Category: life

where everything else happens

Update on my Exhaust: Team CJ fumbles another one.

old and new

My new exhaust arrived this week! Above you can see the new parts laid out next to the old parts. I hope to put the new ones on the car later today.

If you recall the exhaust started making nasty noises last year on the GTTSR. We could see a crack on the driver’s side muffler, but the whole horror was revealed when I pulled the entire assembly off the car. This is a stainless steel exhaust system, and as such you would think it would last a lifetime. It was installed by Classic Jaguar 10 years ago. Being an exceedingly persistent guy, I sent an email to Dan Mooney to let him know the mufflers he sold my father had cracked…

Mr. Mooney,

The stainless steel exhaust system installed on my car by Classic Jaguar has failed in a catastrophic fashion. You can view the photos here:

http ://etc.goolsbee.org/jag/Exhaust/

Last time I had an issue (the engine, specifically the cylinder head), you absolved yourself from any warranty as I had brought the car to somebody else first. In this case nobody other than you & I know the condition of the exhaust system – so you’re getting the first pass. As you can see the mufflers are cracked half way through. Their interiors are seriously rusted and have disintegrated… perhaps these were on the car prior to being submerged and were never replaced?

So before I shop for a replacement system I wonder if Team CJ would stand behind their product & installation during restoration. Let me know.

–chuck goolsbee
65ots, 1E10715
arlington, wa, usa

Hey, I figured “what the hell”… I’ll keep offering the guy chances to redeem himself, after all… I’m an exceedingly persistent guy! Here is his reply:

Mr Goolsbee,

As a point of order, you are not now and have never been a customer of Classic Jaguar. To the best of my knowledge, you have never spent a single penny with Classic Jaguar. Furthermore, given your inaccurate, insulting and grossly misleading Internet rants about Classic Jaguar, I hardly feel inclined to assit [sic] you with any problems you may have with your car.

For the record, although I have no doubt you will misrepresent whatever I say on your website, your father only bought one exhaust system from Classic Jaguar and that was in the spring of 1997. It was not replaced when the car was rescued from the Houston flood in 2001. As to why it was not replaced at that time, I suggest you take that up with your father. Speaking of your father, please give him my sincere best regards.

On the positive side of things, at least the failed exhaust muffler will give you the opportunity of removing one more connection to myself or Classic Jaguar from your car – something which I understand is very important to you.

Best Regards,

Dan Mooney – Team CJ
danmooney@classicjaguar.com
www.classicjaguar.com

Really?

okay…. I don’t believe I’ve ever been “inaccurate, insulting and grossly misleading” in any of my statements about Classic Jaguar. If I have Dan, feel free to point them out and I’ll correct them gladly. Anyway, in terms of a vendor standing behind their products, which CJ claims to do, what I say in my little corner of the Internet should have nothing to do with any of this, right? So to try and get this conversation back on target I replied:

Dan,

In our last correspondence you indicated that what prevented you from considering upholding a warranty on your parts and workmanship was the fact that I had brought the car to another shop. Therefore, in this instance I figured I’d offer you first opportunity to stand behind your work and your product.

Let me know if you change your mind, as I’d like to have the car on the road again soon.

–chuck goolsbee
65ots, 1E10715
arlington, wa, usa

This conversation happened over a period of two days in early February. Want to venture a guess what I heard back?

Nada, Nuthin’, Zilch.

So whose statements are “inaccurate, insulting and grossly misleading”??
“Team CJ components are the highest quality, most thoroughly engineered performance upgrades available for your Jaguar. We have invested thousands of hours of research and real world testing to ensure that our components are safe, practical, durable and easy to install. Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. Such is the confidence that we have in our products, many Team CJ components are guaranteed for life!” “Team CJ header systems are beautifully made, superbly engineered components that will enhance both performance and the appearance of any Jaguar engine bay. Constructed of the finest quality 304 stainless steel, mandrel bent and hand finished for perfect fit, our header systems will last the lifetime of your car.” “These superb quality tuned headers have been developed entirely by Classic Jaguar. Any other stainless steel header system currently on the market is nothing more than expensive window dressing for your engine bay.” “Please do not confuse our exclusive Team CJ header system with some of the inferior products currently being peddled around the US market. By now you know our credentials – at Classic Jaguar we are building some of the finest E Types in the world and we install the parts we sell on a daily basis. The Team CJ header system is the best E Type header system on the market – otherwise we wouldn’t offer it.“

