Ramble On

Since I've transitioned to working from home, I'm not near as active. I my last position, I would typically walk from five to seven miles a day, sometimes more on weekends. To try to keep some muscle tone, I've been going on walks around the neighborhood most every day. I'm not getting anywhere near the distance I used to, but there's a lot more up and downs around here, and it's working some different sets of muscles, I can tell. Almost always I go solo, but a couple of times I've had someone come along.

My wife made the suggestion that I should take some pictures while out on my walks. Here's a few. To start off, it's a couple weeks late, but something for 512 day!!!

Up next is some slow going construction. This is the site of the house that burned down a few years back.

Here's some of the most artful work I've come across recently.

They've set up Mardi Gras in their yard!!! Pretty cool!!!

The sign says "Please Seat Yourself"

This wall, I've seen for years. It's an awesome wall, makes me think the residence behind it is a compound or a citadel or some such. Of course, with such a wall, you can't really tell.

A block over is a pretty extreme climb to get back to our side, so it's one of those I haven't done in a while. I think it's been over 15 years since I've walked it, but I'm fairly certain I've been that way before. However, I don't remember having seen these before. There's about a dozen houses that are all the same design!!! They may be duplexes, there's an entrance between the garage doors, and then an outside staircase that goes up two flights to an entrance on the side. I don't think I'd much like living on that level!!!

There's a street that turns to a dirt road for a ways that goes behind them I took the other day.There's a half dozen undeveloped lots towards the end.

About halfway down there's a gas meter, got to be at least 100 feet from the nearest structure!!! I wonder if they send someone to read it.

The other day, a chopper came in low over the hills!!!

Bool Hunt

All of my nonexistent readers are probably well aware that I end up going to the junkyard on a fairly regular basis. This post will cover a few of those trips, as well as filling in a bit of recent history.

About a month ago, I'd finally gotten Scruffy over to an alignment shop to get the rear tires pointed in the right direction. This is the only car I've ever had where I've had a rear tire wear and alignment issue, probably because nearly all of the cars I've owned have had solid rear axles where alignment isn't a thing. The others not in that category, I haven't messed with the ride height, so there's that. As you can see, they were REALLY worn down for about two years of wear!!! The alignment shop had told me that the camber was still a bit out, but to come back when I'd replaced the tires, with a little advance warning, and they would install a camber kit to correct it. Yesterday I finally got a replacement pair.

Prior to heading over there, on Friday evening, I opened up the back of the two machined look rims I'd picked up, with the idea of getting a full matching set on Scruffy, at which point I realized that the one had a significant abrasion on one opening, where it had peened the metal out, so I decided against using that one, for now. It also had quite a bit of scuffing on other areas, and I took some medium-fine sandpaper and 3M pads to one such area, to see if I could get it looking decent. Looks like all it is is through the clear coat or anodizing, whichever it has. About a half hour's work, and it came out looking quite good!!! Anyway, left that one off for now and now have 3 out of 4 the same.

Now, for a few weeks back background. The second to the last week I was working at the physical building, on Thursday they were doing Wuhan Flu testing. They were having us come in at the time of the testing, wait for the results, then, if negative, report for work. My appointment was for noon, so I got to go in a bit later. Oh yeah, spoiler alert, around 400 employees still working there, and not a single positive!!! Anyway, about a mile from home, it started running really rough, with not much power. I drove it almost to where I get on the freeway, and pulled into a gas station to see if I could see anything. Restarting it had done nothing, but plugging in the OBD scanner showed multiple misfires. I turned around to go home and switch cars, and getting to the uphill area discovered it didn't have enough juice to climb the hill. Called my wife and had her bring her car down. Used her car that day, and did a bit of research. There were several things, but the consensus was to start with the spark plugs and work your way down the systems. No idea when the plugs were last changed, but never hurts to have new ones (so long as they are OEM NGK copper core ones, not any exotic metal ones, as they have a high fail rate in Saturn 1.9 engines, due to the waste spark system they run). Also, while I was getting the plugs, I got a crankshaft position sensor, my reasoning being that the sudden failure seemed consistent with that. Replacing the plugs did nothing, so I headed back up the hill and took the plug wires, coils and ignition control module off 3, and went back down and replaced all the units on Scruffy. Viola!!! No cumbersome crankshaft position sensor replacement, which I was not looking forward to. Just to see what would happen, I put the units from Scruffy back on 3. Moved the issue to that one, as I figured it probably would. I figure it was likely the ignition control module, as I've had coils fail before, and the OBD will show the coil specific to two cylinders missing.

