Category: Cars

I am a “car guy”… I love old cars.

Changes to the fleet…

As some of you know, digital.forest was acquired earlier this year. While my payout as a stockholder wasn’t “retire now” in scale, it has allowed us to upgrade the Goolsbee fleet. First and foremost I set out to buy Sue a cruiser to help her sore back and smooth out her hectic driving schedule with something super-comfy. We test-drove a lot of mid-range machines, and she settled upon a Mercedes-Benz C300. It took me a month or so to find the right one, at the right price. She now enjoys a 2009 C300-4Matic. It is hands-down the best car we’ve ever had in the Goolsbee garage. VERY comfortable, and drives super-smooth.

This means her 2006 Jeep Liberty CRD is now for sale.

Christopher finished school at the end of the winter quarter, and is now preparing for law school. Since he loves the car and learned to drive in it, I’m giving him the TDI. It for him will be like the ’80 Diesel Rabbit I drove when I was his age – a great, reliable, frugal first car.

“How about Chuck? What does he get?”

I wanted something fun for my new commuter car. My drive to work is actually quite enjoyable – a choice of twisty two-lanes, largely without traffic. I love to drive roofless. I like to shift my own gears. (In hindsight, I’ve never owned a slushbox for *my* daily driver.) I don’t need more than two seats. I didn’t want to spend that much. I started surfing Autotrader and eBay for used cars meeting the above criteria. After filtering out the Miatas (sorry – while I know they are GREAT cars, they are also nearly ubiquitous) my searches turned up a good selection of interesting cars. MR2s. TTs. S2000s. 350/370Zs. Boxsters. SLKs. Some 911s and Corvettes. Even a Jag (Holy depreciation Batman!)

After the wonderful experience of hucking the ClownTown Roadshow’s old E30 BMW around the track now twice – with every lap bringing a grin to my face, I figured I owed a look at the Z3/Z4 line of cars. A coworker at Facebook loaned me the keys to his 2006 M Roadster while I was in Menlo Park for meetings several weeks back and halfway through the drive I decided this would be my next car.

I decided upon a color & trim choice (blue exterior, grey/wood interior) and went hunting. Autotrader turned up a few, as did eBay, but then I was referred to a car broker in the Bay Area. The idea is you tell them what you want, and about what you will pay. I knew what I wanted, and my shopping gave me an idea of what the fair market value of these cars are now, so I laid it out for the broker. He found me one in SoCal within a few days, and now the car is mine. Totally painless process. I highly recommend it over trying to buy on your own.

The car is a 2007, has ~33k miles, and is REALLY nice.

the car d.f bought.

While I’m not a huge fan of the Z4 styling, the M version seems to tone down some of the more outrageousness, while upping the “ultimate driving machine” bit. It is very much a modern E-type: Classic “long bonnet, short boot” styling. Minimal interior, maximum driving pleasure. High horsepower & torque straight six. Laughable cargo space (though easily 3X what the Jag has!)

I’ve only has it a week, but every mile has been grin-worthy. The miles per gallon can’t touch the TDI, but the smiles per gallon is way past the redline. I can afford the gas now. 😉

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.

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. 😉

Chuck Goes Racing: The 24 Hours of LeMons.

The Clowntown Roadshow at the 2011 Arsefreezeapalooza at Buttonwillow last weekend.

Ever since its inception, I’ve really dug Jay Lamm’s “24 Hours of LeMons” series of car racing. The ethos is all about fun. More importantly, fun on a budget. Car racing is way too serious and way too expensive, but LeMons has changed all that. I’ve wanted to participate since day one at Altamont, but have never had the team, the car, etc.

