Dave was my wife’s cousin. Extremely solid dude. Dave was an artist, a sci-fi and sci-real fan, a connoisseur of fine cigars, fancy pipes and good beer. Reach out to people around you, we’re all on this earth to support and love each other. If you see someone who’s down, pick them up and try and lighten their load.

Please send out some positive vibes and prayers for my family, especially his little girl.

Dave also liked Chevy trucks and Smashing Pumpkins.

Till we meet again Dave.

Picked up a new to me vehicle on Friday. 2006 Xterra 4x4 accompanied by Señor Manuel. Paint and interior are in great condition. Engine and tranny feel great. Reminds me of driving my Wrangler, but with more power (baby). Very truck like ride. This will be my wife’s car as my quarter million mile Tundra is still going strong. Seats aren’t as comfy as my Tundra, but the ride is a bit nicer and much quieter. I’ll be swapping fluids and restoring the headlights and trim over the next week or so. Other than that I’ll leave it be.

May the gods of plastic grant my twenty year old fuel injector connectors strength as I pull the intake manifold off the Toyota today. I’ve been dreading this starter replacement for a while.

Update 1

Got the manifold off! Prayers worked and I only cracked one clip, but I’m thinking I’ll be alright. Didn’t even have to curse and only lost a little bit of blood. Little bit of gunk around the cylinder head openings, but they look pretty clean inside. Don’t worry, I plugged them after I took this pic. Took about two hours, but I made sure to go slow as I have nothing to do today. Enjoy some topless 2UZ porn. The fluid around the head gasket area is from me spilling coolant from the throttle body. Definitely need to swap out the valve cover gaskets, though.

Might need a new intake hose, last person to take it off buggered it up a bit. This is the bottom of the hose, so I had no idea it was crumpled. Might try putting a bit of heat on it, as it feels pretty solid.

Update 2

Got everything back together. I went slow and it was actually pretty easy. I hit the intake house with a heat gun and it redounded nicely. All my fuel injector plugs went on nice and snug, and I didn’t have any issues reconnecting all the plugs and hoses. I tested the starter real quick before reinstalling everything and the engine turned over perfectly, so I already knew I was gtg there.

The truck fired right up, sputtered a bit, which I was expecting on account of removing the fuel line, and ran. But then it threw a code (P1126). I cleared the code and restarted the truck, but the code came back. I checked the throttle and it was dead. Doesn’t do anything until I reach the kick down at the bottom which manually opens the throttle, at which point it accelerates normally. Truck starts up and idles fine, so I’m thinking something screwy is going on with the throttle actuator. Joy. Time to bust out the FSM.

Watching my wife give birth is the most spiritual experience I’ve ever had. Truly mind expanding. We were at dinner with friends when my wife started having contractions. We visited our midwife afterwards, who told us we had one day left before our lives changed forever. She told my wife to go home, drink a stout, and get some rest for the day to come. We split a Rogue Shakespeare Stout.

The next day my wife gave birth to our first beautiful baby girl, surrounded by family and friends. About thirty minutes after ushering a new life into this world, my wife was hanging out with family, eating pizza, and taking a much deserved break. It’s been a wild ride ever since. Props to all the mom’s and kids out there, you keep us idiot dads in line.

I’ll start off with my appreciation for @jminer and the rest of you who helped set this place up. We have some Opponauts (this one included) going through some shit this year, and it’s been very uplifting to see people get support on a car forum of all places. Here’s to hoping everyone can harness some of those positive vibes into the New Year.

I’m cruising around on the Harley, and make a left onto a metered onramp to get onto the freeway. I make note of the fancy new Tacoma next to me, also making a left onto the freeway. I check my mirrors as I enter the onramp, making sure no one is riding my ass approaching the red meter light. The teenager in the Tacoma must have been staring at his phone, because he hasn’t even started making the left yet. Good, so I head towards the freeway, briefly thinking I should just blow through the meter since I’m the only one on the ramp. I decide to be a good boy, and slow my roll as I approach the meter, stop, and wait for it to turn green.

Before it does, I hear screeching tires behind me. Fuck. I immediately start to release the clutch, and give a little peaksy in my mirror, just in case I might be able to see death right before he careens into me. As I look innthe mirror, a big white blur passes maybe a foot from my right arm. It’s the Tacoma, and homeboy is the Oppo champ, as me managed to avoid both me, and the retaining wall, correcting his skid and merging into traffic like a boss.

After giving a round of internal applause, I notice there’s another white Toyota, this one a Four Runner, sitting diagonally across the onramp, a couple feet from my rear fender. I give the driver “what the fuck?” hands as I point at the meter light, and he rolls down his window and apologizes.

I get the hell off that onramp, and see the Tacoma getting off on the next exit. Against my better judgement, I decide we should have a chat. Really bad idea, but I figured after two near misses, today is my lucky day, and he probably won’t shoot me.

