Category: Review & Criticism

I’m gonna get you sucka! Review of an engine oil extractor.

I’m not a very good mechanic, but I enjoy working on my cars. Part of it is because I’m cheap, and don’t like spending money on things that can be done myself. The other part of it is that every time I have any interaction with any part of a car dealership, I walk away feeling like a rape victim. Silkwood showers. Haunting regret. The works. Determined to rid myself of that feeling of being used, I made a commitment to gain the skills, and free myself from abuse. There are still a lot of jobs I don’t feel competent to perform on my own, but having the knowledge of how things work prevents me from being at a disadvantage when I buy the services of a professional.

I started by doing oil changes. The procedure itself is so simple that it boggles my mind that anyone pays for the task. Yes, time is money, but a car is a huge portion of the cost of living, and its longevity is abetted by proper maintenance. Knowing that it is done properly adds peace of mind to that longevity. I keep my cars as long as possible and generally wear out their interiors before their drivetrains. Oil changes are the most basic, yet vital maintenance step you can take to keep your car running a long time. Mechanically the process boils down to removing old oil, and pouring in new oil. If you can cook yourself dinner you can change your own oil. The most difficult part of the operation is getting underneath the car to drain the old oil. Now that is no longer an issue!

I first heard about removing the oil out of an engine via the dipstick hole on a mailing list about Diesel Mercedes-Benz cars that I read. Mercedes-Benz dealers only do through-the-dispstick-hole oil changes. I always thought it seemed silly, but now I’m a convert. I recently bought a Mityvac 7201 Fluid Evacuator Plus from Amazon. The event that lead up to my purchase was an accidental over-tightening of the drain bolt in my wife’s Jeep Liberty CRD. Last time I changed her oil I wasn’t paying attention and over-did it when putting the bolt back in. I didn’t strip it completely, but I felt that little “give” that told me I’d be doing a heli-coil job on her pan at some point in my future. (Remember I said at the beginning that I wasn’t a very good mechanic!) I did the bodger’s trick of sealing the bolt in silicone to hold it over until I can fix it properly. Meanwhile I’m still going to have to change the oil. Hence the The Mityvac 7201 Fluid Evacuator Plus.

The Mityvac 7201 Fluid Evacuator Plus arrives at my office

The unit arrived with a damaged box, which is never a good start to a relationship. Thankfully no parts were missing and nothing was damaged. Included in the box was the unit itself, two different diameter extraction tubes, a main tube, and an instruction manual. I’m one of those guys who reads the manual of every thing I buy, so I sat down to read the skimpy pamphlet that serves as the unit’s instruction manual. It took all of about 32 seconds to complete. I can paraphrase it for you right here:

  • Warm up, then shut down your engine. (Warm is good, HOT not so much.)
  • Remove your engine’s oil cap and dipstick.
  • Insert the main tube into the top of the Mityvac 7201 unit.
  • Select an extraction tube that is just slightly smaller than your dipstick hole, and attach that to the main tube.
  • Insert extraction tube into the dipstick hole until you hit the bottom of the oil pan (your dipstick will serve as a guide as to how far to expect to slide it down.)
  • Make sure the drain plug on the Mityvac 7201 unit is secure.
  • Select “Evacuate” from the “Evacuate/Discharge” button options.
  • Pump the handle about 10 times, like you would a bicycle pump.
  • Stand back and behold the wonder that is the Mityvac 7201 Fluid Evacuator Plus as it sucks the old oil out of your engine!

Here is a photo of it in action this morning on the wife’s CRD:

It sucks! Then again it is SUPPOSED to suck

It takes about two minutes to suck the oil from a 6.7 quart capacity engine like this VM Motori 2.8L CRD. My 4.4 quart TDI took less than that. When it hits bottom and all the oil is out you’ll hear it sucking air. Once finished you pull the extraction tube out and off, insert the main tube into a good portable oil reservoir, flip the switch to “Discharge”, and it’ll blow out the old oil into something handy to carry it in off to the recycling station. Fill your engine with the proper amount of new oil, replace your cap and dipstick, and you are done. You won’t even get your hands dirty! Much faster than draining too.