That all changed a few months ago when a co-worker offered his already prepared LeMons car (the Team Pandamonium BMW E30) for sale on an internal car group at Facebook. (Yes, we use Facebook at Facebook as our Intranet – it is awesome!) Within minutes a new team was formed, made up entirely of Facebook employees. We’ve re-themed the car (Facebook of course!) and last weekend we participated in our first race. Our goals for this race were:

  1. Finish
  2. get to know the car and each other
  3. Learn what we need to keep the car running and race efficiently
  4. Finish in the top half
  5. Have fun

The race was at Buttonwillow in California. I had business in Palo Alto late that week so I was able to get down there and participate. In fact, since I have lots of trailering experience (horses and cars) I volunteered to drive our beater race car down with our beater truck (a 1994 Ford F250XL with utility bed), what I wasn’t prepared for was the worst windstorm in recent California history the evening I drove down! Between Gilroy and I-5 I think I topped out at 35 MPH, and had to pull over a few times to ride out the insane winds. I left Menlo Park at around 3pm and I think I arrived at the track around 9:30 pm. I had planned to get a hotel room, but laid down in the truck to catch a nap (as anyone whose driven a truck and trailer in extreme conditions will tell you it totally wipes out your brain!) I figured I’d sleep an hour, but ended up waking up at around 3:30 am! I just stayed put at that point. We had a day to test the car and track before the race started. I took the car out for a while on Friday, and turned in respectable 2:20’s lap times. Not bad for not having been on a track since 2004, and my first time in this car. At the end of the day we put the car through tech & BS inspection, and we were assessed a 10 lap penalty for having a car that has won a previous LeMons race. We brokered that down to 5 laps with a bottle of Scotch (Bribery of BS Judges is encouraged at LeMons!)

The track was set in “Race #15” configuration, which was a nice mix of speed and hard corners, including a very long back straight (“The Drag Strip”). We had five drivers and six ~2.5 hour shifts to run. I ran the last shift of the first day. Words can not adequately express how awesomely fun it was to drive in an honest-to-god actual wheel-to-wheel race. Yes, there were many cars faster than ours, but we seemed to pass as much, if not more than we were passed. I yelled at d-bag drivers, I made daring passes, I hammered the car to 120 MPH down the straight, and I laughed out loud at crazy cars and insane driving. I had a complete blast. The only incident that marred my track time it was having to pit for gas. I was out, and making progress when I finally glanced at the gas gauge while flying down the long straight at ludicrous speed (I recall Mike Hawthorn describing the 170 MPH Mulsanne Straight as the moment when he could actually relax and think. It is true, everywhere else you’re too busy to look at gauges!) and realized I was almost empty. As I was working through the Esses I thought about pitting, and as I gunned it to pass a car in the short straight before Sunset Corner the gas light came on and I recalled Capt. Kulka saying “if the light comes on, PIT!” so I exited the track to refill the tank. Hopefully we’ll learn to avoid these issues in future races, as it is in the pits where races are won or lost!

After the tank was filled the remaining 30 minutes of track time went by in a flash. The setting sun made the infamous Bus Stop corner even harder than normal, but I seemed to master it with a quick stab on the brakes and a down-shift into third right BEFORE the corner, and then carry acceleration through it and into Riverside and the long straight. Being on-track for the day’s finish with the salute from the corner workers as the sun set was awesome – a moment I’ll never forget.

As a team we did really well – far better than we had hoped. After Day Two, we finished 27th out of 134 cars – way beyond our hoped-for top-half finish. Each of us stayed very consistent, turning 2:15—2:35 laps, depending upon traffic and yellows. The only real issue we had was a 30 minute penalty on the first shift of Day 2, when one of our guys spun off the track. If we can get out pit stops worked out and stay on-track, we could be quite competitive.

This was my very first time driving a BMW. Despite being old enough to legally drink ethanol, and being stripped bare for racing, I found the 325i a joy to drive. Rear wheel drive, reasonably torquey inline six, and a full complement of three pedals made for a real driver’s car. I may seriously consider a Munich Machine for my next daily driver!

Stay tuned for more as we run our next races.

If you’d like to follow along more closely, see photos and movies, “like” us on Facebook.

SOL Day Five: Fixing Jerry’s Generator & Touring Mesa Verde

One of the fears people have about taking an old car out on an extended trip or tour is “what happens if it breaks?” This subject came up a few times on our little Southwest Oil Leak email list, and the consensus came down to: “We’ll all pitch in and help fix it.” Darrell Grimes driving an XJ, volunteered to be “the sag wagon” and generally stayed at the back of the pack. His trunk was filled with tools and supplies. The tour was filled with people who had lots of experience working on these cars, a few of them professionally. Having performed my share of roadside surgery over the years I know I’m pretty confident that I could get my car running again in just about any scenario short of a con rod exiting the XK horizontally. Ironically, short of the Bedell’s failed voltage regulator at the start of the tour, the cars had run great – until yesterday, when Jerry Mouton’s generator failed. He drove on his battery all day and planned to swap it with one he’d been carrying in his boot for twenty years in the morning.

