For lunch on Wednesday, we walked a block up from the office to Cooke Street Diner on the corner of Cooke and the street where Tyke was shot. We had tried this small corner take-out lunch place the first week they opened. They had taken over the spot left after Mizutani’s Coffee Shop left vacant when they shut down several years ago. At that time, they hadn’t gotten their routines wired yet, but more importantly, I wasn’t really impressed with the food. I thought it was time for another try. In addition to the regular menu, there were over half a dozen specials, including two sandwiches. One of the specials was meat loaf, and I was compelled to order it. Plates came with a choice of white or brown rice, and tossed or macaroni salad. I chose brown rice and tossed salad. If it was a testament to the quality of the food at Cooke Street Diner, the place was full, and there was a steady flow of people arriving and leaving with their orders. I didn’t ask, so I don’t know for sure, but it looks like a family operation with daughter and grandma out front taking the orders and running the register, and dad and someone else back in the kitchen cooking and plating the food. My plate was prepared quickly, and I returned to the office. Continue reading ‘Cooke Street Diner’
After the previous night’s frustration with drillling, I decided to seek out professional help. Found RHT Enterprise listed under machine shops and location was in town, right off of Ward Ave. Spun by on Tuesday while out on a service call. Found the space after walking around a bit, I had actually walked right past it the last time I had my alignment done. Knocked on door, seems no one was around.
Today, wednesday I gave them a call and he called back. It seems he’s there after work and weekends.
Made an appointment and went by right after work. Small space, but he has a good size mill, lathe, bandsaw crammed in there. It takes him half an hour to mill out the four holes exactly where I want. Sweet. During the days he’s actually at UH. Pretty cool guy, I’ll go back if I need to.
After this is done, I’m excited to head home and get this done! As soon as I get home, I break out the angle grinder to take off the unneeded tabs. Showers of sparks later, they’re gone, and I clean up the struts. Looking good. Continue reading ‘Midnite Mechanic, FAIL’
It’s Wednesday afternoon and it’s raining on the windward side. Looks like no riding today. Boo.
I miked myself on the scale the other day - I lost 4.5 kg (10 lbs.) from the gastroenteritis! That’s over a kilogram a day! Too bad losing that much weight in 3 days in that manner sucked so much.
Picked up a steering rack and rod ends and headed home after work. Had dinner first, no worries about power tools tonight, and trying to wrench when bonking is no fun. Plus gotta let the car cool down. By the time I start it’s late, almost 9PM. I’ll just see how far I can get. I’ve done this three times previously, everythings been anti-seized by me, it’ll all comes apart smoothly. Looks like I have to apologize to the Korean manufacturers, the source of the fault is the outer tie rod end, not the inner made in Korea rod. I don’t recall where the ends came from. It’s all being replaced anyway, the new ends are greasable too. Reassembly goes smoothly too. It takes me a bunch of fiddling to adjust the toe setting to something acceptable. And so now it’s almost 3AM. Yikes, but I was on a roll and finished. No test drive though, time to sleep!
Sunday 18th, hoped to sleep in, but again the construction guys are up banging around the house in back early. Sheeze. Oh well, it’s getting too hot anyway. After lunch I give Jeff a call to see if I can borrow his spring compressors to take apart the junkyard struts. I had at one point thought of undoing the top cap nut on the strut while it was still in car, then jacking up the car until the spring was free. Figured there wouldn’t be any flying missiles, but I didn’t want to take the chance. It was afternoon by the time I got to Jeff’s and picked up the compressors, it was blazing hot. Glad I used my dad’s Suzuki with a/c. Continue reading ‘Root’s Machine Werks’
Whoo-hoo!
Scored an Easton Monkey Lite DH freeride/downhill carbon fiber riser handlebar for dirt cheap. It’s one of the last non-PRC-made Easton handlebars (hecho en Mexico), and is, of course, in the discontinued-for-2008 25.4mm (1″ standard) stem clamp size. At around 225 grams, it is only about 25 grams lighter than the EA70 Monkeybar it replaces, but it should offer a better ride and more turning stiffness. The orange center section almost exactly matches the color of my Chase frame! Score!
It was cheaper than the $75 USD quarter window vent trim for my FJ80.
After determining that the rear Koni shock inserts will not fit the FX16 casing, headed to the junkyard this  past Saturday. Look at pic and you can see the insert is longer, and also the diameter is bigger. No amount of hammering will get that fit into the FX casing pictured on top. So Saturday afternoon headed to ABC in Pearl City, the pick and pull I often go to. I wander around the yard checking out all the Toyotas. So far all the strut casing I’ve seen and measured don’t match. I do find a AE92 Corolla SR5 that someone is going over. I leave him to his scavenging as I go look around some more. Nothing else looks good. There’s also nothing else unusual or of much interest to me. Continue reading ‘Junkyarding’
Friday, May 16, vog haze is super strong, to me it looks worse then past weeks strong vog. Anyway, the weather aside from that has been clear so the Friday night ride is on! This time I scram from work on time. 5PM on a friday, I expect the traffic getting onto the freeway from the Lunalilo to be a mess, but instead its moving. In fact once on freeway it’s flowing right along and I cruise along to Pali. Dang, it takes me only about 25 minutes to get to the Castle fountain and park! Jeff, Sara, and Chris are here, and Jeff rubs his eyes in disbelief that I’m so early. Continue reading ‘Hammer Girl’
Nope, I didn’t run off over the weekend and plop down cash on a USDM Toyota ist, but something I had for dinner on Thursday took me down on Friday morning. High fever, cramps, nausea, general sense of nearly total malaise – yep, good old gastroenteritis. I figure it was something at dinner, because if it was my laulau lunch plate from Yama’s Fish Market, I would have gone off around dinner time on Thursday. Since Root, Fabio, and I shared the same food for dinner at Chiang Mai Thai restaurant, it must have been the tapioca, since we all had different desserts. Continue reading ‘xD’
The Koni Sport one way adjustable struts arrived yesterday. I was wondering if it was my complete order as the box looked rather small. It was just that they were all crammed in, no padding to speak of. Set of two struts per logo box. Here’s the contents of the rear strut inserts showing one strut. To install these, you need to take your old strut assembly and cut the top of, drill a hole in bottom, pull out all the old bits, then insert this new strut, and bolt it in through the bottom. 
So earlier in the day I took an old set of struts over to Ckucky’s to undo the top nut and drain the rears. Drilled hole in side and was wondering if we’d get sprayed by oil from letting the nitrogen goodness out. Either the pressure is low, or the goodness had left already, no oil showers. Continue reading ‘Koni Kurses’