A new game... Post pics from your cel phone V.1.0

[Jims5543]

Maybe the 3rd time is a charm after all. After 2 disaster foster / rescue dogs it seems we finally rescued one that fits. Her name is Lucy she seems to be a terrier mutt and she is the sweetest most laid back 10 month old pup I have ever met.

Mrs.5543 received an email Friday morning about this pooch. She went and visited with her Friday afternoon, it felt right, she adopted Lucy.



It is awesome to have a pup around the house again made for a perfect holiday weekend.

She does a LOT of this. My sons Whippet rescue mutt is the same way. This one makes the Whippet mutt look hyper.

[jeff10049]

good looking mutt they're the best. Looks like the perfect size too. We have had dogs around for so long it would seem weird without one.

[MiniDave]

My nephew just moved out of his dad's house, across country from St. Louis to Bend, Oregon. He posted a pic this morning from where he's staying. He has a little money saved up, but no job or apartment yet......he'd like to get on with the forest service and live out in the boonies in a cabin far away from people.

[jeff10049]

Dave,
My business is in Bend I live in La pine (the boonies) I have some very good connections at the Forest Service and a Job is coming up NOW in their auto shop what does he do? I can put him in touch with the right department. It seems an introduction from someone you know can go a long way in these kind of jobs.
Have him swing by Bend RV Repair and ask for me I can take him over and interduce him to the head guys at the USFS or Over at the law enforcement division if that's what he does. 

Jeff

[94touring]

Here's a comparison on these shock mounts.

[MiniDave]

OK, I see the difference now - one's white and the othern's black!   ;D

[John Gervais]

Thanks -

[Jims5543]

OK, I see the difference now - one's white and the othern's black!   ;D

It also appears they flipped the mounting shaft from one side to the other.

[Jims5543]

I talked son into buying something newer and quit trying to DD a 30 year old car with 200K miles on it.

He decided on a R53, so we have both been shopping online.

Some observations:

1. Stealerships suck.

2. Some private sellers, not all but a majority, are delusional when it comes to the value of their cars they are selling KBB be damned it does not facotr in my emotional attachment.



After some follies at a stealership with a beat to shit 2002 Cooper S that was misrepresented on Autotrader and caused us to waste our time driving 80 miles to them to see a sad beat up car, with only 60K miles. I almost wondered if the odo was turned back it looked like it had over 200K miles on it.

Then we found a 2002 JCW with 80K miles and in the Autotrader pics you could see a JCW GP in the background, enthusiast!! and a realistic one at that, he was only asking $5200 for his JCW.

I looked on NAM and saw way too many 2X the value Cooopers up for sale and when the seller was real and down to earth on the price, it was across the country. I found one sweet one in Georgia but it was liquid yellow, I thought it was bad ass, my son said it sucked.

So he found a Chili Red one 80 miles south again, at a private stealership not a big one one of the small used car lot types.

This cat had no idea what he had.... and we were OK with that, poker face time.

It is a 2006 Cooper S, 80K miles as well, we are tying to stay below 100K miles.  We look it over and we started to digest what we were looking at, pop the hood, a 2006 JCW cold air intake added ($500 item) a M7 Strut Brace ($250) look in the rims, JCW big Brake kit ($2000) and JCW 18"Rims ($2000) then look in the back JCW cat back exhaust ($500) on the dash, Cooper S boost gauge and voltage meter (Pod mounts alone $100 and gauges another $200) Then back under the hood I noticed it had a M7 supercharger pulley not sure of the size yet but suspect it is a 16% pulley which costs $180 and is supposed to bump up the HP of the car nicely. Then there are the carbon fiber accents. Some in poor shape may be able to resurrect. On the rims newer Pilot Sports... and we have not even looked under to see if the suspension is worked on.

The asking price for this car was about the same as the cost for the mods on it, this was too easy.

There was one snag, the car is missing a trim piece, we would have been happy just discounting the price but he insisted on getting it back on, having the car detailed, throwing in an oil change too.

So we pick it up Saturday morning and pay the balance on the car then, we left a deposit.

