Author: chuck goolsbee

My favorite car hack.

Wedging the alternator with a Chouinard Stopper

I was making digital copies of some old Bishop family slides for Sue when I stumbled upon some old Kodachromes of mine from my college days. I found this photo and had to chuckle. I was on a climbing road trip from Texas to Colorado (a trip I made many times) when a bolt fell out of my VW Rabbit Diesel in the middle of nowhere New Mexico. Despite looking for well over an hour, I never did find the bolt. My solution was to chock the alternator in-place with… well… a CHOCK.

A Chouinard Equipment #7 stopper if I recall correctly.

I limped into the next town, stopped at a NAPA, where they had no metric bolts, but I was able to make do with an SAE bolt (which eventually caused the alternator mounting hole to bell out before I could find a proper metric fitting in Denver.) I seem to recall having to have a machine shop enlarge the hole after a while – but that came later. I had forgotten the whole episode until I saw this photo.

Announcing: The Northwest Oil Leak Jaguar Tour 2012

Even more fun than it looks!

After the wild success of the Southwest Oil Leak 2011 E-type Tour, we’ve all decided to do it again. This time we’re heading up to the Pacific Northwest in September 2012, touring Oregon & Washington. Here is a rough map of the proposed route:

NWOL Route

We’ll be following twisty back roads, avoiding freeways, and looking for great scenery and awesome roads. Overnight stops will occur in Bend, Hood River, McMinnville, and the Oregon Coast. Highlights will include:

  • The Oregon High Desert
  • The Columbia Gorge
  • Mt. St. Helens
  • The Oregon Wine Country
  • The Everegreen Air & Space Museum (home of The Spruce Goose)
  • The Oregon Coast
  • Crater Lake National Park

What the NWOL Tour is: Fun, Friendly, Fun, Low-key, Fun, Low Budget, and Fun.
We all arrange, and pay for our own food, fuel, and lodging. A no-frills tour with the emphasis on FUN.

What the NWOL Tour is NOT:
Expensive. THERE IS NO ENTRY FEE. It is a group-organized thing – the amount you spend is a factor of how you want to travel. Some folks bring a tent and camp out, others stay at luxury hotels. HOW you spend is up to you. The route is picked with a range of lodging option available.
A Race. We’re taking a leisurely tour through a scenic area. No points are awarded for arriving first.
A Rally. No timing, scoring, or checkpoints are involved. If you are looking for a great rally in the same area, check out the Northwest Classic.
Fully Supported. We have no sweep truck stuffed with professional mechanics – just your fellow “leakers” and whatever tools they carry. Make sure your Jaguar is in good running condition before coming on the tour, and be ready to fix it if it breaks. Last year’s SOL had a few minor mechanical problems but they were all taken care of by the participants themselves. Bring your cell phone and AAA card!

If you and your Jaguar would like to come along (we’ll consider other makes, if you’re a fun person!) let me know and I’ll add you to the electronic mailing list for the event.

Wrong Lens, Right Place.

Nick Crosses the Finish Line

Last Saturday Nick’s Nordic Ski team had a Pursuit Race. We had to leave the house at the crack of dawn and I could not find my telephoto lens. All I could turn up were short focal length (7—14mm and 20mm, which in M4/3rds is similar to 14—28mm and 45mm in a 35mm format) lenses.

Shooting sports is always better with longer lenses – you stand off and track the action from afar, letting the long glass get you close to the athletes. Long lenses also flatten perspective and offer interesting bokeh (the unfocused areas outside of the depth-of-field) making for appealing images. I shoot the telephoto from a monopod, which provides me with a stable platform that still allows me to pan side to side to keep the action in-frame.

My 20mm prime is a fantastic portrait lens, and is very fast, meaning it is great in low light, but the focal length makes for “snapshot” looking shots of sports.

I love shooting with wide-angle lenses, but they are not my first choice for shooting sports. In the past I’ve used my wide-angle as a secondary lens while shooting sports, taking close-up shots from a very short tripod close to the ground with a remote shutter. This time however, I affixed the camera and wide-angle to my monopod I usually have the telephoto on, but used it instead like a boom – held low, or high in the track of the race course. I’m pleased with the results:

Pre-race wax

Mass-start of the first boys' Classic race.

Poling to the finish of the boys' Classic race.

Girls Classic race

Girls Classic race

Girls Classic race

BHS Boys start the Skate Race

Nick skates towards the camera during the second lap of the Boys' Skate Race

Nick skates by the camera at high speed

I love living in the future.

This is amazing, yet mundane.

