ReDecorating

I had made mention of a couple of items recently. One was that I would likely be replacing my printer in the near future. The other was the lack of content I've had recently.

Well, I took care of both of them today!!! I was going to try and scan a form the other day, and I couldn't get my printer to get past the “Print Head Not Installed” portion. I messed with it for a few minutes, then called it, and ordered a new one!!!

I stuck with Canon, since I've been happy with the one I had, present experience excluded. Got a Canon Pixima G6020, another all in one with print, scan, and copy functions. Since it's a much newer model, it's also wirelessly connected, and since ink has been a major expense with my previous printer, this one is an ink tank model with big reservoirs. Oh yea, I can also scan and print from my phone now, as well.

As a side note, I had long ago mentioned the artwork on my file cabinet upon which my desktop computer tower and printer have always sat. Never had an actual picture here, only a link to a page on a long gone Geocities site. When we were living in Long Beach, my wife had saved up and bought a set of chairs and a love seat that were black with blue and maroon pattern shapes all over them, and when I got a 2-drawer file cabinet, I painted it black, and hand painted similar blue and maroon pattern shapes to match. The chairs and love seat are long gone, but the file cabinet remains, so I've included it in the picture here!!!

A little over 12 years ago, I had painted the bathroom in a black and white theme. My dad made up the custom painted toilet seat that has been the base for many of the pictures posted on this blog, and when I'd painted it up, I picked up three black 5”x7” picture frames, with the idea that I could rotate in various black and white pictures. (The only picture that actually shows much of the black and white was the third on this post) The first three, I printed out pictures of Mochi sleeping on the top of the cat tree, Leo relaxing in the sink, and a vertical picture of both their paws. I'd added the picture frame effect in Paint Shop Pro, and had them printed at WalMart. Well, those pictures have stayed there since that day, until today!!!

After setting up my new printer and printing the test page and a test picture, I printed out these pictures to replace the old ones. The first two are from out Texas trip from a few years ago, both taken in Galveston. The first was looking out from the window of the Best Western (second picture from the end of this post). The next was on the beach on the Gulf of America (the final picture on this post). When I saw both of these pictures, I knew they'd work great for the theme I was using in there!!!

For the third, I kept with the theme of having a cat picture. I used Sid's X-ray showing the repair!!! Hey, it cost me a lot of money!!!

The Follow Up Random Post

I feel like I'm lacking content to blog about these days, so I'm going to post a few minor things somewhat related to previous posts!!!

A couple weeks ago, I bought myself a rechargeable battery type tire inflator. It's a no name deal, and wasn't very expensive, but I'm quite pleased with it. You can set your desired pressure and it'll turn off when it hits the correct pressure. The tires on the Falcon tend to lose pressure while it's sitting, and with the Moon hub caps, it's more involved than most to top them off. This is when I took off one of the caps, you can see the levels of receding waters from the rains of January!!!

I'd gone down to sweep up some of the constantly falling pine needles a couple weeks ago, and there was a ticket envelope on the Falcon, and the tires had been chalked, so apparently we've got a bitchy neighbor. I moved it, then topped the tires. Last week we took it to the car wash, and it cleans up nice!!! There was quite a bit of silt under the hub caps, so it took some cleaning out.

I had completely forgotten back when I did my Literary Stack post about a couple of books I'd read. The first was an autobiography of Mark Thompson of the Mark and Brian show, which had been one of my long time favorites. It's entitled, “Don't Bump the Record, Kid”, and I learned of it from Woody of the Woody Show. He was listening to it as an audio book, and was enjoying it. Of course, I prefer an actual book, but this appears to have been a limited release. When I first went looking for it, there was only one available, for over $50. I wasn't going that high. I checked back around a month later, and someone was selling a copy for around $20, and it was signed!!! I'd heard a lot of the stories, and lived a good amount of them, and I enjoyed the book quite a lot!!!

