I've been in Moab Utah for the last two weeks and although Jeep week is over I am just getting settled in and rented a Jeep for 24 hours from a local outfit Barlow Adventures. This was my first opportunity to get off the paved paths. I'm not the biggest fan of heights so I skipped the Shaffer Trail. My wife, brother in law and spouse tackled that while I played with dog at our rental. They had a great 2-ish hours and I met up with them afterward near Dead Horse Point. We then did some more trails further away from the canyon walls. Lots of fun (one of them you cross a small creek multiple times). I feel bad because our 2021 Rubicon Wrangler with modest 2" lift and 35" tires was awesome and so much fun.

It made me think of how 99% of Wrangler owners never use them off road, a place they were so clearly meant to be. I mean on road it was better than I expected, even with the large tires aired down to 28. So imagine taking the plunge on a Wrangler, with admittedly some concessions to on road mannerisms, and not taking it off road. Either by choice, or because the local geography isn't conducive to off road driving.

Yesterday we rented Can-AM Maverick X3 RC UTVs and took on Finns and Things and Hells Revenge which are in a local state park. I'll post on that in a couple days but suffice it to say, WOW, those things are super capable. We did what I would have thought were impossible accents and terrain with relative ease. Even crazier, those same lightly modified (sometimes even stock tires) Jeeps were crawling up and down those same trails. The amount capability in Jeeps and similar off-road capable vehicles and not using it is like having a supercar and always keeping it under 50.

I guess those who use them in snowy climates get some use of that capability but even a foot of snow pales in comparison to the vast expanse available to those who really get to use it out in the wild.!! (/assets/uploads/files/1650640742679-img_20220422_091408-resized.jpg) image url) ![IMG_20220422_091414.jpg]

Apple

I went to Advance Auto Parts to pick up a fan belt for the Volvo and heater hose. On my way in I walked past an Acura MDX. As I was being helped with the fan belt the MDX owner walked in and asked the counter person for oil.

The counter person asked for year, make, model. MDX owner replied that she had a 2019 Acura MDX. I started thinking no way a 2019 MDX ate enough oil between service. Counter person asked how much oil she needed, a quart or . . .. Owner responded " I don't know it is down to 20%". I had to chime in to let he know that the message was most likely Acura's maintenance minder and that oil life is down to 20% and needed an oil change when it gets to10-15%.

Now I know how engines can get overfilled. I also learned that getting hose is really difficult. Managed to get 5/16 fuel injection hose for my heater overflow tube. I will switch it out for the real heater stuff at some point in the future.

Saw this in Oregon. Appeared to be very rust free and it was the most perfect shade of blue. I can't remember the last time I saw one of these with a single cab. It looked really good. I wonder if it's the original paint.

I can't ride but do love these. Alaska plates in southern Idaho.

I finally finished putting my 1966/67 Volvo 1800 together and immediately sold it so I have less physical attachment to any one spot. Since I am pivoting on a new adventure I figured it was time to change my username. Albino Kangaroo was the best I could come up with. Side note, the new Volvo 1800 owner is road tripping it over 1,200 miles with a brand new engine. They totally lucked out by missing the New Jersey snow.

As of yesterday morning I was really keen on buying a station wagon for traveling around the country. They make so much sense! My earlier post https://opposite-lock.com/topic/34278/wagon-hunting-anyone-have-experience-with-the-vw-golf-sportswagon was filled with great feedback. I think I would have been happy with a 2020-2022 Buick Regal TourX Wagon. Unfortunately, Buick discontinued it in 2020 after making between -4 and 12 of them (it was actually made in Germany). The few on the used car sites are all in the ~$25k and up for 2018/2019 and $30k or more for the mid range tier, $33k ish for a 2020. As a couple people mentioned they were not hot sellers and at the end some dealers marked them down 10-12k.

My wife and I chatted for a bit and figured station wagons are barely popular now, forget about it when we try to sell a 2018/2019 in 2-3 years. Then I started looking at the Tiguan and once I was in SUV territory I started looking for minivans on the lot. I just wired funds for a 2022 Pacifica Touring L that I found about 3 hours away. It is probably too big for what we need but it opens up a level of comfort in terms of taking more stuff and more space for the doggo and her new crate (for when we get to Airbnb's (our new living spaces). With the wagon mounting bikes to a roof rack would be easier than an SUV but with the minivan I am going to try and just put them (2) inside, maybe on a fork mounted racks.
Side note, props to the dealer for selling $2k below MSRP. I probably called 6 dealers in my area and they wouldn't budge. At the end of 2021 some even had $2,500 market adjustments on 2021 vehicles. Even now few of these minivans are on lots. The factory is shut down from Jan 3-24th and based on other forums delivery times are many weeks due to trucking shortages. In the end we are paying $1,500 more than the base model but getting the next trim up which should be easier to sell when the time comes. Only real downside is leather seats in a Chrysler. I didn't have a chance to try the cloth ones that come in the base model but assume they would have been more comfy. On the plus side, and I know this might sounds odd, but I love the idea of basic 17" wheels over the 18" or 20" wheels found on higher trims and most competitors. I would much rather have the side wall in such a non sporty vehicle.

