F1 - Australia 2009

Last weekend was the first race of this years F1 season. I have been looking forward to it since the end of the last season. I usually pull for the red cars and this season is no exception. I also like the the drivers of the defunct Honda team newly christened as Brawn. I like many others figured they would be the underdogs this year. I guess we were all wrong. The Brawn cars driven by Button and Barrichello finished 1st and 2nd last weekend. Awesome race.

Top Gear and F1

I wish this show was available in the US. Here is a bit they did on F1 a good while back. It predates Alonso leaving for McLaren before returning to Renault.

Listen to all the stats he quotes on this car. And the tolerances. The engine is effectively siezed up and must be warmed before cranking.

I hope they bring F1 back to Indy in the near future!

Today the local blog critic awarded my blog the most boring blog in the neighborhood award. I guess he missed the geometric proofs from a couple of years back. And the lyrics for 'Oh, Yes Wyoming'. (If your interested, I recently proved the triangle inequality theorem for vectors.)

Then I remembered my blog wasn't really meant to be entertaining, it was intended to document my current obsession, whatever that might be, for example a Miata, a 1925 Chevrolet,rebuilding a 1972 GMC pickup, hoping to acquire an unspecified year Corvette or Volkswagen Beetle, building Furniture, hot tubing, auto body repair, camping, hiking, biking, welding, metal-meet, camping, Dodge Chargers, low carb dieting, school, procrastination, hypermiling, building a foundry, melting aluminium, state quarters, container gardening, MDF, STL, model railroading (n gauge), tenth scale RC cars, RC airplanes, Vertigo, slot car racing, Formula One, the US Grand Prix, attending car shows, Mini Coopers, ping pong, foos ball, chocolate chip cookies, fembots with a penchant for evil, cast iron skillets or even fried okra. Whatever. I feel so validated now.

Mmmm, fried okra.

iMike and Terry did not even get an honorable mention because their blogs are too interesting. Sorry guys.

Hello, Hello, Hola!

Weekend Update

F1: The first F1 race of the season was this weekend. Hamilton finished first, no surprise there. Of the 22 cars, only 6 finished. Kimi was 9th, Masa DNF. Still pulling for Ferrari. G is dedicated to McLaren. Rubens(Honda) will probably be black-flagged for leaving the pits under a red light putting Kimi back into the points.

Diet: Lost another lb and a half this week. Having achieved my initial goal, I have not yet determined where I am heading now.

GMC: Disassembled the rear diff preparing for some sandblasting.

Melting: No progress.

Other: Attended auction.

Formula One season starts Thursday with the first race on Sunday.

Shall I go ahead and predict Kimi will win again this season? Certainly.

Gone Indy

The Indy trip was fun and it just sped by.

This year I omitted some of my usual trip technology.

First I left my laptop at home. The only place I could find a reasonably priced room (< $150/night) back when I booked it in January was at a 2-star Hotel. I knew they would not be providing free Internet access. (The room turned out to be nicer than the 3-star we had last year, though it did cost a few dollars more.)

Second, I left the camera at home. The camera is took big to carry in a pocket and I didn't want to try to wear it on my belt. That works fine when standing walking, but it is a real nuisance when trying to sit.

I did take the GPS. It is used mostly as a novelty but it is nice know how far from home I am at any given time.

I also took my SanDisk MP3 player. It is small and will easily fit in a pocket. The great benefit here is that it is also an FM radio. The race track broadcasts the announcer on 100.10 FM so having a radio and ear plugs makes it easier to hear what is going on even when the noise level is up. Taking the radio was a good call. It was definitely easier to keep up with what was going on.

I also took my TI calculator. I have a Modern Abstract Algebra test this Thursday so I had some studying to do. Believe it or not, I probably got more homework done than I would have had I stayed at home. Besides the motor sport events and dining out, there were not really too many other things to distract me thus allowing me to procrastinate.

