Guinness

What Did You Do To Your Smart Today?

5,057 posts in this topic

You could have fixed that one yourself in less than 5 mins. All you needed was a 13mm and 17mm wrench and a screwdriver. Much quicker than the dealer who is not very competent :D

Evilution.

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We drove the green car to Nanaimo and then Victoria and back. Got the km up to 179,260...Washed the car and dried it off. It was filthy with salty mud. Poor car.

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I noticed that Baby's antlers were pressing against the 'awnings' I had put over the window so we did a major alteration on the antler mount. Put them back on the car last night so now we can be Rudolph without ruining the 'awnings'. :rolleyes: Ish.

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I finally hit 18,000 km in the BRABUS Canada 1 - Snowball - though there is nary a cold snowball in sight around these parts. I've done 1000 km in the past 2 months in Snowball!

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Actually yesterday, but I put the antlers and nose on my car as we were heading to BIL's place in Ontario. He has four kids, and Xmas is for kids so it's fun to do. Also put the grille blockers in (upper [RS Parts] grille and cowl intake) for the season. Tomorrow I'll measure and cut a new lower grille blocker -- I installed mesh on my nose this summer so I can't just slide the rad blocker in place. Also have to isolate a clunk coming from underneath (likely a loose belly pan, again) and track down the rub points in my front arches.

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I got Snowball back from the dealer today, with the rear top tension adjusted to snug the back of the roof tightly against the B pillar and roof bars. So it doesn't leak anymore! Beautiful cold, sunny day here, the drive back from Victoria was nice.The green smart hit 180,000 km on the way down to Victoria. Good little car!

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That's a real snowball! I was just speaking with my friend in Franconia (near Karlstadt) and he says it's snowing again!!

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Brigitte was taking the smart for the night, to her brother's house about 80 Km away in L'Orignal, ON, so I cleaned the outside glass and headlamp and tail lamp lenses, then checked the tires. That's when it hit me that the tire installer said he was putting the Nokians at 35 psi and I could adjust them later when I got home and mounted the wheels on the car. No wonder the car has felt so resoundingly rough the last few weeks! :D Dropped the rears to 30.5 and the fronts to 29.0 for now, and will try it for a week. But the Hakka side walls are quite rigid already so they might just be happy a bit lower.

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Finally got around to putting my new deck and bluetooth in. Found a nice little opening to put the cable for the mic into on the side of the centre column and mounted it on the bottom, right-hand side of the speedo housing, and have put the USB port into the drawer underneath. Fascia from Nexxia looks pretty good, was a little finicky but all in all looks pretty smooth and just need to match the deck colours now to the exterior colour and interior lights to make it look even fancier :)

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technically last friday, but got a new glow plug and installed it , as well as a new air filter and got another oil change done. Was very happy that I did not have the dificulties that some other memebers have had. Car now has 108333 km (got it 9 months ago with apporx 64,000) so far this is the only part that has failed, car still started well on the other two plugs but ran a little rough for the first minute or so. I also cleaned the EGR for the third time (in place) the light came back on two days later, so it looks like in the spring I will have to take it off and do a though cleaning or replace it with a new valve (the car has not gone into limp mode because of this for since the last time I cleaned it 20,000 km ago, and with the x-guage installed I can clear the code if it does happen at least). So far the little car is doing great. Today I drove it to work despite a slight snowfall, worked great, and even went around an SUV that had spun on an uphill turn, powered by with no problem despite the slippery road (yes the traction control kicked in, but the car just kept going) made my day, and probably didn't make the SUV driver very happy. My smart seems to be very happy again.Hopefully no other items besides an oil change again before spring.

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Brigitte was taking the smart for the night, to her brother's house about 80 Km away in L'Orignal, ON, so I cleaned the outside glass and headlamp and tail lamp lenses, then checked the tires. That's when it hit me that the tire installer said he was putting the Nokians at 35 psi and I could adjust them later when I got home and mounted the wheels on the car. No wonder the car has felt so resoundingly rough the last few weeks! :D Dropped the rears to 30.5 and the fronts to 29.0 for now, and will try it for a week. But the Hakka side walls are quite rigid already so they might just be happy a bit lower.

Yep. In fact, tires with harder sidewalls will give excellent traction in the 27-29 range. At least that is my experience with the "Ultra-High Performance" Hankook 4-season tires.

Bil :senil:

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Brigitte was taking the smart for the night, to her brother's house about 80 Km away in L'Orignal, ON, so I cleaned the outside glass and headlamp and tail lamp lenses, then checked the tires. That's when it hit me that the tire installer said he was putting the Nokians at 35 psi and I could adjust them later when I got home and mounted the wheels on the car. No wonder the car has felt so resoundingly rough the last few weeks! :D Dropped the rears to 30.5 and the fronts to 29.0 for now, and will try it for a week. But the Hakka side walls are quite rigid already so they might just be happy a bit lower.

With my Hakka's, I usually run them at 28.

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Today got a new 451 cup holder for my Marty (450) and works beautifully, tried it out today with two Tim Hortons coffee's :DBrit and Marty Car :D

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With my Hakka's, I usually run them at 28.

