Category Vehicle Maintenance

My Saturday was really busy from sunset to sundown.  After weeding before it got too hot, I headed inside to do the cleaning.  I was supposed to be picking up the dogs Saturday morning for a prolonged visit until Tuesday but Ali was delayed in her departure.  I wound up getting them early in the afternoon on my way back from stops at Home Depot and Auto Zone.

One of the items I picked up at Home Depot was a tile file.  When I installed the ceramic tile in the house a decade or so ago I had certain areas that were not as flat as they should be due to an uneven surface below it, despite my efforts to smooth it out with thin set concrete beforehand.  The end result was a few tiles that had an elevated edge/corner that I feel sometimes when walking around barefoot.  These edges also beat the hell out of the rubber portions of the Scooba when I set it loose.

For whatever reason, despite the annoyance this caused me, I never looked into how to address it, until last week.  I read about something called a tile stone that is designed to smooth sharp tile edges.  What I bought accomplished the same end result.  The file has a coarse texture on one side and finer texture on the other to finish the job.

I knocked down a couple high corners as a test.  It worked well, dulling the previously pointy reminder of my poor tile installation ability.  I plan to crawl around on my hands and knees in the near future, obliterating any and all sharp edges that remain.

I also did three different filter changes on the van Saturday afternoon, swapping out the oil, air and fuel filter.  The fuel filter swap was the most involved.  The old filter looked like it had been in place for quite awhile.  All three procedures were taped to be added to my growing collection of amateur automotive maintenance videos. 🙂

During the day Saturday I took 15 minutes out of my day to try to fly my Sky Scooter.  On my first flight the plane was up and down almost immediately when it banked hard right after my toss, crashing into the ground.

The impact broke one of the folding props.  I had another set of props inside although they were smaller and would provide less thrust.  I put them on anyway, I had nothing to lose.

I got the plane up in the air with my second launch attempt but the small prop made a big difference in power or lack there of.  Compared to what I was accustomed to with my SpeedWing, the Sky Scooter was trudging through the air.

The slower air speed also means it was more susceptible to wind, the plane was getting buffeted about quite a bit.  I had to be really on the sticks and paying attention the entire time.  I managed to get the plane down safely after a 5 or 6 minute flight.

Ali said she was ok with me borrowing her Volt while she was gone for some gas free miles.  The only thing she asked was that maybe I could clean it since it was very dirty.  I did so both inside and out.  It was indeed very, very dirty but I figure elbow grease is free, gas is not.

A spent a lot of time cooking chicken for the dogs.  Ali bought a ton of what she thought were boneless thighs to add to their meals.  Well it turns out they were the bone in variety.  I had a huge pot of boiling water filled with chicken thighs.  I then pulled them out one by one and had to dust off my old meat cutter skills to remove the meat from the bones.  It was very gross.  I can hardly believe I spent over three years of my life doing this sort of stuff day in and day out in my late teens/early 20’s.

On Saturday night I watched Wall-E for the second time, I just wanted to see it again.  It’s such a cute movie but I also am in tune with the underlying tones in the film of where mankind is headed, with everyone being a huge fat ass that is carted around 24/7 on flying chairs.  All these people do is consume, consume, consume and nothing else.  Many people today are practically there already, just slap some rockets on their recliner.

On Sunday morning Cindy did another training brick with me.  I suggested we abandon the bike portion this week and instead do a longer run like the 10K square, using the water park as a starting point.  I figured we could then follow it up with a swim.  Well since the water park doesn’t open until 10Am I figured it made sense to start the run a little before 9, assuming a 10K will take somewhere around an hour.

Well my logic had a flaw.  It didn’t take into consideration it was August in SW Florida.  There is a reason that many runners start their runs very early (6AM) in these parts, especially in the 6 month long summers, it gets very hot, very early.

I was ok for maybe the first 2 miles of the run, after that the heat and humidity really started to bother me.  I just felt like shit.  Despite not running very fast (an average 9:44 pace), my body just wanted me to stop.  To be honest, if I was running by myself I can pretty much guarantee I would have stopped either at the 3.75 mile mark at the corner of Oakes and Vanderbilt or at the corner of Vanderbilt and Livingston.  I just wanted the misery to end.

My ego and desire to not look like a pussy, prevailed, dragging me to the finish line.  The funny thing is Cindy said she felt awful as well but didn’t want to say anything because she didn’t want to seem wimpy.

