L.A. Fleet Week Starts Friday, August 31st

And I won't be there this year...sob..sob.

Looks like it's going to be pretty big this year, and I wouldn't mind being there, but we have relatives coming (again) this weekend.

Read all about it here at the L.A. Fleet Week website.

On a side note, it's just amazing how far the Battleship Iowa Museum has come since she came to San Pedro in 2012. New exhibits are opening, and more of the ship is becoming accessible to the public. You can *finally* get a tour of some of the Engineering Spaces down on Broadway, like Engine Room #2, and Fire Room #4. If you'd like to see the Transmitter Room on Broadway, just contact the nice folks at BIARA, and a tour of that area and the Radio Room ("FACCON1") can be arranged. ALL of the 24" fluorescent tubes on board have been replaced with LED lighting, giving the working spaces greatly improved lighting, reducing the electric bill, and have much better reliability than the old old tube/starter fixture they used to have. I donated 4 cases of 24" tubes to the ship over the years, along with a case of starters, so going LED will eliminate that.

If you're ever in the L.A. Harbor area, by all means take the time to see the Iowa. It'll give you a whole new understanding of the phrase "Built Like A BATTLESHIP".

Easy Radio "Field Service" Call

Since most of our new in-laws are in the construction/demolition/rehab/excavating/hauling business, they have good old CB Radios in their trucks. CB radios are still pretty big here, as they're cheap, easy to use, and work pretty well for what I'd consider "Short Range Ground Wave" communications of a mile or two.

Most of the gravel pits, constructions sites and paving plants these guys go to use CB radios to communicate with the truckers. Even though the truck may have a fancy 800~900MHz "Trunked Radio" 2-way  FM radio in it to talk to the office, it will still have a CB in it to talk to the Dispatchers/Yard Managers at the places they go to.

The first of the in-laws trucks was a full-size Peterbuilt tractor with a full-size dump box on it. Our daughter-in-laws younger brother bought the tractor and dump box separately and 'married' them in the shop section of the little place we stayed at when we first moved here. He does very good quality work, and it looks like it rolled out of Peterbuilt that way.

At one time the truck had a commercial 2-way radio of some kind in it, so it had a Larsen "NMO" (for "New Motorola) antenna mount on the roof, with coax running behind the driver's seat down to where the radio was mounted, on the lower, door side of the seat mount.

This was NOT a good place to mount a non weather-resistant "consumer grade" radio! It got wet when the door was open in the rain, got kicked by people climbing in and out of the cab, and had all kinds of stuff get dropped on it.

He went through THREE of the "$50 class" radios before he decided to relocate the radio up to the top of the cab in the center where it's out of harms way.

And he bought a brand-news, shiny "$150 class" radio to put up there.

The wiring was beautifully installed, the coax had been rerouted, and the radio mounted solidly.

The problem was, he couldn't hear anybody at the gravel pits, although they said they could hear him.

Hmmmm......Well, I did the Full Monty on it when I got there. The power output of the radio was about 4 Watts, increasing with modulation, and sweeping the antenna with my analyzer revealed nothing out of the ordinary. The SWR was about 1.5:1, rising to 1.7:1 on one end of the band, and 1.8:1 at the other end, perfectly acceptable considering I could NOT get the analyzer to connect to my laptop, and was forced to read the little 2" x 3" display on the analyzer.

Double Hmmmmm.....this looks like a good installation, and AFAIC, it "meets specs". What could the problem be? I open the squelch all the way with volume at max, and was greeted by a slight noise increase, which quickly faded away. Yup....sounds like the receiver's dead. On a brand-new radio........DUH!??!

Flipping through the manual, I remembered this radio had an RF Gain control, basically a receiver sensitivity control. No, it couldn't be.......yep, it is. ALL the way to zero, meaning the receiver is pretty much deaf.

I turned the RF Gain wide open, and "Channel 19" audio came blasting out of the speaker from the trucks on I-25. People immediately came running over asking what I did to "fix" the problem.

Uhhhhh.....RTFM?

So I sat down with them and gave a "Radio 101" course, explaining what all the knobs and buttons did, and my findings on the antenna. The radio has a built-in SWR meter, and after calibrating it, it agreed with my analyzer well enough that I decided there wasn't any antenna problem.

He sent me a text today saying it worked fine at the gravel pit, and could I look at his Dad's radio? And his friend Nick's? And maybe Justin's too?

Everything That Flies Needs A Place To Nest Or Rest....

As witnessed by this little guy (or gal) taking a break from whatever it is that Dragonflies do all day.

