Random Thoughts... [Automotive Edition]

I had to get gas the other day. Now I know what you'll be thinking: ZOMG LOL BORING POST.

Wait wait, just hold your horses and panties.

So I downloaded gasbuddy onto my phone and checked out the cheapest prices within 5-10 miles of me. The cheapest was $3.67 but it was also 5 miles from me. The gas station that was a block away from me sold gas at $3.97.

I figure I have to fill 10 and at the most 11 gallons. So overall that would be a savings of $3. Traveling to the cheapo gas station would have eaten up about 1/4 of a gallon and 1/4 of $3.67 is about $1, and since it would be there and back, I woulda actually used up $2 worth of gas, so I woulda only saved $1. So I was like

fuckthat.jpg


and went to the $3.99 station 1 block away.

Correct thinking or bogus thinking?
 
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Well, I'd say you'd only have lost $1 for the travel, not 2.

Luckily for me, all stations in the country are mandated to have the exact same price of fuel, so I just go to my local OMV.
 
Correct thinking or bogus thinking?

Correct thinking. The cost of driving there is much higher than just paying for the gas. There's depreciation, wear, risk of damage/injury, and not to forget time - all these would be higher if you made a detour for a cheaper station.

My strategy is to just fill up when/where it's cheap with as little detours as possible. Relatively easy to predict given enough data:

https://pic.armedcats.net/n/na/narf/2011/07/13/preise.png

https://pic.armedcats.net/n/na/narf/2011/07/13/preise_Super-30.png

Recently started crawling many more stations, and was too lazy to filter some out and assign colors :lol:
Considering that variations within 24h can easily hit 10c/l I'd be looking at up to 5.5? per fillup difference. For example Monday two weeks ago (middle of the bottom chart) they wanted 1.419?/l, the day later they wanted 1.529?/l. Potentially 6? difference per tank.
 
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Correct thinking. The cost of driving there is much higher than just paying for the gas. There's depreciation, wear, risk of damage/injury, and not to forget time - all these would be higher if you made a detour for a cheaper station.

My strategy is to just fill up when/where it's cheap with as little detours as possible. Relatively easy to predict given enough data:

https://pic.armedcats.net/n/na/narf/2011/07/13/preise.png

https://pic.armedcats.net/n/na/narf/2011/07/13/preise_Super-30.png

Recently started crawling many more stations, and was too lazy to filter some out and assign colors :lol:
Considering that variations within 24h can easily hit 10c/l I'd be looking at up to 5.5? per fillup difference. For example Monday two weeks ago (middle of the bottom chart) they wanted 1.419?/l, the day later they wanted 1.529?/l. Potentially 6? difference per tank.

Only in Germany... :p
 
Rode in my first MX-5 yesterday. Silver on black NC with the 6 speed. I really liked it. Top was up and it was really cramped, but in a good way. Definitely not a hairdresser's car.
If you thought you looked like that, imagine how I looked in a VW Eos with another guy and the top down driving down Oxford St (Sydney's gay district), while playing 'Just Can't Get Enough' by Depeche Mode which VW had thoughtfully loaded onto the hard drive, along with a selection of other questionable music. Probably the most fun I've ever had driving in the city, watching gruff builder-types in Transits looking at us with a knowing look on their face :lol:

Also, even though it was only an Eos, it has made me fall in love with convertibles. It may have been the coldest July day for a number of years, but with the sun out and the heated seats on, it was a blast. Is it bad that I spent last night searching for cheap drop-tops for sale, and thought a Saab 900 would be awesome? There's also a very cheap E30 convertible for sale... And no, I can't afford an MX-5.

You know something is wrong when a French car is more reliable than a Volvo. :p

I found this. It has a better interior and struts which don't disintegrate every 10,000 miles.

http://denver.craigslist.org/cto/2452977912.html

I like how it has an inline V6. Amazing engineering there. :p
 
Has anyone ever noticed how those LED DRLs on Audi's turn off when the turn signal is on. Why? Looks really dumb when it does that.
 
Correct thinking or bogus thinking?

