2004 Toyota Camry Le Sedan 4-door 2.4l - 64,500 Miles on 2040-cars

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24 Hours of Le Mans live update part two

We tasked surfing journalist Rory Parker to watch this year's live stream of the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans. What follows is an experiment to experience the world's greatest endurance race from the perspective of a motorsports novice. Parker lives in Hawaii and can hold his breath longer than he can go without swearing. For Part One, click here. Or you can skip ahead to Part Three here. I write about surfing for a living. If you can call it a living. Basically means I spend my days fucking around and my wife pays for everything. Because she's got a real job that pays well. Brings home the bacon. Very progressive arrangement. Super twenty first century. I run a surf website, beachgrit.com, with two other guys. It's a strange gig. More or less uncensored. Kind of popular. Very good at alienating advertisers. My behavior has cost us a few bucks. I'm terrible at self-censorship. Know there's a line out there, no idea where it lies. I still don't understand any of the technical side. Might as well be astrophysics or something. For contests I do long rambling write ups. They rarely make much sense. Mainly just talk about my life, whatever random thoughts pop into my head. "Can you do something similar for Le Mans?" "Sure, but I know absolutely fuck-all about racing." "That's okay. Just write what you want." "Will do. But you're gonna need to edit my stuff. Probably censor it heavily." So here I am. I spent the last week trying to learn all I can about the sport of endurance racing. But there's only so much you can jam in your head. And I still don't understand any of the technical side. Might as well be astrophysics or something. While I rambled things were happening. Tracy Krohn spun into the gravel on the Forza chicane. #89 is out of the race after an accident I missed. Pegasus racing hit the wall on the Porsche curves. Bashed up front end, in the garage getting fixed. Toyota and Porsche are swapping back and forth in the front three. Ford back in the lead in GTE Pro. #91 Porsche took a stone through the radiator, down two laps. Not good. The wife and I are one of those weird childless couples that spend way too much time caring for the needs of their pet. French bulldog, Mr Eugene Victor Debs. Great little guy. Spent the last four years training him to be obedient and friendly. Nice thing about dogs, when you're sick of dealing with them you can just lock 'em in another room for a few hours. You don't need to worry about paying for college.

Toyota goofs again in latest Mirai fuel cell ad

In the "gotcha" culture engendered by social media and viral campaigns, it looks like Toyota got, well, got. The Japanese automaker is starting a campaign for its Mirai fuel-cell vehicle, and included a line about the fact that the car "breathes in air." Of course, all light-duty vehicles do that, as Jalopnik's Opposite Lock happily pointed out. Jalopnik added that even electric vehicles have an air intake for their heat exchangers. Oops. It looks like Toyota doesn't think this message is wrong, since the image is still up on the company's Google+ page. The Mirai can still lay claim to something that may impress the layman in that it emits only water vapor from its tailpipe. It's a pitch Toyota started making to Americans last November when the company said it would start Mirai sales this year in California. Toyota's charging an MSRP of $57,500 for those looking to buy the car outright or a three-year lease rate of $499 a month for 36 months (with $3,649 due at signing) for those to want to lease the car. Toyota also said in January that it would ramp up Mirai production to about 2,000 vehicles in 2016 from about 700 this year, as it expands distribution into Europe and the US. In the US, refueling the hydrogen will be free. Just like the chemistry lesson from Opposite Lock. Related Videos:

How to fix a $4,000 hybrid battery problem with vinegar and baking soda

This is one of those 'Don't try this at home if you don't know what you're doing' DIY tales. Two weeks after imgur user "scoodidabop" bought a used Toyota Camry Hybrid with no warranty, he got the Christmas Tree dash display with warnings like "Check VSC System," "Check Hybrid System," and the Check Engine light. After some Internet sleuthing he figured it could be a faulty brake actuator, assuming the hybrid system warning was a false alarm. But it wasn't the actuator, it was the battery, a Toyota dealer telling him that his battery had "gone bad," and he'd need $4,457 to replace it. Then he had a brainstorm: it could be one of the cells that's gone bad, not the whole battery. Scoodidabop has some experience as an electrician, so he figured he could test it and replace any bad cells for about $45 apiece. He removed the battery unit from the trunk and over the course of two hours tested all 68 cells four times. He found nothing wrong. So he devised another type of test and checked every cell again. He couldn't find a problem with any of them. Turns out the problem wasn't in the cells, but with the dirty and corroded copper connectors at the ends of the high-voltage cables. He pulled the 34 connectors and their steel nuts, soaked them in vinegar, gave them a light steel wool scrub, soaked them in baking soda and water to counteract the vinegar, applied an anticorrosive and reinstalled them. That took an hour. When he replaced the battery, the warning lights had all gone out and the battery worked perfectly. Skill level: experience. Cost: less than $10. Perhaps it's time for hybrids to be able to test their own cells individually. Dealers, too.