Unless you have to also change a filter you won’t have to get under the car at all. In the case of my TDI, the filter is on top of the engine, so with that car the entire operation can be done from above. No muss, no fuss. No ramps, no jacks. There are other units besides the Mityvac 7201, but I chose this one for its size and discharge capacity. Some of the cars I care for are vintage machines with 11+ quart oil capacities. (The discharge feature also makes it useful for brake bleeding but I haven’t tested that yet.) The Mityvac 7201 is expensive at around $75, but a budget-minded gearhead could find a usable substitute for as little as $45. If you want powered options (electrical or compressed air) plan on spending a few hundred bucks.

Dick Dale: The Effortlessness of Mastery

Dick Dale

When I was an on-ice official (Referee & Linesman) in hockey, we were always told that you have achieved perfection when you can work a game unnoticed. That is, when your craft and skills meet with experience and confidence, your mastery will make your effort appear effortless. Mastery in art and craft is something that truly requires a lifetime to gain. Old dogs don’t learn new tricks, they just become so good at old ones that they are no longer tricks, they are art.

I consider myself lucky, and privileged when I can experience the mastery of those who have worked that lifetime. I saw and heard Dick Dale tonight at the Triple Door in Seattle. I discovered Dick Dale’s music a long time ago, when I was living overseas and frankly found the music they played on the radio ranged from disappointing to awful. It is an odd experience to be a stranger in a strange land, and you find yourself longing for things from home. In my first months there I was alone and consoled myself on weekends by watching American movies, if only to just relax and not have to listen so hard while parsing dialects and accents. Seeing movies from home was like letting my brain rest. A movie I watched had a Dick Dale tune and it sparked in me the desire to explore uniquely American musical genres. I fell in love with “surf rock” and it became a staple in my personal playlists. Not long after my return to the USA, I flew to Southern California to see and hear the man himself play. It was at the “Route 66 Reunion” in San Bernadino, and he played outdoors amidst a giant car show on a warm autumn evening. His son Jimmy, then a young boy, played with him for a few songs. I chatted with him after the show and he signed the shirt I was wearing for me. The whole trip is a fond memory for me.

Above: Dick & Jimmy Dale play together that night nearly a decade ago.

Since then I’ve tried to see him again, but for one reason or another I was always out of town when he visited Seattle, Bellingham, or Vancouver, BC, the large cities close to my home. I’d check his website for tour dates faithfully and inevitably be in another state when he came through here (which by the way is why I flew to SoCal to see him last time!) When checking his site last year I was taken aback to see that Dick had been stricken with cancer and had stopped touring. Being a tough old guy he beat it, and is (amazingly!) back on tour again. I sprung for some tickets and invited friends to come along and see him.

Dick Dale's performs tonight

I’m so glad I went.

Dick Dale has been performing for longer than I have been alive. He is 72 years old and can rock like few others. Most importantly he has truly mastered his craft. His playing is so effortless that it is a joy to behold. He has no set list, he just plays what he wants, moving from one song to another based on whim. His two band mates literally follow him, their eyes glued to his figure, moving along as Dale drifts off of notes and chords from one song to another. The sounds that come from his guitar are beautiful cascades of, as he so succinctly put it, pain and pleasure – flowing as naturally, and relentlessly, as water down a mountainside, or waves upon a beach.

Riders in the Sky, The Wedge, Esperanza, Ring of Fire, Let’s Go Trippin’, In-liner, Miserlou, and Third Rock from the Sun.

After the show, I chatted briefly with him again, as I had all those years ago. I wore the same shirt, and had him refresh the now faded autograph. I handed him one of my personal cards, with a photo of the 65E on it and he mentioned that he owns one as well: a red ’68.

