Author Archive for taro

Page 44 of 88

FR-S potential

Published on January 7, 2013 in car by taro. Closed

Dang, at this Sundays auto-x I saw the potential of the car. A Subaru version running in my class, only change was race compound tires, was driven by one of the top drivers during fun runs. He turned in a awesome time of 40 seconds and change. More than six seconds faster than my best time and would have been in the top tiers of entire field, top ten and just besting the GT-R!

Now all I got to do is buy a set of tires, and a big box of skill. 6 seconds over 40 is huge, it’ll take way more than just tires to make up for that! I did spring for a day of the Evolution driving class in two weeks, too bad I can’t really afford the full weekend.

Busy HFD

Published on January 6, 2013 in rant by taro. 1 Comment

Saturday as we were finishing up the brake job on the Dodge, I heard a HFD truck approaching. Scat and eye looked at each other and immediately the thought was, oh, here comes HFD1! The pump truck however turned onto side street that wouldn’t be a normal route to the hiking trail. Looks like a house call. Ambulance followed some minutes later.

HFD1 did fly by later though, but it surprisingly did not go to Koko Crater. More sirens, but none going up our street so looks like it really wasn’t Koko Crater.

Scat and I hopped into the Dodge for a test cruise. As we were going down Lunalilo Home Road, I spotted HFD1 hovering along the Koolau ridge. Uh oh. As we got closer, I could see the flourescent green/yellow of the ground crew hiking up Yoga Sisters ridge and a bevy of HFD trucks at the skate park.

Continue reading ‘Busy HFD’

Beer Is Good – Samuel Adams Winter Lager

Published on January 6, 2013 in Food and Review by taro. Closed

Seasonal offering from Sam Adams. Pours with light head, medium dark amber, almost red. Nicely balanced, crisp. It does have addition of some spices but it really is subtle, I don’t think I could point it out if I wasn’t told. Nice drinking beer, one of the better winter seasonals I’ve tried so far!

3 out 4 ginger sipping monkeys.

See Creatures

Published on January 2, 2013 in Uncategorized by taro. Closed

This past weekend spent some time at Lanai lookout, I’d popped by a few times before to see what the humback whales were up to, but viewing conditions were bad and/or there weren’t very many around. This time conditions were good. Activity wise it was still slow, but picking up. Here’s a couple turtles who seemed to be chowing down too. Continue reading ‘See Creatures’

Hatsuhinode 2013

Published on January 1, 2013 in rant and Uncategorized by taro. 3 Comments

Yet another year of thoughts of waking up early and riding up Koko Head for hatsuhinode ignored as I rushed up the street 10 minutes before sunrise. Pretty clouded over so couldn’t see actual moment of sunrise. Wasn’t until a good fifteen minutes later could get a decent picture.

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DSS

Published on December 30, 2012 in car by taro. Closed

I forgot to blog about this, after months of waiting and back and forth and sending multiple old shafts, waiting for me when I got back from Thanksgiving trip was the box from The Drive Shaft Shop. They ended up manufacturing everything except the wheel hub cup. All from Chromo/300m steel. 300m is a slightly different alloy of 4340 chromo and features higher strength all around. Looks good, although missing the dust shields on the transaxle side.

Installation of the short drivers side went without a hitch. The long one gave me problems, the little spring clip retainer was not seated correctly and I ended up mangling it trying to insert into the transaxle. It took me a bunch of trips to Napa to find another. Had to find different nut also, the one they provided was made for the style where the shaft has a notch and you punch the flang of the nut into it to lock. I needed the nut with locking castle type washer and cotter pin. It’s finally in, driving around the neighborhood, they work. No race for a while though, so I don’t know how they’ll perform. Odds are these shafts won’t break. I hope so because with the single piece transaxle side cup design, it’s not as easy to change.

Ow my ears!

Published on December 29, 2012 in SUAR by taro. Closed

The English mangling of the Ginza Bairin ad grates on my ears bad enough, and then I hear the radio spot for Hatsumode at Hawaii Kotohira Jinja on KORL. Ouch, make it stop, it hurts!

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Dark Holiday

Published on December 25, 2012 in car by taro. 1 Comment

Wouldn’t you know it after spending entire night last friday detailing the car before the race, it rains the following week. There was a window of good weather this weekend so ended up washing the car again, which lasted until last night. Today was overcast but not raining so went for a little drive in the afternoon to look for photo ops. I guess dark weather makes for a different kind of image.

Continue reading ‘Dark Holiday’

Sticky fail

Published on December 22, 2012 in car by taro. 1 Comment

Look out with the new safety check decals if you attempt to move them. The print & adhesive layer is pretty homogenous and does that perforate with void word. I tried with heat gun (couldn’t find hair dryer) and got half of it off. So now I’m here at the 76 station getting a new check done. Didn’t want to go all the way back to dealer. Darn they only got one year tags.

Mow fun!

Published on December 20, 2012 in Gear by taro. 5 Comments

Mow!(WMV format)
Derek, you need one of these for your lawn! I have a feeling it doesn’t work on inclines though. I’m not sure how the control works, I saw a foot pedal and a tiller/joystick