More Car Stuff

Mostly because of my newly acquired inheritance, I've been getting in a good amount of car work in these days. As always, there's more to do!!!

Not chronological, but to start with, I bought a new deep cycle battery to use in the Hawk, and put the one I'd borrowed from the Falcon back in. I'll also mention since I don't have a picture to go with it, one of Kutcher's tires had a nail in it that I removed and plugged the hole. I'd bought a tire plug kit from my previous job, and this is the first time I used it. I've seen them installed before, but have never done it myself. Either I should have gone at the tire more and oversized the hole more, or it's harder to get in than I thought, I had to fight it to get it in!!! It's holding fine, though. The tires are all getting worn, and I'm thinking I'll do something I've been meaning to do, take it for an alignment, and buy a new set of tires. The oil change light just came on, and it will be the first one I've done without being able to buy employee price oil. One of the driving lights burned out, but I bought a pair of yellow ones to replace the factory white ones with not long after we bought it, and this may be the perfect time to install them!!! Oh, and I bought myself a pair of ramps to make some of these maintenance tasks a bit easier.

I'm also planning on doing a repair on the bottom of Zonker's front bumper like I did on Scruffy, it has a little portion in the middle that's hanging down now. That was a big part of the reason I bought the ramps!!!

On to the things I've done to the Hawk, I got all the window tint removed from the front windows. It wasn't as difficult as I'd thought it was going to be.

Also got a reflection of Zonker and of an unmentioned cat with coffee T-shirt my wife got me in the window picture!!!

One of the first things I did to try to get it to run cooler was to flush to cooling system and install a high flow thermostat. After I drained it, I removed the thermostat and added the flush, ran it for a while, and drained it again. As I did this, I got a better look at the sketchy looking routing of the upper radiator hose. The water pump and air conditioning compressor run off one belt, and the alternator drives from the A/C, and the hose was running between the two.

While I had the hose off, I got a look at the groove it had cut in the hose, and did not like the look of it at all!!! On my first run to the local auto parts store, they were good enough to let me go behind the counter and see if I could find a molded hose that might work better. A portion of part number D72224 turned out to work quite nicely!!!

My other thought was that the upper radiator hose appeared to be higher than the radiator filler, which could possibly cause a bubble in the system. I found a filler neck tee that I planned to put in place of the splice junction. I made the first purchase from my former work for a U-bolt to use as a solid mount for it, and added a bracket to hold it between the belt. I also tensioned the belt a little more.

After I'd done all the cooling system work, I was thinking I should have got some T-bolt hose clamps from my previous work while I was there (I'm not paying their shipping costs!!!) While I was looking around for something else, I located a couple I'd previously bought!!! Makes for a cleaner looking installation!!! I'd run it a couple of times in the driveway for around half an hour at a time, and the temperature didn't get all the way up, but the first time I noticed the electric fan wasn't coming on all the time. I cleaned the terminals and it seems to be working fine ever since.

I had ordered pizza a couple of nights later, and the younger and I took the Hawk to pick it up, as well as try it out and see how it did. It made it without and cooling issues, but it would surge while driving. Steady throttle, and it sounded like I was on and off the pedal. On the way back, I thought I'd take the less steep but longer back way up the hill. Around half way, it starts acting like it wants to cut out. I throw it in neutral and rev a few times (still acting like it's running rough and not really wanting to run) then try going again. It stalls out. I re start it, and it wants to die again, then does. I re start it again, and there's a road going off the side that I'm pretty sure goes down to the next street over. I head down it, and it's doing a little better not climbing, but the road is super sketchy, it goes down to one lane, and rutted dirt!!! I had the idea of taking it down to our street and parking it there, but it made it halfway down the street between, and stalls. I roll it to the side, and try re starting it again. It starts, but it's running really rough. It had gotten warm, but not like when I'd brought it home. I was thinking the heat was causing an issue, so I'd let it sit and cool for a while and try again. Oh yea, where it was, they now have no overnight 2 AM to 6 AM parking now.

We walked up, ate our pizza, and I walked back down a couple hours later. It re started, but was still running rough. I drove it over to the bottom of my street, and it stalled as I was rounding the corner. I was able to re start it, and drove it to the same back way street I'd last attempted, and it stalled out going around that corner, too!!! I called it for the night, rolled it back to the side of the street (no overnight restrictions there!!!) and once again walked up the hill.