I was out just putterin' around (or 'piddle farting' as Phil calls it) out in the garage, and I stepped outside to look around. I happened to notice all the Dragonflies flitting around, and then saw the one sitting on top of my Larsen NMO 2/70, and just had to go get my camera.

And he/she/it (am I getting too PC?) had a lot of friends hangin' out today, too.

The green stuff are our Iris', and now that we're getting rid of the Sumac, that corner of the house is looking much tidier.

The picture below is from the end of May, and all those woody stalks sticking up, with a bit of greenery at the top, are what we're told is Sumac.

Now imagine those stalks, but two or three times that diameter. And completely covered in foliage, so much so that it's hanging over the Iris', and looked like something from the back lot at Universal Studios. It's fast growing, and as invasive as a truckload of "refugees" from South of the border. Not quite as bad as Kudzu, but very annoying. I was amazed looking at the pic above at how much, and how fast, that stuff grew from what you see to what we whacked.

I may or may not have a picture of it, but it's gone now. We cut it down to 12" high stumps, and we'll hack it down some more before I bore holes into the stumps, and we pour in some Ortho Poison Ivy Killer. This is what a couple of nursery's told us to do, so we'll give it a shot.

And the Little One was here last night and today. It's amazing to watch him grow from week-to-week, and watch his skills develop. It seems he's working on language now, and he's just starting to string a couple of words together now. "WHA??" and a point went to "WHAT?" and a point to (this week) "What THAT??" and more accurate point to what he wants to see.

And while we were sitting in Grandpa's Big Chair and looking at pictures, he strung together 5 or six "words" in a perfect sentence of utter nonsense. The sounds were distinct and separate, like words in a sentence, and not only did each "word" have unique inflection and intonation, but strung together they way he did, with correct inflection and intonation as a whole, it was a perfect sentence. Sure, they weren't words in the conventional sense, but it was obvious he knew what they meant, and how to string them together to convey a more complete message.

I was floored!

Have to get a key and CPO out for him to play with soon....

OWWWW....My Achin' Head!

Got the granddaughter and her BF to DEN in really good time Tuesday night. Their flight was at 2200, which means TPTB want you there at 2000. Since it's typically about a 75 minute drive, we'd have to leave by 1845, but since rain was expected, and this would still be "Rush Hour" in Lost Angeleez, I decided we should leave NLT 1830.

Typical of this planning, we hit ZERO traffic, a few sprinkles, and dropped them off at 1940, a good 20 minutes earlier than I expected.

Sigh.....that would NEVER happen if I was taking them to LAX or ORD, where you can easily spend 30 minutes just finding a clear spot to drop your passengers off.

Same thing coming home, ZERO traffic and no rain. So we stopped for Dinner at Johnson's Corner along I-25, another place that's been here "forever", kinda like Vern's Place in Laporte.

I know, it's "just a truck stop", but having driven past it so many times, I wanted to stop. Decent food, large portions, and inexpensive compared to a lot of Road Food.

I had the meatloaf, and a large iced tea, while my wife just had Hot Cocoa and one of their "World Famous Cinnamon Rolls".

That sucker was 2/3rds the size of the dinner plate they brought it out on!

And it was "right out of the oven", and really, really, really GOOD.

Total tab was $13.12, quite reasonable for the amount and quality of the food.

Went to the Dermatologist today so I could hook up with them, and have them look at the "Actinic Keratosis" spots on my old, bald head. I've had them frozen off numerous times in the past, and did a "PhotoDynamic" treatment, but they just keep coming back. Must be global warming or fracking, or the HAARP project.

Anyway....the (very!) nice young lady Physician's Assistant checked it out, and froze a bunch of them again.

And she really clobbered a couple of spots, as it cooled off my head so much that it gave me a splitting headache, like having a 100 lb block of dry ice on my head.

So that's done for another year, and now I just wait for the spots to peel off.

And now I can get back to working on the car, setting up the basement workshop, sorting through stuff (I *still* haven't found my temperature-controlled soldering station, or my AEA PK900!), yard work, and a myriad of other things......

Relatives In Town - Light Posting Ahead For A Few Days

My wife's granddaughter and her boyfriend came in today for a few days. We haven't seen them in almost a year, and of course, Pebbles The Wonder Dog went absolutely bonkers when she saw them. They're good kids; she's 21-ish and works at Target, and he's 28-ish and is a substitute grade school teacher for LAUSD and LBUSD in SoCal. They both want to get outta the Lost Angeleez area, but aren't sure where they'd like to live.

