Down South Vacationin'

Welcome to the recap of this year's vacation trip!!! A few years back I had the idea of going to check out Dollywood, and finally this year that is what we did!!!

Compared to the perpetual fail of last year's trip, it was a great vacation!!! (On that trip, I could have, and probably should have, and if I ever had the chance still might do a post about the other parts of that vacation that epically failed... Looking at you, Expedia and American Airlines, two companies on my "Do Not Patronize" list since then)

In the second shot, you'll see the cool Dr. Who cats shirts my wife thought would be good to get to travel in!!!

I had the idea of hitting Nashville and Memphis while we were there, but it turns out that Tennessee is a pretty big state, and flying from one area to another would take a while with the NSA lines and whatnot. I had 11 days consecutive, but my son was still in school for the first four, which worked out, as I had time to fix Scruffy. If it hadn't been for the school thing, we may have hit all three areas.

We left VERY early on Saturday (like don't even bother going to bed the night before early) which worked out good in that there was very little traffic on the roads, and the airport lines weren't that bad yet. We got there a bit longer than the prescribed two hours early, and the airline kiosks weren't open yet, then when they were, the TSA checkpoints weren't. Still not bad at all. Knoxville is the closest airport to Pigeon Forge, and there are no direct flights, so it was via Denver on the way there, and O'Hare on the way back. Upon arrival, and even before looking for which way to get to our lodging, we cruised aimlessly into Maryville, where we happed on the Dead End Barbecue, which turned out to be as good as it sounds!!!

Didn't do much else after checking into our room that afternoon, just reset our sleep clocks!!!

As you may expect, the whole of the area of the state we saw is very lush. Lots of little creeks and streams, hills and valleys. Oh yea, and humid, too!!! Not Florida humid, but still more than home. Seemed like for most of the drive we were on two lane country roads, very picturesque!!!

Got the three day passes for Dollywood and Dollywood Splash Country. Had a couple days where we weren't at those parks, but it turns out there's a LOT of other things to do in the area!!!

There is a new coaster at Dollywood, the Lightening Rod, the fastest wood coaster in North America, with a power launch. Looks awesome, with turns banked to near vertical, but both days we were there it wasn't open. Something like that happened last year, too.

Other things to do around Pigeon Forge??? There's an Alpine Coaster, with one or two person sleds, almost bobsleds, that are right on the mountains. You control the brakes, but they really aren't necessary!!! They are worthy rides, and we ended up going twice, once at night.

Of course, there's also the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We heard of a hike out to the Chimneys that we did one afternoon. Only two miles, but upsy most the way in. That is where I got most of my pictures on my real camera, and worthy of a post of it's own. Maybe that will happen.

According to a statistic I just made up, Pigeon Forge has the most go-karts per capita of any town in America. Seems like at least half a dozen places down the main drag. Mini golf and arcades are also abundant. Made it to the Titanic museum, but not the Elvis museum.

There is more to come...

Life Hack (SAW!!!) My Car

Back in February I did my last Life Hack post, about a way to stop small water leaks in your car. I had made mention that it works more often than not, but that very incident that inspired me to write that post turned out to not be one of those times!!!

I had been driving my wife's car, Scruffy, around that time, and it had begun to give me the low water light a couple times a week or so. Huh. I didn't ever see any water at the pump, radiator, or hoses. It wasn't leaking from the heater core. Not losing a lot of water, and never getting hot. Well, I'll season it with some pepper, and if that doesn't do it, it will surely get worse, and I'll be able to see where it's coming from then!!!

Well, it got worse, but I still never saw a place it was leaking from. Finally, it got to where it was needing filled up any time you would drive it for about 15 minutes. The only thing I could come up with was a leaking head gasket burning off water, but it's not running bad or showing any other symptoms. I ran it past a friend of mine who's an awesome shadetree mechanic, and he suggests a compression test to tell the tale. My wife drives it over during the week, and he does the test. Compression is good, so he leaves it running a while to get it hot. I just had been driving it, he left it in one place, and it made a puddle after a while!!! He checks it out, and where the overflow line goes back into the system is leaking some. He touches it to see if it's loose, and the hose fitting breaks off!!! I had known the 2000 and up Saturn 1.9 engines had plastic intake manifolds, but didn't realize that this skinny little part was on it!!!