I was totally exhausted as I sat down on a curb to try to catch my breath.  Running in the heat was bad enough but add into that we didn’t have any water stops along the way, adding to the fail in my logic. After a long break I finally got myself into the pool for three 400 yard sets.  My first 400 was really slow, about 9:30.  Surprisingly my final two 400’s actually got faster, 9:00 and then 8:15.  I guess I got a second wind.

I was so damn tired after it was all said and done.  I was sure at some point I would need to collapse for a nap but that opportunity never presented itself.

I got back outside to try to fly the Sky Scooter some more on Sunday afternoon.  After a non-damaging failed launch attempt I got the plane back up in the air on the second try although I barely avoided smashing into the fence on take off.  That flight went slow but smooth.  I landed the plane safely.

I had one of my two new battery packs out there with me as well.  I wasn’t quite sure if I had a full charge in the pack but I figured I would slap it in the plane and give it a try.  The new pack had significantly more punch than the 4 year old batteries I used on the first flight.  The Sky Scooter climbed steadily, much higher than I had it the first time around.

I was doing big loops around the back yard however after only a couple minutes I noticed a large drop in altitude like the battery pack was dying.  The plane at this point was out far beyond the rear fence line, I tried to get it back but it just kept going down.  I knew I was in trouble so just as it disappeared behind a large pine tree I killed the throttle and pulled full up on the elevator control, hoping to minimize damage.

I never saw the plane actually hit the ground, I just knew the general direction I last saw it, somewhere behind the pine tree.  As I walked out behind my property I saw the two fill pits in the vicinity, both filled to the brim with rain water.  I knew with my luck, the plane was probably in the middle of one of them.  I did a quick survey of both bodies of water and didn’t see my aircraft.

I kept looking around, figuring the blue fuselage should stick out like a sore thumb.  I also would stop and try to fire off the motor and rudder servos, hoping for an audible clue to the planes location.  I had no luck.  After I was out there for maybe 10 minutes wandering around, Cindy came out to help me with the search.

I was dumbfounded, how could we not see the damn plane!?  I canvassed certain areas 2,3,4 times, figuring I just had to be not seeing it.  At around the half hour mark of searching I was just about ready to give up and write off the Sky Scooter as lost in action.  I decided to do one more loop, farther out than I thought the plane could have been.

Finally I spot the scooter sitting in a ditch, a good 150 yards beyond my rear fence line.  The tail of the plane was broken but it was otherwise intact.  The battery was ejected on impact and was laying a few feet away from the plane.  I trudged back towards the house and yelled over to Cindy that the I found the Scooter.

I didn’t really care the tail was broken on the plane, I could get another if I want to.  I was more interested in recovering the plane for the various expensive electronics that are in it.  However repairing the Scooter will be a low priority since I have my TuffWing to build and my Blade MQX quad copter is supposed to show up today.

On Sunday night I saw the new Red Dawn.  It was pretty dumb but mildly entertaining.  For some reason the original Red Dawn with Patrick Swayze seemed much more believable than what was portrayed this time around. I’d give it a B.

Nicki once again has been concerning me with her eating or lack there of.  The last time I had them out at the house she was all on board with her new mostly chicken thigh diet.  She was chomping at the bit for me to put down her food and she was eating every last bite.

Saturday night she just picked the chicken out of her dinner, leaving all of the dog food untouched.  Then Sunday morning she ate nothing of her breakfast, despite it being loaded down with the chicken I just cooked the night before.  She has skipped meals before but I really started getting concerned when she didn’t even eat the treats I offered to her, something she normally never turns down.

Last night for dinner she ate a portion of her dinner but left at least half of it.  This morning she once again ignored breakfast until it was sat on the carpet next to her where she was laying down.  She then at least ate all of the chicken but once again would not touch the rest of the dog food.

I think her rear legs/knees are really bothering her, more so now that the baby aspirin was stopped after another vet visit last week.  When she is standing by her food platform I can see her back legs sliding on the tile, which she must find annoying/painful.  I am going to try putting one of the kitchen rugs in front of her food stand to give her better traction when eating.  If that doesn’t work I may be just feeding her from the sitting/laying position.

I hate seeing her struggle like this.

So on my way to work yesterday I stopped and got a battery for the SSR, with plans to install it after work last night.  All day I felt slightly bothered by the idea of the truck sitting out in the driveway, naked and disabled.

Of course about 10 minutes before I headed outside to perform the battery install it started to rain.  I didn’t care since I was going to be working under the truck, so what if my lower body gets soaked.

Replacing the battery was challenging because of the limited working space.  Once I got the battery in the lowered support tray I had to awkwardly try to push the tray up and then backward to it’s locking position.  Doing this with the weight of the battery on top of my hand was a struggle.  After a few failed attempts I was able to wedge my forearm/hand between the ground and the battery tray to fashion a human jack stand while I wiggled the tray into position with the other hand.

