While I (oddly) have no desire to own an Aston Martin I do really love to look at them. While I can pick nits about many minor deficiencies of this particular photo, the subject matter as a whole redeems it. Enjoy.
Car Photo of the Day: Exhaust
After an exhaustive search through my catalog of car photos I settled upon this contemplative view of an exhaust pipe.
“Exhaust” is one of those odd words when you look at it. It has Latin roots, yet has a Germanic look to it. Perhaps it is just the “haust” part that makes me want to hoist a lager and down a bratwurst. How the explosive release of combustion vapors relates to the draining of physical and mental resources I don’t know. These big pipes never look tired. Sure, cars run out of energy when their tanks run dry, but I rarely equate that with the wonderful noises that often come from exhaust systems. Exhaust notes make their cars seem positively energetic in fact. Only when a car sits idle, with that creaking and popping moans coming from its metal as heat is lost to the air around it does it seem at all “exhausted”. Yet we know that is an illusion. The turn of the starter, is all it will take to spark the machine alert and alive once again. Like the sound of food hitting the dish that brings the sleeping dog to full sprint, the car is never as exhausted as it appears. Until of course, it ceases to function entirely, at which point the exhaust system is just a series of inert metal pipes, rusting at a slightly higher rate than the rusting parts around it. It is then that we can truly say that car is exhausted.
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 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 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.
Goolsbee News: An end in sight?
The “Neverending Goolsbee Deck Rebuild Project” may actually be nearing the end… who would have thought? Certainly not me, the man who gave it the name.
The weather finally turned back to sunny. Chris & I were able to finish up the last of the carpentry and whatnot. We prepped for painting with tape over the areas we want saved from the deck coating. Chris is outside as we speak, laying down what very well could be the final coat of “Deckote” over the entire surface.
Of course we didn’t get here without some mishap! I grabbed a paintbrush and hit the areas around the edges where we’d taped and laid down the Deckote where Chris’ roller can’t go. As I reached the very far end of the deck I felt tiny drops of water hitting me. Huh? There is literally not a cloud in the sky, how could it be raining? I looked up and saw a drip coming from the gutter downspout just beyond the deck. It was dripping water onto the railing which was splashing into droplets and hitting me. That won’t do. The Deckote stuff requires dry conditions for application. I reached up and touched the downspout to check to see where the water was coming from. As I grabbed it near where the drip was (nearer the house) the far end of it where it comes out of the gutter let loose and what followed was a deluge of Niagran proportions. The ENTIRE gutter, which stretches easily 35 feet in a right-angle around the roof’s edge was obviously COMPLETELY full of water from the rains earlier in the week. The downspout was obviously in delicate balance and my touching it dislodged it from that balance and dumped the water, along with the wad of crud (I suspect left over from the re-roof we had done earlier this summer) that held the water back. The gutter of course held plenty of dirt along with the water, a good portion of which was now all over myself, and the deck which I’d just painted the edges of. Sigh. I put the downspout down on the railing, and held my hands in such a way to direct the majority of the water away from the deck. Eventually, after what seemed like five minutes of standing there the deluge drained off to a trickle, and I put the downspout back together again.
I wrung myself out, then swept the deck off. I’ll let the sun do the work of drying it. Chris will roller the coating over and afterwards I’ll fill in the missing bits. Some railing work remains, but that is Chris’ job, and in the grand scheme of things is pretty simple. We could be BBQ’in on it by next weekend… Just in time for Autumn!
A nice Saturday drive…
Not my car by the way… I haven’t managed to get mine to Europe YET.
Great video of an “oldtimer” tour around a road course in Austria. As much fun as it is to see how well this driver handles the E-type, the car spotting of all the OTHER hardware out on the track is a hoot. Can you name all the cars? 🙂
Car Photo of the Day: The Wheel of a Delahaye
I’m a poet, and I know it.
Car Photo of the Day: Let down, or all part of the fun?
In the comments section of the article I just wrote on “The Truth About Cars” I was taken to task by one person who complained that old cars will always “let you down.”
Maybe it is perverse of me to think so, but I actually enjoy the challenge of keeping an old machine running. I feel the acts or maintenance and repair enhance my relationship with the car. Over time I can hear, feel, and occasionally smell things wrong with it, and feel immensely satisfied when I’m able to tend to them, and continue on my way. If your life is nothing but destinations, then by all means stay away from old cars and their needs. You will be let down. But if your life is about journeys, and adventures, then hit the road in that old jalopy!
I answered the commentator with a variation of the above theme and posited that perhaps my next article would be “The Joys Of Being Let Down By Old Cars.” A further comment then suggested that I’m nuts. 😉
Perhaps I am, but I’m going down that road anyway. Who’s coming with me? Push-starting the 65E all the way home from Los Angeles? It is the punch line from our great Father/Son Road Trip of 2009. Having a stranger save our lost-bolt brake bracket calamity in Idaho last summer? The best part of my trip home from the GTTSR!
Got a great story to tell, then share it here and maybe I’ll weave it in.