May have just gave up on the little car.  Working on the brakes today. Pissed me off.

Bonfire may be in its future.

Didn't burn it.  Even tho its a mess and needs a lot of work, i decided id miss it. Its been with me nearly 25 years.  But instead of fighting again, last week i decided to have it taken down to the local shop and have them put the parts back on. Even followed the truck there. Afterward, it sort of feels like a fail.. I never take my cars in, i even rebuild and machine the heads myself.  ( other than a brand new one, due to warranty cancellations if you sneeze on it on your own )

Partial rant too.. 

Man i hate modern cars. It gets cold, battery dips a bit ( -3 the other evening ). Then the computer freaks out and you cant even start the freaking thing until you disconnect it totally for a reset.  And now i have to dig the car out the rest of the way so i can get int the hood and be able to stand there to futz with it.   Good thing we don't use that one often.  

Oh, and did i mention the battery is inside the freaking wheel well? Whomever thought of that should be shot.   Sure, i can unplug it from inside the engine compartment but if you wanted to bring it in for warmth/trickle charge or replace, its a nightmare. 

Almost as bad as when they replaced a 10 dollar fuse box, with a 300 dollar digital control box.. that of course will go out on you and kill the car when you least expect it.  ( first experience of that was with my mother's PT cruiser.. .the 2nd time it died, we sold the car )

Oh and the little car may come home in a week or so.. Seems one of the replacement parts i ordered had the wrong piston ( long story ) and had to order a new caliper for one corner. ETA mid week. Grrr. Good thing i wasn't doing the work this time, its all i need is to have it one more time piss me off when im underneath it.

Nice to have the little car back on the road. 

Still things i want to do to it ( like put the AC back in.. ), and still gotta find a place i can park it for a couple of weeks to do body work/paint so it does not look like trash. But it moves.. 

"darn, that bolt fell out of my hand...  not a big deal i will just.....   great..it never hit the ground" 

I normally can, but when it gets into the darkness ..  its hard. Have to do it by sound.

( in that last case i did find it. It hit the frame and rolled down hill a bit. but still annoying )

Wed Mar 12 2025 20:38:00 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

It takes many years of tinkering with mechanical stuff before you develop the skill of following a dropped part down with your eyes.

Oh, along those lines, back in the early 80s i bought a used car. A 73 2 door Cadillac Calais.  If you are familiar with them they have a HUGE front end .. there is a large open space between the radiator and the front of the grill.

I had to do some work on it a few months later that involved removing the radiator to get into the grill area easier than removing body panels..( tho its been so long i dont even remember why now ) found a ratchet, wrench, screwdriver and some sockets all in there..   previous owner dropped them there is my guess, or a mechanic he took it to at some point.  Being that the 'floor' is plastic, i never really heard them rattling around.

"bonus tools" 

Wed Mar 12 2025 20:38:00 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

It takes many years of tinkering with mechanical stuff before you develop the skill of following a dropped part down with your eyes.

I had a couple of cars..  One required you to remove the alternator to pull one plug. annoying.  The next one i had, according to the factory you had to pull the engine to get to one. Yes, pull the engine.

After i did some eyeballing, i hard turned the wheel, then drilled a 1" hole in the wheel well liner ( was still real steel back then, not plastic ),  instant access.   Idiots.   

Thu Mar 27 2025 13:12:03 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar 

Ah yes, the old rear wheel drive vehicles with gigantic engine compartments that you could practically stand inside while you're working. Sure beats the modern ones where you have to put it on a lift just to change the spark plugs.

As mentioned elsewhere, this summer, going to attempt to rip the EFI out of my little car.    The jeep, i don't think i can do it unless i cast my own intake manifold.  Not impossible, but not trivial either ( due to the shape/location/etc i don't think i can just cut holes and make it work like i can the little car )

Or i guess i could try throttle body injection, wont need a computer for that, just variable pressure to a nozzle there at the intake.. Could even rig it to take propane too..  Mmmmm plan B i guess.

Normally its quite easy to disable that nonsense anyway.

Most cars:

• Open hood.  See if it quits doing it. Normally it does.  A few don't and require proprietary stuff to be fed back into the bus but most will stop.  Hard to do repairs, even oil changes if you cant keep it from stopping.
• If it does stop happening, search around for an extra switch.  ( or cheat and get a book )
• Pull it off, tape it up.  
• Or cut the damned wires.. see if it starts back up. If so, strip, short and tape. 
• Or if its not a flapper or plunger ( i have heard of this one too ) its magnetic.. just grab a fridge magnet and tape it down. 

