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A productive weekend

Seemingly the entire weekend was spent on car-related stuff, and lots got done. Clint and Brad came over on Saturday, and the previous statement about spring compressors held true to an even greater extent.

First up was the task of putting the stock shocks, springs, intake, and exhaust manifold back on the car. Intake and manifold were pretty straightforward, and removal of each shock/spring takes about 4 minutes. Then the spring compressor fun began.

Basically, we couldn't compress the stock spring without the compressors slipping to one side, and just trying to compress the first one took a solid hour. Final solution? Buy another set of spring compressors, and just put so many of them on that they can't slip enough to create a problem! :-P After that, everything went pretty smoothly.

So now I have the car back at stock ride height, and man, it's not fun at all any more. Turn-in is slow, it rolls all over the place, and ride height feels like that of a small SUV. :-\

After that, we attempted to put my new camber plates in the Evo. The instructions were entirely in Japanese, so they were of no use. The stock strut assembly came out easily, and the whole process went pretty smoothly, except for a couple little spacers that seem to have a place to go.

So both plates go in, I shove the struts all the way in to max out the camber, tighten things up, and go for a test drive.

"Clunk clunk clunk"

Fantastic, it's making noise, and I'm running out of time. I had to leave by 5:20 or so to make it to a softball tournament, and the car work isn't complete.

Fortunately Brad and Clint come through, and offer to stick around and fix it for me. As it turns out, those spacers were needed underneath the top mounting bolt, as otherwise the bolt runs out of threads before it's all the way down. I drove the car when I came home, and it felt great. Now off for an alignment this week, wait for my wheels and tires to come in this week, and I'll be ready for this Saturday's autocross.

Sunday I spent plenty of time cleaning up the Integra parts I removed so they can go up for sale, and cleaning up the garage in general from the previous day's activities. Evan also came over to put a new fuel filter in his Camaro, which made the garage smell all kinds of fumey.

Finally, I went to two different Costcos today, including one I had never been to before (near Val Vista and the 202). :-D

Broken Integra (holiday weekend pt 2)

A short car failure story. Wednesday afternoon the screw holding in my distributor rotor thought it had enough, and decided to remove itself from the system. The rotor thought this was fantastic, and celebrated by tearing up the distributor cap while mauling itself in the process. Glorious. Get my new cap and rotor on Friday, still doesn't work. New complete distributor is on its way from "distributor king" on ebay. Meanwhile I'm driving my parent's 740 wagon, in all of its boxy turbo wagon goodness. At the very least, the car fits me well. Lots of steering wheel/leg clearance, I have at least a couple inches of headroom, and the headrests are sized well for someone my size. It even fits in the garage!

This made Sunday's autocross interesting, as now we had no car to drive. Fortunately, Brad was nice enough to let us co-drive his godaddy.com Miata, complete with slick orange and green stripes. Teresa and I were both pretty pleased with our results, her with one of her best pax scores since the GS Neon, and I scored higher than I have in a good number of events now. Driving the right car for the class has its benefits I suppose. ;-)

So much emptiness

The site has been blank for weeks now, great. Fortunately, I haven't done much:

- Went to New Jersey for vacation. Spent some time on the beach, ate unhealthy food, played enough miniature golf to get me through the year.

- Got my first-ever second place autox trophy. Thanks Clint! :-P

- Had probably my best ever Addams Family pinball game, at about 412 million points. The machine was almost fully-functional, which was pretty nice. I had at least a couple multiballs, getting the jackpot or double jackpot each time. Two or three extra balls helped out the score quite a bit as well. Towards the end I finally got the "Tour the Mansion" award, which is awarded after you've gone through all of the game modes. You get 50M points, in addition to a few other things. That was great.

- We have a cat now, and have had him for a couple weeks, but still no name. Current possibilities are Samba (after the monkey in Samba de Amigo, greatest Dreamcast game ever), Pi (after the greatest number ever), or Hobbes (after the tiger in the greatest comic strip ever).

- Had my first mountain bike crash just over a week ago, right over the handlebars. Knocked the wind out of me, scraped up my knee pretty good, and my right hand is still in pain. The urgent care doctor initially said it was broken, but I went to a hand doctor that said it wasn't, so that's good I suppose. Still, this isn't good for my golf game.

- 360voice.com lets your Xbox 360 tell everyone what you've been up to. Mine is like most others, in that it seems a lot like a dog - really happy when you play with it, sad and whiny when you ignore it. At least it posts every day, more than I can say about myself to be sure. It also seems to be good motivation to get some achievements, as I've increased my score a good amount lately.

Related to video games, I picked up Uno on Live Arcade last week, and it provided a level of fun commensurate with the price. Single player seems mostly worthless, but partner Uno can be pretty fun provided the other people in your game actually talk. You're paired up with the person sitting across from you, and if either of you goes out, you both get the win. Since Skip/Draw Two/Draw Four cards only punish the person next two you, you can get into good circles of making the other team constantly draw cards. If nothing else, having a teammate requires some amount of talking, and that prevents games where you just sit there with three other strangers and nobody talks (and if you're going to do that, you may as well just play against a non-human).

I also finished up the GRAW single player campaign at normal difficulty, that was pretty fun. After a few levels I realized I had to use the night vision goggles way too much, and that's when I discovered the brightness level in the game was set to zero. :-P Not so good on an LCD RPTV! Cranked that up to 5 out of 6 and I could finally see things. It was nice to get good use out of a $60 game. I might try to stretch it out a bit more and play some levels on hard for a few more achievements.

So speaking of $60 games, the 360 might be what gets me to try gamefly.com. More games are coming out that I want to try, but I don't feel like they're worth $60 to me yet, and prices haven't really come down at all in the eight months or so that the system has been out. Granted some have been less (PGR3, Table Tennis), but it's still feels like a big increase over the $40 and $50 games I was accustomed to with the PS2/Xbox. So for $15/month I could rent games as they become available, and not deal with Blockbuster (I'm doubting here that Blockbuster has changed at all in the last year or so since I dealt with them). That works out to 4 games a year - so what am I better off having? Four games that I can keep, or as many as I can go through in a year, but keeping none?

Honestly, I'd still have to buy some to keep. :-P Forza 2, Halo 3, maybe a couple others that I rent and really enjoy. But I'd really like to try stuff like MotoGP 06, the new LOTR game, Gears of War, etc. I think the stream of games due out is good enough to support using something like Gamefly, provided they have enough copies of the games to keep me playing something.

