Thirsty FX

Published on September 5, 2008 in car by taro. Closed

Ugh, over the past weeks, the FX has been consuming a lot of water without a really obvious leak. Its so bad now it looses half a quart in a day. When I got home today, I immediately popped the hood and shined the SureFire around. This time I spotted wetness on the water pump. Saves me the trouble of rigging up the riceboy UV black light neon that I had found under the dash of the FX and going to store to find some UV dye. Now the question is what should I do about this? I’d been wanting to do a complete rebuild of the original FX engine and install that. But that’ll take some time. Do I fix this current engine which is of unknown condition that lights up the oil pressure light at low idle and valve clatters like a diesei?

Ah the saga continues. Oh, and had a disheartening trip to Toyota parts. Wanted to replace the fuseable link box, no longer available, neg cable, discontinued. More and more parts are becoming unavailable.

Floppy Wing – Field-Expedient FJ80 Side Mirror Repair

Published on September 5, 2008 in car by risu. Closed

No, not wang. When I started drivng home on Wednesday, I heard a tap on the passenger window, and when I looked over to see what it was, I saw myself in the side mirror. I didn’t clip anything, so I didn’t know why the mirror was folded in. Maybe someone brushed up against it in the parking lot. As I approached the four-way stop, the mirror rotated back into the normal position. WTF?! As I stated moving off the stop, it started to rotate in again. Bumps in the road made the mirror shake around. Had the pivot mechanism failed? Continue reading ‘Floppy Wing – Field-Expedient FJ80 Side Mirror Repair’

Ronery Road Ride

Published on September 4, 2008 in bike by risu. Closed

Where's Root?Ckucke didn’t have golf plans for Wednesday afternoon, so we put a Tantalus pau hana ride together. Jeff and Sara were taking a doctor paddle boarding, and Scat was out recovering from his surgery, so they were out. Root was supposed to be in, but backed out when we called him after waiting until a quarter hour past the start time. I popped a gel before we started for a bit of extra “go” for the climb, but it was really to no avail. At the first left hairpin at the State base yard road, the torment began. The weather was nice and clear, and a cool wind blew in along the shaded road up, but I immediately felt the drag pulling me back. A heavy hamburger steak plate lunch from The Alley Restaurant at Aiea Bowl and several weeks of missing afternoon secret training had made me weak. Continue reading ‘Ronery Road Ride’

Mystery Hills Upper Loop

Published on September 4, 2008 in bike by risu. Closed

Wailuna“Deth March” was the subject line of the e-mail that went around for this Saturday’s ride, so it went without question that a certain amount of suffering would be involved. The plan was to do the complete Demon trail loop, but heavy rain on Friday made us switch to our backup plan of a long ride at Wailuna. I had it set in my mind to link the Wailuna ascent, Waimano Ridge trail, and Waimano Mystery hills into a loop. We have ridden all of the pieces, but never together as a complete circuit. Jeff, Sara, Root, and I have been up Waimano Ridge from Waimano Home Road all the way to the Wailuna trail. Chris and I have been up Mystery Hills to Waimano Ridge, but we went down the trail to Waimano Loop Trail and sortied that way. Continue reading ‘Mystery Hills Upper Loop’

Tokkuri Tei

Published on September 3, 2008 in Food and Review by taro. Closed

After the conclusion of this year’s Okinawa Festival, I was quite roasted having spent pretty much the entire days there out in the sun. I felt in dire need of some beerage, and air conditioning. Fabio and I started going over options for the Kaimuki area. Bulging forehead vein burgers at Big City came up. Food options there didn’t appeal this evening, and if anything, the a/c is TOO much there for shorts and t-shirts. Fabio mentioned the place Koh no Tori next to Imanas Tei by Pucks Alley. The description perked my interest, well priced izakayaish tidbits.  Then thought of Tokkuri Tei. Tokkuri Tei is one of the places that for years I’ve been saying should try. I heard good things about it, but never got around to going there. Continue reading ‘Tokkuri Tei’