Last night Jordan told me he wanted to be a race car driver. Me too. Unfortunately we are probably both too old to get started now. It seems kids today get started at about the age of 3 or 4.

Perhaps later I will tell you about my hotel bath tub.

Road Trip

I am heading north to Indianapolis today. The main event, the US GP, is not until Sunday. Tomorrow will be full day including F1 qualifying and several other racing events.

If your watching the race on Sunday, look for me in the drivers seat of the car sitting at pole.

2007 US Grand Prix

This coming weekend if the F1 US Grand Prix. I will be heading out Friday for Indy. I am looking forward to the trip. This has been a great season for Formula One. I believe this will be my fourth F1 race.

Friday is a practice session. It is usually on TV before I leave AL so I will definitely miss it. Saturday AM there is typically another practices session followed by qualifying at around 1:00 PM or so. Typically there are several other races that day. And a car show on the back straight away.

Sunday is the F1 race. I think it is at 1:30 PM eastern.

Who wants a T-shirt?

I could certainly get use to four day weekends. Today's plans is nothing. Now let me catch you up on the last few days.

I started Friday by rotating the tires on the Charger (7500 miles). I had to replace a few lugs on the front tire. They were deformed and I couldn't get the proper size wrench on them. This was the first tire rotation for the car, but I have had two flats already. My theory on the lugs is that someone had applied the wrong size socket to those lugs using an air gun. Gotta love that.

A simple tire rotation ended up taking almost two hours. That included a parts run for lugs.

Once that was complete, I met G', Bri, and David M. for lunch before heading back home to start work on changing the Miata's timing belt. David parked his Miata nose to nose with mine and we got to work. His car is a 92 with the 1.6L; mine is a 95 with the 1.8L. At first glance they are very similar but as things progress one really starts to notice the differences: Air box, thermostat housing, alternator brackets.

After a few hours I had to call it quits for the day. I estimated we were 30% done, David thought we were closer to 50%. At this point I had drained and removed, the radiator, removed the dual electric fans, the valve cover, the three plates covering the timing belt.

Next up for the day was helping Beth lock up her new house. She needed all the locks changed. First we went to the house to inventory what we needed. Next we dropped David off at his house. He was at our mercy for a lift since he no longer has a functional Miata. Step three involved finding a set of door knobs and dead bolts that matched the others in the house. We managed to find three out of four sets with matching keys. The key dude had already left for the day so she would need to make a return trip to get the remaining set to match the first three. This expedition ended with me be dropped off at home so that Beth could go pick up her son. Yes, his name is David also.

After grabbing a couple of tools, G' and I headed over to Beth's new house. The goal for today was not to replace all the locks, but simply to replace all the dead bolts. This would be good enough for now, because Ginger and I had other plans, we were going out to dinner at Bone Fish Grill.

Saturday morning David and I planned to start working on the Miatas at 7:30 AM. At about 6:30 AM I was in the getting a head start. I called him a few minutes later to ask if he had a socket. I don't recall if it was a 20 or 21 MM socket, but I didn't have it nor did he.

Yes I called David at 6:30 AM. He is an early bird and there was no risk of waking him up. He was sitting on has back porch drinking coffee.

David hit HD, Lowes, and two parts stores before he found the socket we needed. Fortunately it was only $6.

The socket was required to remove the crankshaft bolt. Having the right tool sure makes the job easier. At this point I could described a misadventure involving removing the timing belt and chipping the timing belt sprocket but no good could come from that so I will omit it.

At 9:15 AM we closed up shop again. I was heading for Decatur for a car show and David had to take care of some stuff he had been volunteered to do. The plan was to open the shop back up at 1 or 2.

The car show was nice though a little warm. My neighbor Brian went with me. While a the car show I saw Ginger's Aunt and Uncle. I saw a 1966 VW Beetle that wanted to follow me home, but I had to leave it there.

