So someone was supposed to buy the Mazda6 today. Sunday I decided to go drive it a bit to get the rust off the brakes and whatnot. Went to the coffee table where I set the key last Wednesday and... not there. Wife had some friends over the weekend and they spent the weekend partying and moving furniture around and somehow in the middle of that the key went bye-bye. We spent two full days turning the house upside down looking for it to no avail so I caved and called a mobile locksmith. $120 later I have a new key that... sorta works. Have to jiggle it sometimes. Cool. I also checked the mail and found a recall notice for the driver airbag. Didn’t feel super great about selling a car knowingly with a claymore in the steering wheel, plus the legal grey area of doing so, so I scheduled a time at the local Mazda dealership which will be 7:30 this Friday, so the sale is put off until after then.
Then yesterday the wife called me and said the IS300s fucking key snapped, which is fun. So now I ordered some more keys so I can clone it and hope the RFID tags in them are the proper fucking ones to actually start the car, unlike the (free) keys I already had cut that have the wrong RFID tag so they’re useless for anything other than opening the door.
I have the money. I can spend it. I’m just trying to fucking be frugal and I’ve been DYING to buy a special lens adapter for my camera that will make my vintage lens collection absolutely come to life (speedbooster/lens turbo) but have not wanted to drop the $160 necessary. Then all this bullshit happens and I end up spending $180 or so on this fuckery.
I also ordered a knockoff Techstream cable in the hopes it will give me extra options for key programming and to disable the auto-tilt steering column bullshit in the LS400. My column motors are intermittent and I’d rather not they stop working altogether with the wheel in the full up position where it’s useless to me. I called the local Toyota dealership and they wanted $60. I called the local Lexus dealership and they told me the very well-documented process by Lexus to accomplish this was impossible and they’d have to unplug the motors. Fucking lol. So for $30 I ordered a knockoff techstream cable and very-definitely pirated software because fuck Lexus for making this require a dealership visit when the 1st gen LS400 had a DEDICATED FUCKING BUTTON to disable it and the LS430 lets you do it through the onboard menus.
Assholes.
On the plus side the Mazda6 drives great. Easily the best car in its class, driving-wise. Changes direction with a quickness and the engine makes a fantastic noise.
