So.. due to technical difficulties with getting the Caddy ready in time, I ended up having this little bugger here as a "loaner". You know, just for a few days until the Caddy was back on the street again...
Well, those few days dragged on a bit, and turned into about 3500 miles that I put on it... the car somehow found its way to Florida?!
So I can report a few things:
- very comfy long distance cruiser
- feels only very rarely not powerful enough
- the lack of adjustability of the steering column is just a gigantic fail on Hyundais end, base model or not
- surprisingly good fuel consumption (I got 500 miles out of a tank, despite the car claiming that I won't)
- as expected, so not really a negative, it is not all that happy to be trown around curvy b-roads
- transmission is good at its job most of the time, but the software could use some refinement, it is every now and then rather indecicive which gear it should use
What I also can report, is..
A taste of the cost-cutting; the spare is sadly a donut, but used wheels are pretty cheap and I'll probably pick some up (if they fit...)
That this never happened. How I know? Well, let's just say that the car's notification of "Tire Pressure Low" after finding a pothole was somewhat believable.
I also know that the jack works, but the tool you're supposed to use for cranking it, is kinda cheap and silly. But oh well. After finding and hitting said pothole, I had to limp it a bit along the street until a sidewalk started, so I had a surface to actually jack it up on... by the time I got back to Bens place, tire places were closed, so the next day was now tire duty instead of Space Center.
The next day, as planned, I started the highly annoying journey that would be to find a correct size tire not made out of chinesium locally in store..
.. right after finding a new rim. Because...
(second picture is not a completely accurate representation of the radius, but shows that it is not just the little notch that was the problem)
Yep, it's dead, Jim! Shook the balancing machine like it wanted to rip it out of the ground. So I postponed the installation of the located tire, and went on the hunt for a matching Genesis sedan wheel. I mean, how hard can it be, in a time of craigslist and ebay in a large US city for a reasonable price, right?!
If you guessed impossible, you would be correct! The local stealership offered to order one in for a mere $650 plus tax and installation, oh and plus tire of course, which I politely declined. Craiglist and ebay had nothing in any distance that was even remotely in the cards. So I ended up touring the local small rim/wheel/tire shops, asking around, being sent around from one to the next one.. all on that fucking space saver. I ended up finding a shop that offered me a temporary solution, a Genesis Coupe wheel. While also 18", it was obviously a different styling, and also an 8" wide rear wheel instead of the 7,5" the sedan wheels are all around. But it'd take the same tire size no problem and more importantly would fit on the car, at the very least on the rear. So I bought that thing used, went over to the tire shop that had an acceptable tire locally available, got raped for that and the installation, had them put the coupe wheel in the back just to avoid unlikely but potential fitment issues with the rear rim upfront, and then was done for the day...
Oh yeah, I also checked the front suspension while the wheel was off for any suspicious dents or bents, but didn't see anything. After the new wheel was installed, I did some testing on the parking lot looking for pulling to a side under accelleration and braking, but nothing of the like, so I'm optimistic that I got at least lucky in that regard and didn't fuck up more down there..
A few days later, back in Texas, after talking with Ethan, I scooped up a full set of super cheap coupe wheels from craigslist in a small town north of Austin. They were color mismatched, and as it turned out when I inspected them in the sellers truckbed, also 3 fronts (7,5x18) and only 1 rear (8x18). Given what I already had, I decided to not give a shit. And Ethan told me that they knew a guy for powder coating up in Dallas, so the color issue was not much of one.
So I ended up borrowing a friends car because mine was broken, and all it cost me was a full set of 5 wheels and 1 tire so far..
.
- first coupe rim in Florida: $120 (trading in the broken one as core and tire disposal fee included)
- new tire for said rim: $180 (mounted and installed)
- set of 4 coupe rims: $100 (yes, that was funnily the cheapest part..)
= $400 and he still has to paint them and buy at least 1 matching tire, or just 4 new ones and keep the one I got as a FULL SIZE spare)
Needless to say that I am more than thankful for being given the car for the trip while at the same time I feel like shit for breaking a friends car
.
