border town olympics

The kids set up shop in the upstairs room,
and discovered that the antenna hooked up to the TV gets reception from Mexico.

slouch brothers

All of a sudden we were watching real time Olympics!
At first I thought it was some replays from the day before,
but than the US girls soccer team beat canada in the last minute.
GOOOAAAALLLLL!!!

perich kids

So its been really cool to have the kids watch the olympics while I'm tinkering downstairs,
especially since we don't have cable at home so it's tough to watch!

This past week they were able to see a bunch of different sports
IN REAL TIME -
water polo, tae kwon do, track and field, weightlifting, handball etc.
that would normally be hard to see on the delayed NBC coverage,
since they only cover the sports or background stories from the US perspective.

Anyway even though the screen is a little fuzzy,
I'm glad the kids have the memory of the summer olympics now,
since it will be 4 years til next time.

TP

temptation

Ken had this box stashed up on the shelf for weeks.
It is the worst form of temptation for someone like me.

rotate your stock

I'm a rattlecan addict and this paint is one of the best -
Sherwin Williams "Controls Rust".
I've tried them all.
I used to really like the Duplicolor Engine Enamel,
which is good but it gets brittle and chips easily.
Than I went to the Rustoleum Engine Paint,
mainly cause it came in these tall 16 ounce cans.
The RPU is painted with this and it's held up well.

I've yet to try the gloss version of this Controls Rust product,
but the flat paint is some bulletproof stuff,
for a rattle can anyway.

sherwin williams controls rust rattlecan

Needless to say,
I caved in.
A couple nights ago I sprayed a half-can that was lying around.
The frame looked so good I had to get a new can out,
the next thing I know there is only one can left.
Those 2 cans were enough to coat the outside surfaces,
but not inside the frame slots.

custom 1940 ford frame

I had texted Ken to warn him that I owed him some paint,
just in case he popped in and wanted to do some huffing.
He didn't seem to upset that I pilfered through his stock.

custom 1940 ford frame

The frame was unfinished with the bare spots glaring at me,
and tonight out came the last can.
It was a guilty pleasure seeing the frame coated in black,
like eating the last piece of apple pie.

creepy logo

TP

i heart vans

This weekend we made a lumber run.

perich kids

The van was already full of junk,
and somehow all this stuff still piled in.

semi-loaded ford e-350

Ford engineers made the inner dimensions perfect for a 4x8 sheet of plywood,
that is with a bench seat in the middle full of kids!

2012 ford transit

It is sad that Ford is discontinuing the big van line.
The old econolines are going to be the next collectible car!

TP

tj singletrack

Last tuesday I shot down for my weekly TJ dental road trip.
I'm really close to finishing up these visits!
Really!
The exciting part was the opening of the 905 freeway.

905 freeway

The drive to the Otay border crossing consisted of 8 miles of stop and go detour.
With no other choice it was just one of the parts of the drive.
Now I realize how much time is saved with the new 3-5 lane freeway.
At least 10 minutes was saved on the drive south.

TJ singletrack

Since the wife didn't come,
I rode the trusty mountain bike.
Strange how normal it is to ride down there now.
It's actually alot of fun to ride in the traffic,
among the slow moving cars.

On the ride back I rode on the opposite side.
One of my rides in the past was a little sketchy
cause of the big trucks and it is a mini freeway area.
There is a trail running alongside the road,
cool little sections of urban singletrack.

road to murua

If I wasn't always late,
the ride down the singletrack would be alot of fun.

cool rock wall

One of the perks about riding is really checking out the surroundings.
It's hard to see the details but this rock wall was so, well mexican.
I remember as a kid one of my uncles hired some mexican laborers to build some rock walls.
There is an art to building with random round rocks.

tj minimall

On the way up I couldn't pass up the liquor bottle pit stop.

905 freeway

Now I can say the van and I were one of the first 60,000 drivers on the new 905 freeway.
So much faster.

ron castillo rum

Yeah I now learned all rums are not created equal.
For some reason I went cheap and bought this $6 liter bottle of Castillo rum,
instead of the tried and true $13 bottle of Bacardi.
Yowza this is some nasty bottom shelf chit.
Even mixing it you can smell the hangover.
Oh well.

TP

martini chinagirl pit bike

There's a guy out there somewhere who collects some really cool photos
of usually vintage performance cars and the like.

