18.12.2021 The Flood

I know, I know.  Weird things or big news sometimes does happen to me. But it is usually a one person experience. But when multiple people experience the same thing, it must be big.

 

When I rains for a long time, my mind always wandered back to one particular memory:

Sleeping and lying on the bed in Kuching.

Around this time of the year, Kuching, it would rain non-stop, and usually, the shortest was about 48 hours. So, imagine you're in the Ground Floor of a building, and all around you were the sounds of rain. It is so cooling that I don't even need to switch the Fan nor the Aircond on.  Man, I can sleep for days!

Towards the evening, as the rain got heavier, some of us decided to wait until the rain lightened up a little and that was about close to about 7 in the evening. But that time, it was already very dark. Anyway, seeing the rising flood first hand, I knew that all the alternative routes are no longer viable. The only one left was through a village. It was OK until I realised that there were no streetlights on the narrow road and both sides of the large drains were overflowing...

The main road was flooded. The flood waters from the opposite side flowed into my lane.

Decided to skip the main Highway as long as possible and took a detour through the village. This was a little dangerous.

Finally on the home stretch and yeah, there was spots of flooding. And this was a HIGHWAY.

Almost there. Since I am familiar with this stretch of the road, I had to keep to the right lane as there would be a pool of water on the left. My bad, it was a big pool of water on the left.

OK, just another three kilometers to go. So a few more minutes of traffic jam should not hurt much since there would be no more flooding.

I was wrong

 

So, on the next morning, the rain has not stopped but slowed down to a drizzle. The feeling was a bit weird because after a great night, I actually woke up on the dot. The traffic was smooth but by this time, the rain has started to get heavier.

Clouds on the building means its going to be a very cold morning.

Half an hour later, my Group WhatsApp reported many staff were going to be late and some of their houses were flooded as well. Taking the cues from the conversation, I fired up Waze and took a longer detour through the back roads.

Sadly, the place was flooded. I was at this traffic light earlier but the alternative routes were a no go too. By the time I came back to this spot, a kind gentleman has alighted from his 4x4 and helped to divert traffic. Because if we were to follow the lights, the jam can form a backlog within minutes.

Finally, I gave up and decided to brave the jam instead. As soon as I drove through the exit ramp, I saw the backlog, noped and reversed. I am looking at about 10Km worth of traffic jam and we haven't even considered the additional 3Km of flooding.

Many cars after me did the same. The went down the ramp, noped and reversed back out.

Wanted to have a break at the Clownhouse but gad, it was full as well...

This was that Waze reported at that time. Finally, Boss said the Office is closed. After notifying our customers, I still have to follow up with the loose ends since some are not happy or have more questions about their cars, etc.

All the way home, I changed to Santa at a lay by. And I so wanted to be able to punch him in the face. It was so irritating as the novelty wore off after a few minutes. But be like me; never ever change your Waze setting when you're on the road.

 

Lunch was a little consoling comfort with some burn biscuit and rando sauce. How it came about, that would be another story

 

That 40B19L Battery or how it lasted 40 months

My car has problems cranking the engine since a few months ago. I thought nothing of it, thinking it was the starter or the key contacts. But then, it got worse last week and so, it just occurred to me that it has been a long time since I changed my battery...

A quick call to my Supplier at Indigo and within 18 hours, I have a new replacement. He wanted to send it to me personally but because of the Roadblocks, he suggested me to go to one of his customer's shop for the same price and also, they did the change without charging me.

This battery has been with me for 40 months! (Read: 3.25 years) Which is unheard of. But then again, with the pandemic last year, I was not able to drive for at least 8 weeks in total, which again, is till not too bad for this battery which roughly costs me less than RM5 per month. And bonus, after seeing the actual prices out there, I am thankful to him for saving me a lot more money.

So, be kind and always help when you can. If not, at least make their work bearable.

After the change, my Car feels very 'on the edge' and little taps gave me spurts of power. All this is made possible by the new battery and those Iridum plugs, I guess.

This tiny little battery (40B19L) packs a punch

 

I was hoping to see a red dot but it just turned dark green.

The T10 Parkng Light using COB LEDs

When it comes to my car's lights, I am a little OCD about it. But in truth, I am more paranoid about being caught by the Police. Still, the degree of that OCD also depends on how deep my pockets are. For today's exercise, I am going to replace the T10 parking lights of my car.

Although they are located near the main headlights, it would be a tight squeeze to fit my hands in there since I have no other tools to remove the headlamp assembly completely. Plus, for a 9 year old car, there's a lot of dirt in there. Since it rained earlier...

So, here are the comparisons between the different LED technologies of the T10 W5W bulb equivalent. The old T10 uses conventional LEDs, which I think, lasted me about a year and a half. But if I were to factor in actual driving time, it would be very much less. maybe a fraction. The new COB bulbs are encapsulated with some clear spongy material which I would guess has the lifespan of between now and when it fails.

 

So, with the new COB LEDs, they are much brighter than the older LEDs. Silly me forgot to order them in that yellowish warm white, which was the original colour of the bulb. I really matches the headlight. But since I have 8 more of those bulbs left, I have to let it go.
 