I bolted on the battery cables and figured I should hop in the truck to make sure I had solved my no-start problem.  The truck fired right up although the engine sounded abnormally noisy so I turned it off immediately.  My theory was being parked on the incline of the driveway for the last 24 hours allowed all of the oil to drain towards the back of the engine/oil pan.

Once I buttoned up the rest of the battery box I drifted the truck down to the flat portion of the driveway before starting it again.  It sounded normal this time and I quickly pulled the truck back into the garage as the rain was picking up intensity.  I was relieved that the problem appears to only have been the battery.  The battery I pulled was an AC Delco brand, a good one with a 7 year warranty.  Unfortunately I have no way of knowing if it was the battery that came with the truck in 2005, which would be pretty amazing.

On the way home last night I stopped by the running store to pick up a computer, normally an odd place to pick up such a thing.  Awhile back I had set this computer up for the store to use to sign up people for races. It didn’t get enough use to merit the space it took up on the counter so it was just sitting disconnected in a back room.  My plan was to put it back to use as a replacement for mom’s aging laptop.

This system, although a few years old has much better hardware specs than mom’s laptop with 4 times the memory and a faster processor. It also has Windows 7 on it which will be a nice face lift from XP for mom. To really speed it up I bought a small SSD drive to install in the desktop as well which should show up tomorrow.

I set the system up on the kitchen island to work on it.  For network access I strung a long ethernet cable up over the pot rack and kitchen cabinets to the cat 5 jack by the telephone.  It looked pretty bad but it worked well.

Since the computer had been turned off for a long time there were literally 200+ updates that needed to be applied.  I let the system up and running all night letting it update itself.  Once I get the SSD drive installed I will set it up for mom, I think she will like it.

Today is my last day with the dogs as Ali returns from her latest trip this evening.  Nicki has eaten like a champ the entire time she has been with me.  Her overall state of being has seemed better too, surely because she is eating better.  She was wrestling with Sadie, as well as she can wrestle anymore, and has generally had a dog smile on her face the entire time.  It’s a nice change from the mostly mopey demeanor she was sporting during other recent visits.

I need to lose weight.  Last night before my shower the scale clicked in at 183 pounds.  Although I certainly don’t have love handles, I can feel the extra weight on me during my various body weight exercises.  There was a period of time, probably damn close to two years where my weight was hanging in the low 170’s.  Although I looked rather gaunt at times, I also felt more efficient both at endurance and body weight training.  Less weight also was a good thing for my troublesome, twice operated on knees.

Now some people would suggest the added body weight is from added muscle, particularly lower body muscle from my increased dedication to exercises such as squats and dead lifts.  To a degree that could be true, but I always find myself assuming any higher numbers on the scale are pure fat.

My diet definitely has been less strict than my 170 pound days where many of my dinners were just veggie wraps and juice.  My amount of endurance training is a few clicks down as well which doesn’t help matters.

So anyway the plan is to enlist more dietary discipline while trying to turn my exercise intensity dial up a click or two.  If I am not careful I could find myself back in my rather defintion-less, 195 pound shape I was sporting 6 or 7 years ago.

I think losing 6 or 7 pounds would put me at a sweet spot.

So Saturday morning I skipped the club run.  I didn’t feel like getting up early and both of my knees felt varying degrees of ouch.  I also had a very sore lower back from my 110 back extensions the day before.  Instead I directed my energy towards chores, lot and lots of chores.

I did just a ridiculous amount of things.  For fun I wrote down everything I did, it added up to close to 20 different to do’s.  Most of my effort was outside.  I decided to address a lot of pruning and trimming that needed to be done on various trees and bushes.  We are in the absolute epicenter of horribly humid and hot Florida summertime weather.    I literally felt like I was melting as I toiled in the yard.

The amazing thing is with all of that work, I still felt like I had left stuff on the plate yet to do.  I found all of this work despite having mowed the entire property during the week, which was a good thing since standing water has returned in force thanks to multiple deluges the past few days.

I originally had hopes of spending some f around time on Saturday playing video games or trying to fly my wing but there was just no spare time to be found before heading out to the movies.

We saw the new Wolverine movie.  Despite it being opening weekend, Coconut Pointe once again delivered a sparsely populated theater, even with us walking in right at the 7:30 showtime.  It was the 3D version but to be honest I am having a hard time remembering exactly what was 3D about it.  Perhaps I am just so accustomed to 3D now that my brain hardly even recognizes the difference.