On to autocrossing, a proposal was made to move the 3-series BMWs and the IS300 out of DSP for 2007. As great as this initially looks to me on paper, it would be both a blessing and a curse. Obviously if this were to pass, I should have a car that's potentially a top competitor. Perhaps not the first year, but at least by 2008 the pax factor should be adjusted, so even if I didn't compete nationally I would still see a local benefit with no changes to the car. Still, if I have a car with potential to be competitive, I should really prep it a lot closer to the limit of the rules. And there's Part 1 of the curse. Just getting "closer" to the limit would mean an LSD, Hondata, exhaust, and dyno tuning. There's $2500 right off the bat if I want to use decent parts, and using cheap stuff doesn't save all that much. To go beyond that requires work that doesn't help the issue of street legality, like ITBs and a big header that eliminates the cat (figure $3k for the pair).

So I could have a car that's potentially competitive. I can take over $5k and get it a lot closer to fully prepared, or I can take that same $5k plus any money I'd get from selling the car, and buy something else. That's where Part 2 of the curse comes in - even for the $11k or so that we're talking about, I can't get a car that's as fast, as fun to drive, and as competitive in its class as my Integra. So I'm stuck with it (starting my 9th year with the car this month).

Of course, if the proposal gets turned down, my car remains uncompetitive, there's no reason to spend money on it, and getting a different car that's more competitive seems like a worthwhile venture. But whatever. I still think it should pass, I guess. :-P

Oil Oil Everywhere

But specifically, into a little container and sent off to Blackstone Labs a few weeks ago for an oil analysis. Results came back pretty good...I don't know if I should be surprised or not. ;-)

Jury duty and such

Got stuck with Jury Duty on Friday, but it wasn't bad at all. It was for county court, there was only one trial, and the defendant didn't show up so we all got to go home after a few hours. :-P

That said, I "finished" up the work on my car Friday afternoon, with "finished" in quotes because I really didn't complete all the work I intended to complete. Three of the hoses were just not accessible with the intake manifold there, and I wasn't going to take it off to replace them. Not at the rate I work anyway, when I don't really know what I'm going to do. Besides, I always secretly hope that the first time the IM comes off, ITBs are going back on in its place, and I don't have those right now. :-D Anyway, at least I'm driving my car again instead of the Neon, and maybe I'll try to address the stalling problem in that car again.

Got some good time in on Guitar Hero this weekend, and scores are starting to improve. On medium difficulty, I have five stars on every regular song except Coyboys From Hell (I have five on most bonus tracks, but I've only played each of them once). On hard difficulty...well it's a little harder. :-P I've unlocked the final set of songs, but they're just too much for me at the moment, so I'm going back and replaying the earlier songs. I have five stars on the first 7 or 8 tracks, plus a couple others. I beat a few songs on expert, but that's still way beyond me in general.

The azsolo2.com update is closer to being done - I believe all of the pages are complete, now I just have to make some minor changes, update it for 2006, and review the whole thing.

Hose-tastic

Point of interest number one, the water hose diagram the dealer uses to look up parts is different from the one in the service manual.

That said, when I started taking out hoses Monday night to get ready for installation last night, I accidently took off one hose I hadn't intended to replace. As luck would have it, that hose was about 3x the cost of all the other hoses I was replacing. :-\ Even better, they gave me the wrong one, so that's going back today. Last night I got the three hoses back on that I could replace from the top side. The others I have can't really be accessed from the top side without taking the intake manifold off, but you can't easily get to them from the bottom without taking the oil filter off, either. I think I'm going to be changing my oil a few hundred miles early. :-P

Hopefully all goes well and I can be back on the road tonight. I'm getting tired of driving the Neon already (or more specifically, it's really cold outside in the morning, and the Neon isn't garaged).

Golf and car repair

My weekend started out entirely too cold and early, I think I had to leave by 6:45 to be in Casa Grande by 7:30. Still, it's far easier to wake up to play golf than it is to work. I was hitting golf balls on the driving range at about 40°, and every shot that wasn't solid stung a fair amount. Swinging a club in four layers of clothing is a bit restricting as well.

As I mentioned the other day, Francisco Grande is known for it's Black tees at over 7500 yards, fairly long by any standards (except ice golf, perhaps). The allure of those tees was too great, so that's what we played. Even better, the course suited my game perfectly by not having any out-of-bounds. When you went beyond the grass there was nothing but dirt, so an errant tee shot is not only easy to find, but often quite playable.

Somehow I managed to have more luck during that round than just about any round I can remember (because it sure didn't feel like skill, or at least it shouldn't be). My sand wedge around the green was on fire. First hole, pitched it to six inches. Several other holes I put it to 3-4 feet. One of the later holes I flopped it over a tree, over a bunker, and landed it on the green with minimal space to work with. The one place it let me down was out of the actual sand! I was only in one trap all day, and my shot out caught a little ball and I hit it across the green. As I usually consider my sand game to be a strong point, that was disappointing.

I had a couple other good shots as well. One par 4, from 210 out, I had a tree in front of me that I couldn't go over. I managed to slice a 2-iron, moving the ball about 30 yards left-to-right, and landed it on the green. Another hole I was particularly happy with was the longeset par 4 on the course, at 486 yards. I put my tee shot behind a tree, and tried hitting a 3 wood around it from 240 yards. I clocked the tree hard, and the ball went straight sideways into the fairway. Still 240 yards out, I landed a soft 3 wood on the green to about 10 feet and made my par putt. :-D

When all was said and done, I missed my putt on the 18th for a 79, and ended up with an 80. Not bad at all given the length of the course. It was nice to use longer clubs from the fairway as well. Looking at my stats, the fact that I only hit 4 greens in regulation and still shot an 80 shows how well I was playing around the green. I even lipped out 3 putts, so the potential for lower was definitely there.

One point of interest, Hexcel actually has a manufacturing facility in Casa Grande, on the same road as the golf course. Who knew? :-P

My luck either continued or ran out on the way home however, depending on how you look at it. Another coolant hose broke about a mile from home. I ended up pushing it home later in the day with help from Teresa and Evan, as I wasn't able to change the hose there in the Olive Garden parking lot. :-P Since this is the second time a stupid little hose has broken, it's time to replace all of them. I made it to the dealer just before the parts department closed, and while they didn't have most of the hoses in stock, they should be here on Tuesday. Hopefully tonight I can try to take most of the old ones off so they'll be ready to go on the car and I can start driving it again.