Another book I found in a give away box probably a couple years ago was the Jack Kerouac classic, “On the Road”. It was “The Original Scroll” version, and it had a lot of the history and told of the edits that were made for various publications. It's one of those I'd heard of forever, so I had to pick it up and check it out. It wasn't a great book, but it was an enjoyable read, and now I can speak of it from having read it.

A couple weeks ago I picked up a pack of Mountain Dew Baja Blast, thinking it was just the classic Baja Blast, not realizing it was Tropical Lime. It tastes better to me than the canned classic Baja Blast, but not as good as the on tap that you get from Taco Bell.

I took the younger to a dentist appointment the other day. In the stairwell, they've got one wall that's painted a little reminiscent of my license plate frame!!!

Last week we went to the beach with a huge and shifting group of friends. Surrogate son and his brother were there, a couple of other families, and a couple of our other friends. In the afternoon, one friend left to get his girlfriend when she got off work, which took more than an hour. The younger fell asleep for a bit while this was going on.

A couple more friends showed up around when the sun went down, and a little after that, SpaceX did a launch from Vandenberg!!! I'm pretty sure it was dropping off Starlink satellites.

I took a couple of pictures of the younger and a friend in the dark with no flash, and they came out kind of fuzzy, and each picture had one looking good and the other not so much, so I did a merge of the two pictures!!! You can totally tell it was two different pictures, but it's plausible!!!

Passed!!!

Finally did it!!! Finally got both of the cars that require a smog check to pass!!!

As previously mentioned, the check for Zonker was coming up. If I'm not mistaken, it would have expired tomorrow. I'd been having a lot of frustration with my normal place, and a friend had referred me to his place, who he's had great success with getting more difficult cars to pass. I'd taken Kutcher over there to see if he could help me out, and apparently since one shop has already entered the information, they wouldn't be able to do anything for me.

Not wanting a repeat of the issues with Kutcher, I took Zonker there around a month ago. As mentioned, I hadn't been having any issue with the check engine light or trouble codes since I'd had the exhaust done, so I didn't think it was going to be an issue. The guy pre checks it, and tells me he can't pass it as is, since it has a cold air intake installed. I'll either need to replace it with the factory intake and filter, or get a California Air Resources Board exemption number for the current intake.

I check into it, and it looks to be the dealer installed GM Performance Parts intake, part number 19157849. I locate the CARB exemption order number for it, and make note of it, and return to the smog check place. The guy tells me I can't just have the EO number, I have to have the underhood sticker. Grrr...

I try to get in touch with the manufacturer, AEM, who were the ones who made it for GM. Apparently, they are now under K&N's umbrella, and they were unable to locate any record of them having used this CARB exemption order. To be fair, it was at a minimum 15 years ago. OK, plan B...

I located a GM Performance Parts logo, and made up the sticker myself!!! Picked up some label paper, and... when I went to print it out, my trusty printer says the print head isn't installed!!! I pop it out, put it back in, and now it's showing... only I'm out of black ink!!! I order a new set of inks, and when they're delivered, I install them, but the printer is saying that the print head isn't installed again!!! I pull it out, give it a thorough cleaning, put it back together, and it finally shows that it's installed. I do the test and alignment pages, and partway through, it has the print head issue again!!! Mess with it some more, and finally get it to get set up properly, and print out the sticker. I also printed out the CARB EO paperwork, and took it along when I got it checked. It passed without any further issues!!!

In other news, there's a good chance I'll be picking up a printer to replace my beloved Canon Pixima MP610. I could possibly buy a new print head, but they're not cheap, and there's no guarantee it would fix the issue.