As some may know I sold everything I own, including my 1967 Volvo 1800 and now travel with my wife and dog from state to state with whatever fits inside our Chrysler Pacifica (we can even fit both our bikes inside). One main reason was my wife felt life was getting a bit stagnant and we had seen most everything to see in our NJ suburb. I generally agreed but didn't want to give up some of the things I had come to enjoy in our house.

Being from NJ, one of the most polluted states one thing I enjoyed was the fancy reverse osmosis water treatment system I installed in our house. It was in the basement fed a small tap by the kitchen sink. While our NJ tap water was generally ok I liked removing the chlorine and other potential chemicals like PFOA PFAS that we had in small quantities. While the tap water met all standards, it only meets what they test for and excludes things that might not yet be known. This was especially useful as our town used deep wells and was only a couple miles from an old Ford plant where there was known pollution from dumping paint and the like, and an old military site (Nike location? though I don't recall that site having pollution).

We now stay in AirBnbs and while I am sure the water is fine; for the first couple weeks we bought bottled water. I got tired of buying and transporting, then recycling 1 gallon bottles, or alternatively driving to a water purifying/filling station every couple of days. To remedy the issue I tried to replicate my old RO system and made it even better. This is a simple setup with two pre filters, one sediment, one carbon block before the 75GPD RO membrane that I run at about 85PSI ( I have a small pressure gauge for calibration but I take it off as it isn't need for general operation) so it puts out closer to 90GPD. As we move so often I didn't want to mess around with the water supply at each location and the general fragility of plumbing and valves so I use a 24v Aquatech 8800 pump to draw and pressurize water from a jug under a slowly running tap. I takes about 9-10 minutes to make each gallon depending on how cold the input water is (colder is slower) so I run it about 40 minutes every 2-3 days to fill up four 1 gallon jugs.

The RO system takes everything out of the water and leaves you with something like distilled water. I do not de-ionize the water (some ppl do this for aquariums) as it is not suitable for drinking and is almost like a solvent without exposing it to air or other treatment. One through the RO process it leaves pretty bland water (as water has no taste) so I then re-mineralize it with the recipe below. My old house RO system had a remineralization cartridge but from what I read those don't really do as much as advertised as the water is quickly passing through generally non-soluble minerals.

To remedy this and make my own version of mineral-ish water I make a 500ml solution containing the following minerals. I then add 25g of that solution to each gallon of RO water. In practice this gives me water with about 35-40 ppm of total dissolved solids.
• .9 grams of potassium bicarbonate
• 1.36 grams of calcium chloride
• 1.88 grams of magnesium sulfate
• 1.36 grams of sodium bicarbonate

The recipe above is from https://www.teacurious.com/water-recipe and I plan to tweak it in the future. There are a number of good water calculators that allow you to adjust minerals to match the composition of commercial mineral waters. Haven't tried that yet.
The real effort to rematerialize started when I got into making espresso at home and found out that they use a standard water recipe. It's a fun rabbit hole.
If anyone is interested here are two good websites with downloadable auto calculating spreadsheets with a number of water recipes. The first one even has indicators that let you know if a custom blend will be too basic and or have too many minerals, etc.
https://www.espressoschool.com.au/coffee-watercalculators/
Direct link to their Google docs water calculator - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Vk5TXlev-2tK0TJmfbrL6zTc82r8z_Cg4yD_ikvf8zg/
Here is another website that goes into how to replicate fancy mineral water -
https://khymos.org/2012/01/04/mineral-waters-a-la-carte/
Direct link to their Google docs water calculator -
http://blog.khymos.org/wp-content/2012/01/mineral_water_calculator_v6.xlsx?_ga=2.167659582.1264525401.1653676364-776272048.1653676364))))

I am playing with the idea of buying a 2018 Chrysler Pacifica, packing it full of stuff and moving around a bit. That is a story for another time. My search brought me to Patriot Subaru in Saco Maine where I saw this Suzuki Carry. I have no clue why they have them. I might call up the dealer just to find out. What a strange hydraulic bed.

Look, they have a bunch of them. $13k seems steep for something that I don't think can really keep up on a highway.

