new happenings.........

So we put an offer in on a different house. We must thank my parents so much for this. They have helped us a lot and we wouldn't be able to afford this house otherwise (nor the current one that we are in...).

This place is a bit south of the city, but maybe only 5 or 10 minutes mroe to drive. It could certainly be called rural...it is on a drilled well, septic system and oil heat. We have looked into the oil heating thing...for a while we thought we would either convert it, or buy something else. As it turns out, new oil furnaces are much more efficient that gas furnaces. That's good. Plus our short term goal is to supplement our electricity with solar panels. For only a few thousand, we can likely produce enough to supply most of our demands. The province has a program called 'net metering' for which they only bill you for the 'net' amount of electricity that you need to use from them...hence the name.

Anyhow...here are the pics.

click it to enlarge!













click it to enlarge!


I will post more later...

spiders

So there's this dude (or dudette) spider hanging out in our backyard. He/she has three separate (and HUGE) webs. It's big enough to freak you out if you are just casually walking down the stairs to the deck and BAHBAHHHH, SPIDER! Man. Gives me the willies just thinking about it.

we're aquarists...just another way to say "we're geeks"

We LOVE being geeks... ;-D

been a while

so. not much is too new... i just realized that i haven't posted anything for over a month!

we bought an aquarium! some of you have seen the pics. for those who haven't, i will put some up shortly! we now have 14 fish! there are 4 platys, 5 guppies, 2 black phantom tetras, 2 orthorincus and 1 plecostomus ('the monster fish' as e puts it). i took a while building the stand...but all in all i'm pretty happy with it considering the time that i put into it.

re: the house below. it just got moved back a few feet and they built a concrete foundation. there wasn't one there before. there's a little cracking along one corner of the house, but no biggie. i'd take pics, but the traffic has been nuts up there. i stay away at all costs. there is a bus only lane that is going up W avenue. cool. there is also a bike lane that is separate just like up G avenue.

i put a 12" subwoofer and an amp into the talon. it sounds great in there. the funniest thing is that the woofer itself was the first one i ever bought and in fact it was installed into my parents' car way back when i first started driving in high school...still sounds great. it looks a little 'ghetto' but whatever. i don't care.

just a couple pics

I have been meaning to take some pics of the car at night...but never find a good spot (haven't looked either). I had just finished replacing my alternator...*groan*...good thing I had the old one hanging around!!! all in all it only took about 2 hours start to finish!









Here's the 'alleged house'...still not moved!

went on vacation to 'the lake' last week!

one of many fabulous sunsets...
















i just love the tiny details in things, this is just an example...we were building trenches and dams and reservoirs...great fun!


















see! we have beaches and blue sky here!















one of the many [CRAZY] storms that we had while we were there. i love the clouds!














the calm after the storm!














storm #2! again, crazy cloud formations...















a salt mine repository...apparently the salt is mined from kilometers under the water!!!!! then it is refined and loaded onto export ships -- this particular shipping line used to be owned by *the* Martin family.

more pictures!

this is the 'other car...'

it is certainly nice and clean in this picture. i mean, WHY would you buy an AWD car if you didn't take it into the mud!!!










See, doesn't that just look right?!?

Much better!!!!!! :o)

insect pics

dragonfly nymph













Dicerca variacata














Photuris sp. - firefly















a little 'dune' coleopteran













member of the Sphingidae - Sphinx moths
possibly a Paonias sp.?













member of Cerambycidae
possibly a Graphisursus fasciatus













i was told to add some pics, so i did!

my back hurts & the new clutch rocks the casbah

so it was really nice weather on the weekend. cool air and clear skies!! so nice that it wasn't roasting like previously. i did some gardening, cleaned up the garage, put up some shelves (in the garage and inside too). all in all a good time. however, i did hurt my back from lifting the engine into the car. seems to be getting better now.

so, i did a clutch drop over the weekend...i revved it up to about 5000, then let out the clutch pedal really quickly...and it chirped the front tires and then took off like a rocket.






the old clutch had no hope of doing that...what a sorry, tired old thing. i think i'll have to slip the clutch a little bit to preserve the drivetrain. good to know that there is some decent clamping power in there now.
















i think that i need to get the fuel going properly...it seems to pull the timing like crazy when it gets warm. i need to log that thing!! as soon as i get my logger back, i hope to solve that problem and get the boost turned back up! i am only running it at about 8 psi right now...*sigh*.

maybe i should see if i have an EPROM ecu...that would make things much easier.

brought the 'poop' engine home today

man oh man am i aching...

i brought the old engine home from the shop today...owwwww. talk about messy. talk about oily. talk about AWKWARD... (ok ok sicko's, i'm talking about the engine...)



