located after making the introduction, Neil left to sell
more used cars.
First thing I told Smitty was that I'd been in just two days
earlier and test drove with another sales guy. Smitty was not happy
at this point as Neil, of course, never relayed this information. I
was promptly ushered over to Joe because even among car salesman they
don't steal from each other. (at least after the customer has been
logged in the system taking a test drive)
I was somewhat nervous starting the negotiation at this point but
got it out there that the reason I'd come in to see Smitty was that
I'd been lead to believe that I had a deal at $26K out-the-door. This
was on a MSRP of $28,870 and invoice $26,462. The price I was asking
without the tax, title and registration was approximately $24,000. I
never would have had the guts to come straight in and ask this.
Joe was somewhat skeptical but said he'd see what he could do and
went off. I suspect at this point that there was a three way
conversation with the Sales Manager, Joe and Smitty. Ten minutes
later Joe and the Sales Manager returned to discuss. It was made
clear that they would accept the offer but were very interested in
getting their hands on my trade-in. I explained that I didn't have it
with me but gave the Sales Manager a description of it and that I was
looking to get $4500. He came back with an offer of $4K and I shook
their hands and took my deal.
The way I see it, the $2K below invoice made my trade-in worth $6K
with a deal at invoice. $6K was about what I was expecting to get via
private sale anyway and saved me the hassle of floating the cash,
listing the sale and finding a buyer.
The Finance and Insurance guy was easy to deal with and I managed
to say no to everything except for the extended warranty. I'd priced
these out at Warranty
Direct and the dealer's offer was only slightly more expensive but
covered more stuff for longer. I consider this insurance in case the
Quest quality isn't quite up to snuff. It's also transferable if I
want to sell later.
I'd also gotten pre-approval for a 5.90% loan from Bridgewater Credit Union but
the 5.99% from the dealer was good enough that I just let them have
it.
Four hours after entering the dealer on Monday I drove home in my
new Nissan Quest reasonably confident that I wasn't taken to the
cleaners. (although I'm always suspicious that if they're agreeing to
do the deal I must be loosing somehow)
(23:49) [/Misc]
#
Shopsmith Lathe Info
So I recently acquired my very own Shopsmith 10ER. It's a super cool
multi-tool from the early 1950's that can be used as a table saw,
drill press, horizontal boring machine, disk sander and lathe.
I'm very interested in trying out the lathe but a ittle hesitant to
jump right in as I haven't used a lathe since high shool (and really
have no memory other than I made a clock).
I've joined the SS10ER user group and trolled around looking for some
helpful links. Here's what I found...
First is exactly my question:
Hi, I'm wanting to try the lathe option of my er-10. I would like to
try spindle turning but don't know which fittings go on the tailstock
or headstock or if I even have them. Unfortunatly, my father, who gave
me his er-10 passed on a dozen years ago so he's not here to ask. How
would I identify the fittings and if I don't have them, how might I
obtain them? Thanks so much and please excuse my ignorance.
Which elicited this response:
Lets start with a link
http://www.shopsmith.com/ownersite/catalog/l_lathecenters.htm
This should take you to Shopsmith WEB page with Lathe parts.
If not go to The Shopsmith home page and select Accessory and Parts
catalog - Then - Master accessory - Then - Lathe Accessories - and -
Lathe Accessories.
Item A in the pic is attached to the spindle of the ER.
This item is available from Shopsmith.
Sears used to sell then although I dont believe they do any more.
Item B goes in the Tail Stock.
A pic of the tail stock is here in this group
http://ph.groups.yahoo.com/group/Shopsmith10ERusers/photos/view/24b7?b=2
The one on the left is probably what you have. The center fits into the
bolt with a hole in it. It is a tapered hole. It is a common taper for
lathes called a Morse taper #2. You can get centers to fit this taper
from any lathe supplier.
Item C does the same as Item B but has a bearing in it to spin with the
work.
This prevents burning of the work. Either B or C will do. Again
available from most lathe suppliers.
Item D you dont need right now come back to it later.
In the photos section of this group we will find some important pictures
This first one is the tool rest. It mounts in the carriage and is used
to position the cutting tool.
http://ph.groups.yahoo.com/group/Shopsmith10ERusers/photos/browse/9d42
A pic of it installed with a chuck mounted
http://ph.groups.yahoo.com/group/Shopsmith10ERusers/photos/view/cc51?b=2
This link shows a pic of the basic set of Chisels. There are MANY
styles of these and they are available from many places.
http://www.shopsmith.com/ownersite/catalog/l_lathechisels.htm
You can get most of these items from any wood working supply
Grizzly is just one
http://grizzlyindustrial.com/
Item H3404 is the ball bearing live center
Search for Lathe Chisels for some of their options.
That should at least get you started on the hunt :)
and this:
Great job of explaining the parts and their functions. I'd add just
one additional item: Aligning the drive center(headstock) and the
live/dead center (tailstock). This is accomplished by sliding the
headstock (with drive center mounted on the spindle)to within an
inch of the dead/live center mounted in the tailstock. Then
extending the quill forward so that the two points of the drive
center and dead/live center just touch. If everything is aligned,
then the two tips will meet. If they are not aligned, then the
floating center (large nut) can be lossened and moved around to
align the two tips. Then retighten the large nut.
Later I ran into a pointer to The
American Association of Woodturners and from there I found
my local chapter the Revolutionary Turners.
And here is a long thread where I found this:
CAUTION: the holding power of a chuck system can exceed practical
use (swing) of the 10E/ER spindle - especially is you extend the
quill. I still turn between centers (for larger pieces) until a
piece is rounded and vibration is reduced, before using just the
chuck.
Duly noted.
Also in this post reviewing the Artisan chuck, there was a link to
the Penn State page where they sell the 1" X 8 TPI adapter for the SS.
And finally this post
on sharpening
This is only looking back until May 4th 2006. I'm sure there is
more good stuff to find.
(21:33) [/woodworking]
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Credenza: Adventrues in wood finishing
This weekend I built a credenza. It is a adaptation on the Cubby
Credenza in Handmade Modern. The main difference is
that I couldn't bring myself to nail and screw through exposed faces.
Instead I used pocket holes from underside the shelves and only glue
to attach the top. (The plans called for 8 finish nails to be driven
through the top into the uprights. I just couldn't do it!)
Another difference was that I didn't bother putting a back on it.
This was half because I liked the look and half because I didn't have
a suitable piece of wood to do it with.
The project started by creating the drawing of cuts to make in a
full sized sheet of plywood using SketchUp. I chose a
maple veneer
from Boulter Plywood in
Somerville. For $3 labor they made all the main vertical cuts in this
diagram. This saved me immensely over trying to get the whole sheet
home and then deal with cutting it in my meager shop.

