Kia Optima - Re-Badging Complete!

I realized after I put up my last post that I had previously posted about ordering the Kia re-badge kit so some of it was redundant.  I don't have an editor (or bother to reread my own posts) so things like that happen from time to time.  Anyway today was a nice day so being the impatient type off I went to apply my new re-badge kit.

The first thing I realized was that the on-line instructions for removing the existing Kia badges was HORRIBLY INACCURATE.  The ones I saw suggested using dental floss or fishing line to remove the badges.... here's the problem.  The original badges have pegs that go into the sheet metal.... YOU CANNOT SLIDE DENTAL FLOSS THROUGH THE PLASTIC PEGS!  After breaking several pieces of fishing line I had to come up with an alternate plan.

The alternate plan involved a hair dryer and a screw driver. I gently lifted the badge and had my helper son apply some heat with the hair dryer, he was actually the one who got the first one lifted off so he deserves the credit for our success. Once we got it pried off it was pretty simple to keep applying heat and remove the entire thing.  The first one left a lot of the double sided tape behind which we had to remove with goo-gone but the back one came off with almost all the double sided tape intact.  I think our success with the second one was due to constant and heavy hair dryer heat application.  Once we had the old ones removed and the area cleaned up applying the new ones was a breeze.

For the wheel covers we simply had to place the new badges over the old ones.  Here is proof of our success, I think the new ones look way better than the old ones.  There is also another story in these pictures but I will get to that in my next post. (And its not the expert removal of my license plate in the second picture using MS Paint)

Kia Optima Re-badge Kit

One of the things I am not really in love with are the Kia emblems on the front and back of my Optima, they are also on the wheels and steering wheel.  I was reading somewhere that you can find replacements that are easy to install, they look like the picture to the left.  After a little internet research sure enough you can buy replacement kits, prices seemed to range from $50 to $80 for a set of 7 (front, back, 4 wheels, steering wheel).

On E-Bay there are lots of places selling the kits but some of them were located overseas which I normally avoid due to it taking forever for items to arrive and possible shipping damage.  I came across a place called the K5 Optima Store and the link to the items can be found here : http://www.k5optimastore.com/products/kemblems.  There were some good reviews on this company so I figured I would give them a shot.  Sure enough 5 days later the kit showed up in the mail well protected in a bubble envelope.

So next steps are to google some videos about how to apply these babies and I'll let you know how it turns out.

Auto Glym - Bodywork Shampoo Conditioner

Time for some new car wash product so I figured I would try something new.  I was reading that the Auto Glym line at Canadian Tire was supposed to be good so I bought a bottle at $13 for 1 litre.  It says on the instructions that you only need 2 capfulls to do a car, so from a one litre bottle that equates to something like 30 washes.

So we had a nice weekend this week, the perfect time to try out the new car wash product.  I opened it up, noticed the appealing aroma and dumped about two capfulls into my car wash bucket.  Two capfulls is not a lot of car wash product for a large bucket but it seemed to make a sufficient level of bubbles to wash the car.  The car washing went well, but I noticed two things as I was doing my car wash routine.

1) The dirt came off relatively easily
2) When I rinsed the car the water just ran right off the finish

I hardly had anything to dry after I was finished washing, because the water from rinsing was running off so easily, much better than with my previous car wash products.

The other up side is that this car wash product is Ph balanced so it does not deteriorate any wax or polish from the car.

At this point, I'd have to say this is the best car wash product I have ever used.

K5 Optima Store - Optima Upgrades

I was looking around for some ideas to spruce up the Optima and I came across the K5 Optima Store.  They sell some cool mods for the Optima like LED lights, re-badge packages and auto-fold mirrors.  I ended up ordering a re-badge package for $70 shipping included and can't wait for it to get here.  I was thinking the Kia guys might wonder what happened when I bring in the car in for service with the word KIA nowhere to be found but since I plan on keeping the car for a while I figured I'd do something to individualize it.  The link to the store is:
http://www.k5optimastore.com/products/kemblems

The LED fog light and tail light kits look cool as well but would take some effort to install so I will mull it over for a while.  I will post an update on how the re-badge install goes.  This is what the new emblems will look like:

How to remove dried on wax from car trim!

Every now and then no matter how careful you are you may get some wax or polish on your plastic trim around the car.  I tried removing it with cleaner to no avail so I figured the internet would have a solution to this problem.  As usual there is a solution... peanut butter.  If you rub peanut butter on the trim stained with wax it will come right off.  But there had to be more to this solution.... why peanut butter??  As it turns out the solution had nothing to do with peanuts but rather the oil in the peanut butter.  The peanut oil helps lifts the wax off the plastic and the peanuts act as an abrasive to help it get well agitated.  Turns out you can remove the wax with vegetable oil, I just ended up using regular vegetable oil and it did the trick with minimal effort.

So next time you make a slip up with your wax just apply a little veg oil and it will be good as new!

Aluminium Wheel Repaired!

I finally got my wheel back today and it is good as new!  The guys at custom wheels also balanced my wheel for no extra charge which was nice of them.  You can see where the wheel was welded but it feels good and well balanced.  I dropped over to Mr. Lube to get my tire put on and they did it in about 10 minutes for no charge.  The guys at Mr. Lube even commented on how nice the Optima looks.  I came home, washed up the Optima, shined up the tires and it looks as good as new.  

I think there is a lesson in all of this.... while I was at Custom Wheels I was looking through their magazines with hundreds of different rims and I was surprised at the prices compared to my $775 replacement Kia Optima rim.  For $200 - $300 there were some really nice looking rims available.  In the future I would suggest upgrading the rims yourself instead of going with the factory upgrade.  Of course the problem becomes that upgraded rims often come with upgraded everything else in a package deal so it's hard to get some of the good stuff like sunroof, leather etc... without buying the upgraded rims. Also if you are buying a used car, for $1,000 you can really give your car a nice upgrade by ordering some nice wheels.

