Truck

Saturday morning I took Mom and Dad's old battered truck (In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that I did a bit of the battering to it myself. With a boat.) to get some cabinets for the garage. But first I had to shovel snow out of the bed. The cabinets were stored in a barn down a snowy hill in Iowa. But said battered truck climbed up and down the hill in 4 low like a billy goat. I was a bit surprised and impressed how easily it handled the short off-roading trip. Having the truck here has been really helpful the past couple of weeks. Thanks Mom and Dad.

The cabinets that I picked up are rather nice. Anke thinks that they are too nice to put in the garage, and wants to place them in the laundry room instead. I should have gotten the ugly cabinets.

Trucker Movies from Three Continents

This post is mostly for me, because I'm not sure anyone else will really appreciate it. These are the opening credits for BJ and the Bear (actually an American TV show not movie), a German trucker film and a Japanese dekotora truck movie.







I love how similar these all are and how a simple fascination with big trucks is universal the world over.

I want to be a (sorta) race car driver

I so much want to be driving one of these old cars through Mexico.

La Carrera Panamericana blog (Day 5)

Return from C-town

I've always meant to take a picture of these funny dinosaurs at some place called Benny Davis Farm between Centerville and Corydon. I finally got around to it today. I'll have to do it again sometimes because I'm not happy with the quality of the image taken with my old point-and-shoot digital camera. And for those who care, my gas milage has increased from around 11 mpg to 17 with the new four speed transmission.

Sometimes procrastination doesn't pay off

If you've been reading this you know that I put a new transmission in the Cutlass a month or so ago. Well the bloody thing was making a funny noise and not shifting right. The whole car was also extremely sluggish- like I'd lost 20 or 30 horse power. I was afraid that the transmission that I bought was bad. On top of that, the company that I bought the damn thing from is in bankruptcy at the moment. I was lucky to even get a transmission, some folks didn't. It was one of the last ones I believe.

But I was afraid to take the car to a transmission shop, because I didn't want to hear the bad news that the whole thing is junk and it'll cost you at least $1000 to rebuild the boat anchor in your drive train. I was talking to Dad about that this weekend and he suggested that I have Doug Widick of Widick Diesel rebuild it for me. Doug's shop is the only place that Dad will allow to touch his semi. Doug uses Dad's Western Star as a test truck of sorts and does all kinds of fun and wacky stuff to make it get better fuel mileage. He is currently getting around 7.5 mpg and pushing 550+ horsepower. That 7.5 mpg is a very impressive feat for a semi.

Anyway I didn't want to bring the car to Doug without really knowing the transmission was toast. So I took the Cutlass to a transmission shop (Transmissions Incorporated at 49th and Dodge, Omaha) that is only about 4 blocks from where I live. They sign out front that says free transmission diagnosis. So I thought that I'd have them check it out first. They then called about noon to say that the funny noise was the transmission dipstick was vibrating against something and the throttle pressure needed adjusted along with a cable stop thingy. Kirk at the shop said they could do all this for $51.43. This pleased me greatly- along with Anke who was very understanding and wasn't even going to yell at me if I had to get the transmission rebuilt.

I picked the car up after work and suddenly the Cutlass and I were friends again. I couldn't hear the transmission and it was much peppier. It seems that before getting fixed the car wasn't ever staying in first gear, so I was always taking off in second, which will make your car seem slower than it actually is.

So the moral of the story is I should have faced the music and taken it to the guys down the street weeks ago. I'd have been much happier if I had.

Transmission In

Last Saturday I finally got my new transmission installed in the Cutlass. Doing a project on a car is not unlike an IT project. You have management (Anke) asking for a timeline of when said project will be done. And you really have no idea so you make up a number, multiply it by 1.5 and say that is how long it will take. And it still takes longer. This should have been a 4 - 6 hour job if everything had fallen into place. We started around 9:30am Saturday and I left for home around 1:30am Sunday.

