Gnubbs Blog

This weekend I installed a couple new gauges, and a new instrument cluster. These were some upgrades I wasn’t planning on doing anytime soon, but there was a deal I couldn’t pass up.

I removed cheap Oil Pressure and Oil Temp gauges. I no longer needed them because my new instrument cluster displays them. I replaced them with nice Defi D-Gauge A/F and Boost gauges. I removed the stock boost gauge and am going to install a Turbo XS Knocklite in it’s place.

The instrument cluster is awesome. It is a single LCD - sweeps RPM across the top of it, and displays speed below. It is totally configurable and there are roughly a thousand add on components for it. It is way, way nicer than the stock WRX one - honestly, they didn’t put the Tach in the center…

Still have a few follow up things to do to button this up:
1. Install a new rad hose with a temp sensor in it
2. Install a wideband O2 sensor (has to wait until my new exhaust is on)
3. Buy and install my Knocklite

Here are some pics:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gnubbs/sets/72157607293509816/

Yesterday, I officially declared that winter was over.  I got new summer wheels and tires, and yesterday I had the tires mounted and put them on my ride.  Of course, the first thing that happens is that it snowed several inches last night…  I could have waited until June and it still would have snowed as soon as I put on my summer tires.

(It has all melted already, and it is back to sweater weather outside.)

Can’t say how the tires perform yet, but I can say the wheels look nice.  They are Piaa FR-s 17×7 and Kumho Ecsta MX 225/45ZR17.

(This is the new storage system I threw together to store my winter tires.  Can a couple of chains and 2×4s be called a "system"?)

A friend asked me to create a list of companies from which I might realistically purchase a sports car.  Here is my response:

1.  Subaru — Figure I better rank it first considering I have a sporty Subaru already.
2.  GM — Pontiac Solstice is a pretty nice car at a reasonable price.  Plus, I might have to grow a mullet and buy a Corvette one of these days.
3.  Audi — S4.  Nice car, awd, and there are tons of them out here.  Makes used prices reasonable.
4.  Porsche — Caymen S.  This is my next car.  Keep my WRX for winter, and buy one of these once it is a few years old.
5.  Mazda — Between the Miata and Mazdaspeed 3, they have some fairly priced sports/sporty cars.
6.  VW — I have a friend with an R32 and have to say that is a very nice ride.  There are so few of them that they tend to be overpriced though.
7.  Toyota — Is there anyone that doesn’t love the twin turbo Supras from back in the day?
8.  BMW — M3s hold their value pretty well, so getting one used wouldn’t be cheap.  From a performance standpoint though, they are hard to beat.
9.  Lotus — an Elise is only about $50k new.  Can’t afford one today, but that is not an unattainably priced car.

Noticeably missing:
1.  Ferrari — Unless I grow a moustache and buy a 308 GTSi, they are just too expensive to realistically hope to buy.  To this day, a 599 GTB Fiorano is the best looking car I have ever seen in person on the street.
2.  Lamborghini — See above but ignore the Magnum PI comments.
3.  Ford — I have a friend with a couple year old Mustang SVT.  It should be a nice car, but it isn’t.  They are so cheaply made — especially the interiors.
4.  Mitsubishi — You might think that I would be a Lancer Evo fan.  Nope.  I know a couple of people who traded in STIs for them, and within months had traded them back in for STIs again because they are so poorly made.
5.  Nissan — Yeah.  The GTR is true sweetness.  It will be quite a few years before I have the scratch for even a used one.

I am looking out my window at a coworker’s Aston Martin DBS  — I could probably swing one of those…

Today I was trying to figure out what car work I need to do in the near future, and realized electronic copies of my 03 WRX and 04 Jeep Liberty maintenance schedules would be useful.

The WRX one is not exactly what subaru recommends.  There are a number of maintenance tasks I prefer to do more frequently (i.e. changing spark plugs, and transmission fluids). 

WRX Maintenance Schedule (pdf)

Jeep Maintenance Schedule (pdf)

You really shouldn’t use these — you should check the manufacturers website and use the official schedules.  

Notice something missing in this picture?

If you have read this blog much since the beginning, you might remember that I have had some issues with my car and it’s cooling system. Last week my cooling issues went beyond cute and became a full on pain in my ass.

About a week and half ago, I was enjoying a 6:45am drive to work when I realized my car was overheating and spewing steam from under the hood. As I pull over, a quick check of my oil temp gauge tells me that it couldn’t have been overheating for long - it was only at about 210 degrees. That is the hot end of normal oil temps in my car. A couple of hours later, the tow truck driver drops me and my car off in front of my garage.

I immediately get to work pulling my radiator. It is friday, so I need to make sure that I figure out what is wrong and get the parts before the shops close for the weekend.

I can’t see anything wrong with the radiator, but based on the amount of coolant I lost and the fact I can’t see anything else wrong in the engine bay I decide that is what it has to be. Toss it in the wife’s jeep, and I head to a radiator shop. These are strange, strange places. The guy was helpful. Tested my radiator and showed me that it had split where the plastic end tanks are connected to the aluminum core.

