Tarkblog

In keeping with tradition of using the Beanblog for story ideas, I also recently had stereo troubles.

The GTO comes with a Blaupunkt stereo system, which is supposedly a very nice system - the kind you’ll typically find in Mercedes, Beamers, etc. The sound quality is very nice, and it’s got a 6 disk changer in the dash which is great, though I’m not much of a CD listener. I really liked the XM I had in the Grand Prix, but I’m too lazy to get an aftermarket system for the car (and yes, I know all about the Roady, the SkyFi, and the MyFi).

Anyway, a few weeks I was listening to one of my CDs when I hit the wrong button. See, the controls for the stereo are flipped from where you would expect them to be - because the car is manufactured in Australia (as a Holden Monaro). It’s easy to hit the wrong button.

The button I happened to hit was “Random”, which does exactly what you would think. However, taking the player back OUT of random was no easy task. I tried all of the buttons, to no avail. I even powered the stereo off and back on, but it stayed in random mode. Attempting to select a different CD or another track only cause the player to jump to a random CD and/or track. Frustrated, I went back to the stereo.

Then a few days ago, after having forgotten about all of this, I attempted to listen to my CDs again. Same deal. When I got to my destination, I popped the book out of the glove box to see if it had advice on how to turn random mode off. It did:

“Press the RANDOM button again to disable random play mode”.

This was not true. Pressing the RANDOM button again only caused the cd player to jump to a random track and start playing.

Frustrated again, I just decided to pull all of my CDs out. And of course, after doing that, the CD player is no longer in random mode. Eureeka!

——

In somewhat related news, I have run into a couple of interesting computer glitches with this car. One time on the way home from work, while sitting at a red light, the computer started dinging at me. The dinging in this car is interesting - it’s more like a happy little midi file that plays instead of some monotones.

Anyway, I look down and the display says “Coolant Temperature Too High”. I look over at the coolant temperature gauge and it’s right in the middle of the semi-circle - where it’s supposed to be. Then, all of a sudden, the needle takes off and jumps up into the red zone. It jumped there much faster than it realistically should have. There was nobody else around at this light, so I turned the car off for a second, then fired it back up. Everything was normal. Just to be safe, I went back to work and checked the car out in the parking lot. Everything was just fine. I drove home after that with no problems.

This same phenomenon happened to me again a few months later. I haven’t seen it since.

One other time, also when leaving work, I was at the stop sign getting ready to turn out of our drive, when I looked down and noticed my tachometer was claiming I was pulling 4000 rpm. I was, however, sitting still, and the engine was most definitely at idle. I continued watching, and the needle kept jumping all over, then finally pegged at the redline. The car made some dings to tell me it was time to shift. Again, I turned the car off then back on, and all was normal again.

I wonder if those Aussies use Microsoft Windows to power their control modules?

This entry was posted on Friday, May 27th, 2005 at 8:55 am and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.