I've been putting off replacing this coolant temp sensor in the Neon for a while now because the manual indicated it was going to be a pain to replace. Located on the back of the head, have to drain coolant, blah blah whatever. I just didn't feel like it. Yesterday I was certainly more motivated, as I wanted a car to drive to work on Monday, and I didn't want to drive it in the "lean when cold" condition it was in anymore. I felt incredibly stupid when I look around and find that the temp sensor not on the back of the head, but it's on the intake manifold on the front of the car, very easily accessible! A 2-minute fix, and here I've been putting it off for weeks. Car started up the first time and didn't stall, fantastic. Took it over to Napa for a test drive, and it certainly felt like it was running better when cold, plus it wasn't stalling.

That was yesterday afternoon though. :-P This morning I start it up, and it stalls right away. In fact, it won't hold an idle at all until the engine is fully warm, and then it's fine. So I guess I still have the same problem, but at least it's running a little better.

So hooray, I have to fix my car now, and the Neon still isn't really fixed. That's just how I wanted to start the week.

HD Tivo on the horizon, and cheap Integra parts

Tivo showed their Series 3 at CES last week, and I'm really looking forward to it. HD support, 300gb internal storage with an external SATA port for expansion, and almost best of all, two cablecard slots. Goodbye evil cable box!

The A/C in the Integra has been out since the end of the summer, with the shop telling me that both the compressor and condenser need to be replaced. This weekend I found a compressor for sale on a local Integra board with 30k on it, picked it up for $50. I'm practically halfway there! :-P

So, a couple months ago, I started thinking about trying mountain biking. I know a number of people that do it, they seem to enjoy it, it sounds like fun. Due to some interesting circumstances, I ended up with a 2004 Haro XLS R3 for a great price a couple weeks ago. Now, up until I got the bike, I've ridden maybe half a dozen times since I got my drivers license, so I'm considerably out of practice. I used to be fairly confident in my abilities back when I was riding to school every day, but now, not so much. I spent a few days riding around on the streets just getting used to being on a bike again before venturing on to dirt.

Yesterday I stuffed the bike in my car (very happy it fit!) and went over to Evan's place, as he has some desert with a trail running through it that people regularly use for biking. Aside from a steep rocky section at the beginning, it was mostly pretty flat stuff. Overall, it did good things for my confidence levels. There are loads of skills that need improving, but I really need to get the confidence up. That said, I'm really not looking forward to my first fall, though I know it's inevitable.

Perhaps I'll get up the nerve to hit a real trail some day. :-P

Update bonanza

This is exactly the problem with a website, the further behind I get, the less motivated I am to make a post, since each passing day means I have more to add. At some point my brain hits a limit though, and anything new I want to add means something else gets left behind. Or to paraphrase Homer, "Remember when we went to that wine tasting and I forgot how to drive?"

I think the last post I made was just before the Tucson autocross, where I planned to drive Dave's car. I had all sorts of problems with that. It was a really fast course, requiring a shift to third on two occasions. Rarely could I get the car from third into second gear cleanly, and on the last couple runs I even had trouble upshifting to third...I just couldn't find it. On top of that, a cone was called on my fastest run (I have no idea where), so I had to stand on a slow run. It really wasn't a good course to exhibit all of the car's abilities, which was unfortunate.

Car issues aside, the course design resulted in some..."event management" issues I guess. Due to the loop and crossover, launch intervals were in the neighborhood of 40 seconds, and even that often put two cars close to each other on course, where one car could easily spin out into another. On top of that we got 4 runs, and that made for a pretty long day.

This is where I totally forget everything that happened last week. I think I probably played some video games. A bit of GT4, some Halo 2. It's good to know that an entire week of my life can be boiled down to "I played video games."

Over this past weekend I noticed an odd noise on deceleration from around my front right wheel. When I finally went to check it out, I first noticed that I was missing a lugnut. Wait...that's not right. The other 3 were "fairly tight," in the same way that I was feeling "fairly stupid." As I'm mourning the loss of the poor lugnut, I notice something shiny on the back side of the wheel. Grease, and lots of it. That's rarely a good thing. Off comes the wheel, and the cv boot is torn all the way around the joint, tossing grease everywhere. Sweet.

My first trip to the dealer for the week, and I'm buying nothing but a lugnut, as I don't have any spares, and I'd rather not (knowingly) drive on three. The boot kit comes from BAP, and I drive up to Clint's place for yet another fine boot installation, which generally went well, except for some additional pain caused by my poly bushings in the LCA, and a broken cotter pin.

Second trip to the dealer for the week, this time to get some spare cotter pins. They don't have the exact one I'm looking for in saleable form, but the guy is nice enough to grab a handful of pins from some bins and just give them to me, saying "one of these should fit." Hooray.

I did in fact carve a pumpkin this year, and I finally tried using a stencil. I did The Cheat from homestarrunner.com, as it looked easy and recognizeable (well, if you know the site).

So that's about it, I think I'm caught up now.

A good autox weekend

It felt good to be autocrossing the Integra again last weekend, especially now that I have some competition with Clint running DSP. I was able to stay ahead after each run, but it was only by four tenths in the end. Given the tire advantage I had, it kind of takes away from the victory. On paper I should have won by a lot, but I'm just not as good a driver. Despite running in the morning, I still paxed a 956. Looking back at past stats, that's pretty consistant with my scores in the spring (952, 950, 953 in Jan, Feb, Mar respectively).

In the morning I was pushing everywhere, and just generally running poor lines. My last run I tightened up some of the lines, blew about 3 turns and a slalom, and didn't lose much time. In TO's I cleaned up those turns, kept the better lines, and the extra grip from running later dropped my times almost two seconds. That was good for a score of 980, easily the best score I've had at a Phoenix area event. In January I had a competition run that would have been a 974 were it not for a cone, but...well, there was a cone. So I'm happy with my performance for the weekend.

In afternoon fun runs I ran the Saab a few times, and those stock tires are just terrible. The best I could manage was only good for about an 895 on the DS pax factor. I was surprised at how easy the car would rotate with the pressures we were running, however (suggested by Jay B). Well, easier than I would have expected, at least. It really needs some better tires, particularly in a better size. Something tells me that 205/55-16 isn't the hot size for STX, no matter what car you're driving.

