More fun with the camera.
There’s a thread on one of the Oldsmobile sites I visit that had folks posting night-time pictures of their dashboard and interior. Long exposure pictures always look cool, and I love taking pictures of my car, so I sat down and fiddled with some of the features on our camera and here’s what I came out with.
A little Toro Touch-up
I’ve been working on a new tail light lens for my car, and finally found a silver pen for some of the accents. The lens isn’t quite ready yet, but I took the pen to my interior and brightened up a few things.
Before
After
Before
After
First real drag races. (lots o’ pics)
Well nobody thinks of Great Bend as the place where there’s tons of stuff to do, but we’re getting better and better at seeking out things to do. A while back during our radio auction I scored a pair two day passes to the Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series here this weekend. You could think of it as the Nationwide Series of NHRA drag racing.
Saturday, was rainy off and on and windy like a mofo. We switched sides of the track to get out of the wind and were much more comfortable. But soon enough the rain shut everybody down and we went home. Sunday was still windy but otherwise beautiful. Perfect day!
It was awesome. The superstock cars were cool because they still look (for the most part) like cars you’d see on the street, but they are friggin’ fast. You think they’re loud too, until the Top Alcohol and Funny Cars roll out. Yeah, I tried not to hold my ears, but after the first pass… well it was in our best interest since we were only about 20 ft. from the track and no sense going deaf for no reason. Plus when you plug the ears, you realize how the sound shakes every bone in your body.
They weren’t the cheapest tickets $50 for both of us (auction price). But man it was worth it. Seeing something like that on TV is one thing. But seeing something as insane as human beings in screaming machines being hurled 1/4 mile in a little over 5 seconds with your own eyes is just too damn cool.
Now tons of pictures. Check the picasa album for tons more!
EDIT: Found out this is a Dodge Diplomat with a Slant Six engine. Pretty cool!
The smell of burning rubber.
68 Cutlass vs. Chevy Nova
More wiring woes (Not the Blazer)!
Would you like that toasted?
Tuesday nights Andrea bowls league, which means I usually get some Guild Wars time in. So there I am trudging through the Ring of Fire in Hard Mode (geek), when Andrea calls. I just figure she’s calling to update me on her awesome bowling results for the night. Turns out she needs a ride home because it’s 10PM and her headlights won’t come on on the Mustang. SUPER!
So not much we can do in the bowling alley parking lot in the dark, so we just left her car there and picked it up in the morning. By the time I’d gotten home from work yesterday, my awesome wife ALREADY had her dash halfway apart and found the problem. Someone had repaired one of the wires at the light switch at one point with one of those crimp connectors and it had burnt itself to a crisp to the point that the wire just fell out. Ever since I got a soldering iron, I can’t stand those crimp connectors.
So Andrea did all the grunt work herself. I just did the soldering and she got it all back together. Had a brief scare when we tested our work and the lights still didn’t come on, but found that the power lead had came out of the harness. Snapped that back in and viola! And easy fix. Well at least my part was!
Best of all… Cost to fix: $0.00
04.5.10Slow progress.
Hasn't moved much this winter. But Spring breaths life back into many things.
Normal people wouldn’t have bought this truck. Normal people would have had to been duped into taking this thing home. Having discovered being duped, normal people would have dumped this thing as quickly as possible (I guess I tried that for a short while). (Un)Fortunately, normal I am not.
With the return of tolerable weather I’ve taken a bit of time to dive back into the Blazer. For now, I’m convinced that the issues with this thing lie in the redneck wiring. I think I’ve finally “undone” all the crazy cooky wiring (that I’ve found). Now I have to get it back the way it was originally. This will be the interesting part as there’s wires under the dashboard that have been cut and then disappear into the darkness beyond. The good news is that I have factory wiring diagrams. So worst case scenario, I’ll just COMPLETELY re-wire the offending circuits.
Simple, right?
I have been able to fix the battery drain by undoing the jacked up wires. No more having to unhook the battery cable every night! And after all the hacked up connections were undone, I noticed a few things. ONE, the fuel pump runs when you apply battery power to the fuel pump test terminal. TWO, the fuel pump is supposed to run for a few seconds when the key is ON, but engine not running. It does not. and THREE, I am no longer able to read Check Engine codes without redneck wiring.
My initial deduction is that now the computer isn’t getting any power. Even if this thing were brand new from day one, I should be getting the NO RPM code when I try to read the codes. But to be sure I have to make sure that it’s the computer that’s disconnected, and not just the diagnostic port I’m trying to read codes from.
