My Shit

For Christmas break this year Alex and I headed south rather than north for a change. The weather was fantastic. We walked on the beach, went on a nice canoe trip in Johnathan Dickinson State Park to Trapper Nelson's, went to many "Christmas" dinners and parties, visited friends, went swimming in the pool, had great ribs at Park Avenue BBQ & Grill, and then stopped by Kennedy Space Center on our way back. It was a very nice relaxing trip.

Unfortunately, the vacation is now over. I'm back to busting my knuckles on the Daytona and studying for comps. At least I have some progress pictures of the Daytona.

The blocks mating surface with the head is now clean:


The turbo is back together:

The car is in the carport while I work on it. The truck has been relegated to the driveway, but the windshield leaks. We're finally expecting rain (all I had to do was park the truck outside) so I used the car cover that came with the car to cover the cab of the truck. Now that's thinkin'.

My products from them "shipped" on the 7th. It is the 19th and they still aren't here.

I will NEVER us their terrible service again. Even after contacting them, their attitude was along the lines of "not our problem."

I started into the project a little sooner than I'd planned after breaking off the water neck bolts in the head.





As best I can tell, it had never been apart in its 21 year history. Still had the original factor head gasket. That's pretty amazing because those head gaskets were known to blow out if you looked at them the wrong way. Based on the coloring of the valves, it looks like it was running pretty well too.

Because it had never been apart, many things were stuck. I've not got about a half a dozen broke of bolts and studs to try to work out.

Submitted
Presented
Accepted

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Things have been really nice for awhile now. We had family in town for Thanksgiving. That was a real load off since there is always so much work to do here. I managed to install brakes on all four corners of my car and adjust the parking brakes. It is nice to be able to stop again and also to have a working parking brake.

The last few weeks of the semester for me always seem to ramp down rather than ramp up. I think it is part of being in a Ph.D. program. It is kind of nice this semester because I have had to schedule somethings that I normally would not have to do (such as my 2nd year paper).

I've gotten a few other things done on the car and truck, which have been nice. I finally got the PCV system fully working in the truck and I also found out why it is pinging at higher throttle positions. Turns out, the "all in timing" is about 5-7* too much. The fix will have to be out-sourced to a machine shop, but should be inexpensive.

I also set the timing in the Daytona today. Turns out, it was REALLY far off. The car is running much better now. I also fixed the back hatch so that I no longer have to hold it open with a stick. Turns out, the parts I needed were cheap and easy to install. I figured they were no longer available for some reason.

One of the best things has been an early Christmas present from Palila. It is a solar powered battery charger. I LOVE IT!!! What better present for a guy that used to be on a solar car race team. The batteries Palila bought for the Wii controllers are NiMH. It is fun to hook up my DMM (like what we used to have on the solar car team) into the circuit and watch the voltage, and then position the solar panel to get the most light, and then to spray the panel down with water to keep it cool since solar panels are more efficient when they are cool. ... the best.