Now it's "parts", plural

Got my car back from the shop, and it looks like I won't have a/c this weekend. There's evidence of dye at both the compressor and condenser from the last batch of freon they put in. :-( Not sure when I'll be doing that, but since I'm not driving it every day (at least, not during the day), it's not exactly a top priority right now. Going to be a warm drive back from the autox.

Parts to buy

Well just one part really, but it always seems like I'm buying more parts. I should have checked it when it was suggested to me, but it does in fact look like I'll need a new clutch master cylinder. I'm still leaking a little fluid, and it's not a big leak, but the seal is definitely all wet and there's evidence of leaking. I'm sure it'll be fine for this weekend, but that's still another $100 I didn't want to spend.

It's certainly hard to get around to my "should replace" list when parts keep getting added to my "need to replace" list. :-P

One down, one to go

Found my leaking coolant line over the weekend, and it turned out to be one that I had to replace when installing my intake about 4 years ago. Once a little pressure was applied to the system, it was a pretty obvious leak. Replaced the hose, added yet more coolant, and I think it's ok now.

Drove it to the gym last night (I'm trying to drive it at night, since the air doesn't work), and I figured I should get on it a few times after it warmed up. For some reason it felt really fast - probably a combination of the following:
1. Been driving the Neon the last two weeks
2. Haven't been up near redline much since the new clutch & flywheel
3. When I was driving the Integra, I would always have the air on.

So now I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how it'll feel on Sunday with the 13's on it again. Hopefully I can get the air fixed so the ride home is somewhat comfortable.

I should have said one down, one-and-a-half to go, I think. Seems that I'm still leaking a little bit of fluid from the clutch reservoir, but I'm not sure what part is leaking. :-\

Too much sleep

Don't wake up at 1pm and think you'll get to bed at any kind of reasonable hour. It just doesn't happen. >:-O

I actually slept a lot over the long weekend, and as such, didn't get much done. I should have checked Autozone to see if they rent pressure testers for the Integra, but that didn't happen, so I might stop by after the gym today.

Played poker one night with a different group of friends than usual, that was interesting. We started with 6, and after 3 hours there were still 5 people left. I finally got one good hand, the guy next to me goes all in with about $3k, and I call him...except I can't cover about $75 of his. I win, but he's left with $75. That later comes back to get me, as he wins a few lucky hands, gets some money, and he eventually put me out of the game! Bleh.

I also spent some time this weekend trying to burn some tivo'd shows to dvd, to clear out some hard drive space. Victory by Design and Good Eats episodes were taking up about 70gb on a 160gb drive, and I only had 10gb free, so that was no good. I finished off the VBD, and 5 episodes of Good Eats. At 5 episodes per disc, I only have about...14 more discs to go. Awesome.

The good news is that as I use it more, the less I hate Nero for basic video editing. It's pretty easy to take commercials out, so on a normal tv show, it just takes a few minutes now. VBD has about twice as many commercials breaks as a usual show (though they're about half as long as usual), so it takes twice as long to take out the commercials. Thanks VBD.

Integra page update

Since I added a few new parts this year, I decided to update the page with details about my car. It had gone quite a while without edits. ;-)

This afternoon I replaced my radiator, and a few weeks ago I replaced my clutch slave cylinder. It's an interesting time for me, as I've had the car long enough that I'm now replacing parts that I've already replaced once before, at some point in the past. I remember the first time those two parts failed me, both situations being worse than this time, when I could nurse the car around until it was ready for repair.

Overall though, the car has been good, as I've added 70k to it over 7 years this month, and other than regular maintenance, I haven't seen that many expenses to speak of. Consider that the car has been autocrossed for a good 5 years, and that's not bad at all.

I know it will have to happen eventually, but it will be a tough car to replace. :-(

Captain, where be the posts?

Yarrr, at the bottom of the sea, where the rest of ye shall be if ya keep asking!

But really, there's no excuse for not posting in what, almost 2 weeks now? Lame. I don't even remember what happened last week, and it obviously wasn't documented here, so I guess nothing happened. ;-) This week, however, I still remember stuff. :-P

My radiator puked a bit on Sunday, prompting an order from Radiator Barn, which showed up yesterday. The box had about a half dozen holes in it, including one nice big gash, but I called the company today, and they said install it anyway. There's no clear damage, so if it works, then great. I'd rather not wait around for another one, and they'll still send me a new one if it turns out that this was damaged in shipping.

Replaced the power window motor in Evan's car this weekend too, and my only comment is that my garage is HOT. As the afternoon sun creeps further and further into the garage (and you wish you had pulled the car in more), the motivation to finish gets that much greater.

Busted out the Dreamcast a couple days ago. Spent the first couple days with the disc of NES games, playing Castlevania and Super Dodge Ball. Last night, played some Chu Chu Rocket and Jet Grind Radio, both a lot of fun. That system was a bargain at $25. :-D

Clutch and flywheel are in

With much wrench-turning from Clint and Brian, my new clutch and flywheel are in. Brian was originally going to be the event photographer, but I think he couldn't stand to see Clint and I have all the fun, so that's why there aren't any pictures. ;-)

Removing the old parts, it looked like the original clutch was still in pretty decent shape, and I bet I could have driven at least another 5-10k miles (well, if I wanted to drive it until the material was gone). The worn stock clutch weighed just over 12 lbs, the new Exedy weighed just under 12. Stock flywheel weighed about 18 lbs (I think the scale was reading a bit light), and the Fidanza weighed just under 8. Pretty good improvement!

Pedal effort is increased, but it's not uncomfortable by any means. The clutch seems to engage smoothly, it feels pretty good. Supposed to drive 750 miles of "city driving" for break-in...that'll take a while, at the rate I drive. From what little I drove the car last night, I noticed the car does seem to rev quicker under acceleration, and rpms fall noticeably faster during shifts (though not so fast that it's a problem). I'm happy with the parts, though I know I've only had them about 10 hours at this point. :-P

A sad moment

I was at Tempe Acura yesterday, buying a couple things for the upcoming clutch change. I stopped by their refrigerator for my complimentary soda (as I always do when paying $arm+leg for factory parts), when I decided against it, realizing that it just wouldn't taste good anyway. :-(

So instead, I took a couple extra cookies. :-D

New parts, bad news, good news

Parts have arrived! Clutch showed up on Friday, flywheel on Saturday.
Exedy Organic:



Fidanza flywheel:

Hopefully they'll make their way onto the car shortly, to be broken in before the Fall series.

