Sunday, January 29, 2012

What I Did This Weekend...

I'm sure it's not the ONLY thing I got done this weekend, but it's pretty much the most major thing. My dad's Studebaker had been getting a bit tired in the engine leading up to the later part of last year, and he decided to replace the vintage 327 with a fresh 350 crate engine.

He did a nice detail job on the engine compartment. He'd picked up what he thought was some catalyzed black paint at a fair discount, but as you can see, it came out an... INTERESTING shade of brown!!! Good enough, he thought, it rather compliments the yellow outer skin, and I have to agree, not to mention it's something you don't really see. He tends to never show it with the engine compartment open, anyway, as it looks much better with it closed. Not that the engine and compartment aren't on a showable level.

While he had the engine out, he made up a custom recess for the firewall to clear the distributor better, which was always a tight fit. The final touch was the addition of a Dynamat type sound and heat insulator. Two last things once all the parts are back together are going to be the replacement of the air conditioner condenser, which seems to have some seepage, and eliminating the leaks in the power steering system.

It was no small job, but all that was really done was to swing the engine in, bolt it to the transmission, bolt the torque converter to the flexplate, and bolt down the engine mounts and tighten up the transmission. A series of twelve bolts turned.

Anything else??? Yea, spent quite a bit at Big Lots! for their 20% off day, and visited a seafood restaurant my wife had spotted in Glendale.

I'm doing a bit of work for a neighbor. He has a couple of cast bronze lion faces that were originally for a fountain where it squirts from the mouth. The studs were frozen in it, and one snapped off. Spray penetrant loosened 'em up. He's going to mount them and use them as wall hangings. I was thinking of the intense green laser I got for my son, and got the idea that it'd be pretty cool to take the element from one of those (or possibly two), hook it to a wall transformer instead of the batteries, and set it up so the lion would shoot a laser beam from it's mouth!!! Would that not be awesome??? Now I'm thinking of contacting my foundry guy and see about getting a couple duplicates cast up!!! Set 'em up with motion detectors, set up little mirrors and bounce a grid of beam all about the ceiling, set it up with a little motor to make the beam track back and forth... the possibilities are pretty cool!!! If I get anything together, I'll take a picture...

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Gusher

Coming home last night, the road opposite ours going up the canyon we live in was blocked off with cones and a parking enforcement vehicle. "Odd", I thought to myself, "Must be some sort of parking emergency!!!" This means I was forced to drive up our street, which is counter to my normal routine, as usually I drive up that side so to be pointed the proper direction to park on the street or pull into the driveway.

As I ascended, there was a flatbed tow truck idling right opposite my driveway. Hmmmm... I get to the top of the street, turn around and park, and go to investigate. In addition to the tow truck, there's parking enforcement and another flatbed tow truck on the opposite street, and cones set up there, too. A few people are milling around over there. I thought maybe someone had wrecked over on that side, or maybe someone managed to drive into the canyon. From the days when my grandfather lived here I'd heard tales of parked cars rolling down into the canyon, yet I've never seen the likes of it.

The property opposite us on that street has some nice river rock retaining walls. I finally notice that the portion by the corner is fallen down into the street, of course followed by much of the dirt behind it. Hmmmmm again!!! I make mention to one of the neighbors out there that it's a shame, I really liked that wall. They agree, and then say something about how there was so much water. ??? It had rained that morning until around noon or so, but nothing serious, only about half an inch at most, I'd guess, and probably less.

Well, you probably guessed from the pictures, I was missing a key element here. Somehow, the fire hydrant over there got sheared off!!! Apparently it was pretty loud and of course went on for a while. My oldest had the presence of mind to take the camera out and get a few shots, as well as a video. Used to be able to post video on here, but I don't see the link for that anymore. The second shot I cropped for effect, you can see the spout is going about three times as high as the basketball hoop!!!

I like the last shot, with the water just cascading off the yard. I still wonder exactly how it happened!!!

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Christmas 2 Random

Anyway

Seems like a lot goes on, doesn't it??? Yesterday I had it in my mind to change the master cylinder on the Maverick, as it seems to have developed a leak past the seal. I've been considering various destinations for this coming Summer vacation, and they were having the Los Angeles Travel & Adventure show... down in LONG BEACH!!! So, I was thinking that if I got through the master cylinder job I might go down and check that out.

