Winter Intersession

Well it is that time of year again, when there is a nice gap between semesters so I can rest my busy head again. Unfortunately, this intersession is a little different from the last. I am very busy trying to get my AMS paper finished, withdrawing another paper, and also hoping to get far enough along with the tornadogenesis project that we can write a paper to KDD. That is a lot to have on my plate in the next couple months, all the while keeping an eye out for potential jobs and preparing to graduate.

I do have some ideas on how to work on the car between now and then though, so I am getting my mind all gathered up for a big push before next semester begins since I never know how much free time I will have after that. The one good thing coming up is that after I get a job and do the 9-5 thing, I will have much more time to actually work on the car. One other piece of good news is that I finally found the time to write up not one, but *two* more guides for your viewing pleasure! The new guides are replacing the license plate lens and installing a valve cover breather, as you can see all the guides I have posted here.

Just keep on trying ’til you run out of cake
–Sooner Dead

PS: I’m Still Alive

Typical… silence on the wire… I apologize… Like what happens every time in school, I overload myself with promises and guarantees that I just can’t backup if I give myself any time to just relax. This is the same problem that has reoccurred each semester. I think it is because by the time I enroll into classes and pick my work hours each semester, I forget what a nightmare the last semester was and in a moment of weakness or stupidity (or both) I try to do too much. Oh well, such is the life of me.

There are benefits to me probably cutting a couple years off my life from a bleeding ulcer or something – I have one really, really nice resume; and as such, I should get a really good stable job. So I guess losing those years aren’t so bad, they crappy ones in the later years anyway where I would probably spend all day drooling on myself anyway because the government would have already of permanently banned me from driving (and probably deservedly so if all goes as planned). Either way, this good stable job that exists in theory, will allow me both time and money to work on the car, save for a house, and buy things for Shelley (I trust she will read this, so I must put this in here). Give it time, the holidays are coming, and I will soon have a little bit to work on Valarie. Until then:

I’m doing science and I’m still alive
–Sooner Dead

Willpower

I’m broke. Not the ‘I quit, I cannot do this anymore’ broke, the ‘I have no money’ broke. It is kind of the reason for me being so quiet; I have been locked down in tests from school and had no money to get anything done on the car. I paid off Katrina, and bought a new computer, so that quickly drained any funds I could have had. The good thing with paying off Katrina was that I am not losing a 1/3 of my monthly car payments to interest! I have saved myself about $800 by paying the car off early. Sure it was a risk running myself that low on cash, but I am very careful with finances and figured it would be alright, and it was.

Onto the actual title of the post. I am actually quite frustrated with myself, as for some reason I cannot find the willpower to do things I think I want to do. Somehow I get caught up in something else, lose track of time, and end up getting nothing I wanted to do done. An example would be watching TV or playing a computer game instead of working on the car, working out, working on code, or doing homework. I know some of these things aren’t fun, but some of them are things I really really want to get done, but I can’t get started and keep working on them consistently and I don’t know why. The problem is is if I am not consistently checking myself to make sure I am doing what I should or doing one of the harder things I enjoy, I slide right back into basically doing nothing productive and it is getting frustrating. I wish I had more to say but I don’t, I just need to just keep at the more difficult things I want to do and force myself to do the things I have to do.

Will you defeat them, your demons?
–Sooner Dead

No Brakes!

As was the focus of the last post, life has been busy, hence the lack of recent posts. Shelley and I got to go out to the car on Saturday, she secured the ram air vents and we worked at troubleshooting the parking brakes. While we didn’t actually fix them (hence the title of this post), and now are searching for how to fix. I am hopeful that the car will be running soon and be able to drive around the parking lot or something.

On to other news; I am building a new computer here in the next month. My old computer is now two years old and there are some awesome games coming up like BioShock, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Spore. Needless to say, my old computer won’t run 4/5ths of those games at least, an depending on the system requirements of the one I think it could run, it may be all 5 not being able to play. So I am building a 2 core system built primarily for gaming for approximately $1000. Not too bad if I do say so myself.