As mentioned previously, a side effect of my new medication is a change in how sodas taste, and I'm afraid that's definitely happened. Imagine a regular soda with about 85% less carbonation and 65% less sweetness - that's what it tastes like to me. Not so good.

But what's the good news, you ask? Beer tastes exactly the same! :-D

MRI results and exhaust fumes

The two are completely unrelated, other than the timeline in which they occurred.

Fortunately the MRI said my brain was ok, which was quite the relief. I'm going to have to take some medication to keep the headaches away, but whatever works. I'm really looking forward to getting back to the things I used to do - going to the gym, tennis, DDR, just sports in general. I still have a couple races on my card for F1 Race Factory to use as well. Alas, I still lack the picture of my brain. I forgot to ask for it when I went in, but I'll have another chance when I go again in a couple weeks.

Got my header back on this past weekend, thanks to a good guy at Full Race that fixed it up for me (their Evo 8 manifold increases my Evo-lust significantly). Now I'm significantly less embarassed to drive my car, as it sounds pretty normal. ;-) I bought a small container of anti-seize for a couple of the bolts that backed out of the head (the ones that broke when the original exhaust manifold was removed), and now I have enough to last me until I'm 240 years old. Awesome.

After my last couple purchases being for maintenance, it felt good to order actual performance parts the other day. Ordered an Exedy Organic clutch kit and Fidanza flywheel, and they should be here either late this week or early next week. After looking at what Subaru parts cost (thanks to the 9-2X purchase), I have a greater appreciation for economies of scale and the cost of Honda parts. I was able to buy those parts for only $434 shipped. :-D

After being introduced to the idea of wearing latex gloves during car repair, I have to say that I like it. Hard to beat that combination of dexterity and cleanliness, provided you can keep them in one piece, and you're not working on anything hot. With that in mind, I picked up a box of nitrile gloves at Harbor Freight last week when they were running a sale on them (about 40% off or so). Supposed to be more puncture- and solvent-resistant than latex...and they're blue. As good as they are though, have you ever tried using them in a 120° garage? Within minutes you can hear the water moving around inside the gloves, as your hands do their best impression of a high school wrestler trying to make weight. :-P The gloves just hold in the heat, and your hands keep sweating. Makes it really interesting when you go to take off said gloves, and you spray this disgusting hand-glove-water everywhere that has been collecting for the last 20 minutes. Oh, and your hands look like you just got out of an hour-long bath. Sweet.

Let's see, that's probably not good.

Since the new gasket didn't work, I took off the header this afternoon to see if it was cracked or something. Well, I wouldn't exactly call it "cracked" I suppose...

Events of Grandeur

Well, not so much.

I was invited to another poker night with some friends last week...turns out I only knew one person there, but whatever. Two of the people claimed to play regularly online, but whatever. My beginner's luck continued, and I won. :-D Unfortunately the rules for the night were that the top 3 positions were paid, so I only took home about half as much as I could have. That, and we weren't able to get 8 players, only 6. Had a good time though!

The joy that goes with working on cars didn't go unnoticed this weekend, oh no. Err, wait, perhaps it did. One thing went perfect, and that was replacing a trim piece on the passenger side grab handle in my car. :-P

First up, gasket between header and cat. Old one comes out ok, new one goes in, all is right with the world. Or not. When I eventually started up the car later that day, the exhaust sounded exactly as bad as it did before. So it seems that the gasket probably isn't the issue, but the header and cat are both enjoying the feel of a brand new $15+ gasket, I'm sure. Worse though, is my guess that the header has a crack in it somewhere near that flange, and if that's the case, then it has had a crack in it all this time! It always made a bit of noise, but it wasn't too bad until recently. I'll try to find a place that maybe can fix it, I don't know. I didn't really want to buy a shiny new SMSP header right now, but if I have to...

Next, clutch slave cylinder on the Integra. It wasn't too big a deal to replace this, but for some reason we (Evan had shown up by this point) must have been idiots when it came to bleeding the thing. It just wouldn't work for a while, then all of the sudden it worked. Fantastic. So that feels a little better, but I think the clutch really suffered hauling Teresa's stuff up the mountains to ABQ. :-\

Radiator hoses. Easy, right? Not when oem hoses seem WAY too small to actually fit. Woo. Oh, and I find out that my radiator cap is in about 6 pieces (which wasn't the case just a couple weeks earlier). Off to the dealership to see if they have another one. How about I drive the Neon over there? Sure! Add some coolant since I still hadn't replaced the slowly leaking coolant tank, and off we go. Driving, driving...temperature needle just goes up up up. Shut the car down right in front of the Acura dealer. Pop the hood, and coolant is bubbling out of the hose that goes to the heater core. Great. Keep in mind that the Acura dealer is less than a mile from my apartment. Evan has AAA, so he calls them up and they send out a tow truck to get it back to my place. Fortunately the Acura dealer was right there, and while the parts counter was closed, the refridgerator was not. :-D So it was a good place to hang out while waiting for the tow truck.

Back to the apartment. Push the Neon back in the garage, hop in the Camaro to pick up a cap from Autozone so that I at least have one working car. Replace that, then it's time to figure out what to do with the Neon. Out comes the airbox, as it's just in the way. I notice that the hose clamp for the line to the heater core really isn't all that tight. I knew the hose was too big (by a whopping 1mm), but I thought tightening it down sufficiently would be fine. Apparently it wasn't tight enough...of course, this is all assuming that the actual pipe into the heater core isn't cracked. Which would be wonderful, you know.

While the airbox is out, it's a good time to replace that coolant tank. Need to remove two nuts to take it out. First one? Lost. Second one? Fell to a visible but inaccessible place in the engine bay, and I don't have a magnet on a stick. Great. It looked oddly damaged though, so I may just be buying a couple of those.

So that's it for the weekend. Still have to go get the exhaust issue fixed on the Integra, and address the Neon issues. All sorts of fun. :-P

Green chiles, tivo, Integra repairs

Traded cars with Teresa this weekend in Albuquerque - the Saab made it there fine, no problems at all. Had about 1200 miles on it when I got there. The way back in the Integra wasn't quite as comfortable, but it wasn't bad, either. I think it was almost an hour shorter going the Payson->Heber->Holbrook->ABQ route vs. Flagstaff->ABQ.

