Separation Anxiety

sticker shock

I’m suffering from Separation Anxiety this week. The 65E is at a body shop, getting that damage to the bonnet you see above fixed. It happened last autumn, when I removed the Going to the Sun Rally sticker from the car. A fist-sized chunk of clear coat came of with the sticker and I went suicidal for several days.

I’ve gotten over the suicidal tendencies but I do worry whenever the car is at a shop I don’t know well. If you recall I was very disappointed in the last body/paint job I had done to the car. Insurance isn’t involved this time, so maybe it will work out. This shop came highly recommended by several local “car guys” around Arlington. It should be done later this week.

Next up is rebuilding the steering rack, and then the summer rally & slalom season starts!

Levitating Liberty!

levitating Liberty!

I spent my evening today doing the 25,000 mile maintenance on Sue’s Jeep Liberty CRD. Oil & Filter changes, some chassis lube, and a tire rotation. As I have noted before oil changes on this machine are really nice and easy, due to a design engineer’s forethought and courtesy to future owners of his product. Thank you Mr. Italian designer, wherever you are… I owe you a nice Chianti or similar.

Anyway, having the lift out in the barn made the rest of the tasks easy as well. Though the fuel filter/water separator is a pain to get to… however they made up for that with a little hand pump built into the housing for priming. Very Nice! The last step was the tire rotation. Once I had it completely shoeless I had to go inside and grab my camera to get a shot.

I bought this lift from Harbor Freight, for a bit over $800. It has repaid that over many times. I’ve been working on my own cars since college and have always dreamed of having one. Being under the ’99 Beetle, propped up on ramps and jackstands when we had a *slight* tremor (probably sub 5 on the Richter scale… but trust me, *I* was acutely aware of the fact that the earth was moving!) scared the bejeezus out of me. The idea of a few thousand pounds of car landing on my chest suddenly made spending nearly a thousand dollars seem REALLY inexpensive! I looked at those super-nice 2- & 4-post lifts and they were all well over $2000+. This one covers 80% of what I’d need a lift for (can’t do transmission, clutch, or exhaust work under it) but for oil changes, suspension & brake work, etc. It is wonderful. I even had the Jaguar up on it when we had a 5+ tremor, with no issues. I was 62 miles away at the time, but still. Safe and sound, both me & the car.

Back to the Liberty: I also poured 5 gallons of Diesel fuel I had in a can into it… and noted that the new ULSD fuel is BRIGHT green. Like “glowing nuke green”… Quite bizarre. I wonder if it is dyed? …much like the non-road taxed Diesel is bright red. Who knows?

I am not a big fan of DRIVING the Liberty. It seems to be designed for short people as I can not fit through the door without craning my neck over to clear the top of the door opening. I have a sort of long-torso for somebody my height, and the seats in the Liberty are very high. They don’t adjust up & down. If Sue has been driving it I can’t get in at all! I have to stick my upper body in, move the seat back, and then climb in. If I try to get in with the seat in “her” position, I get wedged into the door frame. Ouch. It is also and automatic transmission, which I loathe. I can understand why she wants one, and why people prefer them, but I really am a “stick guy” through and through. The CRD does get a very consistent 27 to 30 MPG. I wonder if it would always crack 30+ if it had a manual?

My other beef with the Liberty are the brakes. They seem weak, especially stopping the car on downhill grades, a common thing around these parts. Of course, I am also used to driving vehicles that are less than half the weight of this thing! Maybe that is the issue?

I noted the discs seemed fairly puny when I pulled all the wheels off:

little Liberty brakes

Peugeot 908 HDi dominates at Valencia, Audi R10 on notice – Autoblog

French Fries!

Autoblog: Peugot 908 Hdi

So the titanic battle of the Diesel powered sports prototypes at the 2007 Le Mans 24 hour race is shaping up. The home team is prepping their entry to take on the dominators from Ingolstadt. I can’t wait for June!

Should be a memorable Le Mans.

Car Photo Of The Day.

at least it isn't rossa corsa

I’ve often said I’m not really a “Ferrari guy” but that’s not to say that I don’t appreciate them. I just couldn’t see myself enduring the pain of actually owning one. Not that I have to worry about that though, as the IRS will confirm, I don’t have that sort of income. Or anything remotely close to that sort of income.

The thing about Ferrari’s is that Enzo Ferrari, the company founder and its heart and soul, never saw himself as an automobile manufacturer. Enzo saw himself as a race team manager. He built cars to win races, and sold cars to finance the racing program. His cars therefore are like race cars. They are designed to run like stink for X hours and then be completely torn down and rebuilt.

They are beautiful. They make wonderful noises that is in reality some of the most pleasing road music ever created. They have more soul than anything built by any other car maker. They are universally admired, lusted after, and worshipped. They are just so damn expensive.

This photograph was taken at the Kirkland Concours in 2004. That was the year that early morning rain set the organizers into a panic and they shuffled the cars off the Carillon Point and into the parking garage for fear of getting them wet. Of course the Northwest weather worked against them and the day turned out to be brilliant. Oh well. The cars were well arranged at least, with themes and in some cases approachable and informative owners there to talk to. Except of course the Ferraris… at least while I was looking. The most fun guys to talk to that year were the “Classics” folks. Those pre-war palaces of chrome and straight-eights. Great guys. They also were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Mercedes-Benz 300sl (aka “Gullwing”) so there was probably the largest presentation of 300sl cars that I have ever seen in one spot.

If you are in the Pacific Northwest at the end of the summer, I highly recommend a visit to the Kirkland Concours. (You will note they host their website with my employer, but that is a coincidence that I have nothing to do with! Really.) They really pull a great collection of cars, spanning a range of eras and interests. Normally they are presented in a stunning location on the shore of Lake Washington, so don’t let the above photo put you off.

Answers for the previous CPotD post.

WTF?

WTF2?

So that is the answer to the last Car Photo of the Day post. Yeah… I think it is ugly too. 😉

I guess they are famous GM prototypes. All turbine-powered. All painted silver. Each of them ugly as … well they are really ugly. I saw them on the field at the Amelia Island Concours a few years ago.

Here are some photos of the other two:

Thank god some visions of the future never come true.

Track Meet.

Nick on Track

I took the afternoon off work today to travel up to Mount Vernon to watch Nick run at a track meet. He ran the 7th grade boys 1600 meters (roughly equivalent to a mile, about 19 feet short of one in fact). He made a time of just over seven minutes, which beat his last time by forty-eight seconds. He was in a very fast crowd though, and finished fifth. The first place kid literally almost lapped the field… he was VERY fast.

I told Nicholas that all that hair is obviously slowing him down… it is like strapping on a parachute. 😉

Nick also threw the discus, with his best throw just under 50′.

I could walk, ice skate, or ski 1600 meters no problem, but if you pressed me into running it I’d likely fall over dead. I hate running.