Ready for winter hibernation.

Old Blue, all washed and waxed.  Yup, I’m getting ready for winter.

My Cars

Took my cars out for a photo shoot the other day.  Here’s some of my favorite shots.

Fun filled weekend.

It finally was warm enough to work in the garage, so I decided this was the weekend to get the hardtop hoist set up so I can single-handedly remove and replace the Jeep’s hardtop.

First, I had to get the Fords out of the garage, which turned out to be a major production.  Alphonse, the ‘78 Marquis, no trouble.  I got it out, took it down to the car was to get the winter’s grime off it and parked it out of the way without any problem.  Old Blue, the ‘69 LTD, wasn’t as cooperative.  It got stuck on the ice, which I found out was 5” thick in some spots.

This was Friday afternoon, right about dusk, and as it got darker and colder, and the melted ice started to freeze up again, I had to leave Old Blue sitting across the whole driveway overnight.  Fortunately, I had thought ahead and the Jeep was parked on the street and not blocked in the driveway.

Saturday afternoon, when it got warm again, after a lot of salting, chipping, digging and tire wear, I finally got Old Blue out, to the car wash and in it’s pre-determined spot out of the way.

The the real fun started.  I had to move all the stuff stored at the back of the garage on the north side into the south side.  Believe it or not, all that stuff fit, stacked about 3’ deep, along the back wall of half the garage.

Anyway, after 4 trips to Home Depot and most of the afternoon, I finally have the hoist all hooked up, and a beam in the middle of the garage to help support the weight.

Finis.  And I found some funny stuff while moving the crap from one side of the garage to the other.  Such as this letter from the Salt Lake Bureau of Air Pollution Control which sped up the replacing of the engine in my convertible LTD.  (Click to read)

I’m sure I’ll find a lot more interesting things as I go through everything this summer.

Finally, this optical illusion shirt that a student wore to school on Crazy Pattern Day.

Revived for 2012

The “Obamacon”.  You can make your own here.

Labor Day Fun

I took Old Blue out for his weekly drive and as I was driving through Sugarhouse Park it caught the eye of a kid about 8 or 9 years old.

As I came up next to him, he started running on the grass along the side of the road yelling “I want a car like that, I want a car like that,…”  Since I was in the park I was going pretty slow, he managed to stay up with me for about 6 car lengths.  Yelling all the way.

Before that, I was taking some pictures with the infrared camera, and had to break out the good camera and telephoto lens to get some pictures of this.

Parents, stuffing their kids into big bubble-balls and then pushing them down the hill. 

What is this world coming to, and why didn’t anyone think of this when I was a kid?

Anyone else think that looks a lot like what NASA used when they dropped the first Mars rovers on the planet?

Picture courtesy of NASA

And some say funding for space exploration has no practical applications.

Hangin’ a Super Moon

It was a super moon tonight.  Not just because the skies were clear and you could see it quite well.  It was “super” because it was at it’s closest to the earth it will get this year.

According to NASA, it was 14% bigger and 30% brighter than most full moons of the year, mainly because it will be about 31,000 miles (50,000 km) closer to the earth (at it’s perigee) than when it is at it’s farthest (apogee).

So, of course, I was out in the park at 9:00 PM (MST) taking picture of the event.  And, also of course, you are going to see some of them right here, right now. (Click on any picture to see it larger)

But first; an adorable cat-asleep-in-the-shoe-box shot.  Alan seems to like to find the weirdest places to sleep.  Took this on my way out to shoot the moon.

And a birds-flying-past-the-sunset shot.

I’ll also throw in an Old Blue night shot before heading into the main event. (Yes, I had to find some stuff to shoot while waiting for the moon to peek out from behind the Wasatch Mountains.)

Finally: Just barely poking above the mountain.

And a little bit further.

Close-up.  This is one like the previous picture, just cropped to be closer.

Same as last one, just not cropped.

Just barely “touching” the mountain top.

And there it is, in all it’s glory.

Same shot, just with a much longer shutter speed.

