Jimmy-42's Blog

My son has a 2007 Nissan Xterra with about 14,000 miles on it.  The clutch went out in it (it's a manual transmission), and the Nisson dealer (Wood River) said that it's not covered under the new car warranty because the clutch is considered a 'wear and tear' item.  We got the paperwork out, and guess what, the clutch is listed along with things like hoses, belts, shocks, tires, etc. as being normal wear and tear items.  I've owned several manual transmission vehicles and have never had the clutch go out in one of them, some even had well over 100,000 miles on them.  I looked on the web, and found numerous complaints about clutches going out on late model Nissan's prematurely, and the manufacturer not standing behind them.

Has anyone else had a similar problem?  Does anyone know if clutches (on manual transmission vehicles) are specifically excluded from the new car warranties from other manufacturers?

I realize this isn't really a 'traffic' related post, but, put it here since it's about a vehicle.

Thanks

I live in Illinois, so this post refers to things I've seen in Illinois.  But, I'm assuming that this takes place in other states as well.

I was driving back into Illinois from Missouri the other day and noticed the 'Welcome to Illinois' sign (yeah, I know it's always been there).  What in particular I noticed was that at the bottom it had a line that said 'Rod Blagojevich, Governor'.  Now, every four years or so, we have to pay not only for new signs, but, the cost to take the old ones down and put the new ones up, not to mention the cost of disposing of the old signs.  We're not talking about just one or two signs, we're talking hundreds, if not thousands.  I also noticed when I went to the Secretary of State's office to renew my license plates, that the sign outside the building had 'Jesse White, Secretary of State' on it.  Inside there was a big picture of Jesse White and his name on the wall .  If that wasn't bad enough, many of the documents/forms also had his name on them.  Again, whenever a we get a new Secretary of State, we have to not only change signage, but also print all new forms and dispose of the old ones (which are perfectly good, but, have the wrong name on them).  My question is why do we need to put people's names on signs, documents, forms, etc. when those people are replaced periodically?  Seems like a big waste of tax payer money to me.

The reason that I was always told that pictogramme signs were used is to allow people who could not read, or speak the local language to understand the message conveyed by the sign.  All well and good as long as you can figure out what that symbol is supposed to represent.  But, recently, I've noticed some traffic signs that mixed both written and pictogrammes together.  For instance, I've seen signs at stop lights that say 'Left Turn Yield on (big green dot)'.  Another was 'Yield to (picture of person riding a bicycle)'.  Now if a person can read and understand the text portion of the sign, why do we need a picture included as well, why not write 'Green' or 'Bicyclists'?  Has anyone else seen any really stupidly designed signs?  If so, let us know about them.

Does anyone else get irritated when you look at gasoline prices that always seem to have the 0.9 cents tacked onto them?  There was a point in time when using fractions of a cent in gasoline prices made sense (like back when I was a kid mowing lawns, and I could fill the gallon gas can and get change back from a quarter).  But, with gas selling between $3.50 and $4.00 a gallon, fractions of a cent just don't make sense any more, unless you want to make your gasoline prices look a penny less than what they are.

I was watching the news last night (Fox 2) and more than once I heard that we should leave work early today, and maybe take the day off tomorrow because of the weather that had been forecast.  The forecast was only calling for 5 to 7 inches of snow.  Lets get real folks, 5 to 7 inches of snow is not a big deal.  Now, I know that some people don't know how to drive after two snowflakes have fallen, but, surely most of us can handle a little bit of snow. 

I work for a company that has offices throughout the country.  Can you imagine the reaction of someone in, say an office in Maine, that the St. Louis office was closed because of a few inches of snow?