Piston (im)Plants

Pistons make cool tiny planters! Details at my GRM staff blog:

http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/staff/AlanCesar/plantroots-motor-crafts/

One step above the bleachers

I picked up a Kirkey Racing aluminum seat with a cover and a neck brace a few weeks ago. This is gonna go on the Team Resignation Escort. I found it on Craigslist. It's a 17-incher, so it's a bit wide for me and all our current drivers. But it was cheap, it was local, and we can always add padding. Besides, we won't have to buy a different seat if a fatter driver joins the team.

a few minor updates

My cheaptastic steering wheel wrap was starting to get pretty nasty, so I reapplied with what I had left of a roll. The old stuff peeled off fine and the new stuff looks much better. I was surprised at how quickly this thing got nasty. The part I took off actually looked worse. It was practically black.

Steering wheel athletic wrap: reapply every 6 months or twenty thousand miles. Darker colors may last longer.

In other news, my PCV valve split in half. The hose basically held the top part in place on top of the other half. Never seen that before. I replaced both hose and valve.

In still other news: you may have noticed a thin red line with a dot at the end appearing on the right side (or bottom, for vertical shots) on some of my photos. That's new; it makes me sad and angry, because I like my camera. It's fairly noticeable on the top photo in this post. Look for a red line running up from the bottom, about a quarter of the way from the right side. This is my camera's fault. I don't know what I should do to fix it, if anything, or just deal with it. I can't justify buying a new camera. It would probably cost nearly as much to fix this one, since I'm not skilled in the ways of digital camera voodoo. This will have to be copacetic. I'll pretend it's my watermark.

Weekend racecar prep Number 1

These are my 10-year-old Caterpillar boots. They've seen a lot of abuse, including a weekend photographing an NIU ROTC trip for the Northern Star (which, since its redesign, is one "Under Construction" GIF away from 1997), among other less taxing camping trips, junkyard treks and work excursions. This pair finally bit the dust on Saturday the 13th, and I promptly replaced them with another pair. Hopefully these will last another 10 years.

The job that did it was swapping suspensions on the new Ford Escort diarrhea bucket of an automobile. That's right, I officially have an unofficial LeMons/ChumpCar racer! It'll be a 2nd-gen Escort LX/3rd gen ZX2 Franken'Scort. (Theme and actual car/team name TBD.)

Eric, my only willing co-conspirator and co-money pit feeder at this time wrote up a good bit of detail on it. It's worth every second of your time to read, because he is a hilarious and insane man. This most recent Saturday, we (almost) completed that job by doing the rear suspension. Details on that are coming, as soon as I get my photos back from my dad's camera.

Leather steering wheels disintegrate

My Miata came with a leather-wrapped steering wheel. Which makes no difference to me, except on warm, humid days. Especially on dewy mornings in the spring, summer, or fall; even worse if I left the top down overnight.

What happened? Well, the leather (I think it's leather, anyway) would get moist and start to come off on my hands. I could merely grab the wheel and gross black shit would stick to my hand. It would look like I had an afternoon under the hood, but without the thrill of actually swearing at every stupid bolt under the hood fixing something. Once dry, everything was fine.

My attempt at a cheap repair involved, easily enough, baseball bat grip tape. This stuff is sold at most sporting goods stores as exactly that, though it also works for sports injuries. They label it "athletic tape," and it comes in a small variety of colors, about $4 a roll. I suggest something bright and garish. Amanda bought me one in orange. One roll is enough.

This stuff is easy to use and looks fairly good when you're done. I suggest getting a full overlap as you wrap it: The black shows through with just one layer.

Since it's also made to attach to body parts, you can remove it later on when you get tired of the color without destroying your steering wheel. It's a good low-buck upgrade, and it'll keep the black shit off your hands.

UPDATE: Looks like it lasts about 20k miles before getting 100% nasty.

Speaking of bikes

Who says you can't carry anything in a Miata?
I strapped the bike to my roll bar with a couple bungee cords, and had Amanda come outside (before she finished drying her hair, even) to look at my handiwork. That's true love.

The magic of Dymo labels

I love Dymo labels. So does Amanda. I've had this toggle switch in my car since I bought it, and it was (gasp!) unmarked!

So, once I remembered that Dymo labels exist, I took it upon myself to mark the switch. What does it do? See for yourself.

Introducing

I've created this blog to keep track of my various car-scapades, inspired by my recent purchase of a 1991 Mazda Miata. As a still-owner of a vegetable oil-powered 1980 Mercedes-Benz 240D, I've run into so many bizarre problems and eccentricities with that car that I've thought many times about putting them to (digital) paper. 

I never quite got around to it, partly because the amount of time I dedicated to the Benz limited how much I could spend writing about it. But a recent column on the Pansy Patrol, a car enthusiast blog I read regularly, pushed me over the edge into autoblogland. See the link in the Shared Items on the right. It's where I got the name for this blog.

The things Clint talks about in that column mimic the fight I've been having in my own head about selling the Mercedes. I love it, I hate it, I love it again, I hate it some more. I strive to be rational about the decisions I make involving my cars, but in the end, it's not about what makes the most sense. It's about my love for the car.

I work with a guy, Jim, who buys cars for less than $1000.  Jim fixes what needs attention to make them road-worthy, but that's it. Comfort, amenities, driving pleasure, status, track prowess, power, safety, style -- none of these are things he considers when buying a car. 

Jim is as logical as they get. He doesn't pay depreciation. He doesn't pay a premium for comfort, style, or status. He doesn't care what he drives in any way, other than it gets him where he needs to go for the least amount of money. When the car gets too costly to repair, he'll just "throw it out." He doesn't have any passion about cars at all. 

This blog, then, is not about a hard-core utilitarian approach to cars. Nor is it about mindless fawning over poster cars (a la Countach, Veyron) or an endless, hopeless obsession to on-the-deathbed projects. It's about having fun, getting dirty, and feeling good about a job half-assed with duct tape and JB Weld holding up longer than the original failed part.

I will primarily focus on the three cars that I own or care for, sprinkled with commentary on the automotive industry and other cars that I work on. My cars are (in order of age):

1980 Mercedes-Benz 240D/SVO (for sale -- yes, really)

1991 Mazda Miata (commuter/track)

1998 Ford Escort ZX2 (former commuter, now Amanda's)