Why am I fixing brakes on a non running car? It isn’t like it is going to go anywhere!
–Sooner Dead

Life Over-Torqued

Something I have always been guilty of is not following the sage advice ‘all things in moderation;’ whether it be big things like overloading schoolwork, the buffet-line plate, or simple things such as over-tightening screws until I strip out the grooves. With school starting up and now trying to balance it with work, Shelley, Valarie, and sleep – there is hardly time to actually dedicate to all of them. It is all coming back to me now of just how hard it is to actually work on my car while keeping up with everything else.

So please allow me to apologize about the lack of posts recently as well as the lateness of the two guides I have been talking about for a couple of weeks now, it isn’t that the guides are hard, just that I haven’t had any time in which to write them up. Now for a little update on the car: Shelley and I went out to work on the car, a rebonding that needed to take place between Shelley, Valarie, and I. We pulled out the drivers seat to better work on the car, checked out the front suspension over good, and looked at the problems with the parking break. We found out that the front suspension is good, except it needs springs an shocks replaced – something I already knew – but everything else is in order, which is great and will save some money.

I have plans to go out with Shelley this weekend if I can find the time and we plan on working on fixing the parking brake, resecuring the ram air scoops, and a few other things. As I have said before, I am dedicated to making everything work this time.

I’m only stopping to regain feeling
–Sooner Dead

Small Steps

Last night was good. Really, really good. It may of not of been real mechanically based jobs, but I got things done on the car and I didn’t make matters worse for what feels like the first time since I have owned the car.

After finding out I needed to remove the radiator to get the fan shroud out, I was all ready to go and yank that radiator, and then I stopped. This would mean I would need to drain the majority of the cooling system, and that was not something I was prepared to do. So instead I put things back how they were and decided the car could live without a new shroud for awhile, as 3/4 of the shroud is fine, and I could make a temporary fix on the top 1/4 if the car is over heating.

Once I got the radiator back in place, I went to my second job: figuring out that valve cover breather that had been bothering me for some time. Instead of trying to push it through the valve cover hole, I removed the valve cover and used the extra leverage to put my weight against it. It didn’t go perfectly at first and I had to reposition the rubber grommet once or twice, but eventually it got itself into place! One job done. A guide will be coming on that soon.

Coming off a small victory, I pushed on and replaced the license plate light holder that was broken. The previous one had been broken off and the pieces still remained on the screws, but I replaced it. Two jobs done in one night and not one setback! A guide will be coming out on this job soon as well.

So here I am, 2 jobs closer to driving the car in the wedding. Tonight I am turning my sights on enjoying the victory and studying up on 8 more jobs I hope to be getting closer to finishing by the end of the weekend. The actual goal is to have the car able to run again by next weekend, but we shall see if that is a little too ambitious. Getting two small things done without a setback can really really make you feel like yo u can do anything again and really helps the momentum.

The trip of a thousand miles begins with a single burnout
–Sooner Dead

Tick-Tock

So here is the deal: I made a promise to my fiancé that I would do my best to have my car presentable before our wedding so we could drive off in that. We have 676 days and a couple until we get married. I have about 50 major jobs to get done on the car before it is “presentable” by both her and my definition Of course each of these major jobs have sub-jobs and there is always unexpected things cropping up to complicate matters, but let’s ignore those right now and say it will all boil down to 50 major jobs. A little quick math (676/50) says I can average about 13 days between accomplishing a single job. Sounds easy then, right? WRONG!

While some jobs will be quick and easy, such as resecuring the ram air vents, others will be much more time-consuming and complicated, such as bodywork. The jobs will run the spectrum in difficulty, cost, and time-consumption. So this is how I figure it: do any job you can currently do asap and after that, start working to being able to do the others. Job by job is the only way to restore a car, it doesn’t all just fall into place by itself.

I visited Valarie Sunday night, with the help from the guys over at TransAmCountry I was able to remove the key that has been stuck in the ignition for sometime. Sure it took some swallowing of pride, but at least it was stuck in the ignition due to something I doubt most people would have ever though of: a pseudo-column shift key lock when the base of the steering column is twisted to the right. Twisted it back to the left (putting it where the ‘park’ position would be if you had a column shift), turned the key back and it fell right out!