I liked the movie,  I thought it was very solid from start to finish.  Hugh Jackman is REALLY jacked nowadays, he is built like an NFL linebacker.  There were two little odd things I noticed in this Marvel film.  If Stan Lee was in there for his customary little cameo, I totally missed it.  I don’t recall seeing him at all.  Marvel films also are known for putting a little bonus scene at the VERY end of the credits that reveals what is coming next.   There was a short scene about a minute after the movie ended but we stuck it out another 10 minutes till the actual end of the credits.  There was nothing there, damn it.    Anyway, it gets a solid A from me.  The little bonus footage made me anxious to see the next film, it looks like the X-men are reassembling.   🙂

On Sunday my knees still did not feel great so instead of a brick I wimped out and did just a single exercise, swimming.  I figured since I was only swimming I should go longer than I normally do, both in my segments and overall distance.  The water in the lap pool area was really warm, if I were to guess it was easily in the upper 80’s.   Warm water is nice to soak your feet in, it is pretty lousy to try to swim distance in.  I felt like I was lapping in a bath tub.

Despite the warm water I was strangely faster than normal in the pool, averaging a minute per 50 yards, completing each 500 yard segment in right around 10 minutes.   I did a total of 4 segments totaling up to 2000 yards in the water.  I wasn’t quite sure why I was faster, I guessed it might simply be because I did not pre-fatigue myself with running or biking beforehand.

Even with just doing the swimming, I emerged from the pool thoroughly spent.  The faster pace and warm water did a number on me.

Once again Cindy had a run in with a clueless individual.  This time some guy decided he would exit the diving pool area by flailing across the lane Cindy was swimming in, once again causing a near collision.  Cindy stopped abruptly and asked him what he was doing.  His explanation was he thought he could beat her across the lane before she got there.  Unfortunately this behavior is a by product of trying to swim laps at a public pool, the dumb asses are on a very loose and long chain.

The dogs seemed to be having a good weekend with me, despite the property being overrun with mosquitoes which made an outdoor excursion a swat fest.  They both got baths and Nicki has been eating her revamped meals quite eagerly.  The addition of boneless chicken thighs seems to be the trick.

Sunday morning I spent some time remote controlled into mom’s laptop.  She had been complaining of overall poor performance for awhile.  I have done various tweaks over the years trying to extend the usefulness of the 7 or 8 year old laptop but I think we have reached the end of the road.  Today’s internet assumes you are running hardware with a big blob of memory and a fast processor.  512 MB just isn’t going to cut it anymore.

I have a spare PC that I may be able to add enough memory to that I am thinking about giving mom.  If for some reason it doesn’t work out I will just buy mom a new or lightly used pc to replace the old laptop.

Sunday afternoon I still found myself with stuff to do, part of which was replacing the door speakers in Cindy’s Miata to accompany the new headrest speakers that were installed the weekend prior.   I had to do some creative engineering to get them mounted in a way that was more secure than the horribly low effort way the old shitty speakers were thrown in there.  I would really like to meet whichever prior owner that did some of the “upgrades” on the car.  I have a feeling he has a large stockpile of duct tape somewhere.

Sunday evening a good friend of Cindy’s came out to the house to hang out and watch movies with us.  He happens to have Corvette, a less than a year old beast.  I saw an interesting photo op with a real Corvette behind my SSR that sports a 2005 Corvette LS2 motor in it.

I use my Xbox 360 as a dvd player.  A couple weeks ago I made the mistake of agreeing to participate in a beta program with my living room 360.  Basically they are testing new versions of their operating system, presumably as part of the roll out of the new Xbox One this holiday season.

Well as a result I am getting tons of these huge, slow to download updates every time I turn the damn thing on.  Before we could watch a movie last night I had to sit through yet another at least 15 minute download/update.  It’s very annoying.

We watched Idiocracy (again).  I made sure to  have 3 BLP’s in me before watching.  Despite this being my third time watching the movie I still laughed at it, a lot.  We followed it up with The Campaign, yet another Will Ferrel comedy.

A lot of Will’s recent films have been a mild disappointment to me with most of the funny moments shown in the previews with precious little else to make me laugh beyond that.  Well I found The Campaign very funny, possibly assisted by my mild drunkenness. Perhaps it was also the direct smacks in the face of the likes of George W Bush or the slimy Koch brothers. Regardless, I laughed out loud, a lot. I would give it an A-.