I head to work in the wifes car and start calling around to find the replacement parts. Tarmac USA has a stock radiator in stock ($350) or can get me a nice koyo all aluminum one in 4 days ($400). I decide I would rather get rides for a couple of days and use this as a chance to upgrade.

Since I have my cooling system drained and my radiator out, I decide this is also a good time to change thermostats. I order a Crucial Racing Coolsafe 160 degree thermostat to replace the stock 172 degree one. The nice thing about the Coolsafe thermostats is that their normal failure mode is to fail open - unlike a standard thermostat that fails closed. The downside is they are a bit more expensive ($60).

Replacing the thermostat and radiator is pretty straightforward on my car, and went pretty well. The two hitches I ran into were that I forgot to put in the thermostat before the radiator (cost me about an hour to pull it back out) and that I ran out of coolant when filling it. My old cooling system held between 1~2 gallons of coolant. Now it holds between 3~4.

Driving it around this weekend, I have noticed a real drop in oil temps. Before my oil temps would range from about 210 around town to 230 cruising over a pass in the mountains. Now they stay between 195 and 210 no matter how hard I push my car.

The last twist of the knife was that when my car was up on the tow truck I saw the inside shoulders of my front tires. Totally threadbare - I didn’t think they had gotten that bad… So, on top of everything else I had to spring for a new set of winter tires (used Nitto SN-1 with about a month of use for $350) from a fellow Pirate.

Did this all eliminate my slow coolant leak? Only time will tell.

Most of the time when I see that someone put lambo doors on their car, I quietly heckle them. Or loudly heckle them and rev my engine at their civic.

There is an exception. There are cars out there where I think it is awesome. Namely, Lamborghinis. Especially if it is a Countach. I had a poster of a black one on my wall as a kid and it was rad.

Today I went for a cruise in that car. It was as awesome as I had hoped. Chicks dug me just because I was riding in that car. I totally looked like a drug dealer from a 1980’s movie. It was rad. It had a cassette deck in it. Rad!

If you are not an engineer or car guy, that is all that will interest you. Thanks for reading.

As an engineer or car guy, you will appreciate what I am about to share. My friend did not go out and buy himself a Lamborghini. About six years ago he bought a kit that included reproduction body panels of a mid 1980’s Countach. He built the rest (with some authentic Italian parts for good measure).

Chassis? A nice tubular chassis that he fabricated. It uses a small block Chevy V8 and a modern Getreg 5 speed out of a Pontiac. Shifter mechanism? A cable system that he built himself (which shifts nicer than my Subaru…) HVAC System? An original Lambo control in the cabin, interfaced to a control computer and HVAC system he built. Fuel Injection? Again, his own design. Door hinges that you can buy for every make of car in the world these days? Another piece of his craftsmanship. And they work flawlessly. Fit of the doors is excellent, and they have the best positive mechanical feel when the shut.

It is amazing to talk to him about all of the things he did for this car. With the exception of the engine, transmission, and body panels, he fabricated the entire car. It is truly amazing.

Is it as nice as a real Lamborghini? I have no idea, no one has let me play with their original. Would I have guessed that it is home built? Absolutely not. It is incredibly well executed. I always knew that he was good with a wrench, but my respect for him as a mechanic grew immeasurably today.

Impressive.

Sorry that this post lacks pictures, but they wouldn’t be very exciting anyways…

This weekend I had some car work to do. My brakes had been making a quiet grinding sound, and generally feeling kinda sketchy lately. I will definitely take a sluggish car over one that doesn’t feel like stopping any day. So, I jumped to some conclusions. I took a stab that it was probably my front brake pads getting worn beyond belief. Considering how I drive, and the ratio of front/rear stopping power, this seemed resonable.

So, if I am replacing my front brake pads and bleeding my brake lines, I might as well put on stainless steel brake lines while I am at it. If I am already going to have the brake lines off the calipers, hell, I might as well paint those while I am at it. (I am guessing you are starting to see where this is going…)

So, Friday I go to Flatirons Tuning and buy some Hawk HPS front brake pads, Goodridge SS Brake Lines, and ATE Super Blue brake fluid to the tune of about $200. I get up bright and early Saturday, jack up the car and pop off the wheels. I immediately see what the grinding was. My rear rotors are in truely terrible shape. All nasty and corroded. I pull off my rear brakes and check the pad wear — right at service limits. Crap.

I head back to Flatirons and get some Hawk HPS rear brake pads ($70). Next I go to the auto parts store to get my front and rear rotors turned. The rotor guy takes one look at my rear rotors, and says that he can’t turn them. He will have to take off a ton to get through the corrosion, and there is just not enough rotor left for that. Luckily they have replacement rotors in stock so I have him grab me some. Also, after looking over my front rotors, he says they are in great shape and don’t even need to be turned — unwarped, and no grooves. So, I get the rotors and some caliper paint and walk out of there another $100 poorer.

I head home and finish taking apart my brakes. I disconnect the brake lines from the calipers, remove them and their brackets, and head up to the apartment. There I spend way too much time cleaning them, masking off the sections I don’t want to paint, and painting them black. After drying overnight, they look pretty good — or at least better than the standard corroding aluminum that they come in.