I also worked on getting the fan shroud out and replacing it with one that didn’t have a huge chunk out of the top. Come to find out (again from the guys at TransAmCountry) that due to the steering box, I have to remove the whole radiator. Oh well, in order to learn how to work on cars I am supposed to play with everything, and a radiator falls into that category. I plan on going back tonight and doing some more stuff, including replacing the fan shroud. I will keep y’all updated.

I lost my pride asking how to pull the key out of the ignition
–Sooner Dead

Marriage Counseling

Shelley is to thank for the idea for the title of this entry. Restoring a car is quite like a marriage if you think about it. You meet through some chance coincidence – be it a friend’s tip or just searching at the local hotspots, you see her and must have her. You spend a lot of money on her just to sign a certificate and take her back to your home. Just like in some marriages, sometimes things do not always match up the grandeur plans that were in your head though and you need a little couple’s therapy.

Valarie and me have our moments, grandeur plans and frustrating failures. Sometimes you have to wonder if she likes me at all with as difficult as she is always giving me all kinds of trouble. Get her a nice new garage so I can work on her and she is protected from the elements – she won’t start, and then gets the key stuck in the ignition! I hope that soon we will start seeing eye to eye so I can really get to work on her. I visited her today, gave the garage a good cleaning, hooked up an electric splitter so I can run electric stuff and bought a high output fan to keep the air circulating on hot days (like today). Both front tires were flattening, so I lifted her up and put jack stands under her – which I am going to need to do to work on her anyway.

Tomorrow’s plan is to change out the fan shroud, get the key out of the ignition, and check out all the front suspension to see which parts should be replace. The goal is to be able to drive it locally as soon as possible just in case the garage falls through sometime (though I doubt it will, it is always nice to be prepared).

Why should I pay someone to tell me I’m wrong when you do it for free?
–Sooner Dead

Personal Anthropology

Well, as my last entry’s title implied, I skipped the introductions in favor of an update from my now discontinued site. To get an ‘introduction’, there is a small idea of this site off to your right, below the ‘One Forward Gear’ icon, or you can go to the ‘About Me‘ section and the ‘About The Site‘ section. The past couple days I have been getting the look and feel of this site right, as well as transferring all the info from my last site here. The transfer is not all done, but it is close, and I am thoroughly impressed with how WordPress works.

Back to business. As I was going over the entires from my old site, proof-reading them for any old links and the like, I learned a little about myself. It appears that I have all these really grandeur plans, but something always either distracts me or I find ways to doubt myself and make excuses to shield myself from possibly failing at these dreamed plans (ironic, because I was always taught in soccer that you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take). Regardless, of the psychological issues playing that are behind the scenes, playing the puppeteer, becoming aware of the problems allows one to search for the solution. I think this one is an easy one, and in my no-nonsense kind of thinking: “get up and work on *some* part of the plan!”. And that’s what I plan to do.

Knowing history helps defeat repeating history.
–Sooner Dead

Gauging Interest

Well, finals are over… finally… and it is time for summer to allow me to really see what I can get done on this car. The weekend after finals were completed I headed out to Valarie, and got some help from James’ dad installing the gauges. Things went much smoother than I thought they were and we were able to get everything done and working in just 5 hours, including one hour break for eating and resting. Now, unfortunately I did not get many pictures and much of this process is a little foreign to me so I do not know how much help a guide will be when I get it up, but any hints are better than no hints. Taking up another guy’s time on a weekend, then asking to stop every 2 minutes and write notes / take pictures is a little hard to ask of someone, so I didn’t. After all that hard work we also installed the thermostat cover neck, curing the problem of the engine leaking coolant while running. So all the gauges run and are working with the exception of the speedometer because the speedometer cable I had was a bit too short (and I also didn’t have the gears needed for proper calibration), so as soon as those two things are done I will have a working speedometer as well. They look fantastic in the car and I am extremely pleased with the way it turned out. Also, the car runs just fine as we drove it on and off of a trailer and brought it over to my apartment for easier access for me to work on it over this summer.

See you on the flip side.
–Sooner Dead