The next day I headed down to see if I could figure it out. I was suspecting a fuel delivery issue. I recalled from when my dad had it, it came with a cork float for the fuel level sender, and after 40+ years it just kind of came apart!!! Probably, ideally, I should probably drop the tank and get it cleaned. He had installed an inline canister style fuel filter before the fuel pump, a clear filter with replaceable elements just before the carburetor, and the carb has a built in filter. I took out the clear one to get a look at it, and it was caked solid, and the gas in it looked like dirty brown water!!! Thinking I might be onto something, I headed over to the auto parts store again, and got a replacement for the carburetor filter and the inline filter. I just removed the clear one, planning to get a replacement element at a later time, and put the new carburetor filter in. It seemed to run much better with just that!!! That night, I drove it straight up the front way, and it pulled all the way!!!

You may have heard the old cliché, the old cars, if they break down you can fix it on the side of the road with a screwdriver, crescent wrench, and a pair of pliers. That was exactly what I did!!! Oh, and one of my neighbors driving by told me it's a beautiful car!!!

I cut open the old carburetor filter, and it looked pretty gunked up.

I had ordered replacement elements for the clear filter, but then noticed that the glass was cracked, too, so I ordered a new one of those.

The next day, I pulled it up on the ramps and replaced the canister filter. I noticed it is concerningly close to the exhaust, and decided that I would fashion a heat shield before I wrapped up the work in that area. I used a Monster Energy Drink can, it has to be better than the nothing that was there before!!!

I've also vacuumed it out, and used some carpet powder on the interior carpet, and re vacuumed it. My surrogate son gave me a black ice air freshener. Neither of these has completely gotten rid of the rodent smell, and I laid down another layer of carpet powder and will vacuum it again tomorrow. Should see about getting the five years of dust washed off the car cover, and clean out the trunk. Should also see if the spare holds air, and pick up a replacement tire if it doesn't.

I've figured out some of the operation for the radio, it was a nice HD radio Pioneer unit back in the day, but the antenna doesn't seem to be working. I'm thinking of swapping in the one that was in the Homecoming Saturn, it's got nearly the same function as the ones in Scruffy and Kutcher, and having Bluetooth is always better than off a thumb drive.

One other concerning thing, the voltage gauge... always seems to show on the low side!!! If you rev it up, it'll come up, but cruising or at idle it's well under 12 volts. I'd mentioned the underdrive crank pulley, and had had the thought that the slow spinning was possibly the issue with the cooling. Having read up on the water pump, it seems like they are more than is necessary to keep things cool, even at lower speed, but the alternator could possibly not be spinning fast enough at lower speeds. I had thought of buying a couple of V-belt pulleys and different size cogged drive pulleys and a belt, and making a belt overdrive. Since the aren't that expensive or hard to install, though, I'm thinking of getting a one wire conversion to try out before I go that route. Years ago I installed a GM alternator on the Falcon with a one wire conversion, and it is awesome!!! If you just start it and it's only idling, the headlights and dash lights would be dim, as though it's not getting a charge, but rev it just a bit, and you can see it turn on, and it stays charging strong. No gauge on the Falcon, but from the lights, you can see it working!!!

Oh, and speaking of Scruffy, it developed a freakin' rod knock!!! Right around the time I was having to retrieve the Hawk, and I got the old transmission and engine that had been down at my mom's house. Drove it straight to a shop, and had them do a full rebuild, and swap it in since I no longer have access to a nice big flat driveway to do these things. Set me back probably more than it's worth, but you know. I form an emotional bond with my machines.

Matte Black Cat with a Rat Kings Tat

This week we went to the previously teased Gaslight Anthem and Counting Crows concert. It was a venue I'd never been to before, the YouTube Theater.

The YouTube Theater is in Inglewood, on the same property as our recently added NFL stadium (which I've also never been to before). I had seen a few shows near there at what used to be the Great Western Forum. The first show I ever drove myself to was there, Quiet Riot, with Whitesnake (before most people had heard of them). My friend Sean and I went together. Later we also saw Ratt there, with Bon Jovi opening, back when Bon Jovi had just come out with 7800° Fahrenheit album, so also before most people had heard of them. Much later, my wife and I, along with her brother in law and his wife saw The Scorpions there, around the time their Crazy World album was out. Anyway, the thing I recall from going there was that it seemed like you have to drive quite a ways from the freeway to get there.