Sunday morning, I head back out to the car and JT comes over to give me a hand. Start reinstalling everything, and discover that Flatirons gave me the wrong front pads. Crap. Now this sucks because they are closed on Sundays. We reinstall the old front pads, and the new everything else. Bleed the brakes, take it for a test drive, and all is well.

Monday at lunch, I head back to Flatirons and get the right brake pads. Monday evening, I swap those in and also adjust the parking brakes. Now, all is well. After letting the pads bed in for a couple of days, I will let you know how they work. I will say that the SS lines and fresh fluid makes the brakes feel way, way better. A very hard, easy to modulate peddle. Very nice.

I admit it.  It has had a coolant leak since the day that I bought it.  For the life of me, I just can’t fix it.

I replaced basically all of my coolant lines.  I replaced both radiator hoses.  I have tried both high and low pressure radiator caps.  I got a coolant system pressure tester, pressurized and searched high and low.

I just can’t find it.

I am 99% of the way to taking it into Super Rupair and seeing if they have any more luck.  That is admitting defeat though.  That is stating that I am not a good enough mechanic to fix this problem.  I don’t know if I can do that yet.

Some day, when I park my car after driving it I won’t be greeted by the sickly sweet smell of coolant hitting something hot.  Whether that is because of my work or a professional remains to be seen.

I guess that I have been neglecting my blog a bit lately. Sorry about that. Here is a brief rundown of what has been going on lately, hopefully I can expand on these a bit more soon.

1. AWD sucks if you have to replace a tire

I love my car. I love all wheel drive. Usually. A couple weeks ago, I had a slow leak in one of my wheels and took it in to be fixed. The leak was caused by a screw in the treads, but when the tire came off the car, my mechanic spotted a blister about the size of a baseball on the inside sidewall of my tire.

Part of the beauty of AWD is that if you have to replace one tire, you have to replace all your tires. Has something to do with differing tire heights between the new and worn tires wreaking havoc on the differentials. Much cheaper to replace 3 extra tires, than any one of my 3 diffs.

Luckily I was able to find a smoking deal from a fellow pirate. I got a set of Konig Rated R 17×7 wheels, with pretty new Bridgestone Blizzaks on them for $400. I’ll post pics of the new shoes soon. This got my car back on the road, but now I am in the market for another set of 17’s with summer tires on them.

2. Closures are difficult to teach to C++ programmers

I gave an hour presentation on Ruby to the Software Reading Group here at work this week. They were looking at me like I was suggesting that we overthrow the emperor.

Almost immediately, they wanted to know how typing worked. The idea of a (more or less) untyped language seemed to freak them out a bit. Then I got to blocks and they seemed truely baffled. After a bit of explaining, some of them got it and some of them thought that I was just using some sort of fancy GOTO. I came to the conclusion though that if you don’t get blocks, you will see no value in ruby. The ones that didn’t quite get it, seemed to think that ruby was no more elegent or concise than C++/STL/Boost.
3. I love digital photography

I have been getting my photos from Glacier ready to send out to be printed. I have been using Adobe Ligthroom for photo management, and Photoshop CS for editing. To be honest, on my old G4 800, both of these programs are pretty slow. I really need a macbook for this…

Anyways, I love digital photography. I shot about 320 frames on my trip, and was able to pick out about 60-70 that I liked. I have now spent a couple of days adjusting exposure, editing out some lurkers from otherwise nice landscape photos, adding in some lighting on faces in some frames shot in difficult lighting, and cropping photos.

In my film days this would have meant paying for 9 rolls of film and development. Not a cheap prospect. The end result would have only been as nice as the 60 frames I liked before editing. This digital thing is much cheaper, and provides me with so much more control. On the screen at least, the end result is significantly nicer than my old photography.

That about sums things up. Stephanie and I are going to a nice dinner tonight, so I should have a good weekend. The chef used to be the private chef to the King of Jordan, so I expect that the food will be very good.

Tonight I did some much needed maintenance on my WRX.  The passenger side parking light and fog light were both out.  This resulted in some typical japanese car fun.

To replace the parking lights required removing the grill, two pieces of body trim, and both headlight assemblies.  To be honest, this was very easy and didn’t take much time but it was funny how much had to be removed for such a simple replacement.

The fog lights were much easier.  Three screws and the housing popped out, ready to have the bulbs replaced.  I replaced the stock 55W bulbs with 100W bulbs and they are now much brighter.

That is all for now.  I am starting to prep the car for a 3000 mile roadtrip July 4th week, so there will be plenty to write about in the next couple of weeks.  Stephanie, her brother Mike, and I are driving from Boulder to Glacier Water International Peace Park (on the Montana/Canada border) for a week of camping mucking about in the woods.  The prep work will include switching from my high pressure radiator cap back to stock, switching from my manual boost controller back to stock, replacing head lights and wiper blades, an oil change, and replacing my fuel filter.  Basically finishing off my 30k mile maintenance.