Correct, but surprisingly narf completely missed another aspect - time. How much is your time worth?

Let's say it's worth a nominal $30 per hour. (Just to make it easy.) Well, if the cheaper station is 5 miles away but you weren't going by it anyway, you're looking at a nominal loss of about 20 minutes. That's $10 worth of time or opportunity cost you're throwing away. So, again, not worth it - only more so than you thought.

I find Gasbuddy and the like to be much more useful for finding the lowest cost stations along a route you were going to be traveling anyway - that way you have zero time or opportunity cost, since you were going that way and had to fill up anyway.

The exception to this is the secret sometimes half-off obscure Chevron station in the Dallas area. At current prices, it's worth the drive to get there when they're having a sale if I need to fill up one of the cars. (Nothing I own with four wheels takes less than 19 gallons.)

Has anyone ever noticed how those LED DRLs on Audi's turn off when the turn signal is on. Why? Looks really dumb when it does that.

The LED DRLs mask the turn signal at any significant distance, so they deactivate when the flasher is on.

Also, even though it was only an Eos, it has made me fall in love with convertibles. It may have been the coldest July day for a number of years, but with the sun out and the heated seats on, it was a blast. Is it bad that I spent last night searching for cheap drop-tops for sale, and thought a Saab 900 would be awesome? There's also a very cheap E30 convertible for sale... And no, I can't afford an MX-5.

I just looked through a couple of Aussie car sales sites. Your fellow Australians aren't half proud of their convertible XJSs, are they? I'm seeing all sorts of XJS coupes for $10-20K AUD, but most of the convertibles are in the $50K plus AUD range. WTF? (Especially when that's more than some of the newer XK8 convertibles on the same site. Very weird market there.)
 
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You know something is wrong when a French car is more reliable than a Volvo. :p

I found this. It has a better interior and struts which don't disintegrate every 10,000 miles.

http://denver.craigslist.org/cto/2452977912.html

Again...the struts are fine, it's the stupid rubber spring seats that fail. Each one costs $20 but to replace them you need to take off the whole suspension unit, use a spring compressor and then just replace the top part. Oh, and then you have to do an alignment again. Really annoying.

If I stick with 850's (as I'm hunting for the right T5-R) I will definitely upgrade the spring seats to the XC90 ones which fit perfectly and are a much better design. Some say they last as long as 5 years :lol:
 
Has anyone ever noticed how those LED DRLs on Audi's turn off when the turn signal is on. Why? Looks really dumb when it does that.
It's to increase the visibility of the indicator, so assholes then don't go complaining on internet forums how some cock in an Audi changed lanes without indicating. ;)
 
If I stick with 850's (as I'm hunting for the right T5-R) I will definitely upgrade the spring seats to the XC90 ones which fit perfectly and are a much better design. Some say they last as long as 5 years :lol:

I've never heard of an uncrashed X300 or earlier needing to have the spring seats replaced, except in cases where they've rusted badly. Even then, they're usually a few decades old by the time that happens.
 
Again...the struts are fine, it's the stupid rubber spring seats that fail. Each one costs $20 but to replace them you need to take off the whole suspension unit, use a spring compressor and then just replace the top part. Oh, and then you have to do an alignment again. Really annoying.

If I stick with 850's (as I'm hunting for the right T5-R) I will definitely upgrade the spring seats to the XC90 ones which fit perfectly and are a much better design. Some say they last as long as 5 years :lol:

I fear you might have a form of Heavy Davidson syndrome. :p
 
Correct, but surprisingly narf completely missed another aspect - time. How much is your time worth?

Let's say it's worth a nominal $30 per hour.


Careful Spctre, you are starting to sound like a union worker.
 
Careful Spctre, you are starting to sound like a union worker.

I'd have less problems with union wages if they would actually produce product worth their wages. Mostly they don't. They're really good at producing thugs, intimidating and threatening those that disagree with them, and embezzling member dues, though. :p

Also, LP is in California. Some janitors there make $30 per hour due to inflation and the ridiculous taxation structure, so I guesstimated what he'd theoretically make.

