Been testing the neighbor’s good will the past few days, been working on fixing the rally FX. Here’s the failure. Drew up plans for plates to repair those flanges. My thought was to cut them out and weld the plates in. Took the plans to Universal on thursday and they had them donr friday, but with work and traffic I could get there in time to pick them up. In the meantime I thought about the repair some more. I decided that my initial plan put too much at stake on my skills at welding and fabricating to line everything up and make it strong. The plan now was to weld the plates on the side of the existing flanges. There’s no clearance issues and I’d just have to source longer bolts. Continue reading ‘Grind em’
Archive for the 'car' Category
Page 6 of 39
When I saw the new taillights of the mid-cycle refresh of the Camaro, I thought it looked pretty good. Seeing it again though, it made me think that the car looked like a swollen Nissan Silvia S13.
(0)So the new rally tires and rims are making a big difference. Two events ago went well, but I ran into power problems. It turns out that the wiring harness for the air flow meter got chafed and wires were shorting. My results were good, I was once again running even with my rival in the FF class until mechanicals took him out. In the time between, I taped up the wires and then discovered one of the CV boots had a tear. Since the shafts are now custom it took some work finding a boot, but eventually found one and got that taken care of. Continue reading ‘Rally On/Off’
There’s “squirter overflow” on the Likelike. If you’ve driven on the H3, you know what a squirter is: They’re the drivers going 35 in the passing lane who you pass only to have them blast by you a mile later going 90, but you end up passing again at the bottom of the hill when they’re going under the limit again. Essentially, drivers who can’t properly control or understand their speed. Guess there are so many on H3, they’ve bled over to other trans-Ko’olau routes.
(0)Keep seeing a white Chevy Captiva around. It’s a Puerto Rico only model, but is supposedly also available as a fleet vehicle. Because it is nearly identical to the Equinox, it is not sold in markets where the Equnox is heavily promoted. Both are built on the GM Theta platform, but the Captiva uses the short wheelbase pan of the late Saturn Vue, and the Equinox uses the long pan of the Suzuki XL-7.
(0)So this is what the mailman brought today.
Yes, it came USPS Priority Mail. Not exactly cheap, but it was fast, it shipped from the UK on Wednesday. UK? Yes I had to call out to over the other side of the globe to find this rally stuff. It just isn’t very big here in the USA so selection is limited. I was taking abit of a leap of faith on these parts, I didn’t really know where they were made. I was pretty sure the rims were made somewhere in the EU. Turns out they are made in Italy. Not sure how to feel about that, but the brand has been around for a long time. They came with a set of aluminum hub centric spacers of the correct size for the FX that get retained by a spring clip into the wheel, nice! Also full set of extended shank lug nuts, but cap ends so I can’t use them with my extra long ARP studs. Oh well. Continue reading ‘Going Euro’
Rental Altima, kinda annoying. Keyless entry w/push button start. How do you turn on car without starting it? Couldn’t adjust power mirrors without starting car, radio turns off as soon as u turn off engine. Brakes overboosted, seat reasonably supportive. No USB.
A by product of working on Ckucky’s Taco, I discovered that the Ace Hardware in Kaimuki carries a pretty good selection of Plastidip products, including the colorizers. They didn’t have the new copper metalizer, so I picked up a can of the gold to play with. If you look almost a year back when I got the FR-S, one of the first things I did was try out the black spray Plastidip on my rims. Made them look a lot better. Been thinking about doing the metalizer color since then, but no one brought those spray cans in, and no one wants to ship them to Hawaii. Finally get a chance. Debated what to do about the original coat of black, should I remove and start all over? The original coat actually still looks pretty good, so I decided to do what J suggested and lay down a new layer of black on the existing, and then go for it. Continue reading ‘Bling’
Cruised by the new Teddy’s Bigger Burgers on Kapiolani for the little car show that Scat was in. 
Half the parking lot occupied by a small collection of classic American steel and a gaggle of VW Bugs. A couple of Imapalas done contemporary bagged style, a bunch of fairly typical Chevy and Fords.
Looks like Dave’s buddy got into a classic Camaro?