So, another trip down to DIA or DEN, or whatever, and back. I finally have it burned into my WETROM where to park (top level) in the parking structure, and what aisles to look for (J and K are good) so I can hop out of the car, and head straight to the baggage claim area to meet my visitors. And it only took SIX freaking trips there to get it through my thick skull where to park! The only airports I knew pretty well up to now were LAX, LGB, and ORD. Now I get to add another one to the list.

And even though there weren't any accidents, the traffic was c r a w l i n g along at 0 to 25MPH for large stretches.

Amazingly, it was clear sailing through the "Crossroads" area, and the Rte 34 interchange. Just lots of people out on I-25, in no particular hurry, exercising very poor lane discipline, and slowing everybody else down.

Left at 1245 and got back at 1600, so including a 20 minute stop to pick up the passengers, I averaged something like 43MPH.

Not sure what we're going to do, but for 'young people' stuff they can hang with the son and DIL, while the wimmenfolk have some serious shopping planned.

Back in a few.....

Headlights

Fredd mentioned something about headlights the other day, so I dug out the ones I'll be replacing the sealed beams with.


These are "NEO-940" units, sometimes called "940CEH4", made by a place in India called "Neolite Products", and they produce clones (or knock-offs, if you will) of various High Performance automotive lighting items made by other companies.

Before you scream too loudly about "Counterfeit Products!!", from looking at their product line they seem to specialize in "classic" designs that are no longer produced by the original manufacturer.

They seem nicely made.

They take a standard "H-4" 50W/65W halogen bulb.

And they're functionally equivalent to the Cibie model they copied.

I'll probably go with a different bulb, since these things came with "no-name" bulbs, and the box isn't marked with country of origin. Daniel Stern Lighting has replacement bulbs that are rated "+50", "+110", etc, similar to "+P" loads in a hand gun.

The reviews on these low cost replacement are quite good. The pattern is excellent on low beam, and they really light up the road on high.

Hopefully I'll get to try them this summer!

Rain, and Other Things

Finally got some nice rain yesterday, after watching the last couple of storms slide around us.

Started as just light sprinkles, and then over the course of the next couple of hours turned into some heavy rain for about 30 minutes, and then a nice slow drizzle for a couple of hours.

So since it was raining, and the humidity shot up to >60%, I didn't want to sand down the other fog lamp reflector and expose clean, bare metal to high humidity. The other reflector is bagged up with some desiccant, so no worry there.

Last night's project was to remove the headlight washer nozzles and tubing, and to remove the last bits of the headlight "whiskers" from the car.

The "whiskers" are trim pieces that fit between the header panel and the headlight bucket, and they snap into some punched holes in the sheet metal header panel, the panel that goes between the headlights at the nose, as you can see below. The "whiskers" are soft-trim items, molded from a somewhat flexible plastic, but after 30+ years in the Kalifornia sun, they turn hard, brittle, and start to warp and curl between the attachment points. Then they crack, split, and fall apart, or shatter when you try and remove them, leaving the clips and chunks of plastic that look really bad.

This one one of them, new-in-the-bag from Toyota. 

 

And the 20mm plastic hole plugs I bought for the "rear wiper delete" also fit perfectly into the holes vacated by the washer nozzles.

While headlight washers are a nice idea, the only ones I've ever seen work really well are the ones on old Mercedes cars. Besides having a "fluidic" nozzle that sprayed an oscillation pattern of fluid on the lens, they also had a wiper blade to clean it off. Typical Mercedes Engineering, and it probably added $1000 to the price of the car. The ones on my 1969 Corvette sprayed fluid on both headlamps, but that's all it did. And I didn't think it did much to keep the headlights clean.

So, some additional work was accomplished last night, and since it's drying out now, I can get back to Other Things to work on.

MKII Supra Fog Lamp Restoration, Part III Subsection "A"

Couldn't get to the #2 donor unit until tonight due to some homeowner stuff I had to do/wanted to do.

Had some things to trim and cut back, some things to spray, and some stuff to just generally clean up.

Put an illuminated light switch on the stairway leading to "The Dungeon", aka "Radio Room and Electronics Workshop" because if there's no lights on down there after sunset....it's dark! And I could never find the light switch. Maybe I'm losing it, but it seems the light switches in most of the Colorado homes I've been in aren't where my muscle memory says they should be. They seem to be located on the other side of the stud, and I wind up slapping blank wall space and fumbling to find the switch, usually resulting in me getting my damn flashlight out to find the damn switch so I can turn on the damn lights, if you know what I mean.....