In the state known its chiles, they were available on pretty much everything. I think I had green chiles in some form with every meal, except for the stop at Dunkin' Donuts. Good stuff.

Now that my car is back though, I need to do some repairs (some sooner rather than later). The most immediate concern is the clutch slave cylinder, which will probably fail the next time I look at it wrong. The radiator hoses need to be replaced after that blowout a couple weeks ago, and replacing one with a poorly-fitting hose from Autozone. And of course, I really need to replace the gasket between my header and the cat, as the noise from the exhaust leak has transformed from annoying to embarrassing. :-( But those parts should all be purchased today, with their installation dependent on who's available to help me when (well, the slave cylinder at least).

I mentioned tivo in the subject, as I'm interested in trying Galleon when I get home. It seems to offer some of the things I always liked about an HTPC, like RSS feeds, weather, and email on the tv. Hopefully it'll work ok. :-)

Related to tivo, I finally got the whole dvd burning thing working, I think. I was able to convert my .tivo files to mpegs, cut out the commercials, and burn two episodes of Victory by Design to a dvd. Nice. :-D

Cleaning frenzy

More car cleaning...I just don't get it. Why am I starting to do this stuff now? Anyway, I bought some Armor All Oxi Magic the other day hoping to attack my headliner and center armrest, both of which are thoroughly disgusting.

This is the point at which I deserve severe ridicule for not taking before and after pics. You really have to have seen them to see how terrible they were. Carrying on...

It took some scrubbing, but both the headliner and armrest turned out really well. Before, the armrest was actually somewhat sticky to the tough, kind of a gummy consistency. So much dirt and sweat had been on that armrest over the years, it just all built up. Now you can actually see the original pattern, it's fairly soft, and looks nearly good as new (just a little worn, given the frequent use). The headliner was equally bad, with a measureable buildup of gummy stuff right above where my head was. A lot of this came from the days of (a) using hair gel in combination with (b) being fatter. (b) made me sit up higher, and (a) ended up getting on the headliner. :-P Numerous applications of the oxi magic removed almost all of the dirt and stain, but I don't think it'll ever be 100% gone. The area that was dirty is a bit wrinkled now, and I'm sure that won't go away. :-\ Still, it looks a million times better than it did before. I'm liking this product a lot so far.

That was about all I had time to clean before it got too dark in my garage to continue, but I'll continue on another day.

Cleanliness is next to sleepiness

Or something. Second night in a row now that I've gone to bed after 1am thanks in part to halo 2.

I also spent a couple hours last night cleaning up my wheels. You heard me, cleaning. It's that thing I don't do very often. I bought a bottle of Castrol wheel cleaner and a cheap plastic wheel brush, packed up my stuff, and went over to my parent's house, as they have a hose. ;-) Cleaned up the race wheels first, as they were pretty easy, and I wanted to give them time to dry before putting them back in the car. They're all shiny again, so that's good.

Next was the real challenge, the street wheels. I took them off the car, as I (a) didn't want to get the rest of the car wet since I just washed it, and (b) I wanted to clean the back side of the wheels as well. The front side went ok, they get fairly clean when the car gets washed, it's just a matter of getting into the smaller areas. The back side was amazing. There was no evidence that these wheels were ever any color but dark brown. Just cleaning the outer portion of the inside, I had to rinse out my wheel brush after getting halfway around because it was full of dirt. As I was cleaning the back side of the spokes, the dirt was mixing with the foam from the wheel cleaner, and forming some kind of disgusting paste. They now look pretty clean though...at least as clean as they'll get. ;-) The finish is gone, but at least they're fairly shiny as well. In the end, I think I just about destroyed the cheap wheel brush, and I used almost an entire bottle of wheel cleaner (a large bottle, at that).

Who doesn't like a few pictures?

Last week I uploaded some of the better pics I've taken on my camera phone (well, better is awfully subjective). Pics > text, right? Onward!

1. A fine old car, taken on the freeway to...somewhere. It may have been coming back from a Sierra Vista event I went to several months back. I think the picture came out surprisingly well, given the low light level.

2. Viper in a parking lot. Not so unusual...except it's the parking lot at Costco, and unless you're a regular, you're probably going to walk out with more stuff than will fit in a viper trunk. God help him if he needs to buy toilet paper.

3. Same parking lot! This person might have similar problems. How he drove this to a Costco, I have no idea.

4. LAN tournament at an Athlon 64 launch event. The game was Far Cry, which I had never played before. I made it through several rounds though, and was just a couple kills out of making it into the final four people.

5. These were taken from the balcony outside the main conference room in the new building on Mill Ave., "the brickyard". Good views, and the room was full of about 40 Aeron chairs.

6. Beer pong, sport of kings. Unfortunately this game was played on a smaller-than-regulation table.

7. Soft pretzel? check. Que Bueno? check. Beer? check. :-D

8. The pinnacle of 80's wagondom.

9. Just a little cooler, even though it's not a wagon. ;-)

10. Cone decapitation. So sad.

11. "It's a flavor explosion!!" says the cat.

12. The pummelo. Large grapefruit? Martian spider egg sac? You decide.

13. Shiny race wheels, followed by tire stack comparison. From left to right: 205/50-15 Victoracer V700 on 15x6.5 wheels, 235/45-13 Ecsta V700 on 13x8 wheels, 225/50-14 Ecsta V700 on 14x6 (?) stock Neon wheels.

14. Said race wheels on two different cars. Lots of positive comments on them. There's no doubt that the awesomeness level is high.

15. Finally, what proved to be an meaningless threat. The Wagovan is a good car, and it was lots of fun to drive, but it couldn't quite keep up with the Miata (ok, so 3 seconds off on a 60-second course). Again though, fun to drive, and it looked GREAT on those wheels.

Autocross, 007, sugar

Drove out to the autocross on my new street tires, the Falken Ziex ZE-512. GREAT price, decently quiet, good ride. I enjoyed the course this month - felt like it had a high average speed, but the maximum speed wasn't that high at all, maybe mid-50s at the most for me. Felt kind of busy, and I'm sure my line left lots of time out there. I never really felt that I put together a great run, just mediocre. I'm missing all of that front camber I lost, especially on the two big sweepers on the course. :-\ Fun course though. The "three runs count" idea was interest, and certainly added some pressure when I coned my second run. Ended up with 3 clean runs though, so it wasn't all bad. My pax score counting 3 runs was only one point more than my score counting 1 run, for whatever that's worth.