As plans often change, my wife wanted go go to the Golden Star restaurant in Long Beach for breakfast. It had been a while, and sounded pretty good, so instead of wrenching on the car, we headed there instead, then to the travel show after.

My younger boy was going on quite a while about My Little Ponies. I had to come up with my OC, original character, and I came up with Apple Core, a Pegasus-Unicorn hybrid who launches apple cores at other ponies from his horn. Today I did the drawing & spent entirely too long modifying it in PaintShop Pro.

On the way between those destinations, they had several streets to the West blocked off. Found out, on the news that evening, they were having the MLK day parade. The parade looked pretty ghetto. MLK would have been proud.

For the most part, I found the travel show to be a bust and a waste of money. Did, however, discover that for driving into and out of Canada, you can get by with a Country of origin drivers license or some such instead of having to have a passport, so this may open up a possibility...

A few shots of the final 2011 Christmas celebration with my parents, or the Best Christmas Ever. My older boy got a gorgeous acoustic guitar, and the younger got an AirHogs Hawk Eye RC airplane. I 'shopped my arm out of the picture of it.

Funny how they have the MLK day parade on the Saturday before. Is that for the people who would like to attend, but actually have jobs where they have to work on Monday??? Like everyone who doesn't work for a bank or government???

Discovered something quite interesting while checking flight and lodging prices. From here, it costs very nearly the same to fly and stay in Oahu, Hawaii, as it does to fly and stay in Iceland!!! Mind blown!!! Iceland hadn't really been on my travel radar in any serious fashion, but now it really is!!!

I didn't get a chance to finish this post off the day I started it, so some of the references to yesterday and such aren't going to come out exactly right, unless you time travel with me.

The second to the last picture is my mom's ICD implant. Funny thing, all the pictures I took of her showing it off, she's got her eyes closed in. It seems to be suiting her well, but as you can see, it's fairly prominent on her. The heart medicine they've got her on makes her "woozy", but she's getting her strength back, walking around the neighborhood and the park and stuff. The burn on her leg is getting better, but it remains a pretty serious burn. Third degree, it was.

Today I wore a shirt I got from my parents for Christmas for the first time. It's a tie-dye look, but with incredibly vivid colors, and a picture on the front of a smurf (Brainy) sitting on top of a bunch of mushrooms with spots & stars whirling around his head. I call him mind expandy smurf. It got a lot of comments, somewhere around 18, and everyone really liked it.

As always, I'm sure I'm leaving out more than I can remember.

Oh yea, the second picture scan!!! It's just a piece of paper I found with some weird doodles on it.

Sunday, January 01, 2012

DropShip Like it's Hot!!!

I had meant to include this one in last night's post, even to the point of expressly posing these pictures before I did, but then completely spaced. That's OK, give me a chance to get a jump on starting this year off. Besides, I think the last post had plenty going on.

This was one of the items high on my younger boys' wish list, the Mega Bloks UNSC Pelican Dropship from the Halo series. Not only is it pretty massive, it's pretty cool and pretty detailed.

Of course, I ended up being the one doing most of the construction. Lego does a much better job of organizing the parts, and much of the assembly process was akin to a jigsaw puzzle where you spend more time searching for the right piece than doing the assembly.

Unfortunately, I was just getting the sick when we started. Went for an hour or so, and my headache became unbearable. The ticking of the animated clock decoration on the Christmas tree and my wife's application of Rapture perfume were both exacerbating this condition. I showered off, then soaked in a hot tub of water, then went to bed for several hours. Woke up in the middle of the night and did a little more, then went back to bed.

Did a lot more the next day, and wrapped it up on the third. By that point I'd gotten a clue and was building both sides of mirror image parts, that worked out much better.

In other news, yesterday got a shipment of things I'd ordered from Focal Price for Christmas. Didn't think I'd get it in time, and I was right, but that's OK, everyone liked their swag. Bought lasers for all the guys, a green one for the youngest (very intense beam, and it goes through the batteries), a purple one for myself, and a red one for the first born. The red isn't too exciting, I know, but it has a second button that gives the presser an electric shock. Got more headphones for the older, as he seems to go through them. Got an MP3 player for the younger boy, he'd been wanting one, and it seems to be pretty nice and fairly rich featured. Found a nice watch for my wife. Focal Price has some great deals and free shipping from Hong Kong. I've already thought of another order I need to place with them!!!