The first one had a little "ILLUMINATED" sticker on the side, the box said "Illuminated", and as soon as I flipped the breaker back on....NO illumination. It worked fine (it's a 3-way switch), but was a black hole. Swapped it out with the other one I had, and it lit up fine. Means taking another trip back to Home Depot tomorrow, but that's OK, as I forgot to stop by the CVS when I was over that way today.

Then I took down the 33' vertical, and dragged everything back in the garage. It didn't work as well as I had hoped for, and it made it a pain to mow the yard, so back to the drawing board. I have plans for a MKII version with elevated radials, and that might get finished this summer.

Then I did the Weed-N-Feed thing on the back yard, had some chow, and went out to the garage.

The reflector/lens from the #2 donor unit was a very pleasant surprise when I pulled it out of the bucket:

Wow......pretty clean considering how corroded the other one was! There's one "medium" rusted area. Looks like the flap wheel would make that vanish.

And one edge of the housing where the lens fits in is rusty, but I can't see any pitting, just light, bright orange, surface rust. The little buffer wheel will make this edge look very good.

And the other edge has no rust, like the majority of this one. The flash plating that was on it (probably zinc with a chloride/chromate dip) saved the metal from rusting.

These should clean up in an hour or so. 15 minutes with the flap wheel on the rust, and then spend 30~40 minutes going over it with the little "ScotchBrite" buffer wheel.

Stay tuned.....

MKII Supra Fog Lamp Restoration, Part II

After spending 5~6 hours cleaning the first reflector up, this is how it looks:

Quite a change from the "Before" picture:

It's not perfect, but all the heavy rust is gone, and probably 90% of the pitting. Any remaining rust will be stopped by the Metal Prep stage of the refurb. The Metal Prep solution contains Phosphoric Acid, H3PO4, which chemically converts Iron Oxide, primarily FE2O3, into Iron Phosphate, FEPO4.

Iron Phosphate is cool stuff because it won't promote the formation of further rust, and readily accepts paint, or oil. Parkerizing is a type of Iron Phosphate coating, and it's pretty durable. The Metal Prep solution also contains Zinc Phosphate, ZN3(PO4)2, (I really need to learn how to do subscripts and super scripts...) which reacts with "clean" iron to bond a light Zinc Phosphate coating on the steel.

ANYWAY......the surface is almost ready, and I'll hold off on the final cleaning of this one until the other unit is cleaned up, and then I'll hit them both with a ScotchBrite pad, clean them with the POR cleaner/degreaser, do the Metal Prep application, and then after they're dry, apply the first coat of POR.

These are the WMD's used in the process. The photo shows them in order, from most effective, to least.

On the left, the 80 grit flap wheel and sanding drum were outrageously good at blowing off all the heavy rust, once I had wire brushed all the scale and loose stuff off.

In the center are little "buffs" of synthetic stuff like ScotchBrite. They're great for getting into tight areas, as when you bear down on them, they conform to the surface enough to get into crevices. They wear out pretty quickly, but they sure work great.

And in last place......we have the rotary wire brushes. They were kinda-sorta OK for getting most of the really heavy stuff (mostly scale) off, and getting dirt and discoloration off, but a hand held wire brush was faster.

I don't think it will take nearly as long to clean the other one, as I know how to do it effectively. I spent a couple of hours just experimenting, and trying different tools, before I learned what worked well.

If I had a bead blaster, these would be a 15 minute job, and have a much more uniform surface finish. Since it's getting painted, and will be inside another assembly, surface finish can take a back seat to rust removal/rust prevention.

I'll have to see if there are any "Maker" places out here that will rent time on things like bead blasters.

MKII Supra Fog Lamp Restoration, Part I

Actually more of a quickie refurb to me, but compared to some of the "restorations" I've seen on TV, this almost qualifies for Pebble Beach.

Both of my fog lamps have broken lenses from being hit by rocks, and besides the fact that it's a 33 year old Toyota, the lenses were never a "Service Item", as they're glued into the reflector assembly with God's Own Glue, and are very difficult to separate. There were some clear, smoked, and colored replacement polycarbonate lenses available from Japan, but I think even they've dried up. And there are numerous tales-of-woe on the Supra websites about what a gigantic PITA it was to get the glass lenses out, and glue the replacements in. Horror stories of heat guns, pots of boiling water, and well insulated glues abound.

So your options are limited to living with broken fog lights, replacing them with some type of current aftermarket unit, or finding some unbroken used ones to clean them up.

I chose to go that last route, and bought some used ones from a celicasupra.com forum member. When I bought these 3-1/2 years ago, I opened the box, inspected the lenses, then sealed it up and put it OTS.

When I took them out last week, I noticed they were a bit rusty....