So, now 3 is fairly undriveable. Not like I'm driving it much anyway, but I want to be able to move her around, not to mention I'd rather have everything going if and when I swap the engine out. The ignition control module is around $85, and most of the consensus is that you are better off getting an OEM used replacement from the junkyard anyway, as most of the replacements have a high fail rate. Off to the junkyard!!! Coils are pretty reasonable, but control modules are supposed to be in the $50 to $60 range. Since the double coils mount to the module, I figured I'd pull the whole unit and try and pass it off as a coil array. I also was wondering if they were the same unit for the generation 2 and SHOC models. No one seemed to have that information, but I could probably look up different years and engines and figure that out if I wanted to. I took a look around at earlier SHOC models, and even a generation 1 SC2 and they all appear the same. Anyway, to be safe, I got them off the same year and engine SL2. Funny thing, there didn't seem to be much body damage at all, but both of the airbags had been deployed!!!

When I got to the checkout, the cashier was questioning the pricing, noting that an array would be more expensive, and it was actually two coils, which would be cheaper. He called over a supervisor, who told him to ring it up as two coils, and put the module as a bracket. He noticed it had the wire connector socket, so rang it as a electrical connector. Two coils at around $13.50 (plus $1 core charge) and $2.75 for the ignition control module!!! Score!!! The exhaust manifold was removed from the SL2 I got the goods from, which gave me a chance to get a better shot of the exhaust air injection ports. They look equally as plugged up as Scruffy's had been!!!

And there's that 1st generation SC2. While very little is common to the later ones, they weigh less, and the style is growing on me. I actually like the SC and SC1 front ends with the fixed headlights, which I believe are the same from the doors forward as the sedans.

Now, from quite a while ago when I'd gone to a junkyard near my work, and they had almost exactly the same as 3 on the other side of the wall, I imagine pre being put in the yard, but possibly to be sold. Even has the same rims as 3 originally had!!! In other news, I came across an ad for the same year, color and wheels as 3 with 95K miles, and a busted up front bumper and driver's side fender and mirror, plus a check engine light, asking $1800. I sent them a message that, considering the condition it seemed about $500 to $800 too high. I'd take that deal, if it seemed OK and could pass smog, which of course it won't with that light on.

A couple of the cars of interest there that time were this 60's Mustang with little left but the firewall and the undesirable 6 cylinder engine. It's very rare to see anything that old anymore.

Up next is a early 70's Celica, another of those you never see anywhere anymore!!! Someone had done a terrible job of putting a whale tail spoiler on the trunk, looking like it's about 20 degrees from where it should be. Has the distinction of being similar to the one we had. Of course, it has the unique pull out handles. The steering wheel was removed, but still inside, so I was also reminded of the style of the horn buttons, double circles on each of the three spokes, cheaply made so the ones rotated around it end up upside down!!!

And finally, the junkyard I went to this weekend, a while back there was this pretty nice '64-'66 Suburban in the lot. I noted it because it's similar to my GMC panel truck.

I know I've used the phrase "bool hunt" in previous posts, but I'm not sure I've ever explained it. It's from the Stephen King story, "Lisey's Story". It's where something will be hidden and the other person has to find it. Also in the story is the mention of a "blood bool", so take that for what it's worth. It's been years since I've read that one, maybe I'll dig it out, I quite enjoyed it. Stephen King is a very talented writer, but he's also an old crank who keeps yelling at the Commander in Chief to get off his lawn.

