Category: Cars

I am a “car guy”… I love old cars.

Car Photo of the Day: Name that Aston

Apologies for the lack of a CPotD of late. I’ll post a few in quick succession to make up for it.

As much as I like the look of Aston Martin bonnets, I can not tell the difference from one model to another to be honest. I know there are subtle and not-so-subtle differences between DB2/3/4/5/6/etc but I’m not that intimate with them. To me they are like VW Beetles. Damn sexy VW Beetles though. I do know which one this is, as I have other photos that clearly show badging that removes all doubt. Here though, from this angle you’d have to be a real Aston Anorak. Can you name the model and claim that title?

Multitasking in my very own iPad.

A busy day in the barn

When I’m doing car maintenance I usually go about it in a very linear fashion. I disassemble, label and lay out parts, keep notes, etc. I rarely interrupt a job, as I prefer to focus my attention 100% on the task at hand. In other words, I prefer to single-task. Today however, I had a bunch of “routine” tasks to do.

  • The TDI needs new brake pads, as I could hear one of the rears making noise.
  • Sue’s CRD required a fill-up and an oil change.
  • I had a batch of BioDiesel to cook.

So today I went out to my little private idaho, my man cave, my … iPad … and I multi-tasked. Brake jobs are fairly simple and frankly monotonous. As are oil changes (especially now that I have my “sucka!”). Making BioDiesel is something I do even more often, but it does require more concentration.

Unlike the latter two, there are no “wait states” in a brake job, BUT even with a lift it is dirty, uncomfortable work, so I took a break from brakes at the completion of every corner, to wander off and do something else in the task list.

This is the little Diesel I cut my mechanical teeth on back in the 80s. John Meister's new-old 1981 VW Rabbit Diesel Pickup

An enforced break also came when my friend and BioDiesel co-op member dropped by with his “new” truck, a 1981 VW Rabbit pickup! Diesel of course. It was cool to see that old 45 HP machine under the hood, as it was also in my first car, a 1980 Diesel Rabbit. Nick came out and helped us unload, and load John up with two 20 gallon barrels of home-brew.

The brake pads of the TDI have a sensor built into the left-front side that set off an idiot light on the dash. This light has never come on in my car as of all the pads, this corner had the most left on them. Go figure. The inside pads on both rears were almost gone. The OEM pads back there have a subtle change of pad material in them that makes a grating noise when the pads are worn to that point. This is how I found out it was time to change them rather than the sensor/light combo. I visually check them when I have the wheels off, but will admit to never looking at the inside rear pads, as they are practically invisible, being almost completely obscured by the calipers. I figured if one pad was worn to noise-making I’d change ALL of them. The car has 150,000+ miles on it, so worth the cost of eight brake pads.

I cooked the home-brew, and changed Sue’s CRD oil with the MityVac between the corners of the TDI. The wheels were back on, and the CRD back in the garage in time to watch the Vancouver Canucks beat the Toronto Maple Leafs on Hockey Night in Canada. After the game I shut off the BioDiesel processor and had a nice dinner. I’ll take the TDI out for a test drive tomorrow.

It sure is nice to have my own “iPad” to work in.

Wonderful Noise

Reader Rafe Saber pointed me to this video on YouTube. I’m quite familiar with it, as I own the DVD, but was unaware that Speed/VBD has posted them online. This series of videos has stunning production values and the sound especially is a delight. They’ve lost quite a lot of that quality in the YouTube transmogrifying process (which destroys all video quality!) but even so, the brilliant and wonderful noise of the XK engine still shines through in the first fifty seconds of this clip. I could listen to that sound all day long.

Car Photo of the Day

Name that car.

This might be an easy one, and given the time I’m posting it perhaps it will give folks in the time zone represented by the plate a head start on guessing the make & model.

It was captured at a staging area of a TSD segment at the New England 1000 vintage rally a few years back on the shores of Lake Champlain.

The position of the feet in the frame for some odd reason evoke the cover of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” album, and no… nothing in-frame was on fire when I took this.

Adventures in Engrish

The pre-Christmas freeze broke a few pipes in our barn (despite me turning off the water, and draining them beforehand!) and also claimed my handy digital scale. I use it for weighing the catalyst for my BioDiesel production, which has to be measured down to the gram. Variations between various recipes based on waste oil acidity are pretty minor so it is important that I use the right amounts, or I could end up making a giant vat of soapy gunk instead of fuel. Been there, done that, don’t want to go back.

Obviously the scale had some water in it, likely condensation, as things froze hard. Since things have thawed I started up fuel production again, only to find my scale inoperable. It just beeped and the display presented me with gibberish. I did what any motivated tinkerer would do:

  • I swapped in new batteries.
  • I took it apart, cleaned and reassembled.
  • And, when it continued to beep and display gibberish I hurled it violently against the wall.

While it was satisfying to watch it disintegrate into component parts and splintered plastic bits, it doesn’t help me get any closer to weighing Potassium Hydroxide 200-some grams at a time.

Last weekend I went into town to try and find a suitable replacement scale at the hardware store and farmers co-op. No such luck. They had an analog ones, and hanging ones, but no table-top digital models. I grabbed an analog one as I had a batch in-process and thankfully the recipe was very simple (80/80 1kg/200g) so the analog one did the trick but rarely do recipes work out to nice even numbers. I hopped on Amazon.com and snagged a digital scale. It arrived this week and so far has worked great. It is of course of Chinese orgin, like so many consumer products today, and the manual inserted in the box is … interesting to say the least.

I’m usually one of those guys that reads the manual of every thing I buy to use. One of the joys of buying a new car is sitting in the front seat and reading the owner’s manual cover to cover. (Good thing I rarely buy a new car!) This “RTFM” thing comes from years of working in Information Technology I guess.

It is a good thing that a scale’s operation is fairly straightforward, because this manual is absolutely no help in understanding the operational procedures!

It will back to zero.

Feel free to call out your favorite parts in the comments!