Leaving the event early meant there was actually time to do other stuff on Saturday, so we finally went to the James Bond exhibit at the Arizona Science Center. It was pretty interesting. They had an Aston Martin DB5 from one of the earlier movies there, which was nice. Also several props, such as the Oddjob hat and Jaws' chrome steel jaws. I especially liked seeing some of the original drawings of gadgets and such, and old movie posters (including a number from other countries), so that was cool.

Last night we finally played my 007 Scene It! game, after an Easter filled with sugar and other generally unhealthy stuff. With just two people it goes pretty quickly unless you play where you can only move when you answer a question right. It really pointed out that, despite liking Bond movies, I couldn't tell you much about them. :-P They're all on my "to watch" list now, along with all of the LOTR movies with commentary. Hopefully I'll pay more attention this time. You really have a shot of doing well if you can remember the following about each movie:
- the name of the movie
- where it was in the order of release
- which actors played Bond
- brief plot summary
- the main villian's name
That alone should give you enough info to make a really good guess at most of the answers.

Alas, in all of that business, there was no time for GT4.

Beer, shoes, shocks

I planned to do this over several entries, but as always, I got lazy. Imagine that.

The El Paso tour is about 10 days away now. I felt pretty good after the autox this past Sunday, as I wasn't hitting cones all over the place like my last couple events. I thought the time was pretty decent too. Brandon was out there taking pictures, and he got a bunch of good ones of my car. If I can overcome the laziness, perhaps I'll post some of the better ones. Here's a sample of what he took that day. Still have some work that needs to be done before the tour, but that's what next week is for, right?

Went to BJ's the other night. One of their special beers that day was called "Quad", described as a "strong Belgian ale". It was pretty good, I'd definitely have it again.

My brown docs have finally been retired. Served me well for almost 9 years. Money well spent.

Koni has finally started making race-valved, pre-shortened shocks for Civics/Integras/CRXs. Front shocks are 25mm shorter, rears are 15mm shorter. All have the SPSS3 (I think that is) valving, which I guess is how they valve most Yellows for racing these days. Hopefully they'll hit the street at about $1k/set. A tempting product for me, as I would have zero downtime in going to a shortened/revalved setup...wouldn't have to go back to stock shocks for the several weeks my current shocks would be out for service. That valving would let me go to higher spring rates as well....hmm....maybe 600/750 sounds good. :-D

And the most recent thing...we had a power outage at home for a couple hours this morning. I woke up to an occasional beeping noise, which I recognized as the UPS for my computer in the other room. I looked up to check the time....where'd the clock go?? Turned out our entire building was dark, and this was around 5:15. After stumbling around in the dark, I set the alarm on my phone for 6:30 so I could get up for work, still having no idea how I would shower in the dark, or get my car out of the garage. :-P Fortunately the power came back on at about 6:40, and I made it out the door in time. Now I just have to go reset all of the clocks. >:-O

Blankness no more!

blah...site has been blank for a week, and I haven't posted anything since January 12th. Nice.

Well, last time I posted, I talked about just getting a Tivo. So what's new with that? The Tivo is fantastic, as expected. I'm no longer missing episodes of Good Eats or Mythbusters. I picked up a USB network adapter, so now I can listen to all of my mp3's in the living room, which is nice, and as soon as my Tivo gets the upgrade, I'll be looking forward to copying shows over to the computer. :-D

Christmas was good, got some nice stuff. I somehow received 24 cans of tennis balls, which I know will be put to use. I used some Christmas cash to buy myself a new racket as well, thanks to a good Big 5 sale. Used a little more of that money to buy a new softball glove as well just the other day, but I haven't had a chance to actually play with it yet.

Car stuff - went to a weigh day, got a chance to weigh and cornerweight my car. I was stupied and filled my gas tank before I went, so I didn't really try for perfect cornerweights. I think we got them to within 19lbs, and I raised the front of the car as well, so I don't think there will be any more tire/fender rubbing issues. The biggest pain was just getting the swaybars reconnected. :-P I was all set to have some offset bushings made as well, but it looks like that won't be happening. There's just not that much camber to gain at the upper arms, and getting camber at the lower arms means increasing the track even more than the wheels already did. So the stock UCAs are going back in soon, and some poly bushings have been ordered to replace the stock rubber bushings with 130k on them.

So what's next? A frigid autox in Tucson this weekend, and hopefully the El Paso NT at the end of February. I think I'll be happy if I don't finish last. ;-)

Early Christmas

I finally got my Tivo! An 80hr unit from Costco. I'm quite excited. Need to pick up a usb network adapter now, and I'll be all set. :-D

Also got some pics online of the new race wheels, which I mentioned the other day:

Great, I see my own site and it's blank.

I guess I need to post more. :-P

Last night I moved all of my A/V stuff from my room to the new apartment. As is the case with any good project, I had a bunch of leftover parts (about 8 cables) when all was said and done. The setup should be a bit better than what it was before though. My room looks pretty empty now with all that stuff gone.

New tires! Toe-out with plenty of negative camber finally got to the old 712's, and I corded one of them last week. Time for a new set, and probably an alignment.

This is me after 2 great margaritas, a huge and delicious steak kabob (nearly a pound, so I'm told), and about half of an equally-sized chicken kabob.

And finally, a pic of me putting gas in a thirsty '89 Suburban that I used to move stuff. At least it takes regular.

good to have it back

My car has working a/c again. :-D

clean car

Finally got my car back from the paint shop last week. It's not perfect, but it's MUCh better than it was before. After sitting out all week (while I was in San Diego), it was quite dirty. I cleaned it up tonight, vacuumed the interior, cleaned the glass/mirrors inside and out, and cleaned the front half of the interior. At that point, it was really too dark to continue (about 7:30). I'll probably try to clean the rear half of the interior tomorrow afternoon, as it's probably the dirtiest part. Some pics in the mediocre light:

Ready for paint!

Taking the car in to get painted tomorrow. They told me I could save an hour's worth of labor if I took the wing off myself. :-P Therefore, I present you with the wingless Integra:

This is an interesting picture...you can see the outline of the wing on the faded part of the car. Things really show up well in fluorescent light!