Turns out there's a couple companies making a repair kit for this problem. First thing, though, had to get it back home to work on, so the tiny little hose barb you see in the first couple pictures is the fix I did on it. Got a stainless hose barb and epoxied it in place!!! That part worked fine, but in the second picture you may be able to make out a crack running down the large hose fitting that I added in a helpful arrow to. I bought it from CarSaturn, who seem to be the original, and looks like a better quality part. A little bit more, but I think it better to buy from the originator, and it's made in the U.S.A.

To install is a little bit involved, as it requires the removal of the intake manifold. Not super tricky, but a lot of things have to come off to get it. Here's something I noticed when I got it off, the EGR tube comes way out into the airflow of the intake. Common sense to me always dictates that the smoother airflow you have, the better things are going to run!!!

So, while I had the hacksaw out, I shortened that sucker up, too!!!

And hacksawing??? Yes, that's exactly what you end up doing, is hacksawing the end of the intake manifold off!!!

Getting ALL My Saturns in a Triangle

Ever notice that if you have three of anything, unless they are in a perfectly straight line, they always form a perfect triangle???

So, here we are, almost three months after I picked up Saturn 3. Before the first week was out, I'd made a couple of lists, the first of parts I was going to remove from Baby before bidding her a fond adieu, the second of things to fix on Saturn 3. Up to this past weekend, still hadn't gotten to everything. Over the weekend, finally put Baby back together, with the primary intent of just getting her out of the driveway to do an oil change, secondary intent to send her off to her final resting place. Registration is due next month. All that was required was to put the accessory drive belt back on, and the upper motor mount I'd removed to make that easier. Of course, I'd forgotten that it gave me a hard time and I'd loosened up the A/C compressor to make it easier, and after putting the belt and mount on, that was sitting cocked. While I was at it, I pulled off the driving lights I'd replaced the factory units with around six months ago, as well as the mounts I'd fabbed up. Both of them had cracked lenses already, which I didn't notice until I had them off!!! Also pulled out the radio, it's a pretty good one, the only one I've ever had with HD radio.

I think it was the first or second weekend I had her that I swapped the rims from Baby to 3, and got two of the tires on Scruffy (the name that actually kind of has stuck for the Family Truckster wagon) changed to the alloys that had been on 3. It was at least a month before I got the other two done, but that's done. Around a month after I'd got her, I also swapped the front rotors between Baby and 3, the ones on 3 were warped and it would shimmy like crazy under moderate to hard braking. Took the ceramic pads with about a year of wear on them, too. Around a month and a half in, I swapped the 512 Labs tailpipe onto 3, and WOW, it's a game changer in the mileage department!!! I'd been getting under 27 MPG, and the conversion has bumped it up to SOLID 30.5 MPG at least!!! I'd been wanting to fabricate a whole new one with a cool tip I'd made up years ago, and was doing the swap at my parent's house, but I couldn't get it to come together. Want to put one of 'em on Scruffy, it gets similar lackluster mileage. I'm fairly convinced it's the exhaust ports, which have been undersized in the last few years of production. I would love to find someone with the earlier engine and manual tranny who tracks their mileage and have them do one of these pipes and see how it does!!! That same day I was helping my dad put a disc brake conversion on his Studebaker. Took several weeks to get that done, too, but the results were similarly stellar.

Don't know if I've ever mentioned, but I got myself a dashcam with reverse camera with some birthday money around the end of last year, and had to pull that out, along with a halogen back up light I'd installed. The longer I drive it, the more I want that rig in 3. A few weeks back, I also swapped the rear drums from Baby to Scruffy, as she had one that was cut pretty deep. Let me see, what else??? Pretty early on, I swapped all the speakers out, and it sounds much better!!! The lock switch was another thing fixed early on. I had a K&N air filter element in Baby that I swapped over, but I've never been that impressed with it. Only two things I haven't gotten are the seat covers (which are pretty old, but I really like the style) and the sunroof. The sunroof on Baby works, but it's not smooth. There's a company that does a rebuild with aluminum glides on an exchange basis, not especially cheap, but I think it's money well spent, and will keep me from taking the roof apart twice. Got the keys changed to all on one, for a reasonable sum of $50. I replaced a burnt out driving light bulb, and swapped the map lights from Baby to 3, as well as the windshield wipers. I attempted to de-haze the headlights, but they're pretty bad. One of these days I'll try again, but I'm considering getting some reflective window tint and seeing how that looks on them. Window tint is another on the to-do list, still, but it doesn't bother me from inside, just looks bad from the outside. 3 has a rock chip right at the edge of the field of vision, and that's more of a bother. Not something that was on my original list, but it's there now. Scruffy and the Falcon both have rock chips, too, and I'm hoping I could get a multi discount.