Even with the cutting done at Boulter, I still had larger cuts to
make than I can achieve with my puny table saw. So that meant using
the circular saw. First I picked up a new blade specifically designed
for cutting plywood. It had tiny teeth and cut a kerf maybe 1/8"
wide. I also used this handy hint to support the plywood while
cutting. This woorked much much better than my previous technique of
letting the cut off piece fall onto a waded up blanket! Here is a
picture of the jig just after making a cut:

To finish cutting, I used the table saw for the small pieces (pink in
the diagram) and excess from some of the others.>
Next came the edge banding. I'd bought a 50' roll of pre-glued
iron on maple from Boulter and a trimmer from Rockler in Cambridge.
It took some time to get the hang of just how much heat to use but it
came out pretty good. (had to glue down a couple ends later on)
Right about now I was thinking I was making progress and with a
little bit of time applying stain and what-not I'd be getting right to
assembly. That turned out to be wishful thinking.
First I had to apply a washcoat to partially seal the wood in order
to prevent blotching. While at Rockler I'd picked up a copy of Understanding
Wood Finishing by Bob Flexner which Woody from Rockler said was
the practically the bible on wood finishing. This turned out to be a
good purchase because it does a great time explaining what all the
finishing options really mean. This included the advice not to
believe the labling on the washcoating that you can apply the stain in
2 hours. I ended up giving it 8 and the results seemed good.
(although I didn't do a test piece in 2 hours to compare)
In any event, this meant that the staining took much longer than
I'd intended. Because of this I didn't want to wait before staining
the backs of the upright panels. I ended up "tenting" them so that I
could stain both sides and still let the dry. Clumsy, but
effective.

Once the stain was dry I finally got to assembling. The biggest
challenge here was attaching the top using only wood glue. I ended up
attaching the legs first and then using the bar clamps as shown in the
following picture.

The doors were attached using piano hinge and magnetic push latches
from Rockler. (no handles needed).
Tasks remaining include appling a little more stain to the center
drawer and painting the white feet black.
(21:27) [/woodworking]
#
CD Shelf
My latest obession is the free version of SketchUp and
today I used it to design a simple CD shelf. For materials, I had
a 5' long 6"x1" piece of red oak which at a nominal 5 1/2" wide just happens
to match up perfectly with the size of a CD jewlcase.
First I used SketchUp to play with how I wanted the shelf to look.
Because the CDs aren't going to weigh very much I decided to simply
attach two end pieces to the shelf with dados and hang them using
keyhole cuts in the ends. Here is the final visualization:

And a detailed view of one end piece, with dimensions:

To build the actual shelf, the first thing I did was mark up the cut
lines on one of the end pieces. The mechanical pencil lines were hard
to see, so I enhanced them in this picture:

The first cut was the 3/8" deep dado. The dado comes first because I
need the long board to be able to use this handy dado jig I made a
while ago:

Now I moved over to my (super handy) Makita sliding compound miter saw
to cut the end piece to length and make the 15-degree angled cut:


And just like the first end piece is finished (minus the keyhole):

The opposite end is the same except the dado needs to be cut on the
opposite face.
This was the first time I tried to cut a keyhole using my router and I
was a bit unsure of how to set up for the cut. I ended up clamping
stop blocks on my mini router table as shown. Connecting those two
blocks with a third across their face probably would have made things
easier. But it worked:

With the cutting done I glued and clamped the ends to the shelf:

To finish the shelf I gave it a coat of stain, and that's where I ran
into a bit of trouble. I'd gone a little heavy on the glue and where
some of the spill had been didn't take the stain. I'll have to figure
out how to avoid that problem in the future... Hopefully it isn't
too noticeable:

If you'd like to see the model in SketchUp, you can download it from
the 3D Warehouse.
(22:10) [/woodworking]
#
The Patio
So we saw these Platta decking tiles at Ikea

and said "what the heck." Just laying them out on the ground didn't
feel all that satisfactory. A frame of some sort was called for. I
picked up a bunch of pressure treated 1x2 strips and cut to size.
Then came the drudgery, cutting notches in each strip so they can all
fit together and make a flat, square frame. With a new mortising bit
in the router and a jig I built previously things went about as fast
as could be expected. The jig:

The frame being glued up:

One problem I ran into was that my frame had supports under the
centers of each tile. This left a little too much spring at the
corners when walking on them. To solve this I cut short cleats to put
under the corners and serve as feet. After drilling pilot holes and
screwing to the frame with 2" decking screws, here's what it looks like:

And one more in a real life setting:
(20:24) [/woodworking]
#