But I digress. We got there and parked not too far from the entrance and made our way in. Security is better there in the sense that you don't have to empty your pockets, go through a metal detector, then get wanded down anyway for your belt buckle. I think it was a body scan instead, a guy just ahead of us got pulled out for a more thorough search. Since the place is fairly new, it's real nice, and it was easy to get in and find our seats, which were pretty good. We were on the front row of the first balcony, a bit off to the left. The younger was wondering if there would be an opening act or acts like last time, and I noticed that the setup had a Gaslight Anthem banner, and figured there wouldn't be.

The guys from The Gaslight Anthem start heading out, and Brian Fallon gets on the mic and says his daughter would like to say something. She gets on the mic, and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, The Gaslight Anthem!” From there they go into a song I wasn't familiar with, Have Mercy. Right after that they go into Positive Charge.

They did two cover songs in the set, and another I'd not heard before and haven't been able to positively identify. Since I'd mentioned Tom Petty in the teaser post, it was interesting that one of the covers was a Tom Petty song, Honeybee from the Full Moon Fever album. I recognized the song from the riff!!! The set list was as follows:

1. Have Mercy

2. Positive Charge

3. Handwritten

4. The Weatherman

5. Dark Places

6. Time Spent Playing By Her Side?

7. Howl

8. Honeybee (Tom Petty cover)

9. Mae

10. Here's Looking at You, Kid

11. Lovesong (The Cure cover)

12. Mulholland Drive

13. The 59 Sound

14. 45

Brian was wearing a hat for most of the show, so he wasn't especially photogenic. Once again, I wasn't able to identify who the picture on the drum was supposed to be, but I tried to get a good shot of it. She looks so familiar, I sent a picture and asked my wife, and she wasn't able to tell, either.

Also noticed that they had action figures on several of their amps!!!

Seven of the songs they did in their set they had also done at the previous show. It was cool to finally hear Howl live, and in the teaser post I'd mentioned Tom Petty, so it was cool they covered him!!!

They did the change over with the lights up, and the partition curtain behind the stage up. It goes back a ways, and they have a roll up door for a loading dock at the back, looks like a good design!!!

While we were driving there, I played Spaceman in Tulsa, and told the younger that I bet Counting Crows will play it tonight. It just seemed too perfect for them not to play it!!! They took the stage, and it was the first song they did!!!

The set list was as follows:

1. Spaceman in Tulsa

2. Hard Candy

3. Mr. Jones

4. Virginia Through the Rain

5. Omaha

6. Cover Up the Sun

7. With Love, From A to Z

8. Miami

9. Colorblind

10. God of Ocean Tides

11. Blues Run the Game

12. Round Here + Raining in Baltimore

13. Boxcars

14. A Long December

15. Rain King (intro with something with the lyric, “It would have been fine if you would have been the one”, another song I wasn't familiar with)

16. Under the Aurora

17. Hanginaround

18. Holiday in Spain

I'd never heard Colorblind live before (to be fair, not a song I'd been clamoring to hear live, anyway) but it was another I recognized from the into riff. They did a cool effect where they did a rectangle cone of light over Adam, with brighter chaser lights going around the perimeter. Also did white spots over the rest of the band.

Before he went into Cover Up the Sun, he spoke of how some songs are fables, but rooted in reality and featuring real people. He said the song features Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez, and his grandson Clifton Collins, Jr.

Before he went into With Love, From A to Z he told the story of how his dad had to go into the military during the Vietnam war. They'd been in Boston, and ended up moving to Texas, and traveled in their Oldsmobile Cutlass station wagon. After he mentioned the station wagon, the crowd cheered, and Adam said that the mention of the car always gets a cheer!!! Adam said he had a stack of books, and read them and watched the scenery of the Appalachian Mountains and the open plains. And how now he travels the country and sees a lot of it. I always had thought that the storytelling of Cover Up the Sun sounded like a tale of touring the country in a tour bus. The line near the end, “Let that diesel fly”, as well as the traveling descriptions from the first verse always made me think that.

