I recently read that the new U2 album was schedule for release in October. And then it was changed to November. They have a working title which I have inconveniently forgotten.

This week I picked up 3 lbs of okra at the big garden down the road. Mmmm. Fried okra is good. I boiled a few pods too, just to gross you out. It never occurred to me to try to steam it. I read about that here: Okra and Proud of It.

I have used some of my free time this week to work on rebuilding the differential out of the GMC. I was very lucky during the assembly process. I got the backlash within spec on the second try and the pinion shim was already correct. All that is left is to get the pinion pre-load set by crushing the crush collar and then button I can button it up.

Weekend Update Posted Mid-to-Late in the Week

The posting has been slow around here lately. This is mostly due to my class schedule for the summer. Not that I am spending a lot of time in class, as I am only in class about 12 hours a week, sometimes slightly less if they let us out early, but still at least 10 hours. The real reason is the amount of time required to complete all of my assignments. The last few weeks has seen me spending anywhere from 40 to 60 hours per week on school. Can you say projects out the wazoo? Go ahead and try to say it. I knew you could. What happened to theSummer of Rick? It is absolutely insane, insane I tell you. Fortunately, all good things must come to an end. There are only about 2.5 weeks left of this semester.

Last Saturday I did manage to find the time to take the Turnip Truck out to the Greater Tennessesseessesseeesse Valley Antique Car Show. (Sorry about that extra eessee.) The trip to the car show was like three separate adventures. Count them.

The forecast for the day was 80% chance of rain all day long starting at 6:00 am. There were no clouds in the sky at 7:00 am so I decided I was going.

#1 Driving to the show. Driving an 83 year old vehicle is always an adventure. Doubly so when you attempt to drive 30 miles at a top speed of 35 miles an hour. No trauma on the trip out but we were amazed to see nearly twice as many cars there at 8:00 am this year than there were last year. Technically, I arrived at 8:10 AM this year. Last year I was right on the bell. When I registered, they gave me registration form #426. I assume that means I was the 426 car to arrive but I doubt it. And yes it was hot. And no, I didn't win any of the door prizes.

#2 Spending the Day at the Show. It was hot, but we came prepared. (We = me + 1 of the Brians) We had a cooler full of ice, a gallon of water, and a nice tent-tarpy-thingy along with several soccer-mom chairs, sans the soccer moms. I walked the parts swap and did not find anything I could live without. I also viewed like 70,000 old cars and trucks. OK, maybe 300. I ran into several people I knew, no surprise, and spent some time talking with Mr. Trailer Queen (Tim T.) who brought his 1924 Studebaker in on a trailer. I gave him the business because I had pretty much driven past his house on my way to the show.

Around 3:30 or 4:00 or something like that It was time to head home. Still no clouds in the sky but a call from home informed me it was raining there and had been for a couple of hours. Complete with dogs and cats.

#3 The trip consists of about 30 miles, probably an equal number heading north and east and unfortunately no roads go north east. As I am heading north, I notice large dark clouds to the east and some lightning. And some more lightning. I decided to change my route home in hopes of going around some of the rain. And lightning. I managed to find a nice bank drive thru to park under just as the rain came rolling in. The truck (and '66 Mustang) sat parked for about an hour while we waited out the rain. Eventually the rain pasted and clouds cleared and the pavement dried up. Still we sat there. Why? Have you ever tried to solve a differential equation in your head?

The rain is heading NE at 6 mph. We have a top speed of approximately 35 mph. The house is approximately 15 miles away almost due east. How much of a head start to we have to give the trailing edge of the rain before we leave so that we get home without driving back into the storm? So then we set there for another 10 minutes after agreeing we should wait at least 15. No patience to be found among us, for sure.

We did not catch the rain on the way home though at times we were just behind it. We experienced a little fine sprinkling but nothing worth blogging about. Getting home mostly dry was a major accomplishment. I guess it is good that I didn't win a door prize at the show for surely that would have used all my luck up leaving me to be drenched all the way home.