Oh yeah, that oil change... went pretty smoothly, but while I was down there I discovered a brake fluid leak. Might be just a sealing washer where the hose connects to the caliper (that's kind of how it looked, so I replaced it to see how it does) but if it's not, I've got another... or, it's not that pricey to buy a rebuild.

We were driving Scruffy around last Friday, and she started shifting really hard, like a slam shift. Ugggggh, here we go again!!! Well, at least I've got my own parts car!!! A little looking around on the webs, and I discover that there is a solenoid in the valve body that wears out and causes this symptom. Well, Baby's trans has never had a hiccup (except the time the tensioner went out and the charging system wasn't getting enough juice) so I'm assuming it's good in her. On Sunday I yanked the whole valve body out of her, a not especially difficult task.

I wasn't aware that, of all those bolts, only 11 of them actually hold the valve body in!!! So, unfortunately, I ended up splitting the thing in two, and I though I lost one of the little balls between the bottom half and the plate in the middle. I'm pretty sure it just rolled to the wrong spot, and I think I got it back where it goes. There were two springs, and I think the balls go on top of these.

I hope.

Of course, had to work on Monday, but it occurred to me that I've got a bunch of unscheduled vacation days and the year is near half over. Being as it's not a huge vacation season right now, I should be able to get a day off this week to finish this off. My first choice was for today, and they came through with it, so that's what I did today. Pulled Scruffy apart and then put her back together, and then put Baby back together. Success!!!

Something Like 12 Years

Perhaps you recall several years back, I did a post about my cool lunch box. This post is about what happens to this lunch box if you use it five days a week for around 12 years (so, in a way, it's a 5-12 post!!!)

Remember that molded plastic Coke bottle handle??? Probably six months or so back, I saw that the plastic on the bottom of one end was almost worn through. I put a glob of epoxy on it to try and build it back up. It worked for a while. Then, a week ago, it cut loose as I was walking into work. I knew this day was coming, but now what was I to do??? If I were at my old job, I probably would have machined up some kind of cool aluminum handle.

No fancy CNC machine, or even the old school machine shop tools I cut my teeth on, but I should be able to come up with SOMETHING...

And, here's the result!!! Pretty much all I did was got a couple split shaft collars and a bar of aluminum. Drilled and tapped the ends of the bar, and melded the three into one. A bit of time with a file, and a 3M Scotch Brite pad to put a nice finish on it, and there it is!!! If I'd had access to the aforementioned equipment, no doubt it would be fancier, perhaps finger notches or more rounded edges, or even a Coca-Cola logo cut into the side faces, but this gets the job done in a clean, understated way.

No one I work with has noticed yet. Or at least not made mention, if they have.

Something I've not made mention of, my work issued everyone water bottles. Not only have they put in all new work stations in the newly remodeled offices, but also out in the area I work in. When they did this, they didn't want people spilling on the new stuff, and if you don't have a spill proof bottle already, now you have no excuse. The company colors are yellow and green (the company name is on the other side, they prefer employees to not share about them online for some reason) and while I like it alright, it looked the same as everyone else's. At first, I'd put my 512 on the lid, but it wore off pretty quick. Next, I took a couple of the yellow bands off. That distinguished it from everyone else, but I wasn't satisfied with it. The bands looked like they were the size of those rubber wrist bands, so I had my eye out for them. Eventually came across a green one, which went well with the text, but I only had one. Later, at my wife's doctor's office, they had a bunch of orange giveaway ones, so I grabbed a couple. They go together pretty nicely!!!