They left the stage after Rain King, and I had a feeling they'd be back for an encore. Sure enough, they did!!! I was thinking that the perfect song to end the show with would have been Bobby and the Rat Kings, but I guess they didn't want to play all night!!! Upon reflection later, I noticed that they didn't play any of the 4 songs from the original Butter Miracle Suite One, all of which I've become a fan of. They did play five of the songs off the most recently released Butter Miracle: The Complete Sweets, which I guess makes sense, since Suite One was a few years ago. They did play Boxcars, which has the mention of the matte black cat with a Rat Kings tat that this post title is from (and made me take a look at Kangol hats, to see if any of them appealed to me!!!). After the show, I was looking to see if anyone had posted clips from the show (there are a few), I came across the cinematic official video for Suite One, and it's pretty good!!! Also, it features the aforementioned Clifton Collins Jr.!!! Also where I got the image at the top of the post of the Rat Kings CD.

Oh yeah, I didn't have any trouble identifying the picture of the girl on the Counting Crows drum head, it's the Butter Face girl from the Butter Miracle cover artwork!!!

As we headed out, we swung by the merch booth, to see if there was anything that appealed. As we had headed out of the venue, I saw one guy with a shirt from the hook line from Spaceman in Tulsa, “I'm a Motherfucken' Rock and Roll Star”, that I thought was pretty amusing but probably something I wouldn't wear much. The Gaslight Anthem had one with the lyric from Positive Charge, “It's Good to be Alive” (which, IT IS!!!, and a great sentiment, I thought) with band images underneath that I picked up.

The younger liked the Butter Miracle: The Complete Sweets tour shirt, with the dates in a circular pattern on the back. On the front of his, it has Counting Crows, and the sleeve of mine has The Gaslight Anthem. A couple more overpriced shirts to add to the collection!!!

Machine Work

My dad got his Studebaker back in 1993. A bit of the back story on it is as follows: He had found an old basket case Ford, a '50 I think, for a good price, I think it was $500 but might have been $1,000, that he had wanted to buy. Naturally, it wasn't in running condition. He ran it past my mom, and I think it would be an understatement to say that she was less than enthusiastic. He'd probably mentioned it to me, but I don't recall. My mom talked to my older sister about it, and she had a different point of view. I don't think she was especially crazy about it, either, but she told my mom, “He's a good guy, always works, doesn't drink or do drugs, doesn't gamble away his paycheck, doesn't chase tail, you should let him have something for a little fun!!!” So she had convinced my mom, who reluctantly agreed, but in the interim, my dad had talked himself out of it, thinking it could become a constant bone of contention. He said he wasn't going to get an old project car, “Unless a Studebaker Hawk comes up for sale”!!!

I didn't know that part at all. I was working as a machinist at the time, making tooling for sheet thermoforming, and the other machinist would often look through the classified looking for any interesting classics. He reads one day right around then that there's a '62 Studebaker Hawk, 289” (no, not a Ford motor if you didn't know) and automatic transmission, runs and drives, $1,400. Wow, that sounds like a decent price for just about any running and driving classic to me!!! I knew nothing of Studebaker for the most part, other than that some of them had come with factory centrifugal superchargers, but gave my dad a call anyway to let him know, since I knew he was kind of looking for something. It must have sounded just like what he was thinking. It was up at or near the Van Nuys airport, and I don't remember how much longer it was after that, but he had me come along with him one evening, and it was in pretty good original condition. The passenger side fender had been crunched so bad it had torn the metal, and welded back together and roughed out back to close to the original shape, and there was a big scrape on the passenger side quarter panel ahead of the back wheel. Worth the asking price to him, and he drove it home that night.

Since I was employed as a machinist during a lot of the time that my dad was doing various things on the Studebaker, I ended up making a lot of custom machined items for it!!! I feel like I don't have a lot of items (other than my two 512 keychains) that I machined, but there are several on the Stude!!! Since I recently did a post about license plate frames, I'll start off with this!!! This was one of the few frames I made up with my CNC program. I think I did two 512 frames, a Chicago Cubs frame for Sammy, and this one for my dad that I gave him for Christmas in 2005 (incidentally mentioned on my 100th post!!!). One of my neighbors thought it was a great idea to have it on there, since most people have no idea what it is!!!