Changing Gears

It's been almost 14 years I've been at my job, and for the most part I've been doing pretty much the same thing. The work is fairly straightforward, but is pretty physical. Four or five years back, I finally got on the weekend shift, which is nice in that there's less people around, so it's easier in that regard, less drive time traffic, and there's a little bit of a bump in pay for it. A few times I've been asked by supervisors if there is another department or position I'd like to be in, but nothing has ever materialized. I even had tested for some electronic correspondence customer service at one point.

A month or so back, (we are an essential service, so there's been no stop at my work, although almost all of the sales and support staff are working from home) there was a meeting time blocked out on my daily schedule. Hmmm... I meet with one of the heads above my department, who I've never had any interaction with, and she tells me that they have combed the employee bios, and saw that I had been formally trained in Surfcam, as well as having self-taught AutoCad, BobCad, and Solidworks. For a while, I did a ton of work in Solidworks, because it renders very realistic looking designs, and once you've created them, you can make a pretty good drawing of the part fairly easily. Turns out, Solidworks skill is just the sort of thing they're looking for!!!

They set me up with a couple of the technologies they use, and gave me a half day or so to mess around in Solidworks, to get a feel for it again. A couple days later, they gave me a couple test parts to design and generate drawings for. Apparently, I did well enough for them to offer me a position on the team coming up with the files. The down side is I'd be off weekends, the up side is I'll be working from home!!! I'll be saving money on gas, and saving an hour to an hour and a half of commute time a day, so I'm good with it, as well as being able to use some long dormant skills. Last week they gave me the equipment to bring home, and a day to set it up. The project is supposed to go for around 9 months to a year.

This has been my first week, learning how the process will go. There's a lot of new stuff, which I don't think will be too tough, but I've been on Central Time for the learning, so I don't care for the hours, but that will get better. First time I've ever had a dual monitor set up. I used my old desk I had my home desktop set up on (which I mostly only use for the printer connected) and cleared out a spot in the corner, by the windows. Using the suddenly very popular Zoom any time but early on, I'm terribly back lit, but apparently it's not a big deal. Since I'm much more sedentary, I've been walking a couple miles every afternoon.

Oh, and the design there is something I did in the practice day. It's a rough representation of one of those Saturn Ion rims.

Creepy Croupier

I had made mention, from when we had been to Reno a few years back, of a method I'd come up with to fairly regularly win at roulette.

A while ago I had a dream where I was telling a couple of my friends from work about it, while we are at work.

I started in telling them, and one of them breaks in with the method he's heard of and used. Bet on the first and third twelve, and either red or black, or odd or even. Covers a good percentage of the slots. As he's telling this method, the scene transitions to a casino scene.

When he finishes, we're back at work, and I start telling my method. Once again the scene changes to the casino. My method is to place seven or eight bets on four corners in a zig-zag pattern down the numbers. Once again, it covers a good portion of the numbers, about 2/3 of it, and pays out 9-1. In the eight bets, there's going to be some double-overlaps so a few down the middle will pay out 18-1!!! If nothing else, this method causes you to lose money very slowly!!!

In my dream, I'm placing my bet, and the Croupier, a black man in a vest and bow tie with a high, tight fade haircut, looks at my wager and goes "Hey!!! Hey!!! What are you doing???" I reply, "It's a legal bet, right???" He replies, resignedly, "Yeah, it is."

Then, for just a split second, his eyes flash red, Terminator style...

5 MPH... Believe It!!!

This happened today. One of my pet peeves, when people fail to use their turn signals. When this fool started hitting his brakes, I said, "Hmmm, I wonder what's going to happen here..." but then they let off, and I thought for a moment I had been faked out, but no!!! In retrospect, they should not have let off!!! These exits are marked a 5 MPH, and if you aren't a master of cornering with decent tires, you best believe it!!!

Of course, I was driving Scruffy, and had to come to a full stop unexpectedly, so I was glad to not have another incident of rhinoplasty!!! I know the dash cam has audio recording, and it doesn't have any way to turn it off, but apparently it's not working. As I rolled past afterwards, I called out "Genius!!!"

