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Success!

The Neon started last night! Swapped out both cams, and it finally started (though it was a bit hesitant to do so). Got the car apart quickly last night, then compared the cams. The old ones were a little more worn than the new ones, but it wasn't too bad. At least it worked. It's running a bit rough now, and apparently this morning it gave a check engine light for the O2 sensor. I drove it around last night for a bit though, and it felt fine. I was very happy. :-)

Unfortunately, I now found out that the coolant tank seems to have a leak, and that needs to be replaced. :-(

Neon tire poker purple monkey dishwasher!

The Neon is not playing nice. Didn't really get to work on it last night, but the night before, the intake cam was rotated and such, then everything was put back together. It all looked right. Even had compression in all cylinders. Did it start? Of course not. >:-O

To add to my torment, I had to buy a new tire last night after getting a nail in mine.

But some better news! I really haven't wanted to get in on the current poker craze, but a friend was having a poker night and I was invited, so I went. Only a $10 buy-in, and he was supplying the beer. ;-) Started with 8 people, and I got off to a bit of a slow start. Didn't do much for a while, but a couple good hands put me and another guy out in front of everyone else by a good margin. It eventually got down to the two of us playing. I lost a few hands, and it wasn't looking particularly good. I finally won one again to get a bit of cash back, then I won probably the biggest hand of the night. We decided to cash out then, and I took home $53 out of the $90 total. :-D I credit it all to beginner's luck, as this was the first time I've played, and I know nothing of poker strategy. :-P

Purple monkey dishwasher, of course, comes from this episode.

One tooth off - a story of frustration

The Neon was completely back together Monday night - great, I thought. Start it up...and nothing. No signs of life, other than the few lights on the dash, and the starter cranking away. A compression check shows that 3 of the cylinders have no compression...wonderful. Timing seemed the most likely suspect, but we were sure we did it right. This afternoon/evening the timing gear was torn down again (a wonderful process involving ever poor design Dodge could come up with), thinking maybe one of the gears was a tooth off. Unfortunately...it looked fine!

So...what's going on here? Late in the evening we finally decided to take off the valve cover and see if there was anything odd about the cams. Sure enough, that was the problem. As mentioned earlier, I ended up having to get a new (rebuilt) head, and it looks like it came from a 96-98 model car, as evidenced by the threaded plugs instead of freeze plugs, among other things. It came complete with cams and such, but what we failed to notice is that the "new" intake cam is keyed for the cam gear 180° opposite the old cam, and we were still using the old cam gears! Thanks Dodge!

Tomorrow we're going to try it with the cam rotated 180° or so, and that better move us in the right direction.

Finally, for your viewing pleasure, the shiny rebuilt head.

Greasy fingernails

Worked on the Neon Friday afternoon and Saturday morning/afternoon. The head, intake/exhaust manifolds, timing gear, ps pump, and a/c compressor are all back on, and the head is just a cam seal away from being sealed up. The local Dodge dealer didn't have the seal, so I have to go to a different dealer this afternoon. After that, it's mostly small stuff...throttle body, airbox, and the various hoses, wires, and connectors. It's nice to see it getting so close to completion.

Got hit in the shin with a thrown softball at my game Saturday night, and I have a nice bruise to show for it. >:-O

I blame Microsoft

...for my lack of sleep last night. Played more Forza, I think I'm up to level 27 or 28 now. I now have two GT-class cars, a Porsche and the Realtime NSX. One thing I've come to hate is the test track infield course. Three laps there makes for a long and frustrating race. There's one section of the course where I used the e-brake for three consecutive turns, and I think that's actually the fast way around. I hit first gear WAY too many times. In the context of a series, it takes about twice as long as any other race. It's about as annoying as doing 15 laps in a Vitz on the test ring in GT3, but for a totally different reason. ;-)

After I stayed up until 12:45 or so playing Forza, I decided to watch the show on MTV unveiling the Xbox 360. The show itself was pretty worthless, but at least info about it is out there. Processing power aside, there are a couple things I like about it. One, interchangeable face plates. I'm really not sure that I like the "white" look, so the fact that you can change that up is good. Two, wireless controllers. Fantastic. Three, it'll work as a Media Center Extender out of the box, and should be able to stream HD content from a Windows Media Center PC. I don't know how useful this will be to me in the future, but the idea of it is cool. ;-) It really better be backwards compatible with Xbox games though, because I don't want to have another console laying around.

