goolsbee.org, serving useless content from an undisclosed location since 1997
Something about this photo is out of place. Can you spot it?
This was shot at a rest stop of a competitive rally I participated in some time ago. It was a scheduled tour of a noted car collection. As you can see there are some impressive machines here… but something is odd. Out of place. Can you identify it properly?
Challenge #2 is to name all the vehicles.
I found this old photo and it gave me a chuckle. IIRC it was shot in 2002 in NYC while I was there to speak at a technical conference.
Saw this on I-5 near Boeing Field on the way home last week, had to share. Sort of like the last WTF, in fact it looks like the same exact wing. Odd to see it on an 80’s Vintage 300zx though.
This is a cell-cam shot BTW. Not a bad photo for a cell-cam though. I didn’t have time to grab my digicam, and just used the Blackberry. I rarely use my cell-cam because I thought it takes crappy pics. But they are MUCH better it seems than my old Palm Treo’s shots. Still crappy overall compared to a “real camera” though.
Our house has a 2-car garage built-in, but one parking bay is much larger than the other. The wife laid claim to the larger of the two long ago, which doesn’t bother me as my car(s) are small. Unfortunately the opener on the larger side has always been a source of problems. The one that came with our house never had a remote and it died about a year after we bought the house. So we resorted to manually opening it all the time. Sue chose to move her car to the short side and I have been the one to manually deal with my own door rain or shine, night or day for the past several years. Sue frequently expressed her desire to swap spaces again, so I replaced the opener with one I found free on craigslist in the spring… but it was always flakey. The remote would fire once, and then never work again for a while. I replaced and programed another remote, but it did the same thing. Even when it did work, you had to be practically right under the unit for the remote to function. I guess I now know why this one was “free” on craigslist.
I parked the E-type in the garage for the winter as our damn lazy worthless cats (anybody need three pets?) have utterly FAILED at keeping the barn mouse-free and last winter I found evidence of them making cozy rodent condos inside the Jaguar… whose wire harness apparently is a rare delicacy to small members of the clan rodentia. The wife drew the line on this. If the Jaguar was coming into the garage then it had to go on the short side, and the long side had to have a working opener.
I thought about swapping them, but given the different sizes I figured the hassle wasn’t worth it. The one on the short side was an early 80’s vintage Sears model and will likely work until the next millennia, but the track mechanism and whatnot did not appear to be interchangeable with the unit on the long side of the garage.
I scoured froogle (Google’s price comparison site, very handy!) for the best deal on an opener. Ironically it was Sears, who offer one at $129. It looks like a slightly updated version of the one that has always worked. I order it and it arrived earlier this week. Upon examination the drive mechanism appears to be interchangeable with the chain and track from the old one, so I plan on just swapping the unit itself. I spend yesterday standing on a ladder struggling with getting the unit swapped out. I get everything sorted (I think) and it works… right up to the point where it doesn’t. The first time I open the garage it works fine, but subsequent operations all fail. Time to RTFM.
This unit is THE CHEAPEST one you can buy. It has ZERO ‘bells & whistles” … no programmable multi-button remote, no code-key outside opener, no biometric scanner, no voice command, nothing fancy. Even the wall-mounted button is so basic that it looks like a doorbell. This thing is El Cheapo.
But what does it have that that MUST be installed in order for it to work?
Believe it or not, sensors that cover the doorway. Should some toddler or drunken uncle (I have neither by the way) wander under it while in operation they won’t be not crushed by the lightweight and well-sprung door which likely would not kill a slug were it sliming along under it when closing.
I tried wiring up a loop to fool the opener into thinking the sensors were in place. That didn’t work. I got so pissed off that I left the garage for the night. The last thing I want to have to futz with is some tort lawyer’s wet dream. A bottle of nice Chilean Carmenere with dinner calmed me down, and I steeled myself for the battle coming on Sunday.
It went better than I thought today. I considered bolting the sensors to the ceiling of the garage a foot away from each other just out of spite. Then I figured that it might come back to haunt me some day in the distant future when I’ve sold the house and some idiot sues me. I went ahead and mounted them up properly. The damn thing now works, which I’m sure will make my wife very happy and lead to months (or at least a few minutes) of domestic bliss. But it chaps my hide to HAVE to install some goofy gadget strictly in the name of “safety” just because some idiot killed his cat and sued the living daylights out of some company. This “feature” added a day of labor, some extra dollars at purchase time, and a heaping helping of frustration to my life – all because some attorney retired on a fat contingency check. A garage door opener is a LUXURY, not some sort of necessity for living. The fact that safety features are regulated onto them, either by the courts or the government is absurd. I have no problem with them being available on higher-priced models, along with all those other features. I’ve survived for 45 years without killing myself with a garage door thankyouverymuch. If somebody does manage to kill themselves with a garage door then that is THEIR problem. Don’t inflict your stupidity on the rest of us by lowering the common denominator so far that we’re all strangled by this crap.
grrr.. damn lawyers.
Since the guessers are casting themselves upon rocks on Friday’s CPotD guessing game I figured it’s time for some more hints. Here is a side view of the same car, no need to photoshop away identification.
Here is a shot which shows the 1-cyl engine:
One last hint. The Marque is the founder’s last name, though it is synonymous with a common household object. The Model carries the name of the horse-drawn carriage it is patterned after, at least in terms of use.
If these hints help, go ahead and jump back to Friday and post your guess.
I have another hint coming soon if these don’t get you there. An amazing close-up shot of the low-tech drivetrain!
While the name-that-car crowd collectively puzzle over yesterday’s CPotD, here is a shot over the bow of the 65E as we went through Yellowstone during the 2006 GTTSR. These two Bison held us up for a while as they moseyed down the road in the Madison Valley. In the Park the animals have the right of way, as it should be.