Looking for breakfast: David Fey, Jerry Mouton, Darrell Grimes, and Paul Wigton.

The hotel restaurant was closed for breakfast so we gave up on food and decided to fix Jerry’s generator. As was prearranged, we had more mechanics that the job really required!

Paul Wigton opens his toolkit. Note the big hammer?

My car is the 715th E-type that was built after the change from a generator to an alternator. My struggles with alternators are well-known, having gone through many Lucas and Hitachi units over the years. Jerry’s car is a year older than mine, and it was interesting to note the differences, especially regarding the placement of the electrical drive component: in the early cars it sits down inside the frame rail, rather than above it like my alternator does.

Paul attempts to bend a nut to his will in order to remove the generator.

This made removing the generator more time-consuming than originally thought by this group of esteemed mechanics. The “twenty minute job” stretched closer to one hundred and twenty minutes when all was said and done.

The belt comes off.

Lloyd Nolan, Paul Wigton, & Jerry Mouton at work. OK, Lloyd is just supervising.

I didn’t participate much, beyond shooting photographs and making jokes. So when things got tough I wandered off and admired other cars…

David Langley fitted a steering wheel from an XK onto his S2 E-type. I think it looks great.

How many moron mechanics does it take to remove a generator from an E-type?

Apparently, three.

The boot of Darrell Grimes' XJ. Filled with tools and vital fluids.

Jerry had more problems than just a generator!

The belt that came off Jerry’s generator seemed to be made of the same low-quality crap that lead me to give up on the double/grooved belt for early E-types and go with a single AC belt for some Ford product. I went through a half-dozen of these bad belts before I switched and have yet to change my single skinny belt.

Jerry & David fit the new generator and belt back into the car.

Once the old generator was out, and the pulley swapped it all went back in a whole lot faster. We walked to the cafeteria near the visitor center and grabbed a meal (it was now “lunch” rather then breakfast time) before we hopped in our cars to tour Mesa Verde.

Passing Tweety on the road in Mesa Verde

Tweety in an area where forest fires had burned the trees about 8 years before.

This was my first visit to Mesa Verde, despite coming close many times over the years. For some reason I thought it was just a single, large cliff-dwelling, but instead it is a rather large, sprawling, complex of them. I’ve visited some of the remote cliff dwellings in the Gila Wilderness, but until now have not seen the many sites at Mesa Verde. It is a truly impressive place, and I highly suggest a visit if you haven’t been there.

Spruce Tree House from across the canyon.

We started with Spruce Tree House, which is a mid-sized cliff dwelling that is a short hike down a canyon.

Inside Spruce Tree House.

It is fascinating to see these dwellings. How well they are constructed, and then realize the relatively short period of time that they served their primary purpose.

The USGS guys chatting with the USNPS gal.

Half of the park was closed, but we drove around and walked to all of the important sites that were accessible. Much to my surprise there were signs of structures not only in the cliffs, but also along the ridge tops. Some were clearly dwellings, but also there are storehouses and reservoirs. There are also some structures that have no clear purpose.

Cliff Palace from across a canyon. This is the largest and most well-known Anaszi Cliff Dwelling in the US.

One of the ridge top structures.

After a long day of touring these sites and walking through the various museums, we all gathered for a fare-well dinner at the restaurant located at The Far View Lodge. The sun was setting and an evening rain shower approached the mesa, providing a suitably dramatic backdrop for our evening.


We had to wait a bit to be seated, and ended up at three separate tables, but a grand time was had by all, and we ended up closing the place. It was a great end to a fantastic week on the road with these amazing cars.

Waiting for our table(s)

Finally, here is the full week of time-lapse footage shot from that bizarre camera rig attached to my car: