ERP. If I had a couple million dollars laying around…
I saw this Pro Street Cougar in a parking lot the other night while Finn was at karate. Pro Street means you’ve made modifications to the engine and maybe the driveline, and most likely put a rollcage inside; everything else is supposed to be stock, which explains why this is still street-legal.
A few years ago, I used to visit a site called Bring a Trailer every day. When it first started, it would feature one project car per post, generally in some state of disrepair (hence the name of the site). Their comment section was the real draw, because many of the frequent commenters were subject matter experts–there were Alfa Romeo guys, Porsche guys, Mopar guys, and so on. This was an insanely valuable font of information for car geeks like me. Over the years they grew to feature more and more exotic vehicles and built a paid auction system into the site, so that it became less about project vehicles and more about selling turnkey air-cooled Porsches and restomodded Land Rovers. I stopped visiting when the ratio of paid listings dwarfed the unpaid and switched to another site called Barn Finds. This site was what Bring a Trailer was in the early days, and the comments were, again, the best part of the site. Cars, trucks, motorcycles, the occasional plane–they have it all.
Last week they decided to put up a paywall, probably to deal with the cost of increased bandwith. Free blogs can often be a victim of their own success; there are many I’ve been reading for years who have either switched to a paid model or simply closed up shop, either from financial necessity or boredom. I’m sympathetic to the need to keep things paying for themselves, but I don’t recall ever seeing advance notice from the site owners–I used to hit the site once, maybe twice daily–so it came as a shock when the paywall went up. When their new fee is averaged out over a year, $100 is pennies a day, but at first glance it feels pretty steep. Like many of the other paid services I’ve been reconsidering (we have been without cable for 4 months) time will tell whether I miss it or not.
Monday morning I took advantage of working from home and drove into Glen Burnie to visit the specialty moulding shop I mentioned a few weeks ago. The guy at the counter immediately identified what I needed and went in back to cut up the sizes I specified; within 15 minutes I had 62 feet of moulding shrinkwrapped and ready to stuff in the CR-V. Once the shelves are hung I’ll start mitering the cap moulding and installing it, which will be a nice indoor winter project.
I was out with a group of work friends on Tuesday night and stepped up to the bar to pay our tab. I noticed the bartender expertly mixing a manhattan and asked her what rye she used while waiting for my bill to be rung up. We got into a discussion about the quality of the various rye whiskeys available. When I told her I favored Bulleit, she frowned and said many of the bartenders in DC have stopped carrying it in a show of LGBT solidarity. Puzzled, I asked for details. Apparently one of the children of the founders came out and they shut her out of the company as a result. Disappointed, I asked her what I should use as a replacement and she suggested Rittenhouse, which I will definitely try. Or, I could go with Pikesville Rye, distilled by the same company, which uses a Maryland-based recipe originating in 1895.
Jeep announced the new Gladiator today, a four-door pickup based on an elongated Wrangler platform. This is the first Jeep I’ve actually been interested in purchasing since the old Cherokee platform (the 2-door model of which I was reasonably happy to own for five years). Two items of note: the windshield folds down and the roof comes off, which is pretty awesome, and it comes with an optional 6-speed manual transmission. No idea on price yet (I’d imagine it’s steep) but I’d consider buying one of these.
I was looking through old pictures with Finn on Flickr yesterday and stumbled across my Jalopyrama photos from 2016, which happened right around this time of year. Worried I’d missed it, I did a search and was sad to learn they had to cancel it this year because of problems with the venue. This is sad, and I hope they can reorganize for 2019 because it’s an incredible event that I want to see again.
What has been done to this Porsche would make most of the purists shit themselves in horror, but I find it absolutely beautiful: a ragged out ’74 Targa with 31″ mudders, on its third engine. Bravo, sir, Bravo. (I love how the ducktail is still present, bent upward like a giant middle finger).