So when Alfred left I hopped in the SSR to pull it back in the garage.  It had been sitting in the driveway since I pulled it out to work on the Miata.  As soon as I slid in the seat I knew something was fishy, no interior lights popped on with the door being open.  When I inserted the key my suspicions were confirmed, it was dead as a doornail.  WTF.  How could the truck go from starting a few hours ago to COMPLETELY dead.  Perhaps something was ajar or the ignition switch wasn’t completely off, allowing the radio to still be on?

Well whatever the reason I wanted to get the SSR back in the garage.  The solution seemed simple, jump it.  I pulled the Tacoma next to the SSR and grabbed my jumper cables.  The SSR is a bit of an oddball when it comes to the battery, it is located under the truck, in the rear in a box.  However they try to make jumping the vehicle less of a pain by having remote jump start terminals in the engine bay.

So as I was working in the open air I was getting absolutely mauled by hungry mosquitoes, freshly hatched in the once again abundant standing water.  When I slid back in the SSR to try to start it, the blood suckers followed me, it was pretty maddening.

I was baffled when the interior of the truck still seemed totally dead except a very faint glowing of the check engine light.  I got back out and reattached the cables, this time I got a spark and some life from the interior.  I tried starting it but only got a partial turn followed by clicking.  I told Cindy to bring the RPM’s up on the Tacoma to try to increase the amperage from it’s alternator.  Still, I got a couple turns but not enough for the truck to start.  DAMN IT!

So my next plan of attack was to try to jump directly on the SSR battery.  I crawled under the truck with my stick light and removed the side panel which gave me access to the terminals.  I was getting bit non-stop by mosquitoes but at this point my frustration was masking the repeated pin pricks.

I exposed the battery terminals, reconnected the jumper cables and had the same level of success as under the hood, half turns followed by clicking.  ARGH.  For whatever reason I was not getting a solid enough connection with the cables to support the amp draw to start the SSR , mother f….

Ok well maybe I can at least get my beloved truck in the garage, out of harms way.  It was on the incline part of the driveway leading up to the garage.  For some reason I thought that possibly I would be able to push the 5000 pound vehicle up the hill and into the garage.  That was an epic fail of course, as soon as Cindy released the brake it started rolling backwards, despite my efforts to move it the other direction.

Ok I was officially out of options.  I once again returned under the back of the truck and dropped the battery box as I was getting riddled by mosquito bites, pulling the battery out so I could get a new one today.  I am crossing my fingers it is JUST the battery.  Despite having a number of batteries goes from good to dead since moving to Florida, the symptoms I saw with the SSR make me think something else could be in the mix.  I’ll find out tonight after work.

Yesterday we had another dry day.  I took advantage of it and mowed down the area I skipped the night before.  There was still water on the ground in spots but it’s level was low enough that I could go over it without throwing H2O.  When the huge backyard area is given a complete hair cut it just makes me feel good, not sure why.

After finishing up the mowing I jumped right into yet another automotive maintenance project, this time replacing the O2 sensor in Cindy’s Miata.  The car has had a check engine light since she bought it.  I jumpered the diagnostic terminal on it and got back a 15 code which means the car computer is not getting a reading from the O2 sensor which is on the exhaust header, before the catalytic convertor.  The fix is supposed to be simply replace the sensor.

I have never replaced an oxygen sensor on a vehicle but I have heard horror stories about it.  These stories typically revolve around the old sensor being practically welded in place due to being subjected to extremely high exhaust temperatures day in and day out.  I read various tricks to assist in breaking loose the sensor without breaking it.  If you strip the head you now have a much larger headache, trying to get the remains of the sensor out of the exhaust header.

I figured I would stack the deck in my favor by having the proper tools in hand.  I bought a big 22mm wrench and special socket, specifically designed for O2 sensors.  It has a slot in it that allows you to slide past the connector wire and still get onto the fitting.

Another trick I read was removing the sensor while the engine is hot, the heat makes it easier to break the adhesions.  Of course in order to do this safely I put on my heavy duty Dewalt work gloves.  Trying to get the sensor out of a hot motor with bare hands would be a surefire way to get a lot of severe burns.

So I put my special socket on the old sensor and attached my 18 inch breaker bar to it.  I expected massive amounts of torque were going to be required to break the sensor free.  Imagine my surprise when with hardly any effort the old sensor spun free, I didn’t have to yank at all.  That clued me in that there was no way this was the original O2 sensor and also whomever put this one in did not torque it very hard at all.

So I backed out the old sensor and looked at it.  It didn’t appear to all that old but I had no way of knowing exactly how long it had been in there.  Before installing the new sensor I applied some of the included anti-seize stuff to the threads, being careful not to get any on the part of the detector that extends into the exhaust.  I turned the new sensor in, reconnected the wire and that was that.