And in other news, this weekend is my favorite car show of the year. Yes, it is once again time for the air cooled Volkswagen show at Point Mallard. I will probably wait until Sunday to venture forth. See you there.

Drip Drip Drip

While rolling around under the Miata Friday morning doing a visual inspection, I decided that the oil leak from the CAS O-ring was not the only leak. There was a drop of oil on the front of the oil pan. (I cleaned up the oil pan while I was working on the clutch last week.) So it appears either the pan seal or the front main seal.

I thought I had replaced the front seal last year when I did the timing belt, but after reviewing last years write up, it appears I skipped it. I guess I didn't want to loosen the oil pan at the time for fear of creating an oil leak. Doh! Here's to hoping this is the only leak. I am currently debating whether I want to fix this one any time soon. The parts cost will be negligible but time wise it could kill a day.

I also had a drop of anti-freeze on the radiator drain valve. I had noticed this before also. I think the drain plug just needs to be replaced. This can wait until I replace the front seal, assuming I do, as the radiator needs to be removed during that procedure.

I keep asking myself why I am so obsessed with the car leaking. Why can't I be satisfied just sliding a pan under the car? Myself never answers.

About the time I was finishing up the inspection of my car, David arrived and we replaced the o-ring on his '91 Miata also. Having done the replacement on both a 1.6 and 1.8 liter engine, I believe the 1.6 is a slightly easier task. (It is actually possible to get the CAS out from between the engine and firewall.)

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!

The clutch saga continues. Slowly. My total wait time for the rear seal for the transmission was 8 days.

Quick recap. Order parts at O'Reilly Autoparts, Some parts show up, but not all. Make another trip to pick up the missing stuff. Get home with it. Not the right stuff. Call back. "We can't get that stuff, go to the Dealer."

Go to dealer. Order parts. Go to pick up parts two days later. Some parts show up, but not all parts. This was especially painful this time because it was a Friday and I had hoped to reassemble the car over the weekend. (Mazda Parts guy called O'Reilly to see if they had the part. Ha! They sent me to the Mazda dealership.) Back to the parts store on Monday and get the missing seal.

At this point I am fairly busy with my mundane life and don't get a chance to really work on the Miata again until this evening. That is not entirely true. Late in the afternoon, I spent about an hour with the car hoping that I would somehow be able to lift the transmission back up myself. Even with a pair of jacks, this was more than one person could really do.

At this point I got on the bat horn and called in the calvary. With the assistance of David M. under the car and non-boring Brian controlling the jack, we managed to get the transmission lifted and bolted to the engine block.

I will not call the entire operation a success (prematurely). I still have to hook up the hydraulic clutch cable, re-install the entire exhaust system, fill the transmission, and re-install the drive-shaft(Famous Australian rock band) and a few other miscellaneous details before I am really done. Regardless, all the work requiring more than two hands has been completed.

While the car is on the jack stands and one of the tires is off anyway, I will go head with an oil change and rotating the tires.

The car should be rolling before the weekend is over. A mere 15 or 16 days later.

What did I learn? Order all the parts and have them in hand before getting started.

Regrets: None really. At least not so far.

Going, Going, ...

Last week I placed an advertisement in the paper in an attempt to sell the 1925 Chevrolet Truck. The ad also appears online.

Today I put the truck on ebay. I have my fingers crossed.

G' worked this weekend so I didn't get a chance to go out for an afternoon cruise. It might have bit a bit chilly with the top down though. (I also didn't get to go scope out the Chevettes Corvettes that are on the market, you know, for research purposes.)

The Barrett-Jackson auction begins Tuesday on Speed. I have the Tivo setup to record the whole thing, 35 hours I think. This will be much easier this year thanks to the writer's strike, without which we might actually have something recorded right now.