The week after I replaced the hood on the CR-V, it decided to show its appreciation by stranding Jen in Baltimore City, on the way to pick up a friend for dinner. She said the clutch locked up, and she was unable to shift into or out of 2nd gear. She was able to pilot it safely to a side street and call me; I arranged for a tow truck through USAA and they picked it up a little over an hour later. Our mechanic can’t seem to find the problem but did find that the gear oil was very low. There’s no noise coming from the box and two short trips I’ve taken since then have been painless; this could mean nothing or it could mean the clutch is about to shit itself. Only time will tell, I guess. The mechanic hinted that it would be wiser to buy a new car instead of fixing this one, but we have a large amount of loyalty for this car and I’d much rather keep it on the road than absorb a new car payment.
I’ve had a Flickr Pro account since 2005, when I decided I’d use it for my image hosting CDN. It’s been very useful over the years, even as it’s been bought and sold, and as they’ve added useful features and then taken them away. I’ve found, however, that I’m not using it all that much anymore. The last photos I uploaded there were from the camping trip in June, and everything after that I’ve uploaded directly into WordPress. I’d guess there are a couple thousand photos I’ve linked to over the course of 4,672 posts, and for now that’s fine. I am thinking about the future, however, and at some point I’m going to have to go through each post and update the photo with a local version (as well as fix a bunch where the links have broken). Not today, though.
My IPA stopped fermenting on Thursday evening, so I have to rack it into a secondary fermenter as well as dry hop it. My neighbor picked up another kit for me yesterday and hopefully we will be brewing this evening, but he hasn’t nailed down a time yet. It feels good to have a batch in the works, and it would be even better to have two in the kegerator by Thanksgiving. It also got me thinking about some of the gear I’d like to update next year–a better burner, a slightly bigger kettle with a temperature gauge, and maybe some upgrades to the kegerator itself. But for now, what I’ve got is working well and I’m just happy to be brewing again.
Meanwhile, the crops in the greenhouse are winding down. There are still many black and red cherry tomatoes on the vines, and there’s a second wave of Indian Stripe and Paul Robesons growing slowly, but the whiteflies have really damaged the plants. There aren’t a lot of green leaves left on anything so I don’t know if any of the remaining fruit will ripen at this point late in the season. I’m going to replace the back wall in an effort to keep the heat inside and start winterizing things.
I took Finley out and scored a new hood for the CR-V Saturday morning. It’s no surprise Jen was feeling self-conscious about the old hood; it was really ghetto.
The clearcoat had begun delaminating a few years ago and it’s gotten so bad at this point that there’s only a little bit of it left on the hood itself.
The area in the upper right is the original clearcoat. Everything you see below that and to the left is bare paint.
Finn and I jumped in the CR-V and drove through glorious Glen Burnie, through trailer parks and high-end estates, and found ourselves at a quiet auto salvage yard fronted by tall fencing and a tired trailer. Inside we talked to the salesman who directed us back outside to the hood they’d pulled that morning. It was in OK shape but had obviously taken a ride in the back of a yard truck and gotten scraped up along the way. We placed it next to the fender of the CR-V and found it was almost indistinguishable–the only difference being the greater amount of metal flake in the used hood. I got the guy to come down $25 on it and stuffed it into the back of the car.
Back at the house replacing it was a matter of loosening 4 10mm bolts. I had Finley help me pull it off, and together we had the new hood on in minutes. After a quick scrub, it looks presentable:
I have to pick up some rubbing compound and polishing discs for the buffer my Dad gave me a few years ago, and hopefully we can get the scratches out of the hood and some other areas along the sides of the car. I’ll have this hoopty shining in no time!
Sure, you could restore something more expensive and vastly more powerful, but this guy really wanted to have himself a special ’80s time machine. And after driving it, I can tell you it worked.
A guy found an ’84 Honda CRX in a field in Texas, dragged it home, and spent $10,000 to restore it. As the former owner of an ’86 CRX, I don’t see any problem with this at all.
Finn had a friend over for a playdate on Saturday so Jen and I took the opportunity to get things done around the house.