the car handled it just fine on the way home. i thought it would be more weighed down. the hard part was getting it into a proper position for me to pull it out of the car by myself. that was interesting. good thing I have an engine stand already!!!! it's surprisingly easy to move around on that stand, albeit a weeeee bit heavy.


now i need to pull it apart to see all the damage...*edit* you'll probably notice that cylinders 1&4 look a little oily...that's where i expect to see most of the damage...

pictures of the car...

this shot was taken with a flash, so it looks a little goofy with the reflectors all lit up...

this was a hand-held delay shot...a little blurry, but a better angle...

linky linky!

i added some links! --> check them out...if you like ;-)

it's still hot hot hot...

it feels like rain on my clothes, but there is nothing falling out of the sky, it's allllll humidity. i come out of work all cool and then the heat hits me and all the moisture in the air condenses on my skin and clothes... like a mushy banana in saran wrap.

the last few times that i got into my car i have burned my hand on the metal shift knob...ouch! it stays hot for a long time too! i'll need to take a little baggie of ice into the car or something.

we are hoping to have some relief soon as it's pretty frustrating to be so cooped up some days.

if you are somewhere cool...enjoy it!

brakes break!

so after the car sat for three months, the front brakes were totally warped since it was outside. i dunno i guess it is a common problem. good thing i've done a few brake jobs now. my arms and right leg were practically shaking out of their sockets when i used the brakes. not safe. i had to increase braking distances by at least two times just to be on the safe side.

so as it turns out, they were SO warped that the passenger side disc was difficult to get off, and the driver's side disc was next to infuriatingly IMPOSSIBLE to take off. i tried to use the 2 bolt holes to wind it off, but the bolts sheared off because of the amount of torque required...in fact, the face of the disc over top of the hub cracked...wow. i guess the disc had warped so much that the centre hole for the hub was not circular, but oval!!! this prevented it from coming off straight like it should have. so, after pounding on it with a big rubber mallet for a couple of hours and prying on it with an (albeit small) crowbar, it was not coming off. I slept.

next morning (this morning) i went downstairs...made some coffee (mmmmm....cofffffeeeeee....drooool) and thought about how i was going to get it off the hub. I thought the only way would be to buy an industrial angle grinder and grind off the disc. more money more money...

i thought about it some more and then thought "why don't i just try one more time." so i went out and used ALL my strength (which isn't much heh heh) and pried on it with my breaker bar which i braced against the caliper mounting point (a hugely thick piece of cast iron). after slipping off of it several times and working slowly and intently on one side of the disc it finally came off. i was sweaty, bruised, blistered and oily. but happy.

after that the job was like cake. the assembly went back together easily. phew.

I have the car back now!!!!

The car runs great. I am SO happy to have it back since i didn't have it for 3 months!!!! It seems like it was shorter, but it wasn't.

They totally degreased the engine bay so it is so clean. The engine runs really well. It is quiet and powerful and has great oil pressure (which is a great sign). I think at most it has 120,000 on it. The old engine had 230,000.

It will take a while to feel totally comfortable with it...I will definitely be cautious.

they are working on the engine today!!!

so i went down to the shop and everything is moving along well. the cams are in, the timing belt is replaced, it already has the balance shafts removed (woo hoo!) and it just needs the clutch to be replaced. i picked a used ACT2100 pressure plate for cheap and it should be good for that engine. a new clutch disc will be installed as well.

if all goes well, it will be installed into the car tomorrow morning!!!

cooler weather

FINALLY!!!!! i was dying there for a bit. it was about 95 million degrees with a billion as the rated humidex. well i might be exaggerating a little bit.

today it is about 10 degrees cooler...but still will be pretty hot.

dropped the engine off at the shop today...

i finally picked up the engine last night from a guy locally and trailered it down to my place -- it was a little nervewracking to say the least getting it all the way across the city seeing as i haven't towed a trailer for years... they make a lot of noise. the car was fine pulling it tho!

i was a little nervous about leaving it out on the trailer uncovered (especially in the rain!!!!). pulling it to the shop this morning was nervewracking too with all the rain and mud from construction too. the timing belt, cams and clutch will be going in next week and then into the car the following week! how exciting...my need for speed will be satiated again soon...

the beginning...

i've always been a speed freak and always will be.

i used to race my mountain bikes (Kona HOT with XT and various one-off machined aluminum components...some titanium parts as well...that bike was worth about $3700, which seems totally nuts to me now; i also had a custom built AMP Research frame with Reynolds 851 tubing and a beautiful downtube gusset, RST air/elastomer forketc. etc. etc...).

i blew my motor in my 92 talon this year...i was still running ok times (14.1 @ 93 or 14.2 at 94). i think it went a little lean and fried two of the pistons and whacked the valves too. Arrrgh. i spent months just trying to decide whether to buy a used JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) engine, or to rebuild. I decided finally to buy a used engine from someone locally... phew!