Go home early to work some more on car. I take apart the donor FX dash, and take apart the ventilation system to find where the heck the remote for the stereo dissapeared to. Finally find it after taking everything apart! Sheesh. By the time I’m done, I decide not to try and swap the dash into the new FX as I prob won’t finish in a sane amount of time. I intead decide to swap in the short shifter since that’s simple and already out of the donor. Continue reading ‘Shifty’
Monthly Archive for February, 2008
Page 2 of 2
Sunday, finally decided to do something about my funky parking brake, esp since I signed up for the SCCA Test and Tune event this Saturday. I looked in the manual and took apart a spare caliper. To get to the parking brake mechanism, I needed some tools I didn’t have. So I decided to try and find a reman caliper. Looked online at Checkers, didn’t have it in stock. Called Napa, no deal. I swear finding parts for the FX is harder than finding parts for Scat’s ’51 Chevy. Finally tried Redline and they had it at the Kalihi store, so I booked it over and picked it up. Continue reading ‘That’s the Brakes’
If you’ve been listening to 101.1 Japanese FM, you might have noticed that they have been off-air since last week. The station blog entry for Friday the 8th. indicates that an equipment failure has renderd the station dead for the time being. Hopefully they’ll be up and running again soon.
Okay, as of Thursday 14 February morning, they are back on line. I was wondering if they were going to pull a 99.7 and just up and close without warning…
So after the auction and getting home, I decide I should look at the Corollas after having pretty much ignoring them for a while. I realized the AE86 has had radiator flush in it all this time. I need to drain that, and take apart the idle valve anyway. It was doing the bouncy idle, and when I flexed the hoses going to the idle valve they were quite crunchy. I’m sure the valve is full of crud. 
The throttle body comes off without much drama. 
It is pretty crusty with gunk. Inside the intake manifold is pretty grimy too. Dang egr. Extra Gunky Recirculation is what that is! So I set about cleaning the throttle. I can’t do much with the intake. Debating to take it off and take it somewhere to have them hot tank it. That would be ideal.
And just as I suspected, the idle valve is crusted with rust. Taking the valve apart reveals that it seems the blockage is just at the hose end. The valve body itself look pretty clean. So just cleaning out the plugged end and changing out the hoses will hopefully solve the idle issue. Hopefully the rest of the cooling system is ok….
So woke up at 7AM on a Saturday to get to Ckucky’s by 8:30. Dang, it was like going to work! Anyway, Ckucky and I joined Scat in his rowdy sled to go down to the Hawaii Convention Center and check out the classic car auction that was being held. It was an interesting experience. Not exactly sure if worth the ten bucks, but then again you can barely see a movie at a theater for ten bucks anymore, and we spent over two hours there. 
Ckucky was interested to see how much this Camaro would fetch, he saw it listed earlier in Craigslist. Don’t worry, yours is going to be nicer, because it’s yours!
This Swedish Volvo command car thing was pretty trippy, much larger when you see it in person! Had some cobbed in parts and what looked like some Chevy V8 conversion. Too bad.
And then there was the “Yamazaki” T-Bird. Gotta love it! There was also some pedestrian vehicles that made you wonder what they were doing here, but someone wanted them. Like the Dodge Ram disco van. All it needed was a disco ball.
Scat was agonizing over this Oldsmobile 88. He had seen someone just buy it. Looks like they turned right around & sold it. It seems to have been sold the first day so we never found out for how much.
Ckucky was practically springing one for this Studebaker pickup. It was very nicely done. Very clean, quality. Nothing outrageous.
We only stuck around for the early part of bidding so didn’t really see how much a lot of these vehicles went for. Still it was intersting to see. And look at a couple of the wierd oddball vehicles that were there too.
Had dinner at “Joyful Garden” Chinese restaurant near Kozo Sushi in Kaneohe this weekend. Supposedly they also have a downtown location. The atmosphere is more upscale here than the more familiar “take-out”/family dinner Chinese restaurants here. It was very clean and bright inside, and they had a big Philips LCD TV to watch the end of the “Big Game” on. Cloth napkins – I think that sums it up well. The waiters had black slacks, white shirts and black vests! Continue reading ‘Yummy Nuggets’
So did they let all the wacky/crazy/stoopid people out from wherever it is they are suppoese to be locked away and give them all cars to drive for the day?
This morning, I had this “unlicensed Polynesian contractor” make a left turn into the oncoming traffic in the contra-flow lane on Nimitz from the right traffic lane right in front of me in the left lane! He did a good job testing the ABS on the new work van, and made everything in back that was on a pallet become not on a pallet anymore.
Thank you!
After returning to the warehouse to use the forklift to put everything back onto pallets, I left Kakaako and experienced something poetic. The syllable count is all wrong, and there is no reference to the season, but here is my haiku:
Four white vans at a four-way-stop
Three do not know what to do
Welcome to Cooke Street
You’d think after all these years working as a technician I’d heed the moto of never assume anything and always check the obvious first. I feel like such an idiot. So tonight I head home early and started taking apart the dash around the steering column. I curse at one stuck nut that is spinning around in the plastic connector so I can’t pull it out. I manage to work the test leads in anyway. The switches seem to check out ok. WTF? The relay checks ok, the fuses check ok, the switch checks ok. Leaves only the wiring between the switch & lights. The highs come on so I know that part of the wiring should be ok. Before I go crazy digging through all the wiring some more, I decide just to be sure I better check the bulbs. Damnit! The heck! Both bulbs (which BTW are tinted) are burnt out. Sheesh, I feel like such an idiot. I thought it was unlikely that both bulbs would burn out at the exact same time and assumed they were ok. You know what they say about assumptions…. On the bright side it’s a simple fix, now I have to go back out there and put everything back together.
So we had the somewhat annual ignore the Super Bowl gathering at Greg’s place. Well, Greg actually follows football so he kinda gives a hoot. Us, I didn’t know this particular game was happening until the email went out Friday. An excuse to get together, eat badly, and drink. Polish sausage, a 6 lb ham, chicken wings, some potato rolls, Doritos, oh look, throw some corn and some bell pepper & onions on the grill, those are veggies! And we only had one beer, split between the four of us even! 
So it was a slightly big can….
Anyway, the game was actually fairly entertaining. I found the halftime entertainment to be fairly weak. Some commercials were pretty good. I think Amp won pretty well for a memorable commercial that also came at the end of the game. Come on, jumper cable clamps on nipples. That’s pretty good. Continue reading ‘Stupour Bowl’
Ahh! To be back in Honolulu where a decent Mexican dinner can be had!
Met Fabio, Tracy, and JT for dinner at Los Chaparros last night. I had a 2-item meal with a chicken enchilada and a soft taco al pastor ($13 USD). It was “$3 beer night”, so I had a Negra Modelo.
If it’s one thing that Whistler is missing, it’s a good Mexican restaurant. There’s Caramba, the Mexican restaurant that serves Italian food. I’ve been there once the first time we visited Whistler and never had any hint of a desire to go back. There’s Dup’s Burritos, the little hole-in-the-wall with the ethnically insensitive sign (it features a round-faced dark-skinned man with a sombrero and a big moustache). I’ve heard mixed things about this place. Kevin and Naomi had nachos there and found them to be good, but the Symphony Ninja Sandwich Boys described a Dup’s burrito as, “a wrap with crap in it”. That has almost a Ted Geisel ring to it… There is a new place over on Creekside that opened this season, but we didn’t have a chance to try it. Maybe next time…