Since my "buckets" (the stamped steel brackets that mount the lamp assemblies and lamp adjusters to the car) were in better condition, and the reflector/lens lamp assembly was the only thing I needed, I started taking things apart.

Oh.....about that rust? Here's the reflector/lens assembly removed from the bucket.

The top side:

And the bottom, where the water collects:

The backside of the reflector/lens assembly. Top of picture is bottom of housing as-installed in the car:

OUCH! Look how much nicer the reflector/lens from my car looks:

The brown color is not rust; it's dried road dirt, and wipes right off. Too bad it's such a PITA to remove the lens from the reflector.

And my buckets are in far better condition. You can still read the OEM stamps applied by Toyota. Real Hard-Core restoration people salivate over having such "pristine" 33 year old ink stamps! Every time I've run across ink stamps, color stripes, part number tags, and writing on the backsides or insides of assemblies, I've taken a picture of it, and made notes about it. This car was 95% untouched when I bought it, so each and every one of these marks was placed there and untouched since the car was "Made In Japan" in March of 1985, making it one of the 28,475 Supras produced that year.

These are the buckets that were in the car.

And these are the buckets from the donor units.

Taking them apart involved removing the two screws that hold the bezel on, which secures the reflector/lens in place, then removing the bezel, and finagling the wiring a bit, and presto!, one disassembled 1985 MKII Supra fog light. Oh....and my retaining bezels are also in far better condition than the donor ones.

If my donor units were in as good a shape as my OEM units, I'd be done with this by now, but they're not, so how we gonna clean this mess up, huh?

With lots of Dremel attachments for one of my Dremel tools.

I'll probably go with my AC line-powered Dremel with the flexible shaft attachment, as that lets me hang the tool on the pegboard backing my workbench, and the flexible shaft is easier to control than having the whole battery-powered Dremel in your hand.

Once I have them cleaned up, I'll use this POR-15 kit to rust-proof it, and then spray it with some satin-black Rust-Oleum.

This will be the first time I've used POR-15 even though I've known about it for years. It's expensive, and requires a top coat, but people I know who've used it swear by it.

If it works acceptably well here (ease of application, good coverage) then I'll use it in the jamb area of the hatch, and the underside of the hatch on the leading edge. I'll use Toyota Paint Code 040 "Super White II" paint for the topcoat there, so what little of it that you can see will be the correct color. No, it won't be "Show Quality", but unless you take the car apart like you're watching me do, you'll never see it.

Perfection is the enemy of "Plenty Good Enough".

This car will never be a "100 point car", and I never intended to make it one. I'm trying to "preserve" the car, correct any nasty issues that are lurking in there, and spend my money wisely on the items I have to address.

Engine Compartment Cleaning

Did something today I've wanted to do since I bought the car on New Year's Eve, 2012, and that's do a "proper" Old Skool Engine Bath!

I started on this the other night by pulling off my strut tower brace. Then I figured out how to get the windshield washer reservoir out of it's bracket, which involved pulling the electrical connections for both pumps (one pump is for the headlight washers), which let me lift it out far enough to undo the hose connections.

This was quite fun because 1) it was full of washer fluid and 2) it holds a GALLON of the stuff.

It's a huge reservoir for an early 1980's car, and juggling the plastic reservoir full of fluid almost took another pair of hands. But it came out yesterday, so last night I put some cardboard under the car, and proceeded to liberally apply an entire can of "Gunk Heavy Duty Gel" engine cleaner.

This stuff is GREAT! I've been using Gunk for degreasing things since I was a kid. Lawnmowers, then go karts, then automobiles. The "Original Formula" stuff works well, but it runs off if you really spray it on. The gel hits, spreads out, and STICKS! It didn't run down the firewall or the frame rails and drip on the floor. This means it's just sitting there, slowly soaking into the grease and glop, in my case, about 12 hours worth of sitting.

Got out my "SunJoe" pressure washer, hooked it up, and experimented with the different spray heads it came with, finally deciding to use the "20 Degree" spray pattern head.

I've had this little guy for something like three years, and this is the first time I've used it.

It worked very well, except that it doesn't seem to meter anything from either of the two "soap" dispensers, so I'll have to look into that.

This is one of the areas that had grease and glop on it so thick it looked like undercoating!
You couldn't read the label on the EVAP canister, and I had thought the gold alodyne cylinder was painted black.

I made sure I cleaned out the front ahead of the radiator and A/C condenser, as that area collects a lot of bugs, leaves, and Other Road Trash.

So, she's much cleaner under the hood now. So much cleaner that now the areas I missed jump out at me. I'll do it again in the next day or two.