The Mixer Mix Up

So, I'm driving home last week (in Scruffy, naturally) when I went over something in the road. I didn't see it, but heard the double thump of it going under the wheels or bouncing off the underside. Hope it didn't damage any tires...

As I'm proceeding home, I start hearing a scrape whenever I hit a larger dip in the road. I had flashbacks to the time the crappy hanger on the crappy exhaust pipe had broke. I drove home, hoping for everything to hold together and wondering how my heavy duty double bracketrey could have failed. Headed over to that side when I got home for a look, and saw a bar in the wheel well, pointing towards the tire.

(I did a closer shot with one of those helpful arrows pointed at it)

Huh. How did that happen??? And it's way away from where the bracket is. Went around the other side and went to drop down and get a look at what happened.

And found this poking out from the front end!!! That's no hanger!!! Turned out it was a paint mixer that had gotten flattened and went over the tip I'd made up!!!!

In other news, I think the high temp paint I used on it isn't a very effective rust preventative!!!

Geo Tag You're It

Just recently my younger son has discovered geocaching. I had heard of it years ago, and thought it sounded interesting, but never went any farther than that.

He found one fairly close to our house, and a few down in the flatlands. There were a couple over on the other side of the mountain, so last weekend we trekked over to see if we could find it.

There's a wildlands park over there, and that's where we went. Things I always saw in cartoons growing up, but had never seen in real life, hollow logs, a hollowed out tree, and a bee hive in a tree!!!

It's a pretty wild place, for being in the midst of the city. We'd never been in this area before.

Of course, we hit a couple pokestops and Pokemon gyms on the way, one of them having a raid.

Came across a rope swing along the way.

There was a lot to see out there!!!

This weekend we headed out to hit a couple of raids in Pokemon Go, as well as spinning some pokestops. We each had two Team Rocket battles, too. After the second raid, he saw that there was a Snorlax a ways over from where we were at, and he was off!!! I caught up a little after, and fed it a golden raspberry and used an ultra ball on it. It was considerably higher level than the one I have (which I'd caught in a battle encounter), and after it broke out of the second ball, it ran away!!!

But my son finally got one of his own!!!

In the Harsh, Cold Light of Day

I kept telling myself it might not be that bad. Sure, the front bumper cap would need replaced, and I was sure that some of the mounting points on the fenders would have snapped, and the hood has a little fold on it that would need seen to, but since the impact was all on the bumper, maybe it just pulled everything attached to it out of joint??? I was looking at junkyard inventory and replacement bumper caps, as well as aftermarket styled bumpers, which are mostly hideous.

Finally got a chance to check it out yesterday. I had to use a crowbar to get the finger latch undone. Nope, I'm confident it's a total loss. In the first picture, I circled the bumper mount, that looks like it's bent about 15°, and has a big crease.

The aluminum bumper beam is all twisted, too, and the side metal that mounts the fenders is pushed over. The plastic mount for the driver's side headlight is broken, as well as the front end of the fender. In the last picture, you can see my new motor mount, which should be parallel with the frame, is at an angle.

Sometime in the future, I'll be yanking the engine and probably the transmission out. This is the only Saturn that hasn't developed oil usage issues. Probably will drop it directly into Scruffy.

While I don't completely NEED another car, it's always nice to have a back up. Currently, I'm not seeing anything that's a direct replacement, but there's a super impractical Sky Redline that I really like the look of for a better price than I've ever seen before. It's a sexy beast!!! And there's another way I've been considering going for a few years that I might just pull the trigger on!!!