Overall Custom Wheels does good work and saved me about $600, you just need to wait a couple weeks to get the work done.

HYUNDAI FACTORY AUTHORIZED CLEAROUT

Always on the lookout for new promotions, this month Hyundai has its Factory Authorized Clearout!  This amounts to different discounts on different cars but the one that caught my eye was $2,000 off an Elantra GT, since this is only about a $20,000 car that is a significant discount.  But as I have said before and will undoubtedly say again, if it seems to good to be true it normally is.

Fortunately I had costed one of these vehicles last month in the Elantra GT, GL trim.  At that time there was a $750 discount but more importantly a 0% interest rate up to 7 years.  As of today the 7 year rate or for that matter five year rate is 2.99% which means you basically pay the same as last month and in some cases $5 or so more per month.  So there actually is no deal unless you have some cash hanging around in which case you will save over last month.

Also worth noting is that there are no changes in Civic deals this month but rates are relatively low at 1.9% over 84 months and over at Mazda they are offering $3,000 off cash purchases on Mazda 3's and 0% up to 84 months.

Used Car "Sale" - Disappointing as Usual

Every now and then you come across what seems like a good car sales event.... usually they turn out to be disappointments.  Actually I have found they always turn out to be disappointments.  One of the larger, if not the largest used car dealership here in St. John's had advertised a "Drive Home Happy" sales event with at least $1,500 off every used car on the lot, which currently consists of about 150 vehicles.  They have a lot of used Hyundai Elantras, Santa Fes, Accents, Mitsubsihis, a bunch of Civics and a smattering of other vehicles.  As with most other used car dealerships they are priced anywhere from $1000 to $3000 over what you could get a similar car for privately.

 I emailed the dealership on Saturday asking them what exactly they would be offering at their 3 day sale.  As a backgrounder, most of the vehicles (those with under 100,000 km) come "certified".  Certified boils down to a one year bumper to bumper warranty, which gives you some piece of mind when buying used.  You know they are fairly certain nothing major will break within the next year.

I asked if the $1,500 was actually off every car and they responded that yes every car was $1,500 off if I didn't want it certified, if I did want it certified it was $500 off.  Of course the advertised price on the cars was certified so the Drive Home Happy was actually only $500 off the current sticker price.  You can get $1,500 off but they won't give you the extra year warranty.

So once again what started out looking like a very good deal turned out to be an ok deal but I would suspect you could probably get $500 off any car on the lot if you haggled a bit anyways.  As usual with car sales.... all sizzle no steak!

Fixing My Wheel

It looked like I would need a new wheel so I called Kia to see what the damage would be.  The answer was above what I could have imagined.... $775!  I politely cursed a few times and told them I would get back to them.  I started scouring used car part sites but as I suspected there was not an 18" rim to fit a 2011 Kia Optima EX Luxury to be found anywhere.

My next call was to car repair shops to see if the rim could be fixed.  I Googled fixing aluminium rims and it seemed like professional welders could get the job done if the crack wasn't too extreme.  After calling around I got put on to a place called Custom Wheels.  They said they could fix it but the cost would be at least $140, they would have to see the rim.  So off I went to Wal-Mart to get the tire taken off the rim and my dummy installed.  They charged me a whopping $5 and the counter guy did all the work himself.

Next stop was custom wheels (which was VERY difficult to find) where they took a look at the rim and said they could fix it for $180 + tax but it would take two weeks.  TWO WEEKS..... but I didn't really have a choice since it was saving me about $600.

So here I am one week into wheel repair, driving my better half's car and using the Optima only when totally necessary.  I will do a follow up post in a week when my rim is back hopefully as good as new.

Why am I losing tire pressure???

Last weekend we were planning on a mini-road trip over the highway so I did my regular tire pressure checking and found that my drivers side front tire was especially light.  It was showing 22 psi as opposed to its recommended 35 psi.  When I took a good look you could see that it was low, although it is hard to tell though with the low profile tires.  I headed off to the nearest air pump and filled her back up to 35 and kept a close eye on it for the next couple of hours.  There is actually one free air pump not that far from here at a locally owned petro-canada station, but they are few and far between.  The same station also provides full service gas pumping at no extra charge.

Since there was no air loss I decided to head out over the highway on our 300 km trip, with two stops in between to check pressure.  The pressure seemed to be holding up so I was praying somehow someone just let some air out of my tire and that was it.  I made it to my destination no problem and still with no pressure loss.  The next morning I checked the pressure again and it was at 28...... I knew I had a problem.  I was figuring at that point no big deal, just top it up, get back to town and plug the slow leak I had.

As soon as I got back home without incident I went to my local wal-mart to get them to check the tire.  They were good about it because it was 4:30 on a sunday, they closed at 5 but took me in anyway.  About 10 minutes later they paged me to come to the auto center, and I was figuring I was in for some bad news.  Sure enough there was a small crack in my rim that was causing the loss of pressure.  The guys told me I would probably need a new rim which brought a shiver down my spine since I figured it would be 300-400 for a new one.  You could even see a small dent leading to the crack indicating some major bump had to cause the damage.

I was trying to think how this could have happened and earlier the week I did hit some new pavement where they were doing road work in town, but I was only going about 50km/hr so it was possible but I didn't think likely that would have cracked my rim.  My son had told me he hit a big pot hole about 2-3 weeks ago so that was a likely culprit with the crack just getting big enough for me to notice the loss of air eventually.  Although I will never know for sure either way.

In my next installment I will let you know the cost of a new rim and how I hope to resolve this issue.....