Finally:  Walk away and flip the car maker the bird.

Perhaps i worded it wrong. But so was i. And a super low tech way to make it stop.

Tue May 20 2025 02:51:34 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar Subject: Re: Get yo ASS outta here

umm ... what?

I'm talking about the thing that shuts off the engine when you stop at a red light, and then quickly (but not quickly enough) restarts it when you let up off the brake to go again.

As far as I know there are no vehicles that just randomly start the engine without being told to. Although that would be fun just to mess with people...

Once again, being lazy ( and really not feeling up to it, not feeling so well and arm is bothering me a lot lately )  took the little car in to have the front calipers and hoses replaced. They were feeling odd and didn't want to go thru another fire like the back.  ( turns out, they were freezing up too..so a matter of time )

But i was on a meeting when they called to say its done.   Google translated 'fiero' to 'funeral'   "hello, this is xx from yyyy to let you know your funeral is done"  

LoL    how fitting.

Finally got off my butt and ordered the stuff to try an experimental AC for the little car.

Old story, i pulled the compressor out when i swapped engines last time. . its heavy, dont want ti back in.  Figured i had 2 options:

1- an electric compressor and mount it up front. Which i did get one, it was cheap. Sitting in the garage due to all the rework i have to do ( the engine is in the middle, behind the seats, so a lot of work to do on the existing lines, as even if were to put it back there, which i dont want to do, id have to extend lines, and other stuff due to moving to R32 from old freon ). Its plan B

2 - Plan A - Peltier thermoelectic cooler. it will work, but will it be enough is the question..  Much less rework, can just cut the lines up front, and reuse the evaporator coil in the dash.  Or could even get fancy, hook it to the heater core and flip the power backwards to produce heat in the winter.  But, since i have the evaporator already, not going that route.  

So i have box of parts:

• 2 radiators, about 8x10. Will shove them up near the car radiator. 
• 4 fans ( or use the AC fan on the condenser.. not decided yet )
• 4 fluid based heat transfer blocks
• Couple of tiny water pumps.
• 8 Peltier devices ( well, actually 10, but the blocks will only hold 8 )
• Assorted hoses ( for testing, hooking it to the AC lines, will take some fancy work )
• a 300 watt AC to 12v adapter, for testing before i start cutting car parts.

Still need to come up with a box ( thinking plastic ammo can ), foam board insulation, and wires that can handle around 300 watts ( will use an old outdoor extension cord i suspect. its weather proof and big enough )... But hey, i'm about 90% of the way there

And speaking of insulation, wtf happened to prices on foam board.... was almost free last time i dealt with that stuff in a house remodel. Now its an arm/leg. 

The other day, traveling down a 2 lane state road, doing 49 in a 50. Off to get some restaurant pizza since it was too hot to cook, and only one place in the area has semi-real pizza.

Idiot millennial flies up behind me, must have been doing 80..  Oncoming traffic, so he starts screaming at me to speed up and move out of the way.  Got so close he was literally under my bumper. ( while i don't have some 5" lift on the jeep, it is a bit higher than your average child's rice-burner ).

So i did the logical thing. Slowed way down to 40 so i could safely get out my phone ( camera ) and my PPE.  Pissed him off even more.  Oncoming traffic died down so i sped back up to the speed limit.  Traffic returned.

Get near a right hand turn lane, he tried to go around me on the right, screaming and yelling and trying to scare me over onto oncoming traffic by jerking his wheel. i don't scare. At all, so waste of his time and pissed him off even more   

He was busy flipping me off, lane about ended, sped up a bit, still under the speed limit however, and ran him into a light pole.  Drove off and left him there to die, hopefully, and got my pizza to take home.

Hes lucky i didn't shoot him since he was intentionally trying to get me killed in an accident and id have that right.  But, then id not get to the restaurant in time and my pizza would be cold.

Really hate idiots.

And ya i did sort of tell this story before, but i fibbed on the outcome so it wasn't quite so violent.  But really, i did nothing illegal as he was the instigator and he fell off the road on his own into the pole from driving incorrectly, so might as well tell the real ending.