Rhinoplasty Part Two

It's been raining since Sunday, on and off. It was coming down in buckets on Sunday night, but not at all yesterday afternoon. Coming home tonight it was, and just before a ramp I was taking, I saw a great puddle of water, extending a lane and a half out from the right. Uh oh... As I hit it, the car started pulling to the center of the freeway pretty hard, and I probably was trying to correct the other direction. With the little traction I had, I began a spin heading towards the outside wall. I saw it coming and knew there was nothing I could do but brace myself. It was a hard hit, I was probably still doing 50 or so, and kept spinning for a second revolution, coming to rest with the back end towards the wall, and the nose out in the traffic lane. I turned on my hazard lights and assessed the situation. Of course, it shook up everything in the car, my water bottle, glasses, phone, and the lid to my coffee cup all ended up in the footwell on the drivers' side. I picked all these up, put the gearshift into park, and tried to fire it up. Started up on the second crank, and I straightened it up onto the shoulder, and assessed the the exterior. I'd thought for sure it caught both ends, but apparently it was all on the front. It looked ugly, but nothing that would prevent me from driving it. Headed home, and there was a scraping noise as I was driving. A couple blocks away, I heard something come loose, so I pulled over and discovered the plastic shield below the radiator had been knocked loose.

When I got home, I took out the memory card from the dash cam. There were a half dozen of the clips marked with the emergency save, but none of them were from tonight. Scrolled though the rest, and where it should have been, I got a clip with the unplayable message. Good thing I didn't need it as evidence for an incident with another vehicle!!! I checked the rear camera, and it didn't get scrambled like the front facing one had, and here's the clip!!! Can't tell much of what's going on, but you can see the splash of water, and the spin and where it ended up.

As you can see, it made a mess of the front bumper!!! Lost the emblem, tweaked the headlights out of place, as well as tweaking the fenders and hood out of place.

In addition, that alignment I just got is now completely shot!!! The steering wheel in about 30° out of square. We'll see how it looks in the light of day, and when things have dried out some. Also, it wasn't a sufficient hit to set off the airbags!!!

At least when my wife did Scruffy's nose, it was just the hood!!!

Doing Time

Strange times are upon us, such as I have never seen. The Wuhan virus has put severe restrictions on our day to day lives. The government has all but put the gas-on-a-fire economy into an induced coma. Here's to hoping it will still live once restrictions are eased.

As always, with my work, I had to map out my vacation times off at the end of last year. Of course, not having anything planned out in advance, I was just going for random chunks of time strung together. My wife said, "we never take vacations in the first part of the year, you should take some time and do that!!!" OK, I requested March 16th to 18th off, strung onto a weekend. If you're keeping track, that's right around the time things started getting real with the Wuhan virus. That didn't work out well at all!!!

A couple weeks before my vacation time came up, I'd gotten an Email from the Catalina Island Company, who were doing an off season promotion where if you bought weekday lodging at a couple of their hotels, they would provide boat travel. That sounded like a pretty good deal, and I was considering doing it. However, getting close to time, and the weather prediction was for rain there most of the time. Since it's largely a pedestrian attraction, I scrubbed that from our plans.

I figured we'd stick close to home instead, go see a movie or two, go out and get some food, maybe do some things around the house. Then the lockdown came. Movie theaters were closed, and restaurants were limited to take out. Ah well, the best laid plans and all that...

So, watched a few recent releases on TV. I'd wanted to see the latest Quentin Tarantino feature, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It was pretty enjoyable, but I'd put some of his other works ahead of it. Maybe I just need to see it again and let it grow on me.

My wife has been wanting to see Dr. Sleep again. We'd seen it when we were on our anniversary weekend trip, right around when it came out. I'd read the book, and thought it was quite good. As far as an adaptation of a book goes, it was a pretty good job. An even better job was the melding of the original Stanley Kubrick Jack Nicholson Shining, of which this is a sequel.

Way back in 2007 I'd been bad-mouthing I Am Legend for being a poor man's Omega Man. Well, it happened to be on TV, and I checked it out. It was actually pretty good!!!