Regarding the blasted diet, I lost a little over 5 pounds this week. My goal for next week is another 3. My diet is one of high protein, low carb varieties. My interpretation of that basically means mostly meat, salad, and high fiber vegetables. To make it bearable, I am giving myself one day a week off: Saturday. Saturday is a good choice because I usually have a lite lunch when I am busy playing in the garage and we often have Rosie's for dinner on Saturday night. Mmmmm.

[18.6 lbs to go]

The weekend snuck up on me. What a pleasant surprise. I suspect this can only happen if you don't go to work for a while.

The sky has gray all day today but there was practically no wind. Around the middle of the afternoon, I decided the Miata needed to roll toward no place in particular. (It had been parked since New Years Eve Day.) I was quite successful in this venture in that I did get to no place in particular in a reasonable amount of time.

While going no where, I stopped an observed a motionless C3 parked in a previously used automobile facility. I copied down the VIN so that I could research it online. It was a nice black car with a gray (leather?) interior. Visually it had a few minor problems, for example the passenger side seat belt needed to be cleaned and the leather boot around the manual stick could stand to be replaced. Online research revealed the car to be a '77 with the standard L48 engine package. The L48 is a small-block Chevy, 350 cubic inches, and made between 165 and 185 HP depending on who you believe. This is a relatively low number when you consider my much lighter Miata had 140-ish HP from the factory. Still, a C3 is a pretty cool car. $7355 is a weird price if you ask me.

881

A couple of weeks ago our digital camera called it quits. I was tasked with selection a new one. This turned into another obsession for me. Originally I planned to petition the finance committee for a digital SLR. I have wanted a Canon Rebel XT for a while. After thinking about it thought, I decided that it would not be very practical, what I actually needed was a sub-compact - something that would fit in my pocket. This was also the only requirement provided by the other member of the Obsession A/V club.

I consults with several friends who had recently purchased cameras, Consumer Reports, CNET, and the reviews on Amazon. I made trips to Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy to investigate the cameras in person. I made a spreadsheet and listed several features I felt were important, maximum cost, minimum resolution, maximum size, power up up time, etc. After about a week of investigating I had it narrowed down to one. And then back up to three, and then back down to one again. And then it was time to scour the net for a good price.

Today I placed the order. The new camera should be here in plenty of time for Turkey day.

The Charger had its oil changed yesterday. 10500 Miles

Gingery Lathe

I have considered taking an evening precision machine shop class at the local vocation school a few times, along with welding, and a few others. (I have already taken the cabinet making class and autobody and collision repair classes.) I am always interested in learning something new.

A couple of weeks ago I ordered a book from Amazon called the Charcoal Foundry(David Gingery). It is the first of 7 books in a series.

You might say that reading this book has been my obsession o' the week. The first book is about building a low cost foundry out of a metal five gallon bucket, building a sand form from 1x4s, and learning to sand cast aluminium (using play sand, clay, and empty Dr Pepper cans). All this with an eye towards the second book.

The second books is called The Metal Lathe (David Gingery). In this book, you are stepped through the process of casting and assembling a functional metal lathe. An interesting point to be made here is that this tool is actually used to make itself. Once it is partially functional, you use it to make some of the remaing pieces. How cool is that.

The remaing 5 books cover building a metal shaper, a milling machine, a drill press, a dividing head and finally a sheet metal brake. To be honest I don't know what a dividing head is or how a metal shapper is used. I will have to do some more reading on these two. [And I already have a drill press.]

I found the first book to be extremely interesting. My friends just rolled their eyes at lunch when I was telling them about it. I will definitely put this on my long term list of things to do: Build your own machine shop tools. As the book says, if a piece of your tool breaks, you no longer have to call 1-800-Who-Cares. Instead you just fabricate a new part.

If you find this remotely interesting, Google it, or better yet order the book. There are definitely worse ways to spend $7.95.

On a similar but slightly diffent subject, did you know that you can melt pennies in a cast iron skillet on the stove? Don't try this at home boys and girls. It recently became illegal.