The guys who worked on my car were really great guys. And they knew what they were doing. They had to do some custom fabrication for a couple of mounting brackets. The bracket for the kick down cable will be redone, because we aren't really happy with it but at one in the morning you're willing to say we can live with this for now. I also didn't get my Hurst rachet shifter installed. This is the last time I order car parts from Ebay. It was missing a couple of small, yet key, parts that I didn't know were missing until we started taking apart the interior of my car to install the new shifter. So I'll be ordering a new shifter from Summit Racing. Paying full price, but knowing exactly what I'll get.

A happy note is that my old transmission will still have a life post Scotty's Cutlass. Chris- who did most of the work on my car- has a 1968 Pontiac LeMans that only has an old two speed turbo-glide transmission. Oldsmobile, Pontiac, and Buick all have the same engine/transmission bolt pattern so Chris will be able to bolt my old Turbo-350 transmission right up to his Pontiac motor, giving him three gears now instead of two.

A project that I found infinitely cool that the other Chris (whose shop we used) is in the process of putting a small block 383 Chevy engine into an 89 (I think) BMW 3-series.

Yesterday

I now have all of the parts for the Cutlass tranny swap, but the guys that are going to do the work for me haven't been available lately. So my trip next week to the Lake of the Ozarks will be made in the more comfort but less style. As I bitched about previously the A/C in the Alero (stock photo of car faithfully trekking Andre, Inga, Anke and I across Utah in 2004 included) quit, so yesterday I took it to the shop to get the oil changed and A/C recharged. While there the shop guys were kind enough to give the car the old once over to find any other little thing that they could replace. The rear brakes needed replacing and the front left pad was wearing oddly. And the power steering fluid could use flushing. I didn't really want to do it, but at the end of the day I rather enjoy stopping and steering. So I said do it all. Total bill came to north of $600. More than I wanted or expected to spend, but the old Olds has been good to me.

Last night we had an impressive storm roll through Omaha and Anke got a couple of nice pre and post storm photos. For the record, these are two seperate pictures, not the same one photoshopped.

It's here! It's here!

My transmission has finally arrived. The torque convertor didn't come with it, but that should be arriving within the week. I hope. And I just ordered the cooler- like a tiny radiator- for it. Summit should ship that tomorrow.

It looks good, but it's what is on the inside that really counts. I won't know about that until I get it in the car. Happy Day!

Not the Zoo

I don't know where that kid gets his hair from. Anyway, Anke and I had a plan of going to the zoo this morning. It was early. It was raining. We thought we could wander around before the crowds showed up for Memorial Day Weekend. Umm... the crowds got up earlier than us. So we decided to check out Lauritzen Gardens instead. And it was a good choice. The weather was mostly overcast while we were there with the occasional light sprinkle. The grey sky really offset all of the green. It was rather nice, and a bit romantic. There was a bird sanctuary, which was really mostly a turkey sanctuary. Many nice little fountains and ponds with wather lillies. And the early stages of a Japanese garden with a fantastic gate and a small replica of Mt. Fuji. It's all very nice. I'll have to take Mom here sometime when she visits. I believe that she'd really enjoy it.


Also at Lauritzen Gardens is Kenefick Park which has two engines from Union Pacific. One is an old steam engine called Big Boy and the other is a diesel electric of the Centenial series. The Centenial engines are the larges deisel electric train engines in the world. They were built specifically for Union Pacific. It is really hard to get a grasp of how huge these are unless you are right beside them.

Still no transmission

I ordered a new four speed automatic transmission (200-R4) for my Cutlass six weeks ago. With the old Turbo-350 three speed, I'm only getting just above 10 mpg on the highway. I'm hoping to move it up to the 15-20 mpg range with the new tranny.

When ordering Megamax- the transmission company- said that it should ship out in three weeks or less. Well they still haven't even started on the bloody thing yet! I was planning on installing it next weekend, but that plan now looks shot.

Hind-sight being 20/20, I'm wishing that I'd spent the extra $200 and gone with their competitor. I don't want to raise too much hell with Megamax because they still have to build the bloody thing and ship it to me. If I bitch too much, they might rush it and ship me a shoddy unit and I'm doing the same damn thing next year. Which I don't want to do. I 'spose I'll just have to be patient.