Ended up doing a few things on the cars, too. Finally took 3 to get aligned, months after replacing the tie rod ends. I'd been getting a code for a fuel tank pressure sensor on Scruffy. I got a replacement, and spent a couple days dropping the fuel tank and replacing it. It was the first time I'd done such a thing, and it was a bit of an ordeal since I didn't know that I had to completely remove one of the straps. Haven't gotten that code since, so it seems to have been a success. After that, I rotated the tires on 3, and had checked the rear brakes, where I had been getting a bit of a shudder. Figured it was probably getting time for new brake shoes, but they had lots of lining left, and it had a leaking wheel cylinder. Fortunately, I had an extra new one, so I put that in. The sealing washer was worn out, though, so finally got it finished a week later. Did an oil change on her, too. Next, I pulled the back end off Jade. I'd done the back brakes a while ago, and they didn't seem to be self-adjusting properly. Found the problem rather quickly, one of the springs I'd replaced back when I'd done them originally had broken.

We brought home a pizza one night, and another night had a frozen Jeno's East Chicago Deep Dish pizza.

Turns out my job is one of those critical services, as we supply many medical and infrastructure entities. Things are different there, but we're still going. I'm a bit jealous of the people who are having to stay home, I could get so many other things done if I were, but I think I'd rather still have an income in these uncertain times. Bonus, the traffic out there is some of the best I've ever seen!!! Double bonus, they have been having most of the office and sales forces working from home, so parking at work is also much better!!!

Last Friday I took Scruffy for a 4-wheel alignment to correct the rear tire wear it's been getting. apparently the toe settings were way off. Yesterday I began doing a piston soak on Jade, trying to use Sea Foam as the medium this time to see if it does any better. I've still been getting the P0410 code on Scruffy, so I'm trying some Sea Foam as a soak in the injector ports, too, to see if that helps.

Quick Break

Every once in a while, CHP or the police will run a traffic break. Sometimes you don't know why, but this time was to clear some debris off the freeway, a tie down strap that someone had lost.

Light traffic for a Monday morning. Things are slow on account of the Wuhan virus. I have some other things I've been thinking of posting regarding that, but for now, you get this.

Car Stuff

Some car stuff that's happened. First up, the previously mentioned radiator replacement on Jade. This was back in December, it started losing water pretty regularly. Gave it an inspection, and it had coolant ooze on the driver's side tank of the radiator between the transmission cooler lines, so I figured that was it.

Put a replacement in, and while I was doing that, discovered some damage to the bottom edge and the air conditioning condenser (as well as the radiator, but I took care of that!!!), probably from the time it fell off the jack!!! Fortunately, the extra clearance on both of those components doesn't appear to have affected the functionality of either of them.

So, went through all that, flushed the cooling system, and then noticed the underside of the fill cap didn't look right. That may have been all it needed.

Got myself another set of Ion rims to put on 3, as I've been wanting to do. The rims on 3 were the ones from Baby, and the tires on there were a couple years old when I swapped them on, so I've got my money's worth out of them. There's a whole story on those where they ended up costing too much, suffice it to say don't waste your money on those Goodyear mileage maximizing tires, they have such hard compound to them as to be dangerous, and I ended up getting even worse mileage with them than I'd had with a set of Chinese cheapies.

Anyway, I'd ended up getting two on the Thanksgiving weekend 40% off day, and two on the New Year's sale. Same deal as last time, I was only able to find two machined face ones, and two other painted. As you can see, one was in way worse condition!!! I was telling my dad I'd like to get the painted ones machined to match, and he made the comment, "Well, we know how to polish..." Yeah, that used to be a fair amount of my previous career. Planted the idea in my head, and I bought the discs and wheels and compound to polish, and went to work. It's too much work, but it's getting there. Still need to get an alignment from when I replaced the rod ends. Additionally, it looks like I've got one of the rear wheels on Scruffy that needs work, probably a camber kit, as it's wearing the tire back there prematurely.

And finally, that cool flat exhaust tip I made up??? The dip down to clear the emergency brake cable became the low point, and as with most lowered cars, occasionally you scrape a little. It appears it's done a bit of tweaking it up some, to where it's into the rocker panel, and it's melted it down a little. If I'm able, I'll get some aluminum tubing the same diameter and make up a metal piece with a cutout around it to give it some clearance.