Let’s take a close look at what Classic Jaguar defines as the highest quality, most thoroughly engineered, durable, 100% satisfaction guaranteed, beautifully made, superbly engineered components that will last the lifetime of your car shall we…

no flex joint

Above is the old “Team CJ” exhaust section between the headers and mufflers. Note the big sloppy weld. This was exactly how it was installed by Dan Mooney’s team. Not just purchased from them mind you… purchased and installed by crack Team CJ technicians. This is what that section is SUPPOSED to look like:

flex joint

There should be a flexible section between the headers and the mufflers. This allows the engine’s natural vibration to be absorbed without putting undue stress on the rest of the exhaust. I strongly believe that this ham-handed weld is what lead my “superbly engineered” Team CJ mufflers to crack in half.

Really?

Down at the other end of the system, between the mufflers and the pipes that go under the rear suspension we find…

welded joint

… ANOTHER ham-handed big fugly TeamCJ botched welding job.

This is what it is supposed to look like:

slip joint

Oh well. It is obvious that this system was doomed to fail due to the way it was installed by the inept Team CJ Ninjas of Classic Jaguar in Austin, Texas.

I bought some extra clamps to deal with the places where the old exhaust was welded. The old dirty clamps are currently soaking in some BioDiesel to clean them up. Unfortunately at the moment it is snowing(!) so even if I get the exhaust on I doubt I’ll be able to get much of a test drive.

I’ll update you all on how the installation goes soon, and tell my tale of dealing with a reputable, reasonable vendor with regards to my new exhaust as well.

Of the people, by the people, for the people.

Great words, written and spoken by a great man, who happened also to be a Republican.

It seems that our current Vice President, also a Republican, has forgotten those words, and their meaning. This stupid, endless war is destroying our economy. Most of the people were against it from the start (myself included), and history has shown that the reasons and justifications for entering it were lies and falsehoods… or if you want to be generous and forgiving, incorrect assumptions and wishful thinking.

“We will be greeted as liberators”

“There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction.”

“The war will finance itself through the sale of oil.”

Of course this is also the man who after having been voted in on the promise of “bringing dignity back to the executive branch” told a colleague on the Senate floor to “Go fuck yourself.”

Odd couple of days…

Super Bee?? WTF??

On my way home Friday I saw the car above on the I-5 Express lanes. It had “Super Bee” graphics on the sides. What is wrong with this picture?

Then later on, in the midst of the never-ending I-5 construction in Everett, my car stalled and would not restart. Thankfully I was in the right lane and pointed downhill. I was able to coast over to the side and onto a wide section of median just north of the “Boeing Freeway” on-ramp onto I-5 as you head down the hill past Everett Mall. I immediately knew the cause, or at least had a strong suspicion – my fuel filter.

The car had stalled the night before while ascending a VERY steep hill near my office, so I figured it was clogging again. I was able to restart it the night before. I figured I’d change the filter once I got home… but of course it conked out about 25 miles from my tools. Ironically I had a spare filter in the trunk, just no tools. I called home and described the tools that I needed (a brake bleeder and either a pair of vise grips or pliers) and told them to come rescue me. Traffic was its usual Friday night disaster. I was visited by no fewer than two State Troopers and one DOT truck while I waited. I told them what was going on and that help was on the way. My family arrived about 40 minutes after I called them, with my brake bleeder…. and a Crescent Wrench!

Sigh.

Undaunted I had the filter swapped in about 20 minutes (would have been 5 if I had a pair of pliers!) The car roared back to life and I was able to make it home without further incident.

I’ve figured out what was causing my fuel problems. The bottom barrel in my final filtering setup has contaminated the fuel. So instead of being the final resting place of my home brew fuel at its cleanest… it was getting clean right up to that step where it would get dirty again. I’m fixing that as we speak… more details later.

Hi-Q

Today we went to Everett Mall to watch Chris participate in the semi-finals of Hi-Q. Hi-Q is the geek equivalent of sports. It is a team event with a range of difficult questions in several subjects presented in a quiz show format. He’s been competing all year and has done very well with his team from Arlington High School.

