MitsuStyle - - SC300 + money - DSM = holy USA trip! **56 warning Pics**

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- SC300 + money - DSM = holy USA trip! **56 warning Pics**

First of all!!!

If I missed out on anything, feel free to fill it in Anthony. Thanks to Shane+Mara, Joe, and the other kids for helping me out when I called. Lots of thanks to Anthony for keeping me sane.

Well, some of you already know. I fell into the trap. I am back and more bitter than ever. Let me start here; skip to bottom for cliff's notes.

Wednesday Night:

So I unofficially sold the SC300 to a guy named Todd in GA. The deal was he was going to pay for my plane ticket back if I drove it down there. I was fine with that because I needed a break badly. So I planned this all about about a week prior to the trip because I wasn't sure on a few things. The plans changed to me flying to Utah instead of back to MN because I had found a car there I wanted. The other plan was that I was trying to plan the trip around Anthony(Swifty1638)'s work schedule. This would work out if he skipped on Thursday. We got this all set and done on about Monday/Tuesday. On Wednesday, I had to tell the parents about me leaving that night. They took it quite well but weren't too happy with the idea. The spontaniaty of the idea just caught them off guard to yell/lecture me.

So anyhow.... we leave on Wednesday at about 8 PM. We end up taking longer than usual to leave MN. We get to about the Hudson border, and a friend calls us to meet us there. We do that, and at about 10PM, finally leave to go on the trip. That night, we drove til about 3am, and figured we mightas well stop in Chicago to chillax (-nate) for the night.

Thursday:

We stay there til about 10am on Thursday, and figured we mightas well go check out Sound Performance because we'd never been there before. Here's some of what we saw.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1.../SPChicago.jpg

So... we do that for about an hour as we just check out their cars and shoot the shit. After that, we decide to head over to AMS, but the problem was we had no clue where we were going. We drove around and finally found somewhat a direction so we got there around 1:30PM. They happened to be closed from 1-2PM for lunch so we just walk around their parking lot looking at their cars for the time being. Cool cars. We left 10 minutes later to venture on our trip. We drove all day/night thru the longest state ever (Illinios from top to bottom). At about 2am we were in Georgia about 2 hours from the final destination (Atlanta). Luckily, we had just missed a huge tropical storm. The other problem was that we were there right before the Hurricane was going to hit(we did get out of there soon enough though).

Friday:

We met the Todd guy at the credit union, got my cash, and left to get on the jet plane to fly to Utah.

We had to switch planes in Houston so we stayed there for about 3 hours, ate, etc...

At about 11PM , we arrived in Salt Lake City, UT. We called the seller of the car I wanted at that time thinking we could try to take the car that night and start driving home to make it by Saturday night. The car had blown a few fuses and had a minor seat issue which we had to wait til morning to fix. We waited, got a room at a hotel, and continued on in the morning.

Saturday:

As the lights shut off and the sun comes up, we wake up to go look at the car I was going to buy. We get there around 10am, get the transaction and the seat issue done, get everything set, and are on our way. The car is pretty solid, minus a few minor/big-ger things. The car is a white 91 Tsi AWD with a rebuilt 6 bolt 2.0. I paid a good price for it and we were on our way.

Thinking nothing of it, we drive and drive for the first 10 miles as we hit the mountains, the steepest road(I guess in the USA) I may add, and the car starts acting up (typical dsm). The temp gauge is reading pretty hot. I call the guy as we're going up the mountain to ask him.... no answer. Call again, and again, no answer. We are on the side of the mountains at a view stop or something so we decided to take some pictures of the car with the beautiful view.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v17/guessd/1gDSM.jpg

It's a pretty clean car, but it needs work.

Anyhow, we make our way as we are looking for the nearest town/city. We goto a sorta nearby gas station and ask for help. They guide us to the closest town which is about 10 miles away. We go there to find a Champion auto store as we had filled up the coolant system with water. When we got there, the car was in overheat mode all over again. We parked it, and found the cause.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...KINCOOLANT.jpg

Broken lower radiator hose. Of course, this small town place doesn't have a replacement so I have to cut the top of it and work with what I got. We push it up with the slack it does have and tighten it down. As we fill it up with coolant and water, we think it's all good. I let it idle for like 10 minutes and it's fine. As we try to leave the parking lot, I noticed a trail of coolant from behind the car. We immediately pull back into the parking lot of the place. I then buy a bunch more tools and stuff from the store. Totalling about $200, I get random shit I should've had anyhow if we hadn't ever flew out there. Not knowing what the problem is, I buy a thermostat; switch it, put a gasket on it, and let it be. The car seems to be doing fine now.... or so we thought. As we were driving out of town about 13 miles, it started acting up again, much slower this time. So we pulled into a gas station again... got more water to refill the system, and headed back to the parts store. We figured maybe it was something to do with the fan, or more hoses, or anything. At this point, this was hours after we had bought the car. It was tiring, hot, and we were shot. We didn't know what to do. After replacing more things, we had to leave. It was 5PM and the parts store was closed. The guys at the store said we could stop by their houses if we needed to use their tools. That was very generous of them, but on my shitty luck, I didn't take their offer. We drove and it was fine/cool for about .... 50 miles or so. Then it started acting up again. It was a POS. I hate it so much, yeah. We pull over again, fill it up with more water/coolant. Then we are wondering wtf we can do. Up a little ways is a town... about 20 miles away, so we try to make it there. Halfway there, I look behind as I hear something pop off. I pull over, look under the hood, and the water pipe had now blown off the water pump. I look and the bolt holding that water pipe on wasn't there. At this point, I gave up. I was falling apart and so was the car. Anthony luckily calmed me down a bit; thanks a lot.

Sooooo......... we wait as my phone doesn't work anymore, I have to use Anthony's phone while it's in roaming in the damn mountains of Utah. We get a tow truck about 1 hour later, and get towed back to Salt Lake City to the previous owner's place. There was $220 which was actually a deal for 90+ miles of towing. As we planned it, Anthony was suppose to get home by Monday to make it to work. That wasn't going to happen unless we get a flight out of Salt Lake City asap. So...... I called Shane(ecoli) and Mara, and Joe(notnormal/gixxer) to look us up some plane tickets. As expected, prices were lots higher than they should be... ($600+++) and I knew at this point I was screwed. We stayed the night at a hotel near the airport and flew out the morning after(this morning). We flew to Phoenix, then to MPLS. We finally got back by 1:30 PM and I dunno. I'm screwed, the trip got screwed, and the car is a f'n DSM. God, I do not miss them, but now I'll have to get it shipped here and hopefully that doesn't put too big of a hole in my pocket. The whole trip already has, but I'm lucky if I break even with having a running car. I remember why I hate these cars so much now. Tool-less is never the way to go with a DSM 1200 miles away from home. The total money I was out for this pos is going to be in the $2000 range and I'm not one bit happy about it so I thought I'd just share.

Here's the damn towtruck taking me back to SLC

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...gontrailor.jpg

What a weekend. We went to Chicago,IL... Atlanta, GA... Houston, TX.... Salt Lake City, UT.... Phoenix, AZ.... then back here... all in 4.5 days.

Cliff's Notes:
Cher sold his SC300 and bought a DSM and got screwed like DSMs do to most of us.

Attached pic is us finally leaving the whole thing while we're waiting for our flight at the airport.