Here is the car:



18" Rims with Pilot Sports on them and big brake kit:



JCW Cat back, this was a big surprise.



Dirty car but is in very good condition, excited to see it detailed. Digging the CF trim piece.



Nice interior too, like the 2 tone seats and the grey trim pieces:


Better pic of the dash, like the circle graphic on the passenger side.



Boost and volt gauge:

[94touring]

Got my housings back and the apex seals needed to put it all back together.  This little bag of metal cost $295 :-\  Before and after pic of the housings.  Normally you'd chunk them if they're looking bad but these were brought back to life at a fraction of the cost.

[Jims5543]

How did they do that?  Did they build the surface up then machine back down or just hone it down until the scores are gone?

Interesting.

Many years ago I had a family friend working for a company developing a process where they could take a worn down part, fuse material back to the part to build it back up and then machine back to specs.

Wish I could remember the name of the company.

[94touring]

Basically just hone it, but remains within tolerances. 

[jeff10049]

Cool car JIM, Watching the rotor rebuild with interest as well.
Here's a pic from my phone the other day these guys hang in a field by the house each year for about a week.

[Jims5543]

Forest Puppies!!!



After we finished the deal with the Used car guy, we leveled with him, we told him who ever owned this car added over 5K in upgrades to it. He had no idea. We pointed out the rims and brakes for starters then the intake and cat back.

As fate would have it, my son and I were able to line up first at the bottom of a 2 mile long bridge side by side at a red light both being the first cars to go. I looked over and told him, we need to know. I was in my JCW and him in his CooperS.  We rolled off and shifted to 2nd then hit it, I was able to pull about 1 maybe 2 cars on him by the top of 3rd when we shut them down. Still solid for a non JCW car that is supposed to be what? 40HP down?

Here she is all cleaned up. My son stole my car name, he named him Stimpy. (from Ren and Stimpy a cartoon he grew up with)



The cars namesake:




He loves the car, is need a couple of TLC items, I also told him to order tires, the tires on there are so old they have some dry rot cracks on them.  Otherwise,  once we bled the brakes after getting it home, it is a solid car. Much better than trying to keep a 30+ year old car as a DD. Now he can concentrate on restoring this 325is.

Had a busy day Monday, my older son and I had plans to meet at he office and set up a new cloud server and move my old server onto it. We ended up using an old network switch while ordering a newer one.  Then, once everything was set up, started populating the new server in tow phases, This left us with 3 hours to kill while data did its thing.

We scooped up the 13 y/o and took him for his first ever Gun Range experience.  He was really intimidated by the entire scene at first, then once I put a Walther P22 in his hands (he has had lots of home gun safety courses by dad already) and a quick refresh of what he already knew. I let him shoot at a fresh stick on target at 15 feet to see how he would grasp the concept.



I was really impressed with his initial grouping, having never shot before, he seemed to understand how to aim and take instruction well. You can see he is anticipating the kick too much and pushing down the right. The higher group is after I pointed it out to him.

I reached out to the range to see about lessons for him. They charge $60 an hour, I think I will get him a few hours of instruction just to make sure he does not develop any bad habits.  I barely know what I am doing. I am lucky to hit the entire target let alone the bulls eye. LOL!

Happy to report the Server is populated and up and running flawlessly. I am able to access my company server from home and pretty much anywhere I want even on my cel phone.

2017 is off to a good start.

[94touring]

Today at work had some systems failures.  Long story short worst case scenario was the gear wouldn't come down, but we ended up only blowing a tire.  Shut down half of Charlotte.  First picture is a panoramic view from my office moments after getting the thing to stop and managing to exit the runway without any nose wheel steering available.  Both anti skid systems were knocked out and most likely caused the number 4 wheel to lock up. 

[Willie_B]

Yikes. This is when all your training kicks in.

[Jims5543]

Glad to see the second tire held on.

Question time, because I find this shit fascinating, this is why you train right?

1. You could not get the gear to drop?

2. Then did but there was no steering on the front wheel?

3. While all this is going on, what do you tell the passengers? 

4. Why did the anti skid fail as well?

5. I recon you never made it to DC last night and missed the chaos.


Glad you are safe.