After disconnecting the battery for a couple minutes to clear stored CEL codes I took the car out for a test drive.  Cindy said typically the light comes on after 3-4 minutes of driving.  The car felt peppier than I remembered as I cruised east on Immokalee Road.  I was 85% sure the problem was fixed.

Then, about 5 miles into the test drive the check engine light flashed back on, son of a bitch! I turned around and headed back to the house, dejected that my diagnostic procedures failed me.  I will be digging further into other possible causes for the error although a quick check didn’t reveal much short of a broken wire.  Automotive repairs offer varying amounts of satisfaction and frustration.  All I hope for is to keep the scales slightly tipped to the good side.

Alison is out of town again this weekend meaning I am back on dog duty.  I am picking them up tonight.  I am using the same strategy as the week before, my neighbor is going to help me out by letting out the girls during weekdays.  It’s such a big help but I feel badly for asking her for a hand again after only a week or so.

So I got lucky and have had a day and a half with no rain, enough time to let the standing water recede back into the ground.  I didn’t want to waste the opportunity so after feeding the dogs I immediately headed out to hop on the tractor.  Even with my recent sharpening of the blades, the cut isn’t that great, especially on the sections that are extra shaggy, requiring a second pass at times.

I had the dogs out with me when I started the mowing but I left the screen door open in case they wanted to go back inside.  I was surprised that they both almost immediately went inside instead of hanging out in the yard.  However as soon as the dogs heard the tractor shut off when I parked it, they both came back out.  I guess the yard just isn’t as much fun unless I am out there with them.

I still had ample sunlight so I thought I would make my Wednesday evening ultra-productive by replacing the washer nozzles on the Tacoma.  I bought generic but highly rated replacements off Amazon.  The new nozzles utilize a wide fan spray pattern instead of the two stream nozzles that never worked all that well, that came with the truck.

Replacing the nozzles was easy and straightforward, but imagine my frustration when I tested the new nozzles and still had shitty flow out of the driver side.  I decided there had to be some sort of blockage in the piece of tube that ran from the junction at the passenger side nozzle to the driver side.   I had some spare washer line so I threw that in there.

I hopped back in the truck and fired off the washers, BINGO, I had a nice strong spray on both sides.  Since the washers on the truck never worked great, the minor $11 repair felt like it had major rewards.  Sometimes it’s the simple things…

Of course I recorded the job for my growing library of automotive maintenance videos.

This week has not been much fun.  I have a project at work that has not been going all that well.  Yesterday I did a preliminary demo of the product to my boss and others in the department and it was a mess.  I don’t like when something I am involved with starts to come loose at the ends.  I need to really focus on the project to get things back in line.  The problem in this particular case is it is something that requires the efforts of others as well, perhaps the reason I often prefer to just work alone.

I just sort of feel like I have too many rods in the fire currently and I can’t rotate through them quick enough to keep from getting burned.

On my way home last night I picked up a cheap used leather ottoman via Craigslist.  One of Nicki’s favorite spots to lounge around on is a leather ottoman that Ali took with her.  It’s low enough that Nicki can still climb up on it. She seems to enjoy laying in elevated comfort.  I thought it would be cool if I could once again have something like that at the house for her.

The ottoman I got is old and blue.  It feels sort of like leather but it might be the fake stuff, not that it matters.  I found it ironic that the girl I bought it from said she was an interior designer yet the house she was living in, at least from the outside was not very stylish, complete with Xmas lights still adorning the roof line of the garage and gaudy knick knacks lining the sidewalk..

The ottoman is an inch or two higher than what Ali has but the cushioned part compresses down quite a bit so I hope Nicki can manage.  It also is not as big as the one at the apartment but I think it should be just big enough to let her snooze in comfort.

I have the dogs for a few days early next week so I am hoping the ottoman gets a good field test.  Even if Nicki doesn’t like it I know Sadie will have no issue utilizing it.

I finally finished the Walking Dead game on the 360.  Wow what an epic and different gaming experience. It really felt like I was inside of the Walking Dead tv show.  I don’t think it is a spoiler to say almost everyone winds up dead in the game, after all it is the zombie apocalypse.

I went ahead and spent 5 bucks for the sequel, 400 Days, which I expect to be equally fun.

Last night I did my first Mazda auto repair video, replacing the driver side window regulator in Cindy’s Miata.  I had already been in and out of the door a number of times so I didn’t have much issue replacing the regulator.  I was in and out in less than an hour.