And finally...the old VTEC badge is getting replaced. I'll take a pic of the new one when I get the car back. :-)

The work, it never ends

Last night, after driving all over to find a particular spark plug model, I went up to where Brian works to do the 120k service on my car. As is often the case when I go up there, he ended up doing most of the work, while I got most of the dirt on me. How that happens, I have no idea. Despite not having air conditioning right now, it wasn't too bad a drive - it was possibly made more bearable by the fact that I was really happy to be driving my car again. The music was especially great, as I miss having (a) a decent deck/speakers, (b) a cd player, and (c) a subwoofer.

While I was there, we changed the spark plugs and wires, distributer cap and rotor, fuel filter (mmm.....gassy), engine oil, and transmission oil. We also installed a Skunk2 short shifter, which feels really nice. Highly recommended. :-)

Working on the car...again

Such torment. On Saturday, Teresa came over and helped me put the front bumper back on the car. We thought were were just about done, when what happens? It turns out that we can't get the passenger-side turn signal back in. The bent part of the bumper is in the way! So off with the bumper cover (again). After talking to a couple people, we decide to try and bend it back (as a new bumper is ~$260). First, a stop at Sears for some basic tools:

A 12" wrench and 7" Vise-Grips. We went from this:

to this:

That was enough to get both the turn signal and the "front bumper gusset" back on the car. After that, it went pretty smoothly. Here's the finished product:


Next stop, the paint shop!

Another day with the car

Worked on the car a bit more this afternoon. It looks like the old lower bumper is ok, so I took that off the old upper bumper and put it on the new upper bumper.

The bumper:

Bumper on the car (not bolted down, just a test fit):

More work on the car

Yesterday I went to Certifit and bought some of my new parts - a pair of headlights, a fender, and an upper bumper cover. The bumper cover doesn't have the word "Integra" on the front of it, but that always made it a pain to wax anyway. :-P Otherwise, everything looks good so far. I put the headlights in last night - they're so clean! Here's the comparison pic (click for larger):

They both seem to work fine, and it was really easy to swap them out.

Here's the fender:

But wait! What's that warning down there?

No bare feet? Huh?

My internet connection at home went down last night, so I have a post about a concert I went to that's just waiting to be put up. Oops

More car stuff

Worked on my car a little more yesterday. Was able to get the a/c tensioner pulley out, and it's notably out of balance - probably the reason it has been coming off. My hands are about 4 sizes too large to try and get it back in though. We (Evan and I) also put more brake fluid in the abs unit - and my abs light finally turned off. :-P Now I need to see if I can buy just an accumulator, then pay attention to all the warnings concerning its replacement in the service manual. I have a feeling it's not going to be cheap, and if that's the case, I'll probably just keep adding fluid to my system as necessary.

Oh, and an Acura dealer finally opened up a couple miles from my house. :-)

Pics are up

I took some pics of my car in its current stage of destruction. Click for a larger image.

While I was there, I also took a new engine bay pic, a pic of the header everyone gave me, and a pic of my evil ABS unit.

One more thing

The Integra page is in the process of being updated. Check it out, at let me know what you think. I'll have links to pics in a couple days.

Time to work on the car

I mentioned a few days ago that I got in a minor car accident. After looking at the estimate and getting a check from the insurance company, I decided to fix if myself (with the help of friends). Should be able to save quite a bit of money.

Tonight, my friend Evan came over to help me disassemble the car. We took off the front bumper, front passenger fender, passenger-side side molding, and the hood. All in all, it was much easier than I expected. My service manual had more than adequate instructions for removing the bumper and side molding, and the fender was just held on by a number of bolts. Everything (from finding the tools to cleaning up) only took a little over 90 minutes.

When we were done, we took a pressure washer and some Simple Green to the engine bay to clean things up (much to the shock of those who give me a hard time about my car always being dirty). It looks much better now, and probably better still tomorrow in the light. I'll be taking some pics tomorrow. Hopefully I can get replacement parts this week!

Lots of stuff

Over a month since the last update. A couple weeks ago I went on vacation in Ocean City, NJ, as my family has for years. Had a good time. Last week, I went to San Diego to see one of my friends from high school get married. All in all, a good 10 days or so. Another month until I get to go to San Diego again! I wish I had paid vacation days, but what can you do.

In the Chicago airport on the way back from NJ, Teresa bought me a book called The Da Vinci Code. It deals a lot with religious history, but you don't really have to know anything about religion to enjoy it. In fact, it's probably much more enjoyable if you don't know anything about history, much in the same way that computer geeks cringe when they read something "technical" that was written by a pseudo-geek. I read a little more than half of it on the plane, and finished it tonight. On the way out to NJ (actually Philadelphia), I read this book my mom gave me a while back. Started it as we left Phoenix, finished it about 15 minutes before landing in Philadelphia. It was pretty good as well. I still have several books that have been given to me over the last few years that I have yet to read. Two of the more prominant are Euclid's Window and The Wizard of Quarks. Hopefully I can get to them some day.

Hmm....what else. I played golf at Club West a few weeks ago, and didn't do that bad. I shot an 85 or something, but had about 10 penalty strokes. Almost had a hole-in-one! I ended up figuring out what I was doing wrong on about the 15th hole, and I was 2-under for those last two holes. I also somehow managed to get into a car accident a couple weeks ago, with no fault for either party. The car is in the process of getting repaired at the moment. At the very least, the whole thing should end up with new paint. Sorely needed, as most of the people that actually read this page will tell you. Right now I'm driving a 2003 Buick Regal LS as my rental car. It's pretty lame, but it does have some nice points here and there. Like headroom, for one. I have about 3" of headroom when seated fairly upright, while I have nearly zero in my car. I still really hate GM's 2-key system. This car doesn't have the ability to lock all doors when I lock the driver's side door from the outside, so that seems kinda weird. Lots of storage space inside. Hopefully I won't have it too much longer, and it takes a bit more gas than any of the other cars we have here.

NASA-X

First NASA-X event at AMP - it was pretty fun! I thought the new suspension was great, and I was pretty happy with my times. Unfortunately, I corded a tire and had to run the second course with street tires on in the back...that cost me at least a few tenths. I really didn't feel like buying new tires this soon. A few pics from the event are here. Pics of the tire and new suspension are here.

Nothing to see here

Blah blah blah, again not much since the last update. I ordered new shocks and springs, they should be here this week.

Stuff that magically showed up at my door last week

1. Netgear 2-port print server
2. Skunk2 camber kit
3. 1.5x and 0.65x lenses for my video camera

It was a good week.