Same shutter speed, just rotated the camera so the moon was out of the shot.

Still with the telephoto lens, just zoomed out and took two identical shots at different shutter speeds.  I super-imposed one over the other so you can see the moon’s detail.

Same, different angle.

Got rid of the telephoto lens, and shot a couple with the regular lens.

Looking through my pictures I noticed a weird difference.  Two pictures, taken within seconds of each other, show the moon a different color.  It’s amazing the difference 1/240^th of a second of light can make.

 

 

 

After-thought: I just couldn’t resist.

LTD phone home.

1 + 1 = Happy

The funny thing about bolts is when the end breaks off, nine times out of ten it stays stuck in whatever you were bolting into.

This is what happened to the alternator bolt on Big Green.  Snapped right off and the end was left inside the engine.  Which makes it really hard to just bolt in another bolt.  You have to get that end out.

For me, it’s been a three week process.  Mr. Gearhead rigged the alternator so that the car could run, but since the bolt wasn’t in the engine, it really wasn’t secure enough for long-term use.

2 Weeks ago I tore into it and attempted to extract the bolt piece.  This entailed removing the alternator, 2 of it’s brackets and the fan and it’s shroud.  Lotta removal for a small piece of bolt.  I used an extraction bit that Mr. Gearhead gave me, and all it did was mess up the end of the bolt.  So, I put it all back together again and let it sit for a while.  I gave up on trying it myself and figured I’d just have to cough up the couple hundred bucks to get someone to do it.

A week ago I brought it down to Midas.  They’ve done some work on my cars for me before, but this time they said they didn’t have the ability to drill out a bolt.  So I took it to Pep Boys who said they should be able to do it.  5 hours later I called them up to see how progress was going and was told they looked at it but couldn’t do anything.  Seems my first attempt was off center and messed it up so they were unable to even try.  They said that I’d probably have to get a new engine head (several hundred bucks) that would replace the part of the engine the bolt was broken in.  Thanks a lot guys.

So my older brother, Pedro, pointed out that since I’d probably have to buy a new head anyway, why not just try to drill the thing out myself.  If I totally screwed up the head, no real loss anyhow.  So I figured I’d give it one more try on my own before going the real expensive way.

This week I went to AutoZone and asked the guy if he had something to pull out a broken bolt.  He showed me this extracting drill bit and said what I needed to do was drill a hole in the bolt then use this one backwards, it would drill into the bolt, tighten down and then unscrew it.  I even told him that I had attempted it with a different bit and had drilled off center.  He said no problem, this would still work.

So, today that’s what I did.  Took me a total of 3 hours, and that included disassembling the car, going down to NAPA for a new bolt and then reassembling the car.  Actual work on the bolt literally took less than 10 minutes.  And Midas and Pep Boys couldn’t do it.  Meh!

So, now Old Blue and Big Green are in dang good running order, and that makes me happy.  Now I just have to put the transmission from the Wagon into the Convertible and I’ll have 3 functioning ‘70-ish Ford LTDs.

Ting, ting.

For quite some time something’s been loose on Old Blue.  When driving at low speeds there was almost a constant “ting, clink, ting, clink” coming from the front end.  And it was obvious it wasn’t a single source.  I’ve been trying to track it down for a year now, and back in April I put $2,000 into the front end hoping to fix the problem.  No such luck. (The 2 grand in work needed to be done anyway, so at least it wasn’t a waste of money.)

The other day my little brother, Mr. Gearhead, says to me “It sounds like those little center things in your hubcaps are banging around.”

No way.  I couldn’t accept that the solution could be that easy, but 9 times out of 10 he’s right on, or real close, so I decided to test the theory and take all 4 hubcaps off.

Guess what?  [ Yeah, you probably can, since I wouldn’t be writing this post if it didn’t work. ]. It worked.  Not a ting or a clink since I took them off.  I’m not going to leave them off, the car doesn’t look as classy without them, but I am going to figure a way to tighten down those centerpieces.

Sometimes the simplest things can be what’s driving you nuts.