 

Looking at the burnt LED bulbs, they have turned a slight dark yellow which means, bad news.

 

On a closer look, one LED has 'exploded' while some are cracked. Maybe the inductor is giving out too much power. Then again, in that headlamp assembly, I guess, where there is minimal airflow for cooling, anything goes.

The other side looks OK but had a dark yellow shade.

After going through with the meter, the damage is quite extensive and even with some partially working LEDs and shorting, I have to junk it.

The ELM327 ODB Microcontroller Bridge

 https://www.elmelectronics.com/ic/elm327/

 

 

My MyVi's ODB port

 It's been years since I continued searching for more information about connecting ODB meters for Veechai. You see, he is still the First Generation MyVi although it came in as a SE Edition.

So, this is shedding more light into the problem.Yeah, if the problem was solved, a lot of MyVis now would have various ODB meters installed and so on. But I was informed that this 2008 MyVi uses J-ODB which needs to be coverted or modified before anything can happen. Or is it?

http://mthrfknwin.com/diagnostic-port-obd2-detail-manufacturer-specific-pids/

 

The Mysteries of Irirdium Spark Plugs

OK, its been roughly after 5 weeks since I change my sparks to NGK Iridium.
And here is my verdict:

The car has the oomph and can accelerate better than normal. Plus, on some days, when you just rest your leg on the go-go gas, the car would lurch forward, like a rocker waiting to be released.

But on paper, well, my data is not that great although I expect it to get less mileage.


[GREEN 19.94] This is during the MCO where the road is still not congested
[ORANGE 18.53] This is after the change to Iridium sparks and in full traffic
[BLUE 18.40] I am using this as reference data, which is a week before First MCO with full traffic

So, yeah, the mileage is slightly better when in full traffic [Orange] compared to the almost same traffic conditions a year ago [Blue].
Then again, I had to detour to drop off my kid last year and so, if I had to do the same this time, this means the data would be almost the same.

Somewhere at the back of my head, I know that when there is too much of a good thing, there is a disadvantage around the corner waiting to bite my ass.

 

 

Clearing up my headlights

Yeah, basically, this is what I need to do to get my car's headlights cleared up. But I will sand them up to 3000 grit before moving to Tamiya's Rubbing Compounds and eventually coat them with some weird UV coating which I have ordered from China.

Replacing my Myvi's external window weather strips

So, yeah, I had to get these done earlier instead of waiting for the next few months as we seem to be experiencing sudden rain in this hot weather. The rubbers for these window weather strip has been deteriorating since last year and most of the shops I asked, did not have stock. This is because my MyVi is technically a 1st Generation and so, some parts a kinda hard to get.

Except for PH Auto. They cost a little more and can be within my reach instead of waiting for a few days just to save some bucks.

For the rest of the afternoon, I was replacing the rubbers. Yeah, the half an hour job went well beyond that because I was struggling to pull these damn pieces off without scratching the car further or breaking the window glass....

 

The part numbers for these are:
FRHS: 68161-B1010
RRHS: 68163-B1010
FLHS: 68162-B1010
RLHS: 68164-B1010

 

The rubber has been deteriorating to the point that you can see some of them coming loose in the blowing wind. Yeah, they are brittle too.

 

All four weather strips needs to be changed at once and I cannot skimp on these.

Some people mentioned that these weather strips were very easy to remove. Yeah, right. I had to use a screwdriver and ended up scratching the car.

Anyhoo, you need to make sure that you're pulling them in a firm upward direction or something like that. I yanked too much and it broke off. These again, mine were more than 10 years old.

 

The problem with Monopolies

So, maybe I was not thinking straight or maybe, I have encountered some form of stupidity which took me a long time to brain this and overcome the situation.

The mission was a very simple one: Purchase two new Touch n Go cards.

Right?

But, no. You see, first you need to buy the card and then top it up with money. You have to follow THEIR Rules.

First problem:
The Tough n Go booth does not sell the Cards.

Second problem:
There are two TnG machines located quite some distance away. You can use the short cut ie a straight line though the Parking Basement which is a little hot.

Third Problem:
There is a long queue and the machine does not give back change.
Fine. So I decided to walk about 100m away to their actual Booth. Oh, guess what? They do not sell the cards. 

Fourth Problem:
How to cleanly break a RM50?
Yeah, I had to dig around for a RM10 somewhere in the car to break the cycle, then queue up at the booth to get the card.

Fifth Problem:
They only can top up RM10, RM20 and RM50
Because of the queue, I went back to the booth but he would not accept the RM30 request. So I opted for the RM20 denomination and then he charged me RM0.50 for that.

Sixth Problem:
20 minutes later, a friend wanted a card too. I queued up at the machine again, bought the card. Re-entered the machine again and topped up from there.
It did not charge me RM0.50 for that.

WTF

 

Although I do not know their background story nor do I want to, this does give me an impression that the whole process is very inefficient. Because they're the only boys in town for the last two decades, you can witness first-hand how monopolies creates more problems instead of solutions.

Flushing the Radiator Part 2

So, after running the car for a few days, it was time to flush the cleaning chemicals out. I had to let the car run for a few minutes first so that well, the sediments would mix with the cleaning chemicals again.