It’s just one little problem at a time, one little circuit at a time. Eventually it will all be back to normal and I will discover what $40 part was broken in the first place that started this whole mess.
04.1.10246,865 miles
And that’s as far as she’ll go. Figures, right after the brand new tires.
I think the Toronado is finally done for. I went out to start her up this morning just like every morning and it started up, but then immediately died. Try as I might she wouldn’t turn over, but I couldn’t get it to run again.
So I didn’t have time to mess with it, and it was a nice morning anyway, so I walked to work. Andrea picked me up at lunch and brought me home and I started to trouble shoot. I found that there was no spark at the spark plugs, so after checking all the wires and making sure they were working, I pulled the distributor cap off to see if anything was broken or corroded. Just for S&G’s I had Andrea turn the car over with the cap off…. the rotor didn’t move AT ALL. There’s only a few ways that could happen, and none of them good.
No turn, no spark, no run, no go.
The most likely scenario is the timing chain finally gave out. And to fix that takes more tools than I have, and a good part of the front of the engine needs to be disassembled. We’re talking water pump, balancer, timing cover, hoses, belts, and since the engine is so far forward in this car, the radiator would need to come out to just to get a puller in to get the balancer and timing gears out! ARGH!
It pains me but I think it’s just not worth it. If I can’t sell it quick for cheap I’m going to have to junk it just to get SOME money out of it, because I have to have a car of some kind, and the Blazer isn’t reliable without some work and I still am not 100% sure what’s wrong with it. Ugh. Oh well it’s been a good run. Anybody have some leads on cars? Anything? I’m desperate and would even drive something foreign at this point!
02.26.10Two clean rides
They’re oldies, but they shine up alright!
Washed the cars over lunch today so I ended up not eating anything. Which made me really really hungry by the time I got home after work today. We’ve had a brisket simmering in the crockpot since this morning and MAN was it tasty. A long with cornbread, veggies, mashed potatoes… I’m STUFFED. Gonna relax for a bit then head to a play at the Crest Theater here soon. Haven’t seen a stage show in such a long time, I’m looking forward to it.
It’s been a good day so far!
02.25.10Express Checkout!
This is too cool! Grandma Dee sent this to me today and I just had to share it. It’s a 13 ft. tall shopping cart with a souped up Chevy engine. This is something I would have LOVED to take to Prom in High School or something, haha. Plus I could fit a lot of frozen pizza in there.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C7D-nGxSGE]
02.25.10New shoes!
Okay, not a new photo, but I'm not running out to take a pic of my tires at 6AM!
Well last time I posted about wheel opinions, which I brought up because I was really in the market for new tires. I went ahead and bit the bullet on the tires, so if I ever do decide to get wheels, I’m limited to the same size wheels I have now (15″) which isn’t terrible since I’m not a big fan of the huge rims. Although I was considering going up as high as 17″. But oh well.
For a long long time I’ve been fighting a vibration going down the road. It all started back shortly before we moved to Great Bend when my right rear caliper locked up… overheated and warped my right rear rotor. But at the time being in the middle of a wedding and not even having enough money to get ourselves moved… I was forced to drive it for a while. Eventually I got the caliper and rotor fixed which eliminated most of the vibration, but as my negligence continued it actually wore the tire out of round, taking a tiny bit of rubber off the side of the tire that had been dragging on the warped rotor. The result was that even after I had all new hardware installed, there was still a slight vibration that got REALLY annoying above 60 MPH or so. As such my car was relegated to around town duty while the Mustang hauled us on long trips to Minnesota, Wichita and SWK all the time.
So now four new tires and from what I can tell, the vibration is gone! The ride is smooth and comfortable (or at least as comfortable as it can be on Great Bend’s awful streets). I’m really anxious to hit the hiway and set the cruise. This car is so comfortable and easy to drive that it just makes the miles melt away.
As I look outside, now about 7 o’clock and the skies are lightening up it makes me anxious for the spring time. I have a laundry list of automotive goals I need to get done. Priority one, get the Blazer serviceable. That is going to be a long term project I feel as I’m going to have to rewire the whole driver’s dash area and some under the hood. I need to do some maintenance to the Mustang, replace some gaskets and check out the transmission fluid. And my car needs a radiator flush, some exhaust work, and a little touching up on my cheap bastard paint job. Should be enough to keep me busy through the summer!
Wheel Opinions
This is just a quick photoshop of a wheel I found that (supposedly) would fit my car. Trying to decide how they’d look on my car. If I could find a used set I’d probably go for it. But I don’t really think I want to drop $170 a piece for them brand new.
American Racing Chrome Aero