Small world, and better for having such artists in it.

A review.

I’m in the process of crafting a short “review” of the E-type. While I’m finding it difficult to condense a lot of history, and driving impressions down to ~800 words, it is fun to try and capture this bit of lightning it a bottle.

If you have a few moments have a look and tell me what you think.

I’m happy to scrap the whole thing and start over if need be.

Gearhead Flix: “Truth in 24”

Truth in 24

I just finished watching Truth in 24, and if you are a geadhead I have to say you owe it to yourself to watch. The 24 Hours of Le Mans is for me the only truly compelling event in motorsports. F1 just seems way too technical, delicate, and overdone. NASCAR reminds me of driving down the freeway, only with just left turns and more noise. Indy seems like an anachronism, or open wheel NASCAR. Le Mans however is completely different. It has deep history, combined with all the technicality and strategy you could imagine. They race, balls-out, rain or shine, in daylight and darkness, at speeds that boggle the mind, on a course made partially from public roads. The cars are all radically different, with four completely different classes on course simultaneously. The machines have to have seriously high top-end speed, while still being able to brake and turn at very low speeds. Best of all, the race is not a fixed distance, but merely hours on a clock. Endurance. The car has to be built to last, and the crews have to be able to keep it running, or rebuild it on the fly. Teamwork is vital. Engineering is critical. Driving skill is tested. Survival is as important as speed.

One item on my “bucket list” is to attend the event, by DRIVING there, ideally in the 65E. Meanwhile I have Steve McQueen’s iconic and epic Le Mans, and this wonderful documentary, Truth in 24. While nowhere near as compelling as McQueen’s classic, it has perhaps even better photography, which is saying a lot. It follows the 2008 Le Mans event from the perspective of Audi’s R10 teams. Despite having dominated Le Mans with their R8 and R10 cars over the past decade, Audi was viewed as the underdog last year as Peugeot had their Diesel-powered 908 HDI prototypes. The Peugeots were 3.5 seconds faster per lap around Circuit de la Sarthe. While that may not sound like much, over 24 hours that adds up to a daunting lead. How the Audi team pulls off a win is documented in this film. The difference at the end comes down to one decision, by one very tired engineer, who is being second-guessed by everyone at the moment, but he sticks to his guns. To show how truly grueling this event is, he savors his victory by walking to a quiet place and sitting down to rest, outside the whirlwind of everyone else spraying champagne.

My only complaints about this film is the obvious hand of Audi’s marketing department, and the trademark ‘NFL Films’ style and soundtrack, but if you can do your best to ignore those and soak in the excellent photography and the raw, “unedited for cleanliness” character of the people, the cars, and the emotions you really get a sense of the endurance part of endurance racing. It impossible to watch all of the event, but this film comes very close to doing so, albeit from the perspective of just one team.

One highlight that sticks in my mind, which oddly is not at all visual, but is just a straight sequence where driver Alan McNish takes us on a “guided tour” of the course, while sitting in a chair and watching a video taken from a car on-course. He relates the gear changes, the speeds, the line of the course, which apexes to hit, and which once to miss, where the car will fight you, and where you have to let it go. The video shown is taken at speed and the rate at which the course comes at you is mind-bending. He relates it all in real-time and is breathless by the end. Now imagine doing that for hours on end, through rain, darkness, harsh low-angle sunlight, and traffic.

Amazing.

Another highlight is a passage near the beginning where they briefly talk about the amazingly quiet TDI engine. The Diesel race cars are shockingly quiet. To anyone accustomed to the scream and roar of a typical race car going by the silent “whoosh” of the TDI is startling. More startling as “quiet” is not usually the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Diesel! Ulrich Baretzky, the head of the development of this engine says something very interesting in the film: “Noise is a form of energy, the less you hear the more you use in propulsion.”

This film is being shown on cable TV here in the USA, but best of all you can download it for FREE from Apple’s iTunes Store.

