13 Shots from Petersen

I've lived my whole life in the Los Angeles area, and I'm a car guy, but here's something I've never done. A visit to the Petersen Automotive Museum!!!

My dad's car club managed to get a group trip there, including a tour of the vault. It was pretty awesome, but they don't allow photography in the vault. The three things that I remember from that part are one of the three gold DeLorians ever produced, a Pantera owned by Elvis that he put three bullets into when it wouldn't start for him, and a 62-63 Comet that was under construction. The Comet got my attention because one of the cars I'm always looking around for the similar but much cooler 60-61 model.

All the pictures are from the levels above the vault. I considered attempting a sneak vault photo on my phone, but never did.

Right out in the lobby they had this auto show superbike with a Dodge V-10 engine.

This Mercer was pretty cool. Whoever heard of a monocle windshield??? I was a bit mystified by the gear drive to the front wheel. The most likely thing I could think of was a speedometer cable take off.

Motorized bikes were well represented.

I liked the green car with the white hard top. Don't remember what it was named, but it is a trike, has a removable top, and seats four across the bench seat!!!

There was a design school that had done wood mock ups for the next generation Minis. I like that they used a 5 gallon bucket for the center gauge cluster.

A lot of auto show cars that never saw production.

The huge black Rolls Royce in the lobby has a perfectly round door, although it's not so easy to see in the picture.

Finally, on the way out, in the parking lot was a cool dune buggy!!!

Street Cred

A few weeks ago was the younger boys' birthday. He had some friends over and we had pizza, cake and ice cream. He and his friends played around and goofed off. There was even a recreation of the Trololo Sing Along (because that's what you do on your 14th birthday)

As you can see, the cake was styled with the Rooster Teeth logo. This ties in to what he'd decided he wanted for his birthday, a Rooster Teeth skateboard deck!!!

Of course, had to get wheels & trucks to complete the rig. Came out pretty good!!! Unfortunately, it didn't come with hardware to hold the trucks on, so I got them from my work the next day. Stainless fasteners, and some gray grippy tape, too.

He's been getting some practice on it since then, and is getting proficient on it. It's a much better board than the last one he had.

So, last week we'd gone out for some dinner. He brought his board along, because he knew the place we were going to has a parking lot that's usually mostly empty on the one side. After we eat, he's out there skating around.

Around the time we were getting ready to head out, he sees a break in the curbs around the parking area, around a foot wide by three or so long, like for a water drain channel. "Hey, should I try skating through there???" Yeah, sure, go for it!!! He goes... and somehow loses it, and it takes off towards the quite busy main street on the other side!!! Car in the right lane sees it coming and stops. The car in the left lane doesn't. It's rolled all the way to the middle island, and I'm thinking maybe it'll lay sideways along the edge, but no... the next car over rolls over it. Dang!!! He manages to retrieve it, and has had enough skating for the day. I was thinking he was going to have an expensive wall hanging after that, but it fared pretty decent. A couple of splinters coming up, and another area with around an inch long crack. I glued it back where it had been. It also has a tire track across the end now.

Now there's some serious street cred!!!

Saturn 3

Saturn 3. If you were an adolescent in the late 70's & early 80's, perhaps you remember a Science Fiction film of that name, featuring Farrah Fawcett, who couldn't have been hotter at that time. I vaguely recall the commercials for it, and wanting to see it quite badly. I know I was (and still am) very into Sci-Fi, but I couldn't tell you if the real reason was Farrah. Never did see it, and from hearing some of the feedback about it, that may have been a mercy. That could have been due to it having an R rating, or that it didn't last long in theaters, as box office bombs tend to do. Lord knows I saw several fairly bad Sci-Fi movies in that era, I think everyone was trying to glom onto the success of Star Wars: A New Hope.

But I digress.

