It's over 100* here today (and yesterday, and tomorrow) with an absolutely massive Relative Humidity of....(drum roll, please)...Twelve per cent!
Just have to put that in for Sig!
BTW....it's one of my favorite songs, and I like her version. A good example of how you "Belt Out A Song"..
Keep cool and stay hydrated!
Sent to me by my sister, of all people!
Hope y'all have a safe weekend. I'll be enjoying my "Old Jap Car" out on the road. It's been so long since I've driven it, I need to get reacquainted with it....
I'd forgotten how nice it is to drive, even though I didn't push it hard. The alternator needs replacing (new one is on the bench) as it holds 13.9 Volts, barely enough to charge the battery and power the car. The new one is from a later year Camry, which drops right in, and raises the output from the OEM 35 Amps to 80 Amps.
Thankfully I pulled the dipstick the other day before I ran the start-up procedure.
It was bone dry!
The second-to-the-last time the oil was changed was in Long Beach, and besides putting in 5W-30 instead of 10W-30, they used a gasket on the drain plug that was too big, and didn't seal properly. When my son and I changed the oil last fall, I reused the gasket, as it looked "OK" to me. Over the last 10 months, it's been dripping slowly, and lost ALL the new oil we put in. Just happy I had cardboard and carpet scraps under the car, but I'm going to have to pressure wash "my" side of the garage. Since I use the pressure washer to wash the car, I'll give it a try when I have the car out in the next day or so.
Trip to the auto parts store got me a selection of new gaskets, AND a magnetic oil drain plug, which I was going to use. With the magnet on the new plug, it goes into the oil pan far enough to hit the oil pickup, meaning I can't tighten it, meaning I can't use it.
Oh, well.....One of the gaskets in the kit fit the OEM plug, so that went back in, with the new gasket.
It's been holding a pan full of oil for about four hours now, and not a sign of a drip. I'll run the car tomorrow, and check again after I shut it down to see if it dripped any after warm up.
Is just about finished. Still have some cleaning to do, and the front license plate has to get bolted on, but otherwise, she's about ready to go around the block a few times. That will happen later this week, after I get the jacks out, drop her on the ground, roll her out and give her a good bath.
More to come this week.....
Posted these last night at the bottom of the previous post, but I think everybody missed it.
Have a safe weekend. SLW and I are are off to my belated Birthday Dinner. No, not at Sonny Lubick's Steakhouse. Were going to Austin's American Grill tonight.
The bison meatloaf is to die for....and there's enough for lunch tomorrow.....
Did some minor sanding today, then read the instructions on the can, and sprayed the special flexible "Bumper and Trim Paint" on.
Only has four medium-light coats of paint, so after it sits another hour I'll spray it again.
Huh....how'd the heck did I miss this?
A couple of pinholes on the left, and a divot in the center.
I'm not terribly concerned about the blemishes I missed that show through the paint because they're in areas that can be spotted in later without tearing the lights and grill out. I'll address those in the future. I don't know how well this paint holds up, but I don't think it matters much because of the environment the car is sitting in most of the time.
Tomorrow is clean up the garage and take the tape and paper off to see if I messed up anything else, like not masking it properly.
OK, time's up! Pulled the tape and paper, and found a couple of small areas where some paint got through. Easy-Peasy cleanup with some solvent on a Q-Tip, but the rest of it was masked off OK.
Starting to look like a car again!
GROOOAN...............Six-and-a-half hours of block-sanding later, it's ready for the topcoat.
I'd been worried about some of the sanding scratches that were showing through the primer/surfacer/filler, but after I remembered I have like four coats of the primer on it, I went ahead and blocked it out with 240 grit. There's was plenty of primer to sand on, and they just about went away.
Blocking it again with 320 grit made them disappear.
I was temped to tack it off and spray the edges tonight, but.......I'm going to hold off until tomorrow. I'll inspect it again with fresh eyes, and if I decide it's ready.....SHOWTIME!
In celebration of this joyous event, I brought out the grill, fog lamps, and turn signals that I restored oh....two years ago?
Having my hip get crazy, along with the scamdemic being set loose upon us, AND having issues with my medications (lose 60lbs, and you'd better adjust the dose!), kinda knocked the stuffings out of me for about a year. Oh, well....I'm still on this side of the turf, so Press On Regardless!
