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Triple Homicide Vice Captain
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 Posted: Sat Oct 16, 2010 1:20 pm
I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to bring this up. Back in July...27th to be exact, I bought a car. In turn I had to park the mighty Mercury. Rust In Peace Bessy. crying
I'm keeping Bessy to basically go to school on it and perhaps put it back on the road someday. But now I've got a 2003 Hyundai Elantra VE. 2.0 litre four cylender motor, automatic transmission, 15 inch wheels, and I bought it for $3,600 all taxes in with 123,800 kilometers on it. I call her Medusa. Anyway, Medusa is in amazingly good shape for a used car. Dad and I were pretty shocked last week when we changed the oil and noticed it even had an aluminum oil pan. It's even got a heat shield between the gas tank and the exhaust pipe so all that heating up and cooling down wouldn't rot the gas tank.
So far, one of the things I don't like about it are the part where its hard as hell to find a set of rims and tires on kijiji for Medusa. Hyundai has kind of an odd bolt pattern. Unlike Bessy where quite a wide selection of cheap 5-bolt alloy rims would be great for summer tires. I've just got 4-bolt steel rims for Medusa...so those four alloy rims and 5 steel rims that Bessy has, with damn near brand new winter tires, are gonna sit in the shed for a while...
I'm a little disappointed with the fuel mileage too. It's not bad, but for what it is, I expected closer to 45 miles per gallon. It normally gets between 37 and 40.
Here's what I've spent on it so far...
Air filter: $11
Oil filter: $10
Plug wires: $86
Four spark plugs: $16
4.4 liters of Pennzoil: $13
Undercoating: $65
Two Hankook winter tires: $150
Two used winter tires from Kijiji: $60
When I replaced the plugs, I noticed they were Champion spark plugs...which is probably why the first tank I ran through it was only 34 miles per gallon. The plugs electrodes were about as wide as a needle to begin with, and they were so worn that the gap was about three times as wide as it should have been. I replaced them with better quality NGK plugs. The air filter was also clogged and the oil was pretty dark so it was time to replace those too. I replaced the plug wires too. I probably didn't have to, but since I was doing a tune up, new Napa Beldon plug wires would probably make it more efficient...slightly more efficient...maybe it was just wishful thinking. Either way I still have the old plug wires incase something happens to any of the new ones.
The summer tires that came with the car were the wrong size. They are P195/65R15. For some reason the best tires are on the left side and the other tires are on the right. Neither pair of tires are anything to brag about so I'm just gonna run them til I change them with my winter tires. My car can take P195/60R15 or P185/65R15. I managed to find a pair of worn winter tires on kijiji to put on the back, and a pair of brand new winter tires at Canadian tire to put on the front. All four are P185/65R15.
Finally a friend of my dad undercoated all three of my family's cars for $65 a car. That's half the price of what a shop would have charged, and he used twice as much stuff as they would have. Hopefully this car is never gonna rust.
What do you guys think?
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Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2010 10:37 pm
First I think with a 2.0 4 banger, 37 to 40 mpg is really good, I would expect that to get around 35 at best. Those a good little cars. And hey champion spark plugs are good, those are the only things my jeep would run on! but for sure the ngks are a lot better of a brand to go with, more performance. The only thing I dislike about this is that its a hyundai. They are known to only last about 100 thousand miles(idk how that would translate to kilometers) and my friend had a sonota that died at 100,002 miles. Im lookin to get a new fiesta in april and those get about 40 mpg brand new so id say if your gettin 35 then thats amazing for that car.
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