A completely different kind of Saturn 3 to be discussed some here!!! We'll back it up around a month at this point. Actually, a few months back it actually started up, I guess. The first Saturn I'd bought (all the way back in 2008!!!) started giving me check engine light troubles. Primarily, it was giving me misfire codes, mostly on the #2 cylinder. I tried several things, mostly to no avail. The last thing I'd done, something I'd read on a forum, was replacing the ground wires. I'd cleaned off the ground connections after having read that initially, but hadn't noticed that the ground wire itself up under the battery at some point (before I'd bought the car) had been burnt through by the positive, and only the positive had been replaced. Fast forward 8+ years, and the remaining ground cable is nice and green!!! In the meantime, I'd been putting miles on my wife's, as she's been out of commission (a whole 'nother post could be made of that...) for a few weeks. Finally drove mine in on a Saturday, and as I'm getting off the freeway, I'm hearing a lot of noise. Huh. Sounds for the life of me like a rod knock!!! Strange, it hasn't been getting hot or being run low on oil. Maybe it's the timing chain, after all it's up around 175,000 miles. First thing, pull off the accessory belt to be sure it's not one of them, then off comes the valve cover to check the slack on the timing chain. It really doesn't look bad, but I'm not completely convinced. SO, my thinking goes something like this: if it IS indeed only the timing chain, it's only around $150 for the chain set & gaskets, plus a couple days to do it. But, if I do do it, I've still got an old Saturn block that uses a quart of oil every couple of tanks. Not to mention, if I did the chain & it was still knocking, I'd be out for that. SO, something I'd already been thinking of, find a used wreck or just high miler, yank the engine out of that, and do a full rebuild. Hopefully find one with alloys to put on the wife's. Did I mention I'd just dropped $225 in front end work on her??? Of course. Commence the used car shopping!!!

I'd been looking around for a couple weeks, when I came across this. At the price and miles, it was hardly worth my effort doing all that!!!

2001. A Saturn 3-door, so there's your Saturn 3 tie in!!! That, and it's now our 3rd Saturn. 67,000 miles!!! I thought it was hinkey having a car that old with that few miles, so I ran a CarFax report on it before I jumped.

It has a Texas inspection sticker on the windshield, so I was concerned that it may have been a flood victim. It had been in Midland, Texas, and had it's biggest red flag there, too. It had been stolen, and was recovered two days later. Guess that explains why it has different keys for the door and the ignition switch. For the last ten years, though, it's been in Woodland Hills, and never had a problem passing smog.

Alloy wheels!!! Sunroof!!! Leather interior!!! Pretty much a newer, lower mile carbon copy of my original Saturn!!! That even includes the tore up driver's side seat. Actually, it has a couple of options that one didn't. The aforementioned third door, and ABS & traction control.

A bunch of little things need done, though. First up, the tires are pretty worn, whereas the ones on Baby are in great shape. I like the alloys on her better too, so good. These alloys are going on my wife's. Tire remounting in my future, along with a trip to the locksmith to see about re-keying something. Oh yeah, no remotes, so I can see about getting the ones I've already got programmed to this vehicle. Apparently, you get up into 2001, and you need an expensive device to plug into the OBD2 port to do this. Maybe a locksmith will have that. The lock switch on the inside of the driver's door is gone, but I've seen this before. Twice on mine and once on my wife's I've replaced these. Sunroof isn't working right. It's got window tint (even on the front door windows, illegal) that's quite purple and in pretty bad shape. The speakers in back are shot, and if it's even got any in the front, they're not hooked up. Has the same exhaust leak that the first had, so I want to swap on my 512 labs tailpipe, but I'd like to get a baseline for the mileage first to see if it bumps up on this one, too. Map light buttons aren't working, either. Got a bunch of other little things to swap over, too. I actually like the body style of the first one better, don't care for the newer style headlights, and the backup lights being moved down into the bumper. Conceivably, I COULD unbolt all the body panels (except the 3rd door and quarter panel on that side) on the first one and swap 'em over to the third!!! Nahhhh...

One thing that doesn't need work, it has an awesome radio already installed!!! It has an aux input, but that is actually fairly moot, because it has Bluetooth connectivity, too!!!