[94touring]

1.  A system failed that required manually dropping the gear.  There were several scenerios to the system failure depending on what happens as you go through the checklist.  The first two scenarios resulted in the gear dropping, the last scenario if it didn't drop was burning off fuel then landing on the belly in a controlled crash.  We got the gear down in the first attempt.

2.  The last part of the 1st checklist scenerio said to turn the nosewheel steering off.  We weren't sure why, but evidently that particular system knocks out tiller control and it's turned off to prevent loss of directional control on landing.  I messaged maintaince enroute asking if it was ok to turn it back on after landing and they said they didn't see why not.  But, it didn't work after landing.

3. Before hand I told them nothing.  Only because we weren't going to crash and I declared an emergency based off of the anti skid creating a longer roll out, so I wanted to pick the runway.  Plus without nosewheel steering if I didn't hit the highspeed exit (at a nice angle I can take using just rudders) I'd be stuck dead on the runway at one of the busiest airports in the world.  Basically gave tower a heads up, hey we might be fucked after landing and a huge problem for you.  The only thing I did relay to the passengers beforehand was I briefed the flight attendant that none of the cabin signs are currently working  (actually verified it first).  Part of this system failure knocked out cabin signs..so before landing had her brief them that the signs were out and remain in your seats for landing.  Gave my standard descent briefings and weather updates to the folks.  After landing and I made the highspeed things went rapidly downhill.  I came to a complete stop to cycle the tiller to rengage it to no avail.  Simultaneously tower is asking a zillion questions, I'm cycling switches, trying to figure out wth its pulling right so hard while I dance on the pedals, and wonder if it's my imagination we're listing to the right.  Then in the middle of all that about a dozen firetrucks swarmed us, so I immediately got on the pa and told the people what just happened, what's going on, everything is cool, and please don't go jumping out of any emergency doors.  Then coordinated with ground, ops, the emergency crews, my flight attendant, dispatch, maintaince, and the passengers.  Longer story short I had a bus out there and the people and their bags on it 5 minutes after our scheduled arrival time, a tug to tow this broke ass plane to the pad, and an escort from the fire department to lead the way.  Everyone made their connection.  Then I had to do a conference call with a variety of management types at the company in a debrief.  Have more paperwork to fill out today too.

4.  The outboard was suppose to fail due to us having to reconfigure hydraulics for the gear situation  (probably why the tiller was jacked up too).  But the inboard anti skid also failed after manually dropping the gear.  Either way we had to increase landing distance 75% for one or both failed and I really didn't give it much thought after plugging in the performance numbers.

5. They put me up in Charlotte and had to pay me 6 hours for it, so I made bank.

[BruceK]

Holy crap.  Just another day at the office.   Thanks for sharing what went down.   

[MPlayle]

Glad you got everyone safely down, especially yourself. 

[John Gervais]

... I hate when that happens...   :-\

Well done!   77.gif

[94touring]

Ha thanks  ;D

[Jims5543]

Damn, glad it all turned out ok. My utmost respect to you for being cool under pressure.


Took the sons to the Race of Champions in Miami yesterday.

I have never been in the Marlins stadium before, it was really nice.

Our seats were awesome too.



Sadly the place was pretty empty. I suspect this was the last time ut will be in Miami. Pretty sure they lost their asses on this.



Besides Seb being there and getting eliminated in the first or second round. Travis Pastrana made it to the semi finals.


Pascal Wehrlein managed to get a Slingshot so out of wack he hit some walls, bounced off of Massa, him some more walls and did a barrel roll into a final wall. Massa was just about the first person to reach the car, Pascal climbed right out. The paid passenger/ fan took a while to get out. I was worried they were hurt but they walked away fine too.


The view of downtown Miami was awesome from our seats.

[94touring]

Looks like a good time, too bad I couldn't make it.

[MiniGene]

Dan, great write up on your crazy day.  What a story!  Super glad it ended well for you and everybody on board.

Jim, that track looks like it is straight out of Mario Kart--haha!