Kutcher, on the other hand... when I'd last mentioned the trouble I'd been having, I had installed a new set of injectors. They seemed to be working great, they even bumped the MPG up a decent amount!!! Naturally, took care of the vacuum leak. Still had the P0031 code, Oxygen (A/F) Sensor Heater Control Circuit Low, though, so I took it back to the smog check place. They say, “Oh, we're going to have to do a further analysis to determine the issue, another $175, but we'll take that off any other repairs”. Go for it, I pretty much have no other options. The tech checks it out, and first pulls the connector, and says, “there's the problem, whoever put this O2 sensor in bent the contacts and it's not connecting”... OK, first, it was you that put it in, second, the plug is pretty well protected, there's not really much chance of that happening... He supposedly gets them so everything is making contact, and it still has the same issue. It's almost their closing time, so they tell me to bring it back tomorrow. This was back when I was still working, so I had my wife take it back. She gets in touch with me the next day and tells me they're telling her, “whoever put the O2 sensor in cross threaded it...” Once again, it was you that put it in, you damned clown!!! They finally locate the original transaction where they did, and said it was bad and needs replaced, which they did at no cost. Shockingly, the same code I've taken it there four damn times for still is coming back!!!

I consulted with the guy who'd done the engine swap on the Kutch. His shop is right next door to an exhaust shop, and he double checks with them. He tells me that the O2 sensor has to be an OEM Toyota or a Denso, almost none of the other suppliers O2 sensors will work. I did a bit of research after he'd told me that, and it's well backed up on a lot of Toyota forums, for all kinds of Toyota vehicles.

I ordered a Denso replacement, and put it in, and that took care of it!!! However, it now has a new check engine code. P0420, Catalyst System Efficiency Below Threshold. A lot of the information out there indicates it could very possibly be a bad catalytic converter. However, on a lot of the Toyota forums, other owners had success by installing a O2 sensor spacer on the second O2 sensor. I located one that was very reasonably priced, but I didn't realize that it was coming from freakin' China. It took way longer to get here that I would have liked, but it finally got here. Right around the same time, the oil change light came on, so I was able to do both of them at the same time, since I had it up anyway. I reset the computer, and I didn't get that code anymore...

But... now I was getting another code, P0172, System Too Rich. Well, all systems will start off rich when you first start them up. I reset the computer again, and started letting the car warm for a couple of minutes before taking off, and I wasn't getting the code. Nice, I'll run a week to get a good data set and take it on over.

It makes it almost a full week, and it comes back on again. I put in a fresh air cleaner element, even though it wasn't that dirty looking, it had been in there a couple years. That didn't work. I ran a tank of gas with a bottle of fuel system cleaner. That didn't work. I pulled out the mass airflow sensor and cleaned it off. That didn't work. I kept warming it up for a couple of minutes every time I'd start it. It would go for a couple of days with no check engine light, but it was coming back even sooner than it had been at first. There's several things that could cause the rich condition, but since the injectors are fairly new, I was suspecting that one of them wasn't closing off completely. I viewed a couple of tutorials on cleaning your own fuel injectors, and that was going to be my next move, clean the original injectors and put them back in. I took the original set of injectors, and was soaking them in Marvel Mystery Oil, and made up an adapter tube to spray from a nozzle of a can of carb cleaner to the injectors. One of the things the tutorials mentioned was that the filter screen cones will need to be replaced. I looked around at a couple of the usual places, and no one had them, so I went to check Ebay to see if they had them. I found a couple of kits that have a set of filter cones and the seals for just under $20, but while I'm looking, I see a few items down someone is selling a set of 4 new injectors for just under $30!!! That's about what I was paying for 1 injector from Rock Auto!!! Can't beat that, so I order a set.

They show up a few days later, and I install them. I go to start the car, and it's running very rough, and I let it go for a minute to see if it gets them all primed. The check engine light comes on. I turn it off, and check the computer. No codes. I fire it up again, let it run until the check engine light comes on again, shut it down again. Now it has the code stored, P0304, Cylinder #4 Misfire. Since I hadn't been doing anything with the ignition part, I rather suspected it wasn't really a misfire, but an injector not firing. I checked the connection, and when it was verified good, I moved the cylinder #4 injector to #2, and the code followed, now it was P0302. Bad injector out of the box. I pulled the original injectors out of the Marvel Mystery Oil and cleaned them off, swapped the seals from the new ones, and put it back together. Reset the computer, and I haven't seen a check engine light since!!!