Around that same time, I think my dad must have asked me about making caps for the lakes pipes. I wrote a program for the outside profile, then made a couple of designs. On the drivers' side, I did the Studebaker “Lazy S” logo.

On the passengers' side, I did the Hawk logo. They are fairly quick to make, and I think my thought was to see which he liked, or if he'd like to come up with something different. Also, the cap I had been measuring off to make the outside profile apparently is just a bit smaller top to bottom that the actual flange, so these have a bit of the pipe flange showing. I would have corrected this and whipped out a pair of matching ones, but they axed me before I was able to get to that point.

His original vision for the Stude was to keep it fairly factory original, with the original engine and transmission, and have his custom body touches “bolt on”, so the body could be easily returned to stock. He designed custom tail light housings, and custom headlight bezels, and a custom grille shell. Then, while they were heading out to some far flung event, the 2-speed automatic transmission went out. He called me up to see if I'd get my mom's Cadillac drive out to get them, and he'd have it towed back, which we did. He found out it was going to be over $2,000 to get the transmission rebuilt, and around the same time, he had a guy who owed him that totaled his Chevy truck with a V8 and TH700R4 overdrive transmission. The overdrive it a huge plus for something you're going to be driving any distance, and Chevy small block engines are a hot rod classic. He decided he would be better off updating the drivetrain. He wasn't the first to put a small block in the Hawk body, but a lot of people end up mounting them high in the engine bay to clear the crossmember. He thought, since he knew a machinist, he could get a reduced size crank pulley to clear it, and put it in the original's position. This was well before I was running a CNC, and this was just done on a lathe. I don't remember exactly how it worked out, but the bolt circle to the balancer was wide enough that I wouldn't be able to make it as small as he wanted and have deep enough grooves, so I made it as a 2-piece unit, with the pulley portion bolting onto the balancer mounting portion.

Not long after, he was having issues with the accessory mounting, and had me make up this bracket for the power steering pump. This was done on a vertical mill. It's seen better days, but it may just clean up nicely.

This isn't anything I did, but I discovered or re discovered that he'd added a Moon Equipment temperature gauge to the intake manifold. Wouldn't be a hot rod if it wasn't running hot!!!

As a tooling designer, we also did pattern work, and would send them out to be sand cast in aluminum. The aforementioned custom tail light housings needed an end piece for the trim that runs the length of the car. My dad made up the pattern, and we sent them out for casting. I cleaned up and polished the castings. He also made up the pattern for the custom headlight bezels. They actually have a portion with negative draft, which most casting shops can't do as loose patterns, but the place we worked with is pretty good. They came out with a lot of casting flash that I had to machine off, and cleaned them up. In the original configuration, they were both just bolted on, but for the current final iteration, they both (as well as the custom grille shell) were all molded in.

Venn Diagram

This is coming up in a couple of weeks. Two of my favorite artists are having a concert together!!! The Counting Crows and The Gaslight Anthem!!! The two most recent shows I've seen were Brian Fallon and The Gaslight Anthem, and prior to that I've seen the Counting crows nine times, so when this show was announced (and on a night that works for me) it was an easy sell!!!

I'm putting this post together as a way to chronicle the times I've seen both groups. I had to go through some of my previous posts to get it all together.

I've previously made mention that the first time I saw the Counting Crows was in November 16th, 1995 at the Hollywood Grand with my brother in law. It was before they came out with their Recovering the Satellites album, and it was a lot of their new songs, so it wasn't stuff that the small crowd that was there was familiar with, for the most part, but it was a great show, very intimate. I'd heard that there was a bootleg of the show entitled “Launching the Satellites”, and just recently found someone had published it on YouTube!!! I converted the audio, and have it saved. It's all as one track, and I want to break it up into the individual songs. This was the set list:

1. Catapult

2. Angels of the Silence

3. Daylight Fading

4. I'm Not Sleeping

5. Miller's Angels

6. Another Horsedreamer's Blues

7. Wiseblood

8. Rain King

9. Ghost Train

10. Chelsea

11. Margery

12. Have You Seen Me Lately?

13. Suffocate

14. Goodnight Elizabeth

15. Children in Bloom

16. Round Here

17. Good Luck

I have recordings of Chelsea and Good Luck that I'm pretty sure were from this show, and possibly others (I have a lot of live recordings of their stuff).

