Nicely, this cheap hotel in Okayama has wireless internet. Actually, the wireless router is unsecured and not set up, so if I was an ass, I’d go in and give it some screwed-up password. Today was a trip out to Onomichi and Kurashiki to see old stuff after yesterday’s trapsing around Naoshima looking at some great collections of art both classic and contemporary, and getting that mental limit of what constitutes art and what doesn’t stretched and massaged. Contrary to the feel of the town put forth in fiction like Kamichu!, Onomichi feels like a place that has forgotten its Kami like an inconvenient burden. Walking its steep, meandering hillside paths, one should be greeted on every turn by the town’s cats, at least according to the tourist blurb. All I saw were three or four sickly cats and one “lost cat” poster. Continue reading ‘Kami, Neko, and a Dude in Chinese MultiCam’
Author Archive for snm
Page 8 of 18
Phew, that probably wasn’t the greatest of ideas. Finished fuel pump replacement at 1:30 this morning. The hand pumpy siphon thing I had bought a long time ago’s pumpy part disentgrated after a few pumps and wrapping it up in duct tape only lasted a few more, so I was left with a tank with lots of gas still in it. I disconnected a line and let it drain from that but it was a pretty slow trickle. Eventually undid the fill and lowered the tank enough to pour gas out that way. Gas and fumes floating all around the garage. Pump was an OEM replacement made in USA Carter. The pump itself looked fine, but the little additional provided bits, while quality looked fine, didn’t fit! A o-ring that I ended up not using at all, a retaining spring washer clip thing that was too big to retain, stainless hose clamps of common design where the screw part is so large that it could potentially short on the power wire. Dissapointing, but there was no turning back at this point, I reused old parts and eventually got it back together. Didn’t start car, still need to put back some parts, and decided to let fumes go away. Verdict hopefully tonight!
As Typhoon #15 (“Roke”) passed South of Shikoku last night, all was fairly calm here in Takamatsu, with a light to moderate rain falling in the center of town. The biggest thing I noticed was a single bomb-like thunderclap before midnight when the rain was at its peak. Nonetheless, the typhoon panic led to various school and public facility closures. The ferries were back online, but it was funny that yesterday when they were starting to panic shutdown for the impending storm, conditions were so amazingly calm, whereas today when it was all “safe”, conditions were borderline stomach-churning. There were some legitimate road and facility closures on nearby Ougishima and Megishima due to small landslides or road washouts, but many of the much-touted art sites in the towns remained closed because staff were told to stay home because of the storm. At least this evening dinner was easier to find, as opposed to finding restaurants closed or closing early “because of the typhoon”. I can understand exercising adequate caution, but this event snowballed into a national panic (especially down South where the effects were mild), and I don’t mean this in hindsight – in the days running up to the arrival of the storm at it’s nearest passing point, it was deadly calm with just sporadic drizzling. People were shutting things down days in advance because of the media hype and not actual observed conditions. Continue reading ‘Typhoon Panic’
Although the rainy weather of last night dissipated in the morning so that Shikoku was visible across the water, to avoid the possibility of getting trapped on Shodoshima in the event that the fast-moving typhoon #15 came rushing in, I bailed early. Landing in Takamatsu, the weather was actually worse, with a fairly constant drizzle falling – it makes sense, since I actually moved closer to the typhoon! With no plans for today in Takamatsu, a quick stop at the ekimae tourist information office revealed a map of a shrine complex with a pile of stairs! I hate stairs! Let’s go! I had actually heard of the Kompira-gu shrine previously, but didn’t know many of the details. A leisurely local train ride on the Kotoden from a station built up against the outer wall of the Takamatsu castle ruins took me to Kotohira-machi for 610-yen. Continue reading ‘Typhooned’
Okay, passing through the backstreets of Kotohira-machi (home of the Konpira-gu shrine in Kagawa-ken) I happened across this preschool fence. Once you get passed the fact that there was a barbed wire fence around a preschool (WTF!?!?), note that it is leaned inward to keep the little curtain jerkers in, not to keep weird, unwanted adults out!
Oh them gremlins! They’re having a field day now! Walked to my favorite parts store, Checker/O’Reilly (not) and then to McCully Bike to meet up with Ckucky and Kev. Went to where the FX was parked and pushed it to Young Street amid crowds of flashing blue lights possibly involved with one of the myriad homeless at that baseball park. We formulated the tow plan and hooked up, and for SnG I tried starting the car. Lo and behold it cranked right up. WTF? So the plan was changed that Ckucky would just follow me home. Made it all the way with nary a stumble. This was good in that it saved the stress and trouble of flat towing the FX, but bad in that I was left guessing on what was wrong. I did not have a multi-meter with me at the time so I couldn’t test for power at the pump, which would have been pretty good evidence of a bad pump. After checking the wiring diagrams I’m still fairly confident that is the problem. If the EFI relay was bad, then the ECU wouldn’t have lit up the diagnostic light. There is a possibility the Circuit Open Relay that is a safety for the fuel pump was bad. Jumpering the fuel test connector bypasses the airflow safety that triggers that, but still relies on the relay. What I needed to know was the wires I needed to bypass the relay entirely. Oh well, I’m going to change the pump anyway, perhaps that will cure the slight rough idling I thought I still detected. I’ll get you yet, you gremlins!
Spoke too soon, I am sitting here at corner of Young & Isenberg dead in water. Car hesitated once badly on freeway, now completely dead. Pretty sure it’s the fuel pump.
Wow. Weird. I managed to find a wireless access point at this late-60’s vintage hotel on the far side of Shodoshima! This morning it was a rush to make it to JR Osaka via the Yotsubashi-sen, only to find that the 06:20-something limited express train had already long since gone. It took a local Osaka loop-line train, a 700-series Shinkansen, and a local train on the Ako-sen to get me to Saidaiji-eki in time for the 10:05 bus to the ferry landing to Inu-shima. The sky was overcast for the most part, and the humidity of the past couple of days had dissipated, so the apparent suffering level was not as great. After a short wait at the pier with unchi-pantsu-gyaru, a 10-minute, 300-yen boat ride got me out to Inu-shima. The former copper refinery on the island closed late last century had crumbled into disrepair, but the old slag-brick and red-brick ruins had been converted recently into an art exhibition and installation. In addition to the converted factory, several house-like installations throughout the island were also built. I wonder a little about what the remaining local fishing village residents think about the whole thing, but I’m guessing that a source of revenue that isn’t slowly killing them like the refinery and is preserving the island lifestyle can’t be all bad. Continue reading ‘Islands, Ruins, Art, and Boats’
Last Saturday Mitch gave me a buzz asking if I wanted to check out a mystery bon dance that their group was performing at. He described where in Millilani it was supposed to be. It didn’t sound familiar at all, I tried looking it up. There wasn’t anything in any of the bon dance listings for this year. Tried looking on map using Mitch’s directions, but I was looking at wrong gulch, there’s nothing there. Dave texted back, is it this Daikon Festival thing that he linked to? Picked up Mitch at his place and he confirmed that was it, weird! Looked it up on maps, Honbushin International Center, who?
I think I finally conquered the gremlins. After fixing my grounding problem last week, I’d been driving the rally FX all week and there still was a rough running problem. I could hear it on idle and while driving you could feel it as random hesitating missfires. I couldn’t figure out any pattern either. So through out the week I’ve been swapping parts trying to find the problem. Continue reading ‘FX Gremilins’