Next up is the Tacoma washer reservoir replacement.

So as I documented my Tacoma tire rotation my internal wheels were already spinning regarding other possible causes for the front end vibration that really hits at highway speeds.  As I described yesterday, the vibration problem existed even before the $1600 of repair expenses and I attributed it solely to old shitty tires.

Well I did a few searches yesterday and found several Tacoma owners complaining of identical behavior, vibration kicking in around 60-70 mph.    In all of these cases the eventual fix was replacing worn out front struts.

Well that certainly seemed like a logical cause since the problem has persisted through the tire change and the truck still has the original shocks/struts on all four corners.  I immediately started checking out some how to videos.  Doing the rear shocks seemed pretty straight forward.  The front struts had complications.

The complication is a strut has a coil spring surrounding it.  This spring is compressed and under very high tension.  In order to separate a strut from the spring requires you to compress the spring further to release tension on the strut.  A garage typically has a piece of equipment specifically designed to do this.  A home mechanic has the option to use another method where you basically attach rods with fingers to either side of the spring and crank them down evenly to compress the spring.

Well every video I watched stressed the potential danger with this process.  If for some reason the spring would pop loose it would release a tremendous amount of force.  Depending on what was in it’s way when it popped, there was a possibility for severe injury.  Despite this warning I watched a couple videos that showed this manual compression method and I was confident I could pull it off without maiming myself.

However once I started researching buying replacement struts I saw there was another option available to me, you can buy the front struts already mounted on a new set of springs.  Sure it costs more than a bare strut but not painfully so.  To me, the time and aggravation savings was worth it.  Plus the springs on the truck are 14 years old, getting new springs along with the struts seems like a wise move anyway.

Replacing the pre-assembled struts/springs should be as easy as 5 bolts.  The most challenging thing might just be breaking the old bolts/nuts free.  I bought my replacement set on Amazon (free Prime shipping) and they should show up tomorrow.  Right now my plan is to get out in the garage early on Friday morning to do the work before I push north to Orlando for a long weekend.  I will replace the rear shocks as well before the month is over I’m sure.

I had the dogs sleep over last night.  Nicki has been not eating well the past week or so, at least when she is with me.  I had them for most of the weekend. Nicki was spotty with her eating then and then last night she only ate a portion of supper.  This morning she wouldn’t even touch breakfast.

Ali said she has been eating fine for her so maybe Nicki is just in mopey mode and missing Ali.  I hope that is all it is.

So I decided last night I wanted to get the Tacoma tire rotation that I had hoped to do over the weekend done, I hate leaving loose ends from the weekend dangling.  I decided I would make this a combination workout challenge and automotive maintenance hybrid video.  The goal was to rotate the tires using hand tools in less than 30 minutes.  Of course any challenge needs to be on video, else it didn’t really happen.

My hope in swapping the tires is to nail down the source of vibration I feel in the truck at higher speeds.  If the vibration is lesser after the swap I would assume the problem is wheel related, perhaps Tuffy did a shitty job balancing the new tires.  If the vibration is the same after rotation there is something else going on that I am more than likely just going to ignore.  I have no interest in spending any more money on Tacoma repairs in the near future.

Once I started loosening the lug nuts I immediately noticed that they didn’t seem they were on very tight at all.  They broke loose with my lug wrench much easier than I am accustomed to.  I would assume that the air wrench a garage uses to put the lugs back on would snug them up tighter.

The other thing I noticed was the lead weights that were used to balance the wheels looked all beat up and rusted.  The garage either reused my old weights or threw some used ones on they had laying around.  It’s a minor thing but it sort of bugged me that the $834 I paid Tuffy for tires did not include new lead wheel weights.

Swapping the tires went fine although there was a minor incident towards the end of the process.  I had the entire back end of the truck up in the air, supported with my smaller 2 1/2 ton floor jack.  I was using my heavy duty/taller 5 ton jack to jack the front end.  When I was dropping the jack from the driver side front position I twisted the handle a little too quickly, causing the truck to drop rapidly.  The rapid descent caused just enough sideways momentum to make the jack under the differential in the back to tip over and crash down.

Both of the back wheels were on the truck when it fell and I also had a jack stand under the driver side so it was fine.  Still, it was a bit unsettling to have the back of the truck come crashing down.

I missed my goal of 30 minutes for the entire job, instead clocking in at just over 37 minutes.  I was a sweaty mess by the end of it.

If you want to see the 16 minute video with lots of sped up footage look below.

If you just want to see the truck falling off the jack look here.

