Burger King Bunch

67 vette

Here in the sleepy town of Arlington, WA, the dairies and sawmills may be quiet, but the parking lot of the local Burger King out on Highway 9 rumbles to the roar of old cars every Saturday evening. They call themselves “The Burger King Bunch” and are the closest thing we have here to a car club.

I spent the day pressure washing our back deck, which was filthy with debris and dirt from our very stormy winter. We ate an early dinner and Nick & I took off afterwards in the Jaguar to head to BK to see what was on display this week. The 65E is fresh from the paint shop, looking REAL good again. My self-inflicted clear-coat divot has been fixed, and I even came away with a nice tub of color-matched touch-up paint to take care of the many little chips and dings elsewhere on the car, now and in the future. I am very happy with Steve Velez and his staff at Accurate Lines Collision down in Marysville for the excellent job they did on the repair. Unlike the last paint repair I had done to the Jaguar, everything promised was delivered this time… ON TIME, on budget, and looking great. They even took the time to hit just about every ding and bit of road-rash on the passenger side of the car. If you are anywhere in western Washington and looking for a good body & paint shop I highly recommend them.

Anyway, Nick took a pile of coins off into the Burger King to get a shake, while I wandered off to photograph cars. The turnout was pretty light, as some dark clouds had just blown through (we almost didn’t go, but my weather widgets in my MacOS dashboard told me no rain was aimed at us in the next few hours). There were two cars that really turned my crank though. One was that liquid black, with red highlights ’67 Corvette 427. I own a black car and know how hard they are to keep looking good, and this one looked great.

The other treat was a ’51(?) Nash Statesman. You can’t find a more emblematic “Yank Tank” than this! Big, bulbous and green… just like a Sherman Tank.

Yank Tank

You can find all the photos I shot tonight here.

Published!

my photo

A photo of mine has been chosen as the cover shot for the 300 Star Letter, the magazine of the Gull Wing Group. The Gull Wing Group is a US-based club of 300sl owners… something I don’t qualify for, so I’m not a member. My parents are members though, and I got that photograph while co-driving their ’57 300sl roadster in the 2004 Colorado Grand. My father called me yesterday when his arrived. He saw the shot and at first thought: wow, that is JUST LIKE a classic “Chuck” photograph! Then he recognized the #47 from their car and knew it was an ACTUAL “Chuck” shot, and called me.

Funny thing is, I don’t recall granting permission for the photograph to be used in such a manner. Mind you I may have forgotten. I’ll have to dig around in my email to see.

Here is the original, untouched, uncropped image:

nice shot

I love my job.

Kevin Teker gets tanked!

Where else can you mix the ultimate in high- & low-tech?

Have a look at my latest post on our support blog. This blog is mostly used to communicate scheduled maintenance and server issues to our clients. I started using it to communicate more operational detail when we went through our big facility move in 2005. You can read a sample post here.

Since then I’ve tried to let all our clients peek behind the curtain as it were at least once a month. Big issues, such as when one of the compressors in our HVAC system failed, or when we finished our recent datacenter expansion. Service affecting issues like a snow storm that may have prevented support staff from getting to the office. Our even small issues worth sharing such as this.

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.