By noon I was beat. And about that same time David phoned in to say he had been volunteered for even more stuff and would be able to return until 1 on Sunday. Good for me. I think I took a nap. Then I watched some F1 and re-read the instructions for changing the timing belt. And finally I made a trip to the parts store. I knew going in that I probably wouldn't be able to get the sprocket until Tuesday. Unfortunately it was worse than that. They couldn't get it, so now I have to wait until Tuesday and try the Miata dealership.

Sunday AM started early. Beth had dropped off the other lock on Saturday morning. I skipped Church to finish up lock smithing and then returned home to assembled a basket ball goal we got Jordan for his Birthday.

At one I re-opened the Garage. At two David showed up with reinforcements (Bryant). On a Miata the power steering pump has to be removed to swap out the water pump. On a 95 Miata, the alternator must also be disconnected.

My plan for today was to show David how difficult it was going to be to replace the water pump. I would eventually convince him it was not necessary and once he had had made this decision, I would then try to convince him how important it was to change the water pump. Mind games. Ha!

The water pump swap went smoothly. At this point there were a few things I could put back together but basically I am stuck until I get the sprocket. Best case for that is Tuesday.

David has a hose he needs to replace. The parts store was no help on this one either. He needs the OEM part also.

It is looking like neither car will be running again before next weekend.

Today's plan was to do nothing. Ginger thinks the broken sprinkler needs to be fixed. These two plans don't coexist very well. I guess I will look at the sprinkler in hopes of switching back to my plan ASAP.

Morning Break

I was hoping to be caught up by now so I could take the weekend off. No such luck.

I am currently camping out at the kitchen table with a laptop and a coffee cup that says "Dad" and has a picture of a 1966 Ford Mustang Convertible on it. I believe that is as close as I will be getting to either of the car shows today.

I have been remiss about posting for the last little something something. Several topics have crossed my mind though I have lost most of them. C'est la vie! One did pop into my mind a few minutes ago though so here we are.

One day this week, I believe it was Wednesday, I was heading back to work after having lunch at Vinnie's Indian Cuisine. I was cruzin' up Jordan Lane behind a over sized 4x4 pickup. I was probably too close to the truck ahead of me and there was a Caddy in the right lane next to me. Quicker than you can shake a stick (What does that mean anyway?)... Before I can brake, I have run over a large rock that the pickup ahead of me went over. Fortunately for him, he had plenty of ground clearance. The Miata however does not have much clearance. This rock was fairly large. I would describe it as roughly the size of a shoe box. I saw it but did not have time to react. The rock went right under the car. I felt the car rise on its suspension. It was quite a bump and I heard the sound of rock rubbing on metal as it went from the front all the way to the back.

This provided a very queasy feeling to the driver of the car, yours truly. I watched in the rear view mirror as the rock rolled down the street and the Accord behind me swerved into the lane of oncoming traffic to avoid it. Fortunately for him there was no actual oncoming traffic.

At this point I started nervously looking for smoke or any signs of fluid loss on the gauges or in the road behind me. My instinct was to go back and get the rock out of the road but there was not a good place to turn around. Also I felt I needed to get the little red car home before it quit, just in case. Hopefully one of the guys working road construction retrieved the rock before it caused any damage to anyone else's car.

Once the car was parked, I looked underneath for any drips. Nothing to be seen. The car has moved since then. I don't really feel good about driving it until I inspect it underneath. I want to make sure I don't have a cracked oil pan or a damaged fuel line, etc.

I have high hopes that there is no real damage other than a few minor scrapes on the underside. High hopes aside, I am not going to drive it again until I have verified this to be true. Three days later and there are still no leaks so I would take that as a good sign.

The Spanish Grand Prix is this weekend. Speed Channel, 6:30 AM on Sunday. My Tivo is ready to go.

Gotta get back to the code now.

Formula One

...season has begun. I Tivo'ed this weekends practice session, qualifying event, and race. It looks like it is going to be a pretty exciting season. I'll be pulling for Ferrari's Kimi and Masa this year.

I am looking forward to going to Indy again this summer.