Rev can cook.
He should cater the Challenge.
Rev can cook.
He should cater the Challenge.
All things considered, my couch is pretty comfortable.
Today had me questioning how wise I was to get in the car and drive to Myrtle B for the autocross. I've had two months of BAD back pain and almost anything involving movement, hurts. aLOT. The Fam has put up with me and I've been a major PITA.
I decided that if I got up there and it was too terrible, I wouldn't drive.... or one of the kids would drive me home... or I'd just do my best to not stay on my feet all day. After my third run, I was about in tears but I went and put on this stabilizing belt I bought and decided.... one more run. The belt made the difference but I was really not doing well on my times. Before my final run of the day, I was a second and a half off of Toymansson2 which reallllly wasn't making me happy since he was in MY car. He's telling me that I can beat him. My response? I don't think I can find another second and a half right now let alone more to win. Apparently he knew what to say because not only did I find that 1.5 seconds.. I beat him by another half a second. I think Kid3 deserves part of that first place trophy (I think Toyman was pretty proud of me by the yell after mine!)
Mike wrote: I bought Etherum at $9 a couple months ago. It's at $200 now. Sure, it was a tiny amount of throwaway money. The sort of money one could spend on lunch. I'm not going to retire on this, but that lunch money is now weekend getaway money.
I sold 55 ETH for around $900 not too long ago. Yes, I regret that. I guess the minor win is that it kept me from pulling out in this BTC dip we just had...
My MSD is still good, I think. It's wired to two coils in parallel, one double ended coil for the two leading plugs and a single coil for the trailing. I found the instructions for testing an MSD box online (real easy: power it up, touch the two pickup wires together, see if it makes sparks) so I threw plugs into the leading's wires and tested to see if it made sparks. Yup, big fat blue ones at both spark plugs, and noises like a MIG welder. Also big fat blue sparks from the middle of the trailing coil to the fender.
Sweet! All I need is three coils. I can't trust the leading one anymore, it's as old as the trailing is and that one failed. According to MSD, one of their boxes should fire "a whole row of coils" so I am thinking three Mopar coils from a Magnum 5.2/5.9 engine. Similar design to the ones used on 5.7 Vortecs but easier to wire up.
My Miata with it's bolt-on 1.6L made 92hp@6500rpm to the tires on a Mustang dyno. And power was still climbing when they shut it off at 6500rpm, so it might have made a little more. Considering it was a Mustang, which are notorious heartbreakers, I was expecting mid-80s. And it sounded goooood doing it. Never been outside the car and heard it at high-rpms under load.
Kelowna is one of the hardest cities in Canada to get a job in. Despite this and my lack of professional experience, I've landed a full-time gig at the local Mercedes dealer for the summer. I'm supposed to start sometime next week!
Got both Gjallarhorn and Sleeper Stimulant in Destiny this weekend. Hurray for homing explosives and bouncy piercing lasers!
Two items. Tiger Mom just finished her online classes for her bachelors degree. Awesome for her to be done schooling and awesome for the rest of us so she can pull her head out of the laptop and re-engage with the rest of the world for a bit (until the urge to get her masters bites 
)
The other isn't as big but kinda nice. A family friend has been staying in her "camper" in our driveway off and on as she comes into town to do some work for a few days and then leave for a few. Last night she told me that she felt guilty about not paying her own way so she wanted to pay rent on her bit of driveway (and some dinners/use of kitchen/bathroom/laundry/etc) so she gave me a check for the last three months combined. Yay for unexpected money!!
I jus cut my annual car insurance bill in half by switching to AAA insurance. It also doubled all my limits.
Duke wrote: Looking into the clutch slave failure on the Manic Miata, I see the PO already replaced the soft / coil piece between the hard line and the slave with a braided hose, and the clutch master looks pretty new also. Which is awesome, because there is almost no access to the firewall, or even above-to-below, on the car.
