Messages

Hey George, do you still have the pic of the truck leaving the line at Milan Dragway? I used to have that one among my desktop wallpaper collection, but I lost it somewhere along the line.

I'm glad you're feeling better, Phil. That had to be crazy painful and not a little scary. I've seen George's pickup in person a few years ago, that car looks great and has held up really well.

Yeah, I think that's fair to say. It's a far cry from the days when a ground strap from the battery to the engine, one from the engine to the body, another from the engine to the frame (unless it's a unibody,) and reliance on the electrical bits to bite into the metal bits they're mounted on is all you had.

What about your grounds? These systems are extremely sensitive to excessive resistance creating errors of even a fraction of a volt. I think the stock harness contain at multiple grounds, maybe the block, battery, and radiator support at the OEM level?

You may be onto something with this latest thought. Does the truck have a wideband O2 sensor you can read? If you have less restrictive intake and exhaust, that may be enough to mess with your tune. A little Google work on what mods required a tune on Mustangs of the vintage you got your engine out of would probably give you some idea.

Matt, I really enjoy gardening. These days that's pretty well confined to pots on the deck, but you're absolutely right about the relaxation.

I was a little freaked out by the prevalence of lane splitting in California. Traffic is rolling at 20mph, a lot of people are making hard cuts from lane to lane in an effort to move up in line a car length at a time, and all at once you hear a motorcycle engine coming up from behind going almost double the speed.

Wow, That's a big spring rate change. It's also potentially the difference between a car that gets driven and a car that sits in the garage between polishings.

That's what the pollen has been like here, too. The radio says the area where I live is the 2nd worst for spring pollen season allergies this year of anywhere in the country. That's a position I'd gladly give up.

Wow, Tony, that HHR is a mess! It's an interesting concept to undertake such a thing, but it would be difficult to pull off.

I've used that Permatex before on pipes that almost but didn't quite seal. Much better than the old school exhaust putty, the stuff that got to be sort of like baked mud.

Practicing paint polishing with a cheap, 20v cordless, 4" rotary polisher from Amazon. I was very pleased with the deck lid right off the bat, after watching a couple of YouTube videos. No swirls, nice reflections, kinda purty for a car that's spent most of its life outside and hasn't been waxed as often as it should. Went to the roof, but that didn't go as well at first. I dropped the task because I didn't have a place to park in the shade, it was pretty warm, and I know that isn't right. This evening I went back to it and determined the issue is that I hadn't polished it quite enough where the oxidation was heavier. That's good, it's way easier and cheaper to polish a little more off than to put it back. Best of all, no blue on the waffle pad, so it's not through the clearcoat.

Dad sure has a big smile on his face, Matt. I like the looks of it.

Those pics really help you see how dramatically the hood angles out from the radiator shell to the cowl.

Little things make all the difference in being able to be comfortable on the road.