Today was the first time I was able to attend a contest. Arlington dominated the competition. Here’s the final score:

Hi-Q Final Score

The Finals will be this coming Tuesday.

Sorry for the crappy cell-cam shots. My real digicam was out of reach both in the car and at the mall.

Are there foxes native to the Pacific Northwest?

I ask because I’m pretty sure what I saw this morning was a fox.

Our family dog, a Welsh Corgi named “Major” was behaving a tad odd this morning when I went out to the barn. He usually greets me at the fence and after a bit of petting wanders back to his usual spot under the deck. Instead he followed me around, looking nervous. I didn’t think much of it. I did some normal weekend chores out there and occasionally heard him barking, which is also unusual as he’s a pretty quiet dog. I pulled the pickup truck out of the barn and brought it around to the back of the house for some other weekend chores and I saw what I thought was Major at the back corner of our property. There are some horses that live in the pasture back there and occasionally he makes some odd Corgi attempt at herding them despite the fence in the way. But this animal was obviously not Major on second glance. First of all it had a big bushy tail, something our Corgi lacks! Its nose was very pointy as well. It looked back at me as I got out of the pickup, easily 60 yards away and went into a panic. Major was standing near the house and barking at the animal. It raced back and forth along the fence, like … well a trapped animal. As I looked at it my mind tried to comprehend it. Too short and with a far too bushy coat to be a Coyote. I see and hear plenty of Coyotes around here and this was certainly not one of those, unless perhaps it was a pup? Its coat was a dark, dusky grey, not the dirty blonde/mixed grey/brown you usually associate with Coyotes. It glanced back at me a couple of times and the nose and ears had a distinct Fox look. It was much larger than the red-colored Foxes I’ve seen in the UK, or in the North Woods of the Midwest.

I gathered up the dog and got him out of the backyard. The animal, whatever it is, vanished into our pastures on the east side of the property.

I went inside, grabbed my camera, and let Sue know what was going on. I opened the gate on the west side of our property along the wooded side of the driveway. I then looped around the house to the north and east and entered the fenced area around the barn. I planned to flush it out of the pastures and towards the gate so it could be free of the fenced part and into the woods. I never did see it again, but found a place where it dug its way under the fence along the southwest fence line.

Any Naturalists or Zoologists out there care to inform me as to what species of animal I saw?

Great Timelapse: Seattle circa 1988


Olympia to Seattle in 2 Minutes from finkbuilt on Vimeo.

You can read detail about this timelaspe from the source blog here.

Very nostalgic, as it captures the pre-boom Seattle that I miss so much. HOV lanes? Nah. The Rainier Brewery. The Kingdome(!) Makes me want to watch Almost Live reruns.

In 1988 I was living in Ballard and working in Bellevue. Sue & I were married that summer. Note the shocking lack of traffic. Other than the perpetually under-construction I-90 project over Mercer Island I don’t remember traffic being an issue anywhere around town back then. How times have changed.

This also feeds my well-known lust for driving timelapses. 🙂

Thanks to Roger for the hint on the link. The blog itself has some good stuff in it too – obviously a kindred spirit.

Published, again.

I wrote a lengthy bit about communications as a key to surviving an IT disaster, which in many ways was a written version of the session I delivered at the MacIT conference at Macworld Expo last month. I tackle the stereotype of geeks as poor communicators, and lay out a strategy for getting IT departments into the communication habit. The stunning revelation that lead me down this road is a conclusion I came to when discussing an outage with a “layperson”… that is a user of technology rather than a maintainer of it. To him awareness was more important than downtime. Downtime didn’t bother him so much, so long as he was kept informed of what was going on, why, and when things would be back up. Forewarning would be even better. His downtime came about during a datacenter migration. A light bulb went off over my head, as I had successfully pulled off more than one datacenter migration within the past few years. Did everything go perfectly? Of course not, but the difference was that I put a huge emphasis on communication with our customers way before, before, during, and after the moves. I’m not some IT genius by any stretch of the imagination, and I’m not the first to use this tool effectively. It just seems that most IT professionals forget this critical part of their management strategy.

Anyway, for the terminally curious, the series is linked below. My editor wisely split it into two parts.

Part One

Part Two