Everybody remember the Rockwell Automation Retro Encabulator? Behold the turbo encabulator....
Continue reading The retro encabulator's big brother.
May 2008 Archives
Spotted at an English Russia article on a Lithuanian1 custom car made out of a Mercedes-Benz CL and something called, "PU-foam." 1 The article says "Lithuanian." The photos are named "Latvian." Either way, that coat spells "totally sweet."...
Continue reading Best. Photo. Ever..
The 914 has a set of 165/??R15s mounted on it. Probably 70- or 75-series, since the tread is so narrow. The thing is that with so little weight (2200lbs ... dry?) and so little power (~95hp) I've only really spun a wheel once. Even when pushing the lateral traction to...
Continue reading Skinny rubber meets the road.
If you work on cars (check) and have a lot of ... junk to store in your garage (check), do think twice about buying a house with single-car garage doors instead of a wider, two-car door. Having only a single car's worth of width makes it really challenging to do...
Continue reading Beware: single-width garage doors.
I mentioned earlier that I keep running across the same sets of broken items on old cars. This weekend's project involved fixing the door latches on the 914. The excitement involved:Ripping apart both door cards twice. Clearly I missed the part about reassembling them properly the first time. Removing and...
Continue reading Recurring broken car theme: door latches.
Earlier today on a run, Layla and I spotted a Bald Eagle surrounded by about a dozen crows fly across an arterial road (and over a bus stop), pick up some roadkill (dead squirrel, perhaps) and then fly off. This is one of the first Bald Eagles I've ever seen...
Continue reading National symbols and roadkill.
There's a divot in our concrete where water sometimes puddles. During the winter, enough soil and grass seed accumulated to get grass to grow....
Continue reading The grassy outpost.
One of these came with the house. I tried it once on some weeds last summer but was entirely unimpressed. Pulling weeds out of the loose soil by hand was way easier than using this thing on a pole. But Layla ran across a recommendation so I busted it out...
Continue reading Hound Dog.
If you paid really close attention to the pedal post two weeks ago (closer than I, certainly), you would have noticed the placement of the fuse panel inside the 914. As you can see in the photo above, it's positioned just below the dash to the left of the wheel....
Continue reading Oh dammit. There went my turn signals..
Today is the first day I've been home during daylight in a while. So, pictures I'm not too hot on the rocker panels. Everything else rules....
Continue reading Porsche shots.
On June 6, I'm going to be moving offices. This is notable because I've been in my current office since I started work on June 6, 2005. It'll be a little weird moving. I'll be going from the highest-numbered office in the building (yes, the whole building) and on the...
Continue reading 3 years to the day.
Got a hankering for crazy photos of oddly proportioned and amateur-assembled kit cars? Well I'm giving you the link anyway. Price of His Toys is a car blog all about nutty kit cars—the vast majority of which are based on either VW bug or Fiero chassis. Anyway, there are tons...
Continue reading Price of His Toys.
For the last two nights we've had tachos in the middle. Time for a taco in the middle....
Continue reading 3rd night in a row.
I too have a Ford with a center-mounted tach....
Continue reading Justin ups the ante; I match it..
...right where it belongs....
Continue reading Tacho in the middle....
I love the rain. So, I really enjoy the weather here in Seattle. Dark and dreary is great—and a touch of moisture makes it all fantastic. I really really like the rain. But even I recognize when it rains so much that it breaks brains. This is a weather warning...
Continue reading Hot hot hot hot hot.
Welcome back to 2003 (links to embedded video). Courtesy Kyle....
Continue reading This is full of win.
Manuel had his Miata over the other day and happened to park it next to the 914. What's surprising is that they're almost identically sized. At least, they are according to my eyeballs and Wikipedia. So that's practically no guarantee at all....
Continue reading Miata-sized.
The world seems to be woven a little cozier when stuff like this turns up. Courtesy Danny....
Continue reading Yellow was his favorite color.
This is weird. The Porsche has some weird combination of the problems of the last two old cars I bought. Here's what was wrong with the truck:The brake lights didn't work It had a burnt-out headlamp Here's what was wrong with the Mercedes:The door latch was busted The antenna was...
Continue reading Convolved car problems.
Having one brakelamp inexplicably come on while repairing my brake lamp switch led me to the conclusion that I either royally screwed something up, or had a huge wiring disaster awaiting me under the dash board. As you can see in the photo, the right tail lamp is sitting there...
Continue reading Germans pt. 2: parking lamps.
The Porsche has pedals mounted to the floor, which stick upward into the passenger compartment. This is neither new nor novel—the VW bug I baja'd in college had the same arrangement. What is new and dumb is that the Porsche engineers put this weird floorboard between the pedal assembly and...
Continue reading German engineering == backwards pedals.
Two items of interest:I somehow lost the cookie that associated my entire week's worth of shopping for 914 parts over at Pelican Parts. So now I get to start all over again. Their CGI cart code is located at /cgi-bin/smart/S-mart.cgi. I cannot help but think this is an homage to...
Continue reading CGI.
Yesterday I fixed my headlights but today my hood ceased to open reliably. I actually expect it's a gummed-up release mechanism....
Continue reading Coincidence?.
I drove the 3 today because I haven't gotten around to selling it yet, and tonight I need something with, uhh, headlights. It feels like driving an SUV. I sit way high up in the air and the steering is vague. And the clutch and brake pedals feel like small,...
Continue reading BMW X325is.
The headlights on the 914 were in terrible shape when I got it. Two days ago. The driver's side headlamp didn't work at all (turns out a fuse was missing?) but even with the fuse replaced, I figured I should replace the big sealed beam units anyway since they were...
Continue reading Rusted screws with soft heads.
4-cylinder Porsche 914s all featured 901 transmissions from the factory. The interesting thing about the 901 in the 914 is that it's got a dog-leg shift pattern, meaning that reverse is where 1st is on most transmissions, and 1st is where 2nd usually is (and so forth). You can see...
Continue reading Dog-leg shifter.
Lightweight and mid-engined (Porsche 914 2.0)...
Continue reading Update on that list.
There's been something of a brouhaha amongst the Microsoft technical bloggers in the last few days about this post by Eric Brechner, a director of engineering learning in the Engineering Excellence group at Microsoft1. The short version is that Eric asserts (hah—puns abound) that asserts in code aren't good ways...
Continue reading You're doing it wrong: asserts.
Bluehat was held today on the Microsoft campus. The Bluehat conferences feature the best free shirts of any Microsoft events, and the talks are good, too....
Continue reading Bluehat.
This is a 250W halogen bulb from a set of cheap (and extremely effective) work lamps I bought a while back. When the bulb blew, the filament melted completely through the glass shell and left a really neat hollow strand protruding out the bottom. The bulb is flipped over in...
Continue reading Literally burnt out.