If you want a preview, head on over to the film’s official website: www.truthin24.com.

(Thanks go to reader Wil Langford for pointing me to this!)

Movie Review: Mi Mejor Enemigo (My Best Enemy)

I am a movie junkie and I have a huge NetFlix queue. I love to watch movies as I appreciate them as an art form. I imagine if I had any exposure to a movie camera as a boy I would have pursued a career in film making, likely as a cinematographer. I have no desire to act or direct or anything like that, but I love seeing life, light, and space through a lens. I can watch a movie in any language and appreciate it for what is on the screen. My NetFlix queue started out several years ago as this huge “gotta see everything ever made” pile of eccentricities and is now down to “only” a few hundred films.

When Christopher was in Chile (two years ago now… amazing how time flies) I threw some examples of Chilean cinema into the queue. Machuca is one I actually watched while Chris was in Chile, and I found it a wonderful view of astounding historical events from a perspective that provides a unique vision: that of a child. I highly recommend seeing it. I did not know of Mi Mejor Enemigo until I saw it mentioned in Wayne Bernhardson’s blog in a post last month. I tossed into my queue and set it to a place that would coincide with Christopher’s Spring Break home from College. I watched it the other night and found it to be a very nice movie. VERY well photographed, and a good story. I had to resort to subtitles, as my Spanish stops at “Dos grandes cerveças por favor.” The tragicomic story takes place in the midst of the Beagle Conflict which occurred at the end of 1978, where Argentina was preparing to invade Chile over a border dispute concerning 3 islands at the southern tip of the continent. Rather than focus on the broader conflict, this movie revolves around 12 men, two squads of 6, from either nation, essentially lost in the featureless plains of southern Patagonia. Each is lead by a practical Sergeant, and filled with semi-stereotypical soldiers. The shy & sensitive city kid pining for his girl; the hard-core soldier ready to die for his country; the country bumpkin – in this case a more indigenous, less-European looking fisherman from Chiloe. While stereotypical in nature, the characters are not caricatures however and each is very believable and sympathetic. Through accident, and the sheer expansive and featureless space they occupy the Chilean squad has no real idea of their location, but somehow find themselves in a trench opposite a squad of Argentines. A unique aspect here is that unlike many international conflicts the soldiers share a common language, and are able to relate to each other. First they trade tea for cigarettes, using a sheep dog to run between their trenches. They then come together to assist an injured soldier. Food is shared, along with water, though the dog is lost in the process (I won’t share how though.) This escalates into football matches, and settles into an easy truce after they establish, through mutual agreement a “border” between them. (Something the two countries themselves did with the mediation of the Pope at the same time.) While neither is the “main character” the two Sergeants, wonderfully played by Erto Pantoja (Chile) and Miguel Dedovich (Argentina) are really what hold this movie together. They represent the practical and reasonable while the emotional and unreasonable soldiers they lead, and countries they represent ride a seesaw. There is all sorts of subtle humor here, as well as pathos. I imagine for those who fully understand the language and cultures involved there is even more.

I haven’t had a chance to confer with Christopher about the movie yet (he’s spent the majority of his Spring Break borrowing my car and visiting friends he has not seen since summer!) to see how well it dovetails with his experiences with Chileans. I did note a character referring to all of the Chileans as “northerners” despite every one of them being from places in what I would consider southern or central Chile. Christopher’s time in Chile was indeed spent in northern Chile, a place the Chilean’s call “the little North” as it is situated in the southern half of the Atacama desert, specifically the town of Copiapo. Of course given Chile’s unique geography and extreme length the characters may have been using the term “northern” in a relativistic way, since they were so far from anything really feeling like home. An analogy for an American would be one of our soldiers standing on Adak calling somebody from Idaho as being “from the south”, since in that context they’d be right.