After driving Kutcher for a week, I took it back, and it passed without issue!!! I had been considering getting litigious about the $220 and $175 they'd charged me, since I've got a little free time, and could likely prevail for at least part of it, but decided against it. I just don't think I'm going there anymore!!! The last time I'd had Scruffy there for it's smog, the guy's father was running the place (he's the one who pointed me in the right direction on the driving procedure to get all the monitors set back then), but it looks like he's passed it off to the son, and his son doesn't seem to be up to the task!!!

Oh, and while I was working on various electrical systems, I was disconnecting the battery, and towards the end, the battery terminal was falling apart again, and I used a C clamp to hold it together again until I got a replacement. For some reason, that car seems to go through them!!! Actually picked up the replacement on the way back from the place that smogged Zonker!!! I'm pretty sure I'd bought a few before I was axed, but I couldn't locate them. Got one that's made of zinc instead of lead, hopefully that helps it last longer.

I'd made mention that the phone holder – charger in Kutcher wasn't staying in place as it should. Shortly after, the suction cup portion lost it's connection to the arm. I located this one, and have had it in for around a week. It was working quite well, and it actually charges, but my wife knocked it off yesterday, and it hasn't stuck to the center console for any length of time since then. I re positioned the suction cup to the rear center console with the arm pointing straight up, and it seems to be working there!!!

The previous holder had a weight activated holder, where the bottom edge being pushed down would cause the sides to close. This one, as soon as it senses there's a phone in it, it closes the sides with a motor. It has a couple of little buttons on the sides that are touch activated to release the grip. It's supposed to contain a battery to be able to release when the power is off, but if it does, it hasn't charged. It's also not illuminated like the old one was, either.

Do the Dew Review

When a company comes up with a special edition or alternative recipe of one of their flavors, it piques my interest. Some of them just sound bad, and I usually won't try it unless I hear otherwise. Other times I'll think it sounds good, and I'll have to try it!!!

The other day I was at Little Caesar's picking up some pizzas, and they had a new Mountain Dew flavor. This reminded me of the time I was there last year, and they had pineapple Pepsi in their cooler. I had to get a couple to try them out, and let the younger try it as well.

It was... different. It wasn't great. It had some pineapple flavor to it, but it was mostly Pepsi flavored to me. Ah well, I gave it a try.

This time it was a mango flavored Mountain Dew. Apparently, Mountain Dew has previously had a mango flavor, Mango Gem, but this is Mango Rush. It's supposed to have some spice to it, but I wasn't feeling it. It has the mango flavor to it, which is pretty good, and pretty sweet. Much better than the pineapple Pepsi, but I don't think I'm getting any more. I bought three cans, one for myself, and one for the younger and surrogate son, and for three cans you spend about as much as you do for a pizza at Caesars.

Here's one I've tried that I really liked, Mountain Dew Baja Flash, that has a pineapple coconut flavor!!! Yes, I like Piña Colodas!!! I know I got it when we were vacationing in Running Springs at the store there, and I think I got it again somewhere else.

While I was looking through for Mountain Dew pictures, I happened on this picture from Christmas 2021. Another collaboration, this time between Pringle's and Halo, Moa Burger flavor!!! I picked up a tube for both myself and the younger. As I recall, this was another hit, meaty and salty flavored. This was also the year he'd asked for some Spamton glasses, which he's wearing for the picture.

There's a web sourced picture of both sides of the can, since my picture came out a little fuzzy. I like that Mr. Pringle got a boom mic headset!!!

Anyway, the mention of the Spamton glasses reminded me that I'd found him a Spamton T-shirt for Christmas 2022. I'd taken a shot of the graphics on it, most likely in anticipation of making a post, and never used it. Here it is!!!