Finally, it's just easier to do the math when you score it at $0.50/minute. :p The other option was $15/hour ($0.25/minute), but for that job, you'd be the shift manager at a place where you'd be asking if your customer would like fries with that (in CA.) :p
 
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Correct thinking. The cost of driving there is much higher than just paying for the gas. There's depreciation, wear, risk of damage/injury, and not to forget time - all these would be higher if you made a detour for a cheaper station.

My strategy is to just fill up when/where it's cheap with as little detours as possible. Relatively easy to predict given enough data:

<muthafuggin charts>

Recently started crawling many more stations, and was too lazy to filter some out and assign colors :lol:
Considering that variations within 24h can easily hit 10c/l I'd be looking at up to 5.5? per fillup difference. For example Monday two weeks ago (middle of the bottom chart) they wanted 1.419?/l, the day later they wanted 1.529?/l. Potentially 6? difference per tank.

Wait, so what do the different colors in the first chart represent? Different gas stations?

It seems like it almost doesn't matter where you fill up here in this country. Unless for some stupid reason the mobil on one side of the street is selling gas at $4.00/gallon whereas the chevron right across from it is selling at $3.60 a gallon. It would be a no-brainer because you could afford gas + candy bars or gas + carwash for the price of just gas at the other place.

Fucking economy.

Correct, but surprisingly narf completely missed another aspect - time. How much is your time worth?

Let's say it's worth a nominal $30 per hour. (Just to make it easy.) Well, if the cheaper station is 5 miles away but you weren't going by it anyway, you're looking at a nominal loss of about 20 minutes. That's $10 worth of time or opportunity cost you're throwing away. So, again, not worth it - only more so than you thought.

I find Gasbuddy and the like to be much more useful for finding the lowest cost stations along a route you were going to be traveling anyway - that way you have zero time or opportunity cost, since you were going that way and had to fill up anyway.

I filled up on a Sunday, so I guess no cost since I can't get overtime pay lawl. Had I filled up during a work day then it would have been a cut of 6-12 usd (depending on if you count it for one-way or two-way).
 
It seems like it almost doesn't matter where you fill up here in this country. Unless for some stupid reason the mobil on one side of the street is selling gas at $4.00/gallon whereas the chevron right across from it is selling at $3.60 a gallon. It would be a no-brainer because you could afford gas + candy bars or gas + carwash for the price of just gas at the other place.

Not quite so much for me. I'd only save $1.60 and a car wash wouldn't be real useful anyway. :D

IMG_0043.JPG


:mrgreen:

I filled up on a Sunday, so I guess no cost since I can't get overtime pay lawl. Had I filled up during a work day then it would have been a cut of 6-12 usd (depending on if you count it for one-way or two-way).

Yeah, you get the idea. I'd count two way, because you have to go out of your way to get to the cheap station, then (probably) retrace your route to get back to where you were before you detoured.
 
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I just looked through a couple of Aussie car sales sites. Your fellow Australians aren't half proud of their convertible XJSs, are they? I'm seeing all sorts of XJS coupes for $10-20K AUD, but most of the convertibles are in the $50K plus AUD range. WTF? (Especially when that's more than some of the newer XK8 convertibles on the same site. Very weird market there.)

Yeah, the market is seriously messed up. Those people trying to sell old XJSs for $50,000 though, they're just the typical "I own a classic car and therefore it is worth a fortune" set. I seriously doubt anyone in their right mind would pay that much for one. There's one XJS convertible for $15000, which is the cheapest one and it doesn't look half bad. It's certainly not $35000 worse than the $50k one.
 
It could be "it has a V12 it must be worth $50,000 Ausollars!!"
 
It could be "it has a V12 it must be worth $50,000 Ausollars!!"

Whatever it is, it's the words of an idiot. You can buy a V12 Lamborghini Espada for less. Even a V12 E-Type is $50,000.

Or a Mercedes CL600, but I wouldn't buy that since it would be full of cocaine and vaginal jewellery.
 
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