Big update

So, since the last update....played a lot of Forza the other day - I think from about 4:30pm to 2am, with maybe an hour break for dinner. That put me up to about level 22 in single player, and now I'm up to 25 (haven't had the opportunity to play quite as much lately). Some notes:
- The fact that I can drop a 20B in my FD RX7 is awesome. Zero hp increase, but the torque curve got a LOT fatter.
- A big rear defuser and a proper front splitter look good on just about any reasonably fast car. I'm glad these can be added.
- My Peugeot 206 is still holding its own in Class D. I finished the Class D series last night, and won by quite a bit. The leaderboards seem to indicate that a CRX Si-R is the car to have, but I haven't checked that out yet.
- I don't like the unmodified pre-1975 races. The Stingray should be the car to have, as it is classed the highest, but I hate driving it. On courses like New York, it's hard to beat the Corvette's level of power.

One of these days I'll start playing online with the game, but as I'm all about completion %, I'm still doing that. Right now I'm almost 21% done, so I still have a ways to go in career mode.

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Went on vacation earlier this week - Teresa and I went to Six Flags Magic Mountain, leaving Sunday and returning Tuesday. Going to the park on a Monday meant it was pretty empty. We had to wait maybe an hour to ride X, but everything else, we rarely had to wait more than a couple turns to ride. The Ninja was closed, and that was disappointing, as it looks like a lot of fun going through the trees and all. It was closed the last time I went as well, and now I'm wondering if it's permanently closed, as the whole area seems somewhat vacated.

It's hard to say what my favorite ride is, as many are quite enjoyable. I've always liked the Batman ride for some reason, can't quite identify why. Goliath is good as well, with the huge drop at the beginning, and the circle that almost makes me black out. ;-) A surprise favorite, however, was Revolution. It's one of the oldest coasters in the park, and it just has one loop, but the surroundings make it seem so much cooler. While much of the coaster would have been exposed when it first opened, now trees have gone up around the coaster, and I think that really adds to the experience. You fly around all these sections, completely surrounded by trees, then you climb a hill, and all of the sudden you're above the trees - you can see the rest of the park, and further off in the distance - then you dive back down into the trees for more. Lots of fun.

Following the roller coasters, we ended the day with the water rides, so we wouldn't be walking around the park soaking wet. By the time we were done, we were both pretty thoroughly wet. Fortunately I was able to keep my phone and wallet somewhat dry. :-P

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Picked up the head for the Neon yesterday, and had a couple surprises. One, the rebuildable core they found for me was a complete head, and I expected just a bare head, where he would transfer over all of my stuff to this one. Two, it was a lot cheaper than I thought it would be, about $415 for everything. I think work on the car will start again tomorrow.

Hybrids and "saving money"

So what's the deal with the hybrid bandwagon. Someone sends me a link to this article, where people are paying over new MSRP for a used Toyota Prius, because they want the good mileage. Why, to save money? I really hope not. I put together this spreadsheet (Excel file) to see how much or how long someone would have to drive a Prius for it to really be cost-effective, over something like a Civic. A Civic HX hatchback gets 36/44mpg, for 2/3rds the price of a Prius. Driving 12,000 miles per year and paying $2.40/gallon, the Prius pays for itself in a mere 35 years. :-P Such a deal!

"But I drive way more than 12,000 miles per year" says the whiny hippie. Fine, change it to 20,000 miles per year, and you still need to drive it for 21 years. "But...gas is going to be $3/gallon this summer, everyone says so!" continues said hippie. Fine, $3/gallon with 20k/year and it takes 17 years. $4/gallong? 13 years. $5/gallon? 10 years, and that's still at 20,000 miles per year.

Now all that said, I'm not against hybrids, believe it or not. If companies can build two cars that are otherwise identical, and one gets 15mpg better mileage, that's great. Just don't charge $5k more for it.

