Mechanic Decor: Wheels and Tires as End Tables

When I discovered that the wheels and tires on my Mazda Miata were bent (according to the shop, "bent all to hell"), I also happened to have very little furniture. Conveniently enough, the tires on those wheels were also almost completely worn out. There was no value left in a set of bent wheels with worn tires.

So I looked on Craigslist for glass discs to use as a tabletop. I found someone selling them for $5 apiece. I bought two, stacked the tires two high, and made night stands for our bedroom. My fiancee approves.

Not long after, I found one of my racer friends had a lot of tires left over from a team he worked with. He worked as a mechanic for one of the teams running the Grand-Am Continental Tire series. That team ran the Rolex 24 At Daytona race, which necessarily means a lot of worn-out racing slicks. He hooked me up with four of them for free. He had been keeping them in the hopes of selling them as take-offs that could still be used for shorter events by other racers, but had no takers, so the 20-some tires in his possession were just taking up space at his house.

If you put a set of string lights inside the tires, it'll glow from the inside.

The Ford Escort bears lineage to the Mazda GLC

So. I'm at The Mitty today. It's all awesome, I just about had a dayturnal emission when I saw a Ford GT LeMans race car out on the track, blah blah yadda yadda. The Mitty rules. It really does.

And then I saw this little race car. It's a good little race car. A 1983 Mazda GLC, one of about a dozen factory-backed cars from that year, and the last one still in existence. All the engine and transmission components are, of course, unobtainium. But that's not what I'm getting at.

So I'm photographing this car, and the owner obliges to jack the car up for me so I can photograph the suspension, brakes, under-car stuff. I stick my head under the back and I notice a very familiar three-link strut layout. Its setup—hell, the entire rear subframe—looks almost identical to the BG-chassis Escorts I worked on and loved for many years.

In a sense, duh, it's a front-drive Mazda. Of course it bears lineage. But until I saw it, I never thought that my favorite (crappy econobox) car had ancestry. Noticing that detail definitely put a smile on my face. 

My Little White Truck

I've had this little Lego truck for a very, very long time. It has travelled decades and continents, and still bears red dirt from Brazil. I'm sure I added lasers and stuff at some point, but I removed them pretty quickly. Even at a young age, I thought it was perfect as-is. The only modification that remained is the backrest I added for the driver.

That driver is the pilot from an airplane I used to have, but upgraded with a helmet and air tank from one of my later space sets after the pilot hat got lost—probably in a heat vent somewhere.

I keep this guy in my office. It's my favorite thing ever.

Cheap, easy guitar hangers from a hardware store

I didn't want to spend $30 on guitar hangers for my three guitars, so I sought a solution on a recent trip to Lowe's to buy miscellaneous home improvement junk with my fiancee. I figured I'd find something suitable among the bike hooks, and I did. I got these hooks for $10/ pair. I'm sure you could find cheaper ones if you look a bit. They install as easily as a dedicated guitar hook: just two screws and you're done. If you don't like how long these are, you can get ambitious and pull off the rubber sleeve, cut down the arms with a hacksaw to the length you want, bend them into shape with pliers and a vise, and reinstall the sleeves.

I installed these guys with 1-inch drywall screws, which fit correctly into the holes and match the hook's color. For my headless Hohner (essentially a Steinberger with different pickups), I hung the hook lower on the wall. Finding a stud shouldn't really be necessary unless your guitar is exceptionally heavy.

Parts-Bin Aston Martins

Not only is the 1989-2000 Aston Martin Virage an ugly car, but apparently they also stole the steering wheel from my parents' 1992 Ford Aerostar. 

Aston Martin Virage interior

Standard Ford steering wheel from the '90s (Crown Vic pictured)

Notice the placement of the horn buttons, and the Aston logo in the exact location of the Ford logo. The Aston's interior wouldn't be so hideous were it not for that glaring black contrast of a steering wheel and its cheap, plastic turn signal stalk.

The Virage hit the market not long after Ford took a stake in the brand. This was the time when they started picking up premium brands like Land Rover, Volvo, and, as you can see, Aston Martin. I don't know their exact business strategy in doing that, but we can clearly see it involved some parts-bin cost reduction strategies. 

I can understand sharing components that are out of sight like, say, a steering rack, wheel hubs, differentials. But a steering wheel? That so clearly diminishes the driving experience, and its poor quality is apparent the moment the customer plops into the seat. Not what you want when you're considering shelling out 200 grand. Maybe that's why they didn't sell many of these. Hey, that makes them rare and valuable! 

Today, Ford doesn't own as much of the brand, and Virages are worth about $35,000. Which means you can still buy a nicer Ford Fusion—with a better steering wheel—for less money.

Off Topic: Repairing Champion juicers

My fiancee manages a health food store, and they have for a long time been using Champion brand juicers. These things are basically 1/3-horsepower electric motors with a proprietary attachment. Recently the store upgraded to a crazy twin-screw type (it reminds me of a supercharger) because their Champions were having problems. One would hum, but not spin up. The other vibrated like an unbalanced clothes dryer. I suspected that these residential-grade units couldn't stand up to the heavy use of the store's cafe (Champion does sell a commercial-grade model), and that they had worn bearings. So I took them apart in our kitchen. Electric motors are simple.

By removing the four screws on the back cover, the front cover also comes off. The bearings lightly press into the front and rear covers, so removing them means the rotor (the middle part that spins) easily slides out of the stator coils. Once out, I could test the bearings. They wiggled a little when I tested them, so I decided to replace them. Thankfully, bearing part numbers are universal. I punched it into McMaster-Carr. They're less than six bucks apiece. I ordered a handful of these #6203 bearings.

On the model that wouldn't spin up, the bearings were worn enough that the rotor was rubbing against the stator. You can see the contact marks here.

The bearings are pressed to the rotor shaft, though, which meant a trip to the nearby Harbor Freight store for a cheap set of gear pullers.

Once they're off, the new bearings can be hammered into place. The bearings bottom onto a clip on the shaft.

It's easy to reassemble, but you must remember the orientation of the front and rear covers. They're marked on the back side. Putting it all back together meant our kitchen was no longer a horrible disaster. Zoe is very patient with my silly projects, and this one, thankfully, ended with two like-new juicers.

Top Gear: 50 Shades of Green

If you are a real racer you will probably say that British Racing Green (BRG) brings you bad luck. (Because it really does, but that's for another post.) I personally wouldn't mind racing a BRG car even if it meant I would quite probably die a horrible fiery death, but do so while looking simply fa-bu-lous.

When I was a kid my dad gave me a BRG 1:18 McLaren F1 and I LOVED the damn thing. It was so beautiful, such a classy color that caught all the right lines and reflected light on all the right curves. My silly friends that knew nothing about what's good had silver, black, and orange little McLaren F1s, but those cars just didn't look as pretty. It was such a potent shade of green that it made the McLaren F1 into one of my favorite cars of all time. And as a result, BRG remains as my favorite color ever, for anything. Yes, even spoons.

See, if I could paint my house Brunswick Green outside and British Racing Green inside (with some white walls here and there to contrast) I would die a happy man. But very dead, because I am sure my fiancee would chop off my head as an offering to the gods of common sense.