After seeing @The-Crazy-Kanuck 's post (https://opposite-lock.com/topic/52842/chitty-chitty-bang-bang-intensifies?_=1659834111417) about a week ago where he visited a steam show I was lucky enough to find one 40 minutes from Portland Oregon down in Salem Oregon.

What a great time and totally worth price of admission. Most was kerosene or gas powered. There was also a lot of older trucks and tracked machinery that was really nice to see. It's all kinds of stuff you normally would not at a regular car show that really set it apart to the point where my wife was having a good time.

I think I'm going to do a write-up on this tracked vehicle. Not steam powered but it was really cool to see in the parade.

As a follow up to the discussion with @john-norris (https://opposite-lock.com/topic/57283/open-drift-evergreen-speedway-in-monroe-washington-tomorrow-spectating-is-free/) I met up this morning with @NKato to see the Evergreen Speedway open drift event. It was fun meeting a fellow Oppo in person and his Crown Vic is stunning.

I should say I kept him waiting a bit as I took forever to get out of the house and drop my wife off near Seattle so she could ride her bike while I went to do car stuff. I got their around 11:45 (so 45 mins late) and met NKato at the back entrance which was perfect.

I had not been to this speedway and NKato had checked it out while I was busy being late. There was also an RV show accessed through the main entrance. Meeting in the back bypassed traffic and got us really close to the event. We paid $20 for pit passes that were well worth it. You drive a bit on the cold racetrack around to the pit area where lots of people were working on cars / prepping for drifting. We got to park right next to that in a nice safe spot away from the action but right next to the grandstand and the pit area so it was perfect. With our pit passes (bracelet) we were able to wander around and check out the cars and chat with some of the drivers.

There were a lot of Nissan 240's but the real surprise was an good amount of E36 BMWs . After chatting with the owner of a very nice 240 he explained how the 240s have been going up in value and you can get a manual BMW pretty cheap except they are a bit heavier.

Nkato is super technical and I think he should pick up a spare Crown Vic, do a manual swap and go out drifting! Good time all around.

@EssExTee ok, I'll be skipping that.

@ibRAD yes, older systems will kill you. Newer ones like FM200 and other "clean agent" shouldn't in the concentration used to put out the fire. Some don't displace the oxygen so oxygen deprivation is less an issue. In older halon systems it was an issue and I do recall some alarm installations where we would hook up the main fire system to the halon system and right next to the door was a big stop button you could press (and if I recall hold down) if there was an accidental discharge.

@EssExTee I've been curious about that. How did it taste? Texture?

@Highlander what oil do you use? Following the advice of someone else who did more work on the subject when I had a Volvo 1800 with twin SU's, I found Mobile 1 15-40 worked very well.

@ForSweden I wonder how many newer cars still have fuel filters vs just a screen/sock on the pump. My 2008 Acura didn't have one, and it appears my 2022 Pacifica also doesn't have one. Must be a trend.

Yikes, that rear wheel well treatment looks like the image after someone uses Google's eraser to remove an ex. (@ClassicDatsunDebate )

https://opposite-lock.com/topic/57528/i-have-discovered-magiceraser-io

If I have time I will sit at the dealer and wait for them to do the repair. Only needed a couple of things in the last number of years. PS hose recall, ECU cover recall (so it doesn't get wet from condensation or wet boots or some other nonsense)- both for my old Acura, and one oil change on the Pacifica. This probably doesn't work in this day of labor and parts shortages and one is hopeful they get the car back within a week.

@Noodles And if you brave going up to the second level, very well hidden.

On the coolant flush, the coolant additives do get worn out/absorb crud and all that so it is worth it to do it, but not by a dealer. Check the manual. I remember the Honda K24 engine and the old VW MK4 2.0 AEG, the "flush" was really drain and refill. Use OEM fluid because they are not really much more expensive than off the shelf replacements which are close but designed for multiple applications. A gallon or two of antifreeze (lots is already 50/50 with water or similar) is probably $50.

If the OEM spark plugs are iridium you should be good up to 100k but changing at 80k is ok but not for that price. I wonder if the price quoted also includes a valve adjustment. Not sure if your valves require that.

@Noodles I installed alarm systems/access control and network stuff many years ago. If we ran out of parts and I needed to await drop off or the okay to go get stuff from a supplier I would nap in server rooms. It was so perfect, nice and cold with a buzzing of the fans/AC to put you to sleep. Our badges got us into a lot of places so it was easy to find the low traffic and secure places to nap.

This was totally offset by days where we installed cameras on blazing hot roofs or fun in the winter installing conduit outside in snow. Working 15 minutes outside, sit in the van to warm up, then 15 minutes outside. Eh, still remember the good times.