They are definitely better at the settings I used, so I'll drop them to 28/28 this weekend and try that for a bit.

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I drove Snowball to Victoria in the rain for a CsC meeting. It has been used so infrequently recently that the tires were flat spotted and it took 5 km for those to become curved again! 18,500 km

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We just treated Pepper (our smart) to new rear winter tires.We bought 4 used Conti Winter Contact with rims for $500 from the dealer when we purchased Pepper in November. Unfortunately the rear winters wore a lot faster than the front and only lasted about 7000km before they reached 4mm and we had to swap them out. We concluded that carrying a 32in tube TV home from Winnipeg (375km) probably had something to do with it :PWe replaced the winter contact with two Blizzak WS 60 for $386 installed, Purchased and installed at Kaltire. The fronts are at 8mm and should last the rest of the season at the very least. We also calculated out last months mileage and found we have been getting about 4.5l/100km on average. Which is respectable though we were hoping for a "little" better from the smart. We've just started using the "Power Service" winter treatment sold at cdn tire. Hopefully that'll help those numbers a little bit :)Chris

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Cautionary Note.I did a similar thing when my Conti rears wore out and bought 2 Blizzaks for the rear keeping the Contis on the front.I then had trouble in sweeping left turns where the ESP would engage and grab the right brake hard on thus swerving me to the outside concrete.This was repeatable at will.Took the car to the dealer and after 2 days of testing he put new wheels and tires on and the problem went away. The solution was to buy 2 new Blizzak front tires to match. No problems since but MB rates come expensive for unusual diagnostic work.If you have the same problem please post to advise others and be prepared to save money by buying your tires to match. The Samart ESP seems sensitive to mixed tires.Good luck2seat

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Cautionary Note.I did a similar thing when my Conti rears wore out and bought 2 Blizzaks for the rear keeping the Contis on the front.I then had trouble in sweeping left turns where the ESP would engage and grab the right brake hard on thus swerving me to the outside concrete.This was repeatable at will.Took the car to the dealer and after 2 days of testing he put new wheels and tires on and the problem went away. The solution was to buy 2 new Blizzak front tires to match. No problems since but MB rates come expensive for unusual diagnostic work.If you have the same problem please post to advise others and be prepared to save money by buying your tires to match. The Samart ESP seems sensitive to mixed tires.Good luck2seat

I've only noticed this happening once or twice so far. Not enough to worry about "yet". Thanks for letting me know though. If it does become a problem I'll swap out the tires to new ones. :)Chris

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Today is oil change day. It's a B-service, but I usually spread my workload over a few days. So today it's oil and filter, Monday will be cleaning the K&N air filter and after that I'll get to the less-critical items on the B list.Yesterday while on my usual longish drive at 70-100 Km/h (back roads), I noticed a new noise. I can always hear some intake noise, possibly the turbo or flow through the IC pipes -- the hiss becomes prominent starting around 1800 rpm. I always figured it was a normal noise, but something I only ever hear in winter because of the roof. Yesterday I noticed that at a very specific set of conditions, the noise changed to a staccato sound. I can replicate it at will. In 6th gear -- only in 6th -- at 1800 rpm and 85-99 LOD that intake hiss sounds like it's sputtering. It disappears and sounds normal by 2000 rpm. I can't get it to make the noise in any other gear at the same conditions (load, rpm, etc.). I suspected the WG, but ScanGauge tells me I'm making full boost and HP in every gear.

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How interesting!I only drove Snowball for the third time in three weeks, in the rain to Nanaimo. Now that it doesn't leak, it was great! Even on this Island full of smarts, the bright white car attracts a lot of attention, which to me is weird. Temperature was plus 7.

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It's true mike whenever we go to the island we see SO many Smarts.Wish ours was all white though.Blacks cool but not in the summer.

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I trashed the incandescent interior lights and replaced them with a bunch of blue LED lights from C-T. Next payday i will buy some more for the floor and the dark spots like the package tray and the glove box.Many folk have said they liked the lights in passing. They look so cool when the windows are covered with frost!Eventually i am going to add a whole system of white LED's to the plastic trim around the Tridon to go for that Close Encounters like effect. That system is going to be stupid bright with over 200-15000 mcd LED's installed!This summer i hope to have them done. Then just to be well into Overkill i have a whole set of Luxon White,Red,Green & Blue power LED's to create a color shifting light wash for when i am parked!

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This past weekend:Added 20mm spacers to front, stock, winter alloys.Added 15mm spacers to rear, stock, winter alloys.Feels a lot more planted with the spacers in there, and they don't rub anywhere.Also, since I bought an aftermarket front grille, modified the stock grille for winter only use. Makes a huge difference in the heat on the highway. And even driving 120 around the freezing temp, the water temp does not go over 84 deg. (according to scan gauge) Does not look pretty from the back, but it looks not too bad from the front, and works. Just used a plastic epoxy to glue some ABS plastic on from the backside. Ground off the excess and epoxied again.post-3521-1295563297_thumb.jpgpost-3521-1295563316_thumb.jpg

Edited by MightyMouseTech

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