Once the engine is more or less cooled down, I had to untwist the plug located at the bottom of the radiator. Because the engine was still hot, I could not stuff my fat arms inside.

See that little yellowish butterfly? I has to crawl from under to untwist it to release and drain the hot water from the radiator

This is the part where I start to worry. The total contents that came out from the radiator was very much less although there were quite a lot of what I suspect would be rust particles.

After letting the water from the hose run, I started the engine again. This would help the fresh water to circulate a little.

This kept on until there were no more suds left.

At this time, I remove the 10mm bolt holding the reservoir bottle as I wanted to clean it too.

There was sediment in there as well

I ma using Toyota Long Life Coolant. But after talking to my Techs the other day, they preferred I use Perodua's own brand as this is one kinda a little harsh to the system

After pouring the whole bottle to Toyota long Life, I realised that the radiator could only hold less than 2 litres. At this time, I also forgot to put some into the reservoir. I wanted to get a 1:1 mix but I only managed to add in about 800mL of battery water

Well, I am quite disappointed as the whole exercise did not reduce the temperature but to a smidgen. Still I'll drive around for a few days to see if there is any effect.

Conclusion

The temperature did not really go down much but I'll drive the car around for a day or two to see if there is any changes. Still, despite all these, the only thing else I can do would be to change the aging water pump and based on Internet prices, they are not cheap. I suppose I will do this after replacing the head gasket.

Letting go a part of me

No Turning Back

It's not easy for me to come to this decision but it has to be done. More than 17 years ago, I was given two choices and I could make the decision if I wanted.

However, now, that is no longer an option and I need to make the decision today.

The last few years really made me grumpy, have weird odours and sensitive to cold drinks despite using Sensodyne. It was when I wore masks during the Pandemic did I realise that I have a problem

The problem happened in the early 2020 (during MCO)when I felt part of my filling came off. Since we realised that the Dentist was from Singapore, there was a very high possibility that she was not in KL at that time and also, according to the news report, there was a section nearby her which was cordoned off by the authorities.

And so, after the MCO kinda relaxed a bit this week, I decided to make an appointment to visit the Dentist, thinking it's just a simple job of filling the tooth again and also, asking them to take a look at the side which I felt was a hole.

Oh, Boy.

Taking an X-Ray is quite painless. They just lay a think lead-line blanket over you, hide from the wall and then take the shot. It sounded funny but not for them if they need to do this at least a few times a week. Yeah.

From the X-ray. my left second molar was being pushed by my Wisdom teeth trying to come out. There is a gap between the two teeth and this is where the food that got lodged in started its destruction despite my cleaning carefully everyday. In the end, I chose to extract the rotting molar instead of the Wisdom teeth since this was the choice with less complications.

 

The Calculated Nightmare

This was a very difficult choice for me but then again, I more or less know what is coming. It's just that I was not emotionally prepared for such horrors such as a bloodied tooth and injections (that could punch through into the jaw?). Nevertheless, it was kinda fun and surreal that half my face went numb with the local anesthesia and I kinda fell asleep halfway. But after three attempts, it finally came off.

The Dentist used what I learnt later was called an Elevator (But it still looked like a pair of fancy pincers to me). He did ask me to close my eyes if I do not want to see the whole thing. I am still suffering from neck pain because I was instinctively fighting his left and right rocking motion during the extraction.

Finally, it is out and that black spot which gave off bad odours to the point of my Wife asking me to use mouth wash, can't drink cold water much and are like a sloth, to the detriment to everyone at the table.

The Aftermath

Well, after the blood has kinda clot and sealed up, I was OK. There was no pain even though the Dentist told me the anesthetics would wear off in three hours.

It just kinda feel weird to chew food  in one side of the mouth and if it felt funny, I know I would need to use my tongue to clear the excess food trying to hide in where the molar once was.

The Tooth

Yeah, I am keeping it and just have to find ways to clean and store it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flushing the Radiator Part 1

So, the second phase of my project is to treat the car's cooling system.  My plan is to replace the thermostat and also flush out all the rust/debris that accumulated over the 10-year period. Of course it has been flushed before but this time, I am going to use the Prestone AS105 Radiator Flush+ Cleaner.

In my previous car, I would just flush it after letting the engine running for 15 minutes. But this time, as per the instructions, I would drive the car for a few days, then flush it out and replace with Toyota Long Life coolant and leave it in there for maybe, two years?

 

So I got the guys to help me out a little by supervising my actions. And thankfully, their 10mm was much stronger than my puny Pro's Kit. The replacement took about 5 minutes and boy, there was rust inside the system!

This was the original thermostat from the car and the brown is actually the 10 year old rust

And it would be operating when the water temperature reaches 80°C

Compare this with the one I bought, which is gleaming silver.

Anyway, once the thermostat is in and the guys confirmed I did it correctly, I poured this whole bottle of Prestone  Flush+ Cleaner and let it run around the system for a few days before I flush everything out.

 

The temperature gauge (on the right) is about 50% and once this is completed, I hope it would drop back to about 25% or thereabouts. If it does not, it means the water pump would be the next suspect.