I own a 2006 Jeep Liberty with the wonderful VM Motori 2.8L CRD engine. It was an odd product of the short-lived Daimler-Chrysler marriage: An American SUV, with window controls in the center like a Mercedes-Benz, and a one-off Italian tractor engine. Mind you, a big-bore four-banger with a über-high-pressure common rail injection system that turns amazing fuel economy – Sue drives the wheels off the thing and regularly and consistently sees 29 MPG from the frugal Italian Diesel.

For years we fed it my home-brew, which made the economy all the sweeter.

The only problem with owning an oddball vehicle like this is occasionally it is hard to source parts. Sue’s CRD has 160,000 miles on it and is in need of a timing belt change. I know a great independent mechanic here in Bend who I trust the jobs that are beyond my limited skills and time. We took an impromptu vacation over the holidays after Sue’s Dad passed away, and I scheduled the time for the CRD to get the maintenance done while we were gone. We dropped the Jeep off and I ordered the parts online, delivered straight to my trusted mechanic. All good, right?

Nope. The water pump was on back-order.

I searched around online and found a few websites that listed as “in-stock” and tried ordering from them. No dice. Their published inventory stats were a bald-faced lie. I did a bit of googling and found out that I was not alone – many other Jeep CRD owners were reporting the water pump status as unobtanium.

I figured that since this was a European item that I’d have better luck looking in the EU. I had some of my car-buddies in the EU look around for me. I had extensive conversations with a VM Motori distributor in the Netherlands who in the end, could not find one for me. Of course since this all happened over the xmas/new-years break the communications had huge latency, even with the wonders of the Transmission Control Protocol. Eventually I turned to eBay and found one in the UK – bought it, and here it is, heading my way. Already in the USA, it should be here within 36 hours or so.

I love living in the future.

Makes me want to buy an Alfa-Romeo or something. 😉

Powder Day!

Powder Day!

I usually ski every Saturday, but decided to skip yesterday. It has been a long time since we’ve seen significant snow around here, and Saturday was clear and windy. (VERY windy.) I stayed home and did some document archeology concerning something I’ll talk about soon. That wind brought us a gift though…

Today I awoke to a dusting of snow on the ground and the mountains west of us wrapped in dark clouds. Temps were very low, but the wind was gone. I tossed the ski gear on and dashed up to Mt. Bachelor to arrive in time for the lifts opening. Per usual, I parked at Sunrise (shorter walk to the lifts!) and was one of the first 20 people on the hill. The runs off Sunrise were groomed the night before, so I headed east to my favorite lift, the Rainbow Chair. Rainbow is normally unloved. It is an old, slow triple rather than a swift new detachable quad lift, so it sees very little traffic. I love it though because it covers a ton of vertical, including some near-timberline chutes high up on the east face of Mt. B. From the top of Sunrise I crossed over and took the run I-5. I-5 is a wonderful cruiser which had also been groomed the night before, so not really what I was looking for. Riding the old Rainbow chair up into the clouds I traversed east to the top of Flying Dutchman.

The snow… was sublime. Nice firm base, with anywhere from two- to ten- inches of light, fluffy powder depending upon wind-loading. A mere handful of people had been on this run, and it was possible to carve fresh turns on many lines. The snow was deep enough to allow you to aggressively ski the fall line without building too much speed. Perfect powder really. I made many linked turns through several chutes down into the trees where the run normalizes into a cruiser. It was so good I skied Flying Dutchman several times over. Once it became carved up I skied Rainbow’s lift line seeking untracked expanses. Feeling like I’d carved it all up after 4 trips, I started heading west, hoping to hit the long, steeps of the Northwest Express. While riding the Skyliner Express I heard from folks who had just been over there who disappointed me with news of wind-slab and slick conditions. I bailed off to the left, took the Cliffhanger chute down to the road that cuts across the mountain to the Summit and Sunrise lifts, and once again took the Rainbow lift line; another run down the Dutchman, and then down off the mountain to the Sun Bar for a rest to warm my now-frozen toes.

The base was now swarming with people, with the word now out that it was a Powder Day, so I took my Seasons Pass holder’s privilege of heading home – Satisfied that I’d skimmed the powdery cream off the mountain.

It is supposed to keep snowing all week.

Brazzzzzzzziiiillllllllll….

Welcome to Hell, please take a number…

We flew from central Oregon to Colorado to visit my parents for the holidays. We (reluctantly) flew United, as our preferred carrier (Alaska) had no available flights for the trip. United has never failed to fail me every time I’ve flown them. This time was no exception: Sue had all her prescription medicines stolen from our baggage. I have no idea if it was UAL or TSA at fault here, but I’m now in the complaint process with both. It is sure to be a Kafkaesque journey.