We hauled the cucumber tubs out of the greenhouse and dumped them at the edge of the yard. They were infested with whiteflies, which had disappeared since my first mention and then returned in force. I then mixed up some of the insecticidal soap and sprayed the shit out of all the remaining tomato plants. After two treatments there were hundreds of dead whiteflies laying on the edges of the tubs, so hopefully with a few more applications I can save the rest of the plants. The box fan I’d put in there died sometime back in late July so there’s been no real air movement in there, which is also bad.
We pulled a Dagma and an other Oaxaca from the big plants and a handful of black, yellow and cherry tomatoes from the others, and a lot of them found their way into our salad Saturday night. I also swapped out the green rain barrel on the platform behind the greenhouse, which has a leak somewhere, for one of the soda barrels and pumped the water from Friday’s rainstorm into it. With that and one more good rainstorm we should be able to make it through the fall without going to the hose (with the exception of our vacation, everything I’ve used in the greenhouse has been rainwater, and I’m pretty proud of that).
Sunday we did some errands and in the afternoon I went over to Christi & Glenn’s house to help wake up their Acura, which has been slumbering in their garage since it french-kissed a Prius in 2016. They parked it in the garage because it’s in need of serious bodywork before it can be roadworthy again. Miraculously, even though the top of the radiator has been pushed back 4″ and the bumper mounts are pushed downwards 6″, it hasn’t leaked any critical fluids. I brought over a set of ramps, a siphon kit, a set of tools, and jumper cables in the Scout. First I checked all the fluids to see how it looked and found everything topped off. I pulled the battery and cleaned the cables and posts. Then we looked at siphoning the gas but were thwarted by a metal screen at the base of the fuel tank, so we jacked it up, pulled the tire off, and used a handy drain plug to empty the tank. Once the varnish was out we put about 2 gallons of good gas in it, stuck the tire back on, and hooked the battery back up. With the cables from the Scout on it, it only took two tries (I had to adjust the cable for the best connection) to fire the car right up.
We let it idle for a while, then Glenn turned it around in the driveway so that the exhaust was facing outward and pulled it back inside before the temp gauge crept up (the inlet hose to the radiator is kinked shut at a 90˚ angle from the impact). He’s thrilled and I’m happy for them to have it running again. I left him with instructions for a trickle charger and some tarps to keep the varmints off.
Labor Day was quiet for us. I woke Finn up at 7AM to go do some soccer drills on the field across the street, and we stayed out for about 40 minutes before the gnats and Finley’s bladder brought us back inside. Mama had started a pumpkin pancake assembly line so we helped her finish that and chowed on pancakes and hash browns for a hearty breakfast.
After that, we geared up for a hike in Patapsco and happened across another Scout parked at the trailhead: a yellow Scout I’ve seen around Baltimore for years. We met the owner, snapped a picture, and then descended down the trail into the park. After the second flood they had the trailhead closed off for repairs so the usual route I used to take with Rob and Matt was off limits; we followed a longer southern route that eventually linked up with the main trail I was used to and wound up at the river at the bottom. After a bathroom break we took out shoes off and cooled off in the river for a while, letting the fish nibble on our toes. Then we headed back up the trail and home into the air conditioning.
We made a quick run to Lowes for some bathroom caulk and Jen and I decided we needed a full-size plastic skeleton to sit on our front porch for Halloween, which made Finn happier than if we’d given her a barrel full of candy. Jen promptly christened him Brutus. We propped him up in the back of the Scout, and out on the road we were admonished by a fellow driver to make sure he was buckled up.
At home we relaxed for a bit and I tackled the back lawn, which was 5″ high and gone to seed. Every second row filled the bag on the mower and I’d have to stop and empty it, which took longer and made things hotter. I had sweat pouring down my face by the time I finished. Then I shot the plants in the greenhouse with more insecticidal soap to kill the whiteflies, which are now greatly diminished but have taken up residence on the tomatoes. After watering and tending to the plants I called it a day and came inside for the last time.
After cracking a cold beer we sat down and opened up a new family boardgame: Payday, which is an updated version of the game Renie and I used to play when we were Finn’s age. It’s more complicated now and doesn’t look nearly as cool as the original but we still had a lot of fun.
After dinner we busied ourselves with getting Finn ready for the first day of 4th grade. Jesus, time is flying by.