A Most Random Confluence of Events

Since the first time we went, the Renaissance Pleasure Faire has been an annual pilgrimage for at least part of the family. Interestingly, the younger has been the only one to hit it every year. Two years back both the boys and I went, along with the olders' girl. Last year was the first year since I've switched to working the Saturday shift, and it was shortly after the oldest shipped out to boot camp, so that year mom and the younger were the only attendees. This year, mom wasn't interested in going so much, so it was the younger and I. Good times!!!

While we were there, this happened...

We're walking along, and see an apple on the ground off to the side of the road. The boy says, "It looks like there's a smiley face on that apple" I look bit closer, and sure enough, there's indentations on the apple in the shape of a smiley face!!! Just then, an older lady in full Ren Faire garb holding two cabbages comes running up to us. To the boy, she asks, "would you like to play a free game???" Yea, sure!!! A cabbage she hands to him, and says to try and hit the apple with it. From about ten feet, he throws the cabbage at it, and scores a direct hit, fracturing the apple into at least two pieces!!! "You did it!!! Let me get you your prize!!!", she says, and runs off. Quickly she returns, and presents him with a radish!!!

As we were heading off, she has further inspected the apple, and calls after us, "You knocked the smile off his face!!!"

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!!!

Life Hack... MY CAR!!!

The second in a series of at least two Life Hacks, here's another one!!!

This one may just fix your car. I sometimes tell people, just like the human body, one of the keys to keeping your car alive is to keep the insides wet!!! If you've got an oil leak, better put more in at a corresponding rate or do something to stem the flow. Coolant can be even trickier, as you don't want to be opening a hot cooling system, nor be putting cold coolant into an overheating engine. Especially with the aluminum block and head engines these days, overheating can rapidly destroy an engine. Lack of a good seal in the cooling system will cause a pressure loss, which in turn lowers the boiling point, further exacerbating the problem. Whenever I'm looking through used car ads and come across one where they list several new cooling system components recently installed, that's an automatic pass.

So, if there's a small leak in your cooling system, like a pinhole leak in a radiator or heater core, here's a simple fix that has worked for me on several occasions.

Add a tablespoon or so of black pepper to your cooling system (while it's cold, of course) next time you're adding coolant!!! It doesn't seem like it would do anything, and I can't remember where I heard it from at first, but it works more often than not!!! Of course, it won't fix a leaking seal on a water pump or a bullet hole from a .45 through your radiator, but for a pinhole leak, it'll do. The theory is that the pepper granules will lodge in the hole, and when heated and exposed to air, will swell up and seal the hole.

Gender Dysphoria Cat

Back around a year and a half ago, my wife & I became grandparents to our grand-kitten. At the time, we thought it was a boy cat. There is a lot going on on the back end. A few months later, he got sick. He was very lethargic, and we took him to an emergency vet. They said he's very dehydrated, and if nothing is done, he's going to die. Oh yea, one other thing, he is a she. I told my son I'd cover the cost if he'll pay me back, and I believe his then-girlfriend told him that if he didn't, she'd never talk to him again. For the relative bargain price of around $700, they re-hydrated her and kept her overnight. That turned out to be all it took to get her back in the pink, so to speak. She's been fine ever since.

Ever since then, we've had a girl cat. I'd look at her from the back, and think to myself that if that's a girl cat, she's mighty lippy!!! Well, she's a pretty girl, and I used to call Leo a handsome fellow, so for a feminine counter to that, I'd call her a sexy beast. Truth be told, all cats, regardless of gender, are pretty sexy, I think it has to do with the way they have their shoulders.

When we'd first gotten her, my boy would keep her in his room, because Leo didn't seem very social towards her. He would growl at her, and he was pretty vicious, so it didn't seem safe. After a few months, we started getting them acclimated to each other, and he was actually pretty good with her. As the months went on, the younger and more playful one would attack him, to which he wouldn't do much, just howl about it. That's where I came up with the line about him being in an abusive arranged marriage.

We sometimes would discuss getting her fixed, but since Leo already was and she is an indoor cat, it was never a real pressing issue.

Then, I walk in on him with his dink pointing out, & he's playing with it. Looked quite a bit like this picture of a mixer nozzle here, only all pink. If she's really a girl cat, she's got a hell of a clitoris.

We'll just call him/her an "it".