I even dug out my front license plate and bracket, which had to come off so I could mask the area.
The rest of tonight will be spent down in the Electronics Workshop coming up with arcane things to do.....
Scuff sanded it (again!) with 320 grit, tacked it off, and shot another coat of SEM "Flexible Part Primer Surfacer" this afternoon. I'm going to let it sit for 48 hours so the primer bonds and shrinks, then scuff it again, and paint it black. The car needs a proper paint job (about $15k at current rates) that I'm not going to do, so having a "Pebble Beach Class" front bumper just ain't gonna happen!
Since I have to get it smogged again in April, when my 5-year "Classic Car" tags expire, I figured I'd better get off my duff and GET TO WORK...!
I wanted this done well over a year ago, but then the scamdemic was released, and I had some serious issues with one of my heart meds, AND had the hip problem.
I wanna have my SLW plop down in the shotgun seat, and go to Freddy's for a burger, something I'd promised her when the car first arrived.
And then there's my favorite Rist Canyon Road/Stove Prairie Road/Poudre Canyon Road loop I like to drive. I'll have my son the ace photog take some pix and submit them to nest years "MKII Supra Calendar" that a friend publishes.
Got tied up yesterday with The Little Guy, as he unexpectedly stayed over Friday night, so this is a day late.
In fact, it's now TWO days late as I got sidetracked (what's new?) by some things on Saturday. If this was for a paying customer, it would have been out of here two weeks ago, but I've never worked on a cassette deck before. Which is why it's NOT for a paying customer. These things are a marvel of compact packaging of a complex mechanical assembly, all done to a "High End Prosumer" price level. It's one thing to make an extremely high-quality, rugged, reliable Reel-to-Reel tape recorder, and another thing entirely to do it for a Compact Cassette recorder. I can do all the basic service and repair on a good quality R2R deck as easily as the radio stuff I work on. Think Big-Block Chevy. Getting into one a cassette deck is more like getting in to a DOHC, Direct-Injected, Turbocharged, all aluminum, Indy Car engine. Whole different level of stuff needed. Smaller hardware and smaller components, all metric sized hardware, and different ways to measure things. Doable, but took some time to learn.
ANYWAY.....back to those Pinch Rollers. Yep, I screwed the pooch, f*cked the duck, and shot myself in the foot on this one. Well, gee, Jim........How'd That Happen? I got lazy, and didn't scrupulously clean all the old rubber from the bronze bearings they were vulcanized to.
See all the black stuff on the bearing? Yup....shoulda cleaned it ALL off before I pressed the new rubber sleeves on. I didn't, and I knew better because "They Didn't Look That Bad...".
Well, they were, but I used them anyway. Remember about all these parts being scaled down for a R2R machine? That means the defects on the little rollers "scaled up", and the molehills became mountains, and the audio quality suffered tremendously because of it. These rollers don't keep pressure on the tape; they drive the tape in conjunction with the two capstan shafts. And speed variance, or lumps and bumps in it's operation, directly affects how smoothly the tape goes past the heads. Wow and Flutter, those two dizty twins, made an appearance and wrecked the place. Evan Van Halen sounded horrible!
I tried several solvents to get the rubber loose, but no joy. All they did was clean it. I tried soaking them for 48hrs in a small container with SLW's "Skin-Safe! Non-Toxic!!" "paint stripper", and nada. They're soaking right now in some Aircraft-Grade Coating Remover that I use once in a while.
In the meantime....I bit the bullet and ordered a set from Athan, a company that specializes in any-and-all rollers, idlers, and tires for high-end equipment.
They're not only made of a better, longer-lasting Urethane compound, but they ditched the bronze Oilite bearing for a ball-bearing.
The rubber sleeves were about $25 for a pair. The Athan rollers are $50.....each. Plus tax and shipping.
Oh, well, these should last "forever"....
And here they are, living in their Forever Home...
With the front panel on:
Y'all be safe out there in the coming week!
Wellllll.. ...SLW, The Dog, and myself were going to head up the Ames Monument in Wyoming last week, BUT....the weather forecast was for 75...
.jpg)
