Stargazer's Garage

Hard to believe I've been driving my R32 for eight years, now.   It boggles my mind.  Has it been that long?   While the R32 may have picked up a few cosmetic flaws over the years, I think I've kept it in pretty good shape.  My biggest concern these days, from living in southern Ontario, is potential salt and/or rust damage the R32 might be accumulating hidden from view.  My R32 is mostly a weekender, these days, and during the winter I try to rinse off the salt regularly, but you never know. The VW fuel consumption estimate for the 2004 R32 is 19 mpg (city) and 26 mpg (highway), which in my experience has been reasonably accurate, with one caveat.  In 2011 (fuel economy data for previous years can be found here ) I had an average of 18-19 mpg with a mix of city and highway driving.  Pure city driving it can be as low as 13 mpg.  On a more positive note, with pure highway driving it's easy to average 26-27 mpg.  In celebration of eigh...

Taken at Starbucks

Motorcycle vs. Car Drift Battle 2 is a video that shows how much fun skilled drivers/riders with capable machines can have on a twisty, closed-circuit road. After watching this my heart was racing and my foot and wrists were twitchy. I didn't know if I felt more like getting back into my Subaru Impreza WRX STI or Suzuki Burgman 400c scooter. By the way, the road in the video is the Maryhill Loops Road in Washington. It's closed to public vehicles, but available to rent for special events. Too cool. Drive safe!

I was at Fred Meyer on the weekend and bought the Clickfree Automatic Backup Transformer SE . It's a small USB device that allows you to convert any external hard drive (or any iPod/iPhone) into a Clickfree drive . I bought it not so much for the backup function, but mostly for the "Bonus Feature" listed on the back of the package that says "Automatically copy the music from any iPod to your computer." I thought that this would be very handy in case the music on my desktop was ever lost. I'm so happy with the way that this worked that I had to write a review. When I first plugged the Clickfree into my computer, the program opened up and asked me to plug in the hard drive or iPod. However, when I did that, the software did not respond. I went to the Clickfree website for customer support and they had a page that showed very clearly how to update the Clickfree Transformer to the latest version. Once I updated to the latest version, I started over and everyt...

From 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali The driver-side headlamp on our GMC Yukon XL Denali burnt out on the weekend. It's such a pet peeve of mine seeing cars with only one light that I went out and bought a pair of Silvania Silverstar bulbs and installed them as soon as I could. However, I also had to mutter under my breath at the GM designers who made the simple car maintenance task of changing a light bulb such a pain in the neck. Basically, on the Yukon you need to loosen the wheel liners, grille and front bumper in order to get access to the headlamps. But there was no way I was going to pay the dealership to change a light bulb for me. I originally wanted to buy Silverstar Ultra bulbs which are supposed to be 50% brighter than stock bulbs but Canadian Tire didn't have the right size (H13/9008) in stock. I had to settle for the regular Silverstars which were $10 cheaper but only 30% brighter. My initial impression of the Silverstar bulbs is that they are definitely an improvem...

We were camping in our Keystone Premier 31BHPR one weekend when our neighbors in the next site mentioned that they had something called The Sewer Solution. The way they described the way it worked interested me, so we decided to buy one for ourselves while we were in Orgeon to save having to pay sales tax. I have to say, I totally love the system. It definitely makes dumping our tanks a much nicer experience.... From Bullet Mods and Accessories The Sewer Solution works by using water pressure to force waste down through the narrow hose. That means you need to run an extra water line to the sewer valves. Because we always stay at campgrounds with full hook-ups, that's never a problem for us. From Bullet Mods and Accessories From Bullet Mods and Accessories After you turn on the water jet, you open the valve and the waste gets pushed into the campground sewer system. When the black tank is empty, close the valve and open the grey tank. After it's all empty, what remain...