Things have been very quiet on the DSM front, and for good reason. I fought the aforementioned "line of high VE" problem for a full year, only resolving it in October of last year. But I didn't have time to celebrate because that cleared the way for a new problem: cycling between 8% lean, normal, and 30% rich. It would switch modes vaguely every half hour, but closed loop correction would "hide" all but the last 10% of the rich condition so I had a hell of a time identifying the problem and logging it. I was bringing my laptop on every single drive, no matter how short, and still not getting any useful logs. I thought I had a smoking gun when, on a trip to Detroit, it started to go beyond 25% rich and I restarted the ECU. When it came back up, AFR was nominal again. Aha! It must be software, and I was logging the whole time. But thorough review of the data returned no useful info. I once again parked the Eclipse, intending to buy a new ECU eventually.

Then I realized that I've been a bit delinquent on my oil changes. And, uh, it was bad. Like really bad.

• Van: 13,950, 2 years 4 months
• AZ-1: 5,050, 1 year 7 months
• MR-2: >6,500, >1 year 3 months (not since I bought it)
• Eclipse: 6,100, 2 years 7 months
• Jimny: 4,600, 1 year 10 months (not since I bought it)
• Cappuccino: >1000, >5 months (not since I bought it)

Two Mondays ago the temperature jumped 45 degrees, so I left work early, threw on some shorts, and started spilling oil everywhere.

It took me 3.5 hours to do all 6 oil changes, and the DSM put up by far the biggest fight. I couldn't get my filter socket onto the filter because the downpipe was in the way. The strap wrench couldn't get a grip. I ended up having to drop the exhaust to get to the filter, and then it was stuck on there so tightly that it broke my filter socket. It bent all of the faces outward so that the socket could spin freely over the end of the filter. I did manage to get it off eventually, but the Eclipse was the second car I did, so it made things much less pleasant for the other four cars. Now I have a billet socket on the way...

But while I was under the hood, I saw that one of the vacuum caps on the throttle body was missing. I inspected the three remaining caps and they all had split from top to bottom. They were only 2 years and 6000 miles old. I've driven probably 300 miles since then and haven't had this AFR issue since, so I guess that solved it, but I have no idea how a speed density setup would:
1. Be so impacted by a vacuum leak
2. Cycle between 3 different modes at somewhat regular intervals

But anyway, now I get to start over on the tuning for a fourth time but at least now it's being consistent and predictable. And I should be more excited, but it's on to the next problem now.

Eclipse has been making drivetrain bearing noises for a bit now. Since last year, certainly, but I haven't driven it much in the interim. When I did the oil, I also checked all of the other fluids. I was worried that it might have been my fancy new gearbox, the rare 2gb transfer case, or the rear diff that needs new halfshafts, but all had plenty of fluid and that fluid looked brand new. And after that 300 mile victory trip to Cincinnati, I think it's a failing front passenger wheel bearing AND a failing driver front halfshaft support bearing. The plan is to buy parts for both and do the wheel bearing myself. Someone else can fool with the support bearing because I hate that thing.

Hopefully it’s just the wheel bearing noise resonating thru everything.