Well, I was sorta right. It must be an older style that just replaces the soft part of the line, because there is definitely a braided line at the top on the firewall, but down at the slave end the coiled hard line remains. Nowadays, it seems the cool kids just run a long braided line from the end of the first hard line all the way down to the slave.
Nonetheless, and despite my general bad luck with bleeding closed systems, I got the slave replaced and bled, and now the clutch works again.
Went to the Toledo ProSolo last weekend. Got the phone call Friday while I was in route that our FP car wasn't going to make it. My friend Rich offered up a ride in this:
Even with just a stock VVT motor, this thing was a ton of fun. It's still a work in progress and we had some issues on Saturday, but managed to patch things together enough to finally get runs in on Sunday.
Brewed the first beer of the new company today. Only 3 weeks until I get to drink it.
My main competition locally in BS (Golf R vs my Evo X) had to play catch up to beat me on Sunday instead of being ahead of me the whole day.
Never-mind that we both gave up over a second to the one 'real' BS car that competed, I made him work for it!
I found, and made a deal on, factory 15 inch nb miata wheels today. For 90 bucks.
More of a humble brag than a minor win but here's my afternoon encounter.
Stop at the corner Shell where I buy my idiot tax tickets and start having a conversation with a fellow customer. He's an interesting guy who has an unusual view of the world, and while I normally enjoy such things I was trying to break away and get home. The conversation continues as we go outside where we see an older woman (late 50s and in bad shape) limping across the lot with a bandage and plastic bag on her foot. I must have looked sympathetic because she says she has been all over town trying to find a place that will take her insurance to get a pair of crutches because she has a diabetic ulcer and needs to get the weight off her foot. Well I just so happen to have an old pair in my basement so I tell her to stay there until I get back. Zip home and grab them and return (probably 5 minutes). She is so happy and thankful it's honestly embarrassing. It's pretty clear she's been dealt a poor hand or made some bad decisions in life, if my tiny bit of charity helps her out even a little that's all I hope for.
As Masters Bill and Ted say "be excellent to one another dudes".
In reply to KyAllroad:
Your story makes me realize the next time I see a pair of cheap crutches in the thrift store I should see if someone would take them as a donation.. then again I haven't been in a thrift store for a long while.
Dusterbd13 wrote: I found, and made a deal on, factory 15 inch nb miata wheels today. For 90 bucks.
Congrats! I was happy I picked up a set of 16" NB wheels at the Carlisle Import and Performance show for $80, one of the wheels is a different color though.
I managed to successfully resserect one of my boat lift motors that was submerged in sality water last year during hurricane Matthew. Instead of following the advice of the hive, I did not rinse it out with fresh water because after letting it dry out for a week it seemed to work fine. Fast forward the winter and I find that the motor is seized up. Instead of spending $200 or so plus shipping for a new motor, I disassembled, cleaned, lubed, painted and installed a new starting capacitor and pulley. Put it back on the lift yesterday and the boat is no longer stuck high and dry. Solved for something like $25 in parts and a handfull of hours of work. The real win is that I managed to get it off and back on without dropping a single thing into the water.
Edit: wrong thread, go to the minor rants thread to see the rant.
I won employee of the year!*
*For employees of roughly my grade level, in my region - national recognition, though, which is nice
I just tripled the value of my Volvo!
Passed emissions It hasn't been setting the cam phaser fault but it has been setting a catalyst inefficiency fault more often than not. Today I noticed that all monitors had run except for catalyst, which was still incomplete. Ohio allows you one incomplete monitor, so I hightailed it to the test center and got my papers.
Now the car is good until 2020.
The miata is fixed. 2 hours, 53 bucks.
Which is good because I need it for work tomorrow since the company car is dead.
Knurled wrote: I just tripled the value of my Volvo! Passed emissions
Wait, theres parts of ohio that require emissions testing? Guess my minor win is i dont live in those parts!
A few months ago my son and I pulled apart the dash in the old Crown Vic and manually moved the blend door actuator from heat to cool since it tends to get stuck.
This is the first summer that I can recall commuting to work in a car that has A/C and cruise. It's pretty nice.
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