On the drive into work I didn’t go much over 50 so I couldn’t really tell if things feel much different or not.  I am wondering if the problem could be shock/strut related as well since the originals from the factory are still on the truck.  I smell another project in my future… (I’m already watching how to videos)

I watched the Game of Thrones finale last night.  Of course it couldn’t measure up to the incredible previous episode.  Instead the finale basically got you all primed and ready for season 4 which will be uncomfortably far away.

I didn’t really talk about Ali and I filing our divorce agreement on Wednesday,  it was emotional as I expected it to be.  One thing I did not expect was to get annoyed at the process of filing the papers.

When we walked up to the window and told the clerk we wanted to do she immediately started shoving a FAQ paper at us and telling us how she was unable to give us any legal advice.  Evidently she thought we were asking how to file the paperwork.  We slowed her down and told her we had the paperwork in hand and just needed her to process it.

So after a very slow process, made slower by some computer issue the woman was having, she hands us the paperwork which included a final court date in mid-July, a day that Ali is going to be out of town of course.  We told her that date was going to be no good.  The clerk said the only way to change it was to write a letter to the judge to request a date change. WTF??? Several parts of this made no sense to me.

First, when she was processing the paperwork, what would be so difficult to throw out a tentative date to us, asking if it works for us?  Second when we indicated that the date was a problem, why can’t the clerk simply immediately hop right back into the system and change to another date?  It seemed totally stupid.

So the next day we got it rescheduled, however waiting 24 hours translated into a new court date 3 weeks later than the original, I don’t get it.  At this point we just want to get this over with.  That point now will not arrive until summer is firmly on the downside in mid-August.

The hobby room painting is done but the room reassembly that is going to include some major sorting, throwing out and reorganization still needs to be completed.  That process will take up a decent chunk of my weekend.

All week in Naples it has been raining thanks to the tropical storm that is now moving up the coast.  Alison was supposed to be heading to PA this weekend but cancelled because of the shitty weather.  As a result my dog sitting weekend has been cancelled as well, a bit of a bummer.

I am annoyed that I am still feeling wheel vibration in the Tacoma, especially at highway speeds.  I assumed the vibration I have experienced for quite a while was due to the old worn out tires.  Now I’m not sure.

The easy thing is to guess that the new wheels are not balanced properly but I sort of doubt that is the case.  To test the theory I may do a diagonal tire rotation on the wheels/tires to see if the vibration feels any different after changing tire positions.  If it does, the truck will go back to Tuffy to check balance. If that comes up clean, there are more problems lurking in the suspension.

This weekend has a loose framework in place.  I will tighten it up as it comes.

So yesterday the new garage looked at the Tacoma and confirmed what I already indicated, the driver side rear wheel bearing was bad.  They recommended replacing the bearings on both sides because of the age of the truck just as Tuffy did.  The dollar number was actually a few dollars MORE than what Tuffy quoted.  Well the truck is there already, I told them to just do it. The guys I dealt with at least were much more customer friendly.

I picked up the truck last night and the wheel bearing noise is gone, but the noise was gone before I spent one dollar on the tire replacement task.  That is the bitter irony of all of this expenditure.  Even $1600+ later the truck now doesn’t feel significantly different than before I dropped a dime, despite 4 new tires, a new tie rod and 2 wheel bearings.  It still will vibrate around 70 mph and the steering wheel is now slightly off center. Yea the new tires look better than the 5 or 6 year old Firestone’s but the bang for the buck equation is woefully in the red.

Spending that much money repairing a truck that might be worth $4-5k tops is a frustrating reality.

My robotoaster showed up yesterday.  I wasted little time unboxing it and plugging it in.  Working the toaster was very easy.  Select the toasting level from 1-7 and hit the TOAST button.  The bread is slowly lowered into the body of the toaster and then guards pop in from either side to keep it centered.

Once the toast is in position there is a bar graph on the front display that graphically shows how much time is left before the toast is done.  When finished the bread is lifted out of the toaster and an “all done” noise is sounded, cool!

I ran the toaster through a number of cycles to play with it.  I shot a quick video of one of the cycles. 

I was going to simply discard the crude Toastmaster that has adorned the house for a dozen years.  However Ali reminded me that we got that toaster at a second hand store when we moved here.  For whatever reason that instilled a sentimental value into the old thing that makes me pause to toss it.  If anyone needs an old reliable toaster let me know.

This weekend I have no huge plans although I will be heading to a local triathlon to both cheer on my various friends that are participating and to help Bill with setting up and tearing down equipment that the running club is loaning the event for the race.

My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is yanking the Start Menu out from under me.  Thankfully, there’s an app for that…