I fell off for a while after that, and didn't even pick up the This Desert Life album, but was getting back into them when the Hard Candy album came out, and I went to see them again on December 10th 2002 at The Gibson Amphitheater, right by Universal Studios, and I was reminded of what a great live band they are!!! Toad + The Wet Sprocket opened for them. The show started with all the lights down and went right into “Have You Seen Me Lately”, and on the third singing of the line “Have you seen me lately?”, they put on all the lights on the audience, it was very theatrical!!! At some point around halfway through the set, the drummer Ben Mize had an anxiety attack or some kind of breakdown, and was unable to continue. Adam pulled out his song book and they played a couple songs as acoustic versions, then the drummer for Toad + The Wet Sprocket took over for the rest of the show. I was hooked again!!!

I think the next time I saw them was July 17th, 2003, at the Staples Center with John Mayer. This may be the worst show I've seen, the acoustics there aren't great, and there were a bunch of really annoying John Mayer fans there. I don't beleive I'd made posts about either of these shows.

The next show I saw, I'm not 100% sure of the date, but it was December 2003 at The Wiltern. The Wiltern is a place that's general admission with no seating whatsoever, which I didn't much care for, but it was a great show, especially compared to the previous one!!! The Wallflowers were the opening act, and I enjoyed them. They opened the set with Adam and one of the other Crows with an acoustic guitar off on the side playing “Blues Run the Game”, which I'd not heard before. Later on in the show was another first for me, they played “August and Everything After”, and not long after the show I found a bootleg from the same tour, possibly from the show I was at, of that song.

The next time I saw them was October 25th, 2005 at the Disney Concert Hall with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra (I've previously had that as Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, please update my flaky brain error). Awesome show!!! I took my firstborn to this show, and made a couple of posts about it. Great show, great sound (and different from the standard versions of their songs), and we had what could have been terrible seats, but Adam turned around to be able to watch the director for most of the show, and we ended up with awesome seats because of that!!!

The next show I saw was September 12th, 2008 at Irvine Meadows Amphitheater with Augustina and Maroon 5 (I'm pretty sure it was the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater at this point, but it'll always be the Irvine Meadows Amphitheater to me!!!) I think I've seen 4 or 5 other shows at this venue, and this was unique among them (besides being the last show I've seen there) for being the only one I ever had general admission tickets on the field for.

The next time I saw them was July 24th, 2009 at the Greek Theater with Augustina and Spearhead. “The Saturday Night Rebel Rockers Traveling Circus & Medicine Show”, this was, and it was a great show. One of the main recollections I have from it is when the treacherous starter on Janice went out again!!! Oh, and Spearhead had offers to download audio from the show if you signed up with them, and I still get emails from them!!!

Next up was October 1st, 2010 at the Ford Theater for the Freeloaders screening. Great weather for seeing a movie under the stars, the first time I've been to the venue, and it's a great theater, with good acoustics for a great listening experience!!! The Ford is across the freeway from the Hollywood Bowl (another venue that I haven't been to) and Tom Petty (possibly with the Heartbreakers) was playing that night. You could hear them during some of the more quiet parts, it's the closest I ever got to seeing Tom Petty.

It almost doesn't seem possible, but the most recent time I saw them was November 24, 2012 at The Wiltern, this time with Mean Creek and Tender Mercies. Good show, I enjoyed Mean Creek more than Tender Mercies, and Counting Crows did not disappoint!!! I remember between the acts they played Black Keys' “Gold on the Ceiling”, and sure enough, I looked up, and the ceiling of the Wiltern is indeed gold!!! Another thing I remember is for both shows at The Wiltern, while we were waiting to go in, a couple of girls were going down the line and trying to drum up business for a vegetarian place down the street from there.

After that, it seemed like every time they were playing locally, it was on a day that wasn't good for me, or in one particular case, they were playing at a casino with a small theater, and the tickets were quite expensive. I would have liked to have seen them more recently, but it just didn't work out.

Not like this upcoming one, it's come together about as good as I could ask for!!!