Looking Back: The Antenna Install

I have made reference in a couple of recent posts about the antenna I installed on the Sky. This was back in January of last year, so it's been a while. It's a bit of a story, and here it is!!!

As I mentioned, the original style antenna is a tall solid mast, and it's on the rear fender, right where it's in the way when you are putting the top down or up. All that remained of the original was the plastic base, and around an inch of the original mast. I purchased a little rubber antenna of the style that had been popular during the mini truck craze of the 80's. I had figured I would just remove the original, and plug the replacement in wherever the original cable plugged in. Of course, the radio is a ways from the stereo head, so as a plan B I was thinking I could just splice the cable as needed.

Not previously mentioned, Zonker actually has two antennas, the standard over the air antenna mentioned, and a satellite radio (and probably OnStar as well) “Shark Fin” antenna on the middle back of the rear deck, and of course, both have cables that pass from the trunk area to the interior.

I removed the rear body panel and the center console cover, figuring they would pass through and probably run down the console. That's what you see here, there's a lot going on. The box in the middle of the picture is, I'm pretty sure, the satellite radio receiver. Towards the bottom of the picture, you can see the subwoofer of the Monsoon audio system (which I also previously mentioned that I had repaired by gluing the cone back to the surround) and towards the top is the Monsoon amp. I tried to trace the over the air antenna cable, but was only able to positively ID the satellite cable.

I took a step back, and reconsidered the approach I was going to take. The old antenna base was going to have to be removed to put the new one on. While I was antenna shopping, I saw that almost all of the antenna masts are internally threaded. I went ahead and worked the stub off, and unscrewed the large flat nut on the top of the base, which revealed the threaded rod base. The replacement antenna has a near opposite approach, with a threaded bolt extending down, which is captured and kept from turning with a couple of flats in the metal portion of the antenna base. OK, what can I do with this??? How about using a nut in place of the bolt, and screwing it down to the original threaded stud??? Yes, that could work, but it may end up needing to be shortened, or some sort of adapter made up. I found a flange nut with the correct thread, which of course was too wide for the slot in the metal base. I used a cut off wheel to slice two sides off, and shortened one end, to make a nut where everything lines up.

Next up, how to get everything to line up... The metal base to the antenna is too small to work with the original plastic base. The plastic base for the new antenna has a similar shape, a tapering cone, with the correct size recess for the metal base, and a little extra flange and height on the bottom. Since I already had the cut off wheel set up, I trimmed the flange and a little height off the base, and things were getting close to the right height to sandwich it with the original base, but of course the shape wasn't matching up. I ran a bolt through the newly trimmed down base, and chucked a couple of nuts in my drill, and attached it to the drill. I had the younger run the drill, while I used some coarse sandpaper to shape it down into more of a spherical shape. After the shape was good, I used fine sandpaper and a sanding pad to smooth it out, and it actually polished up beautifully!!!

It ended up looking something like a snowman, with a base cone of the original base (which actually follows the fender contour nicely), the new base turned spherical, and the metal base, which already has a round shape, being two halves that you can use to adjust the angle!!!

At the same time I had ordered the antenna, I also picked up a couple of phone holders. When I had started working from home, I picked up a wireless charger stand for my phone, since I was using my phone a lot for work (I've got a whole folder of work apps I need to uninstall), and the wireless charging was working great!!! I figured I'd look into a similar holder for the cars, and found a couple of these for not a lot. I still hadn't come up with a good holder for Kutcher, and since it tends to get a lot more use, I'd put one in it first. I'm usually not impressed by suction cup style bases, but these work great!!! It's a clear silicone cup with a release lever, and I was able to stick it to the middle of the console, and have the phone holder just back from the gear shift. Just recently, something went wrong with the indexing of the arm, and now it wants to rotate down, guess I'll be taking it back to the drawing board soon. Also, for some reason, it doesn't seem to charge nearly as well as the home unit did. Anyway, here's the one I put in the Sky, it sets it right between the instruments and the heater controls, and it's stuck to the smooth part of the dashboard right over the middle HVAC vents. Lights up a cool blue!!!

