Scamwagon

Now that I have had my Chevy Volt for a week, I had to take care of some high priority items in order to make it driveable.  The first one, of course, was to black out the rims and gold Chevy emblems. I used a product called Custom Wrap by Dupli-Color. It's the equivalent of a better-known product called Plasti-Dip.  You spray it on, and it peels or wipes off when you want it to (assuming you did it right).   Wheels  Started with some serious cleaning of the wheels.  I used Simple Green mixed with water, a sponge, and a lot of elbow grease. I chose to remove the wheels for application, but that is not expressly necessary.  In my case I didn't want to worry about over-spray onto the car or rotors, and felt I could do a better job of getting all the nooks and crannies.  I didn't mask anything at all; I just made sure to do lots of (4-5) coats on everything (including the tires) so it would peel nicely off.  The whole wheels job used 2 can

Is the Chevy Volt a parallel hybrid or serial?  Does the engine drive the wheels after the battery is depleted?  Or does it generate electricity to run the motors, like a range-extended EV?  There are tons of opinions about what class of hybrid the Chevy Volt fits into, and there is good reason for this. The truth of the matter is, it is all of these things and more. If I have lost you, don't feel bad. After reviewing multiple sources of information about how the 2nd gen Volt works, it seemed to be something I would never get my head around (and still haven't).  Let me try to break down what I know and give you some valuable references. Components of the Chevy Voltec Drive System There are 5 main components involved in the Chevy Voltec drive: 1.5L ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) Electric Motor/Generator A (EMG A) Electric Motor/Generator B (EMG B) Planetary Gear A (PGA) Planetary Gear B (PGB) How They Interact The Planetary gear PGA is connected to EMG A and t

Why I chose the Volkswagen "Buy Back" Last month, I sold my VW Golf TDI back to Volkswagen.  It was included in the emissions scandal, and I had the option to sell it back for more than I paid for it.  Even though I mostly loved the car, I had my reasons for choosing to sell it back. Here are some of the reasons which tipped the scales for me: There were quirks that drove me nuts (3 sec. delay in acceleration, always complaining about my key not being in range, bluetooth microphone not working for media audio, worthless voice recognition feature, many more) The mileage and age of the vehicle were getting to the point where things start getting expensive to maintain (90K).   The fuel mileage was averaging about 35 mpg, which is not hard to beat using even a NON-hybrid modern gas vehicle. To further this issue, a gallon of diesel comes at about a $.50 premium over gas, negating any fuel mileage advantages. Also furthering this issue, is the relative difficulty of find