Here is the movie’s trailer (sans subtites) from YouTube. If your Spanish is up to snuff you can watch the entire movie (in 11 parts) on YouTube. If you are like me and can’t comprende Español, or prefer to watch the excellent cinematography in high quality, then grab the DVD from your local video store or NetFlix. It is a great film from a source rarely recognized in this hemisphere. The tale has universal truths about human nature. You’ll love it.

GyazMail update.

GyazMail on my MacBook Pro

It has been several months, and to be honest… I’m very happy. So happy I stopped noticing the fact that I was “in transition” away from Eudora, and just got settled into using GyazMail. I still fire up Eudora about once every two weeks, usually to search for some obscure older bit of correspondence. I’ve moved most of my relevant mail archives directly into GyazMail anyway, so this need is really only for the truly obscure stuff. If you recall, I wanted to leave Eudora behind as it was becoming orphanware, and started showing some odd behaviors under 10.5. I know, somebody will chime in and say it is working just fine for them… but it was getting unstable in my case. I tried using Apple’s Mail.app. It reminded me of all the things I hated about NeXTMail, it’s predecessor under NeXTStep (which was really MacOS X Version Minus One… or perhaps MacOS X is really NeXTStep 5.5? …but I digress.) Mail.app is loaded with annoyances for me. So much so that I would rather continue using Eudora. Entourage is another one I looked at and dismissed quickly as it reminds me too much of everything else in Microsoft Office: overly mouse driven with buttons galore, screen real estate taken up by unused elements, and an odd focus on integration with other Microsoft products, rather than integrating with ME. When I found GyazMail I was intrigued, as it appeared to do 95% of the things I wanted it to do right out of the gate. Looking further I could bend about 3% of the rest of it to my will, leaving a small percentage (do the math, there will be a quiz later!) remaining for the developer to fix, should I choose to bug him with requests. To date I have made no contact with Goichi Hirakawa, GyazMail’s developer beyond sending him some money via my friend Kee Nethery‘s Kagi for his work.

Here’s a short list of the highlights and lowpoints, with full exploration to follow:

Why I left Eudora behind:

  • Lack of stability and compatibility with MacOS X 10.5 and beyond.
  • Lack of support for OS X technologies, notably integration with AddressBook and iCal. These were key to successful syncing with my smartphone, be it my old Treo, my current Blackberry, or whatever I use in the future.
  • “It’s dead Jim.”

What I miss about Eudora:

  • The ability to search across multiple mailboxes and accounts, based on easy search terms.
  • Stationery: The ability to have pre-built mail content, complete with headers, available from the message menu. This is very handy for those of us who administer mailing lists. I had a bunch of mail templates I used for interaction with the list server, as well as canned replies for frequently asked questions from or situations with the list subscribers.
  • The “read through everything with the spacebar” nature of the inbox.

What I love, so far, about GyazMail:

  • Fast, lightweight, stable.
  • EXCELLENT integration with Apple’s AddressBook.
  • Easy to import old Eudora mailboxes into GyazMail.
  • Growl notifications.
  • Excellent multi-account & multi-server support.
  • Better handling (though still not perfect) of HTML-formatted mail.
  • Excellent preference/filter/rule UI and handling

GyazMail annoyances:

  • Overly “clicky” UI. Especially in multiple accounts, when reading new mail, I find that I spend too much “mouse time” bouncing between the left (accounts/mailboxes) pane and the right (message reading panes) of the main window. Eudora had this wonderful way of just space-barring your way through all unread mail. In GyazMail you have to click TWICE to change the mailbox you are reading. Once to change accounts/mailboxes, then once more into the message reading pane to change the focus of the spacebar’s reading emphasis. If you don’t make that second mouseclick
  • Some HTML rendering bugs.
  • Lack of finer control over HTML behaviors within incoming mail. A sort of “all or nothing” approach.
  • Mailbox-intense left pane can use up a lot of screen real-estate, making navigation a scrolling chore. Eudora’s choice to bury this in a menu was more elegant.

(Note: This post is still a work in progress, check back often)

Continue reading “GyazMail update.”