The Chicane Photo Dump

It's a great site to check out,
few words, tons of high quality pictures.

martini porsche 918

Ok that is all well and good,
but the sidestory of the post is because of his picture of a Martini painted Porsche.

A friend who we'll call Chinagirl Mark,
the guy that has gotten head over heels in the motorized bicycle world,
dropped off a tweaker bike frame to do some welding on.
Dang it if I didn't take a picture of this POS.
It took a week to weld up a couple little holes.

He had a plan to do a pit bike version with the MARTINI logo.
I know the logo but was kinda clueless,
than the Chicane guy posted up a picture of the Porsche.

martini pit bike

He rushed the frame to a powdercoater,
and had some stickers designed to replicate the logo.
The next day Mark sent me pics of his finished pit bike.
It was a weird coincidence as I had just seen the porsche picture.

martini chinagirl pit bike

The bike sold within 24 hours at a local car and bike show in Irvine,
for a chit ton of dough!
Dutchman Motorbikes

Anyway I've got to learn a thing or two from his marketing technique.

TP

how to not bottom out

One of the things I didn't put on the list of things to do
was add a couple leaves to the front spring pack.
So let's do a "how to".

shin smackers

The front spring only had 7 leaves,
and the heavy cadillac engine was too much for the suspension.
There was less than 1/4" between the spring and the inner frame rails,
so the outer 8" of spring was taking all the flex.
The frame could have been notched,
but it was obvious the spring pack was too weak.

spring repack tool kit

The first thing to do is assemble all the tools needed.
Of course this shot was taken when I finished.

before picture

I take tons of pictures,
and you should expect I'd take a proper before and after.
Not this time.
I did take a measurement from the frame horn to the ground - 23".

stool time

Now it was gonna get greasy,
and this is my backup phone already.
Not too many pics here.

original leaf spring

I had scrounged up some remnant spring leaves,
but they were the same sizes that were on the pack.
A couple minutes with the grinder and they were the right lengths.

whittled down leaf spring

One of the most important things to do is clean up the bottom side ridge,
a little rounded so it doesn't dig into the top of the spring underneath.
Yeah no pic of that.

spring leaf assembly

Putting all the greasy leaves together is a little tricky.
A couple clamps, a hammer and a long 1/4" rod or bolt is all you need.

spring bolt

The original spring bolts are hollow and have a grease fitting.
It's a trick way to lubricate the leaves.
No luck here,
a normal hex head bolt was rounded to fit in the locator hole.

greasy spring pack

Now there is a total of 11 leaves in the spring pack.
That's about 3/4" higher just in the thickness of the new springs.
The suspension felt much stiffer but smoother,
now that the spring didn't knock on the frame.

after 

With everything buttoned up,
the new measurement from the frame horn was 25.75",
about 2.75" higher than before!
The problem was I'm not exactly sure if I counted the notches in the jack stands.
I thought it was 6.
The other thing is I didn't take a good side picture to compare the before and after.
Oh well,
it doesn't really matter.
Definitely worth the hour and a half.

TP

stubborn

What a difference a year  makes.
The "king of clubs" car show and drag races were this weekend.
You would think the old pickup Chief could make it the 30 miles.

stubborn roadster pickup

Admittedly I haven't been driving it too much lately.
My plan was to spend friday night tuning the hot rod for the drive.

When Danny, Randy and the girls dropped by late friday,
the bottle of rum appeared,
and I figured since the pickup drove around the neighborhood ok,
it would just clean itself out after a couple miles.

ron bacardi anejo

It was Danny's birthday,
so tried to get him drunk off some girlie drinks.
Amazing how buzzed you can get off of rum/oj/cranberry!
Didn't even take any pics!

barona speedway

After waking up not to bright and early,
we piled in Chief and it was obvious something was not quite right.
I spent the morning trying to figure it out the problem,
and it got better but was way to stubborn.
The whole day had passed and the kids and I took the van.

kiwi kevs trick column mount

We didn't get to see much racing,
but it was worth it seeing some old friends.
I took about 5 pictures and 2 were blurry.

race car window installation

I like looking at the little details to modify for future projects.

cool 1955 chevy pickup

Danny and Lucy had driven the newly painted "Hemi Time" down,
their 36 ford pickup.
I told him he should have painted it after we chopped it.
Oh well.

oxnard pharoahs

Here's a link to some good videos and pics of the show.
DynoDanny's Garage

So now I have a year to get one of my old cars roadworthy!

TP