To Lithuania and back, Cool code reader

So the winners of the January Bar-barian forums challenge were promised Bar-barian t-shirts for winning.  The shirts were coming from the guys in NYC.  The plan was for them to send the shirts to me and I would send them out to the winners. Well it took quite awhile for me to get the shirts because of some sort of problems with the place that was supposed to print them.  I actually didn’t get the shirts in hand until late April.

Unfortunately for me, all of the winners were on the other side of the Atlantic, one was in Russia, another in Poland and a third in Lithuania.  I never mailed stuff overseas before.  It wasn’t too bad,  I just had to fill out a customs form and then pay about $10 per package to send it via First Class Mail.

Well evidently first class mail isn’t very fast.  The guy in Russia didn’t get his package until almost a full month had passed.  The guy in Lithuania never received his, we both assumed it was either stolen or lost in the mail.

Well imagine my surprise when I open my mailbox yesterday and see the package containing the shirt sitting there.  There was a purple sticker on it that seemed to indicate in Lithuanian that the address was no good.

The padded envelope definitely looked like it made the round trip to the Lithuania, it was very beat up.  I found it hard to believe it took 7 weeks to get there and back.  Hell I am amazed it got back at all.

So I contacted the kid that has been waiting for the shirt for 5 months.  I told him I had good news and bad news, the good news was I know where the shirt is, the bad news was it’s back in Florida.  I sent him the address he gave me to send it to, wanting to confirm it was correct.  Well evidently it was not.

He left out a couple numbers in the street address that evidently were important.  I guess Vilnius is a pretty big town, there must be a lot of people there named Naglis.

So anyway, I now have the full address and will be sending the shirt back out this week.  I may try to add tracking to it this time if the post office doesn’t want to rape me to do so.

So last night I decided to throw my made in Hong Kong code reader on the SSR to see what the cause of the check engine light was.  My initial hope was the light was caused by a loose gas cap since I filled the truck up on Saturday on the way up to Siesta Key.

I had not used this code reader yet, I bought it several months ago.  It is pretty damn awesome, way better than the cheapo one I had that simply spits out a code and allows you to clear the light.

This new one goes far beyond that.  Not only will it show you the code, it will show you what it means.  It also does a variety of tests including real time monitoring of the vehicle’s sensor data.  Basically it seems to do a lot of the stuff that one garage likes to charge me $90 per visit to do.

Anyway I was surprised to see that the code was related to the clutch pedal.  Well the fact that the clutch spring broke last week made everything come into focus.  By the clutch there is a little switch that senses when the clutch is in the top position.  When you push the clutch in the truck knows it and uses that info to do things like cancel the cruise control if it is engaged.

Well when that spring broke the resting position of the clutch is now slightly lower than it was before, just enough that this switch is not getting engaged when the clutch is up.  Basically the truck thought the clutch was constantly down (or that the switch is bad) so it eventually threw this code.

The fix was quite easy.  The switch is threaded so it can be backed in and out as needed.  I disconnected the wire, turned it a few cranks to move it closer to clutch pedal and then reconnected the wire.  I then used the reader to turn off the check engine light.  That should be all there is to it. I was quite relieved it doesn’t appear to be anything serious.

I still might get a replacement spring just so the pedal is fully retracted.  According to most of the SSR Fanatics, the spring is just not needed and removing it gives you better clutch feel.  There are a few that said removing the spring could possibly cause premature clutch wear. I am not looking to wear out my new Corvette clutch.

The next thing I hope to get done is a full coolant flush of the SSR.  Since I have no idea if it was ever done before it is better to do it.  I am thinking I may replace the factory orange Dex-cool with one of the newer high tech green mixtures.  I have read multiple accounts of Dex-cool, despite being the officially recommended coolant by GM, causing problems down the road.  There are a bunch of guys that have dumped it and converted to the green stuff. I am hoping to knock that project out this weekend.

I got a call from Ali late yesterday afternoon confirming that I saw both dogs take a dump that morning at the house.  I told her I did, wondering why she would think I would lie about dog bathroom activities.  Well evidently one of the dogs, Sadie is Ali’s guess, shit inside the condo, on Nicki’s bed of all places.

When Ali told me the brown gold was on Nicki’s bed I assumed Nicki did it.  She has always retreated to her bed when she wants to do something lovely like throw up.  Well evidently Sadie had more messy action when Ali took them out. If that is the case, it seemed pretty passive aggressive for Sadie to use Nicki’s bed as a toilet, weird.

Ali was not thrilled that her condo reeked of dog shit, there was no space you could go to that wasn’t thick with the stench.  My only advice was to open some windows and crank the AC to get the stink air out of there.