Jump Until Failure

Published on August 28, 2008 in bike by risu. Closed

Jumping JTI hit the jumps up on St. Louis with the boys on Monday. My stomach wasn’t feeling right since lunchtime, and I was still on the weird funk I had all weekend. Saturated with fumes from painting all day at work, Scat was a little out of sorts, hitting the jumps a little off and landing at the edge of control. Ckucke managed to break something in his rear hub, possibly the axle or bearing cup – his rear hub got loose and the back-end felt all floppy. I tried cranking down on his Q/R, but it still seemed the same. Everything seemed relatively normal with Root. Like last week, a hint of a drizzle drifted down the ridgetop at one point, but didn’t get anything wet or sticky. Scat said it had been socked-in at mid-day, but if any precipitation fell, it was all soaked in and dried up by the time we arrived. At the end of the jump session, Scat and I had more-or-less managed to get back onto a somewhat normal footing. Continue reading ‘Jump Until Failure’

Dakine Defender MTB Gloves

Published on August 28, 2008 in bike and Review by risu. Closed

Dakine Defender gloveI’ve seen some other iterations of this glove design sold by other vendors before, but those have shiny carbon-patterned armor plates instead of the Kevlar-look cloth laminated plates that the Dakine Defenders have. Since I’ve been unable to find armored, box-fingered motocross gloves, when I saw these hanging in the back of McBike, I thought that they might be a possibility. There were only tiny sizes, so I waited a month until the backorder came in and Jarrel left a note on my toolbox that they had arrived! I snapped up a large pair that day. I tried on the XL’s, but the fingers were too long. Initially, the large felt tight for some reason. This was odd, since there was enough space at the knuckles as I could move the armor plates even while making a fist. The fingers weren’t too small in girth, since I could pinch the fabric. Odd. Maybe it was the way the fabric folded when the fingers were bent. In any case, the tight sensation went away after wearing them for a half hour, and it didn’t come back on subsequent wearings. Continue reading ‘Dakine Defender MTB Gloves’

Japan Metal

Published on August 28, 2008 in anime by taro. Closed

Bwahaha, I can’t believe I let this one go by till now! Cropping up in fansubs, an OAV series titled Detroit Metal City. Designs and art are ugly style, ala Initial D, but it fits. I’m sure it’s completely intentional as Studio 4C is well capable of some outstanding artistic work. About a recent college graduate following his dream to perform in a band, but it’s not going in quite the direction he wished. Outrageous and hilarious, and yet with all good humour, there’s a hint of reality. Death metal with a Japanese slant. Who knows what’s really behind the paint!

Oh shoots, I just discovered there’s a live action movie that should be out too, complete with Gene Simmons cameo!

Might just have to get the soundtrack. Hey Roy, cosplay outfit for you!

official page

Dragons and Beer

Published on August 26, 2008 in Culture and Food by taro. Closed

This past saturday, August 23rd was a culture day, albiet a late start culture day. The plan was to check out the Dragon Boat races. Gave Derek a call and didn’t end up at Ala Moana until noon. This year’s event was rather ill publicized and I would never have known about it, and it seems neither did anyone else. The park was filled with a usual weekend end of summer crowd. When I got to the center area, other than participants there didn’t seem to be anyone else there for the races. It was lunch break time so nothing was going on at the moment. I decided to stroll on down to McCoy Pavillion where the Greek Festival, which I did know about from radio spots and print media. Continue reading ‘Dragons and Beer’

Cars & Technology

Published on August 22, 2008 in car by taro. Closed

Well, mom took the Prius in second time  in as many weeks. It had been giving warning lights every blue moon, but it finally got bad couple weeks ago and refused to move. It was towed to Toyota, and looking at the service invoice all they did was hook it up to diagnostics, cleared codes, looked up for any service advisories, and sent it on its merry way almost a week later. Less than a week later pile of warning lights came on and I took it for test drive and it was running only on electric. Mom made appointment and took it into Toyota earlier this week. Came back and this time they said the main battery was bad, some leaky cell(s) and corroded wiring. Replaced under warranty, thank goodness as those batteries set you back around $4000. The bad thing with all this technology is its pretty darn hard for the home mechanic to do anything with them, and they’re (hybrid esp) are pretty sensitive. If sensors detect too much out of whack, it shuts it all down. Gone are the days of driving a belching, smoking, running on half cylinders car, which I suppose isn’t a bad thing. Anyway, lets see if this finally fixed things on the Prius. Continue reading ‘Cars & Technology’