Nissan: 65k miles. Oil change, tire pressure check (33lbs front, 30lbs rear), new belts.
Porsche: 85k miles. Pulled off of blocks, charge battery, put air back in tires (32lbs front, 36lbs rear), checked oil level, took her for a rip around the neighborhood.
Triumph: 5k miles. Oil change, tire pressure check (33lbs front, 37lbs rear), top up battery, bolt/nut/screw torque check, bath, quick rip around neighborhood.
Ford: Made room for it in the garage. Nissan now lives outside.
I also grew a beard.
Another year down. Wheew. I thought it was going to kill me.
So what has happened this year…
Bit of a story, so hit the link below for the run down
The wife has posted something very similar on her blog, but I wanted to give it a crack myself.
I am going to blow your fucking mind ok? Every time someone suggests removing a bit of religious influence from our federal government, it is because they want religious practice to continue to be protected.
Blow your load yet? Let me break it down so perhaps you can understand a little better.
continue reading…
I have removed myself from the legions of Facebook members. Why?
Because all I was getting in my inbox were adverts for social games that I had no interest in, inane chain mail that reinforced my theory that Facebook removes individuality and independent thought and replaces it with “me too” group think, the blatant and bold faced disregard for an individuals privacy over and over again, and lack of decent post publishing audience control.
Updates from people that I care about that actually mean anything were very few and far between. Friends and family post pictures with what they are up to, but even that is dwindling to a trickle lately. I am just as guilty as they all are though. A general distaste for sharing anything there. I would rather have my thoughts on my own website. It always felt like I was writing for other people when I posted things on FB. I was never doing it for the sake of doing it. That feeling of obligation gave me just enough apprehension to posting to keep me from doing it.
Another thing is that I was always expecting everyone on my list to respond to me, if they had any interest or not. I took the time and effort to write on Facebook, so obviously everyone on my list should praise my efforts! It is an unreasonable expectation I know, but it was still there, and I couldn’t deny it.
I was never sharing anything for the the sake of sharing it. I was always updating my wall with the expectation of acclaim from the people that may or may not actually care. I was never taking pride in what I shared because I didn’t do it for myself. Just a self serving and selfish desire to have every little word I wrote and shitty picture I shared to earn praise from people that may or may not be honest in the first place.
I am not trying to say that the nice things people posted on my wall aren’t appreciated though. Just the dishonest source of my motivation that preceded each post. Tyler would say that shared social obligation is mutual masturbation, and that is what it started to feel like. You and everyone you know all being locked in the same room, passing wind at the same time, and claiming it smells like fresh baked cookies.
Maybe I am being too cynical. maybe
I spent the afternoon diagnosing and cleaning up under the hood of Cassandra’s lil’ hotrod. What did I find?
Well, her intake was so soaked with oil that took an entire roll of paper towels to sop up. If you know this car, you could tell right away why.
If not, here is the scoop. The Porsches of this generation use a device called an Air Oil Separator. It takes a vacuum line from the intake, right after the throttle body, and pipes it to the crank case. This is good thing for most motors, as it helps to pull the piston rings closer to the cylinder walls, and any oil that seeps around the rings gets pulled back into the crank case, and eventually back to the oil pan. If you have done any vacuum forming you will know that putting a fluid with bubbles incorporated under a vacuum pulls the bubbles out of the fluid at the same time. So groovy on that front too.
This is all well and good, and under normal situations works fantastic. It provides better compression, lower emissions because the seeping oil doesn’t get burned in the pistons and hence end up out the tail pipe, and any aerated oil gets sucked into the intake to be burned and taken care of by the catalytic converters in the exhaust.
So what in the world am I on about with this whole thing? Well when someone over-fills this particular car with oil, it escapes over this vacuum line and directly into the intake. The people that designed this car did anticipate this, and built into this vacuum line an oil catch device called an Air Oil Separator. You remember the ads for the cyclonic upright floor vacuum cleaners? It works exactly the same way. It spins the oil out of the incoming flow of gas, slowing it just enough for the solids to drop out and go back into the crank case and be cycled back to the oil pan.
You can probably imagine what happens if this clever little device gets overwhelmed. It fills to the brim with oil and the vacuum line starts to suck oil out of it, pouring into the intake plenum. Oil then starts to soak the MAF sensor, drips into the cylinders, fouls the spark plugs, makes the catalytic converters have to deal with a HUGE amount of unburnt greasy hydrocarbons, and it eventually starts smoking like crazy. This last part is when you see that something is going horribly awry.
It also makes a gigantic mess, if you couldn’t deduce that already.
So that sure is fun to deal with. The good news is that her car doesn’t need seven THOUSAND dollars worth of repairs for a possibly cracked head. Bad news is that we still don’t know where the coolant is going. The car is still leaving puddles on the floor of the garage, so that implies the coolant is just running out somewhere when it gets pressurized.
One problem at a time with this car I think.
So what have I been up to in the past month…
I changed the oil in the Breaker of Hip bones. I used Shell Rotella synthetic, and it seems to have done quite well so far. Her shifts are pretty smooth, and her clutch is as good as ever. The oil is marketed as big truck oil, but it has the various oil ratings that are required by Triumph. This oil is also what I want to start using in the Porsche, so trying it out is Grace shouldn’t hurt.
What else have I been up to. Well Cassandra joined me for an afternoon on the motorcycle, to make sure the oil still stays where it should. We went on a pretty lengthy ride in fact. 150 miles, but spread out in some pretty country, and up pretty good bits of pavement.
All told, we spent the better bit of five hours out on the bike. Unfortunately, Cassandra has found her helmet to be unbearable after only ten minutes in it. It fit her well in the store, but it looks like some unforeseen pressure points only make themselves known after a few minutes. Pretty dissapointing, but I suggested she reach out to Shoei and get some feed back from the manufacturer for fit modifications that are possible.
I have been fighting a sinus-throat-lung cold for the past two weeks. It has been really unpleasant, but I got to stay home for a bit longer.
Bentley has been to the doctor. Had some skin problems taken care of. He wasn’t happy about it. We aren’t either, as that Vet visit cost us replacement tires for the Porsche. Damn pets being crazy expensive.
So I took a longer ride on Friday. I went to Leavenworth. I spent around five hours on the bike, and man did I feel it the next day. Whoa did I feel it.
Some things I learned from this first outing of the year.
I had a great time despite the difficulties I had. It is always so liberating just hitting the road on a beautiful day, and seeing how far you can go and still get home before the street lights come on.