So, there you are!!! 80's antenna installed!!! Not going to snap off putting the top up or down, and it seriously improves reception!!! Cool 80's aesthetic vibe, as well!!!

And a happy 512 day to all!!!

Sid's Tube

Cat toys are always hit and miss. You may see something you think your cat will love, and they all but ignore it. You can have some trash you're throwing away, and they'll pull it out and have the time of their lives!!! But sometimes, you'll get something they'll love!!!

Some time ago, my wife ordered a collapsible fabric tube, about cat-sized diameter by around 2 feet long. He loves his tube!!! Every time someone would come into the room, he'd race over to it and stick his front into it!!!

So when she located this one, it was a no-brainier. It's the same idea, spring loaded rings around cat-sized, but it's about 8 feet long with a S-bend to it. It also has a couple of windows cut out of the sides.

Predictably, he loves this one, too!!! Once again, whenever anyone comes into the room, he heads for his tube, and sticks his front end in.

I'll put my foot into the other end, and move it around a little. He'll do the cat butt wiggle, then launch himself into the tube like a spring loaded Tigger!!! Sometimes he'll collapse the tube to around half it's length!!!

He'll also reach out the side windows and bat and claw at you. It's great to see our boy having fun!!! I don't think I'd mentioned, but before he broke his leg, it seemed like he was growing out of his kittenhood, but after he got out of the cage, I feel like he had the mindset that he's going to play like a kitten every day!!!

The 80's Called, They Want Their License Plate Frame Back

License plate frames aren't much of a big deal to me, but they do give it something of a finished look. I got a patriotic one for my first Saturn which was pretty cool, but faded as it aged. 3 came with a Saturn of Permian Basin dealer frame, which had the white faded out on the lettering, which I cleaned up, spray painted silver to match the car, and sanded the letters to reveal the black plastic and painted the Saturn logo red. When I sent her away, I swapped the frame to Scruffy. The silver doesn't go as well, but it's in memoriam. Back when I was running a CNC machine, I had come up with a few programs for various frames that I could add text to, my favorite being the 512 frame I left on Nasty. I'd always figured I'd make up a couple more of those, but got out before I had a chance. Zonker didn't have one when I got her, but I took care of that recently!!!

I was emptying a trash can, and someone had tossed out one of those “Drive Pink” license plate frames. I'm all for supporting a cause, but I think they look hideous, and unless you got your car from selling Mary Kay, they really don't go with any of the cars they are on!!! I'd never really looked closely at any of them before, but since I was up close, I got to see that it's actually a quality piece, made of steel (I think). I could come up with something with this...

I sanded it down, and gave it a few coats of gloss yellow. Then I used skinny masking tape to do a series of random stripes, reminiscent of Eddie Van Halen's Frankenstrat from the “1984” album. Interesting, when I was looking for info on that guitar, I discovered that he retired it after they played the Us Festival '83, which was the first concert I went to. Maybe one day I'll do a post on that!!!

I then applied a few coats of gloss black, removed the tape, and did a few coats of a clear reflective paint. That flattened the look of the gloss black, which I hadn't foreseen, but I actually like the way it came out!!! It had a little bleed around some of the cross points of the tape, but it's good enough.

As I'd previously mentioned, I had also added an 80's reminiscent rubber antenna, and I feel like the frame also has something of an 80's vibe. I was going to see if I had some stainless button heads to install it with, and came across some tamper resistant screws from back when I was doing packaging tooling. Installed it without the plate for a picture with black oxide screws, then decided that stainless steel ones would be better, since they won't rust.

Took a picture close up, like the blank one, then when I was at the bank, I realized a full back picture would work better, with the black top and exhaust valance panel. Bonus, the antenna is also visible!!!