>:-O

Senor Bob, and Neon costs rise

A happy Cinco de Mayo to all. I celebrated by going to Macayo's and filling up Senor Bob a couple times, along with a a baja chimi and a good number of chips. Good stuff. Between being full of chimichanga and margarita, and not getting much sleep this week, I think I fell asleep around 9pm, then woke up at 12:15 so I could go to bed. Hooray for 9+ hours of sleep on a weeknight. :-D

The cost of the Neon repair goes up once again - I took the head to a machine shop, and they determined that I needed a new head. The one we had was significantly warped, and it couldn't be machined any more than it already was. The guy at the shop found a rebuildable head for me, and is moving everything over from the old head (well, the stuff that was on it when I gave it go him). So I think I'm looking at about a $600 bill from the machine shop. :-( The car better last forever when I'm done with it. :-P

Forza is just ok. I really don't see how so many sites are rating it higher than GT4, other than the fact that it does a few things GT4 doesn't, so I suppose it's considered "innovative". I still haven't had time for a lot of the career mode, but one thing I've noticed, as was pointed out by someone else, is that you get so many cars early on that I don't really feel like I've earned them. I'm winning easy races in cheap cars, and often getting pretty decent cars in return.

I started out in a Peugeot 206, and left it completely stock for the first two series I won. For the next one, against some faster cars, I added a few mods that wouldn't change my class - minor suspension upgrade, small weight reduction, and an LSD (may have done something else, don't remember). Any change in power or tires would have changed my class, so I didn't feel like doing those. The car now behaves pretty much like I would expect it to, with those mods. Suspension feels a bit tighter, and I'm not getting nearly as much wheelspin around the course. I haven't messed with tire pressure yet, but I suppose if I have nothing better to do one day I may try that. :-P

Media spending

Or rather, spending money on media. The new Nine Inch Nails cd comes out today, both in CD and dualdisc (CD/DVD) format. I think I'm going to pick up the dualdisc, as it's only $2 more than the cd and...well...more stuff! Listening to it in 5.1 channel sound should be cool.

Forza Motorsport comes out this week as well, and I'll be buying that as well. Quite happy I received all those gift cards for my birthday now. :-D Sounds like stores will have it sometime between today and Thursday, but I'm not sure when. As such, I thought I'd get in a bit more GT4 last night before I try out Forza. I finished a number of manufacturer races, as those unlock the cars for arcade mode.

I started with the Mazda Roadster Cup races. Boring. Next was the Mitsubishi Mirage Cup, which was interesting for all the wrong reasons. I didn't feel like messing with the suspension or anything, so I just put a stage 2 turbo on there (the american way, more power!) and called it a day - didn't even add an LSD! The added 70-80hp or so through the front wheels made it..."interesting." To call a 250hp Mirage an understeering pig is an insult to pigs everywhere. The only thing the Mirage had going for it was that it was called "cyborg." The older Mirages in the race were clearly the model to have, as I think they finished 2-3-4 every time.

On to Daihatsu! I ran the Midget II race just because I happened to find a Midget for like $3k in the used car lot. Another $6k or so got me about 4 hp (almost 10% gain!) and some weight loss to take the win. :-P

What else...I bought a '96 240SX to win the Silvia Sisters race, that was kind of fun. After that I did the Audi races, starting with the TT 3.2 in the Tourist Trophy. Pretty fun car to drive! Stage 1 NA upgrade and the cheapest suspension seemed to make it fairly quick, especially after driving stuff like the Mirage. Did the A3 Cup after that, and that car wasn't nearly as fun. Understeer all over the place. The Audi races were really money killers. I think the A3 was $42k, plus I did maybe $10k in mods, and I won $6k for winning the 3 races. The TT series wasn't quite as bad. The car was $57k, but the prizes were $5k/race + $20k for the series ($35k total). Still, not a money-winning series to run. I don't even know if you can get the TT Touring Car without buying it. :-\

I started the 9 Hours at Tsukuba race last night, hoping it would finish up before I went to work this morning, but I started it a bit too late. 45 minutes remaining when I had to leave. :-(