We stop in a grocery store parking lot a quarter mile down the road, and the kid rolls down his window. I pull up next to it (again, really bad idea, but I was on a roll). The kid is in tears. He starts apologizing, saying he dropped something and looked down to grab it and didn’t see me sitting there. I wasn’t angy, and am starting to question why I even followed this guy. I was filled with adrenaline, but it was “happy to be alive” adrenaline, not “I want to fucking kill someone” adrenaline. I tell the kid I’m ok, but to remember this feeling, and be extra cautious while driving, especially around motorcycles. I give him a fist bump, and head into the grocery store to buy a lotto ticket.

I don’t know what the deal was with the Four Runner. Only thing I can think of is he was trying to beat the Tacoma to the zipper merge, and didn’t realize the onramp was metered. The Tacoma beat him, swerved to miss me, and then inattentive Four Runner driver sees me sitting there as he’s full throttle down the onramp. Thank god it stayed dry all day.

Holy shit, I need a La Croix. Post epic saves.

Went from 113F in southern Oregon to 60F once we hit the Redwoods. Fantastic camping in these ancient forests. Cutting all these magnificent trees down was one of the biggest of humanity’s blunders. Headed back into the abyss, so I’ll catch you all in a week or so.

Nearly stepped on this western Diamondback while dropping my kids off at grandpa’s today. My daughter spotted it before I did.

Gramps grabbed his snake stick and relocated it to the desert across the street. The snek was not happy about having his sunbathing interrupted.

It was an exciting morning.

We’ve driven across Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. We lost a turn signal, half a quart of oil and a bit of coolant. The new rad cap has kept the coolant at bay since SLC. We have two more weeks of Montana camping coming up then will probably hang out in the canyonlands for a few days. The dogs and kids are still going strong. Feeling grateful to live in a place that still has open space, and hope it stays that way for a while longer.

@dr-zoidberg Those guys buried something in your yard. Go get a metal detector.

@Green-Truck My ‘66 GMC was bought by a friend and is now a drag truck. I’ll have to see if he’ll let me make a pass in it.

@davesaddiction Just ran into one of my former coworkers at a junkyard today (pretty slim chance of that happening in Phoenix). He immigrated here from Mexico City. We originally hired his BIL (immigrated from Sonora) after he worked for us as a temp. We ended up training them to run envelope converters which allowed them to get hired by other shops when we closed down. These are generally hundred year old machines which take a lot of know how to run smoothly. The guy who trained them learned how to run them after returning from Vietnam in the ‘70s. His BIL was able to get his citizenship and buy a house here which was really great to see. I’d work with those two guys over 95% of the native born Americans that I’ve worked with.

@Qaaaaa Yep, one of my cousins worked for him for a bit. Now she has a fancy finance job in The City.

@your-boy-bjr Especially if you were a teacher! My cousin is a teacher in NJ and he definitely has it better than me. Although I was able to buy my own house at twenty two which definitely ain’t happening for working class kids in NJ. Just hung out with a bunch of Jersey boys at Barrett Jackson. I think my dad is one of the few people who actually left his town. Totally different vibe between the cities in AZ and NJ. The close town connections and much higher property taxes help build a much better public school system. My yearly property taxes are less than what my aunt pays per month. Whole hell of a lot of kids come here for our public universities, though.

@your-boy-bjr Just have to look past all the toxic waste and bodies that the loose union of thieves dumped all over the state. Also, the new breed of thieves aren’t nearly as charming as the old school fellas. Mostly just spoiled rich kids.

@Wrong-Wheel-Drive I’ve never eaten in Patagonia. It’s a very small low key local tourist town, so the restaurants there are probably all pretty good.

@Wrong-Wheel-Drive That’ll be a great ride. We’ve had lots of rain this year so the desert is starting to green up. The Santa Ritas are beautiful. Had a Jaguar living in them for a while.

Tucson is a cool city, even with its recent Tempeification. Best city for Mexican food in Arizona. Be sure to hit up some of old school joints in South Tucson. Mi Nidito is one of my favorites, but they’re all good, even the sketchy burrito stops.

@ttyymmnn said in TIL kiddo edition - steering wheel lock:

@ash78 said in TIL kiddo edition - steering wheel lock:

My '95 Golf predated most keyless entry, but using the key in the door could unlock one or both doors depending on how you twisted it. Which was great until the lock cylinder came out once, leaving us....locked out. Fahrvergnugen.

My 01 Golf had a feature where you could turn the key back and hold it, and all the doors would unlock and the windows would go down. That was a great feature in TX when the car had been parked in the sun for hours.

My uncle had that feature on his Jetta. Equally beneficial in Phoenix, except when you fall asleep on your keys and open your windows during a monsoon. Oops. Surprisingly everything worked fine once it dried out. Still smelled like crayons afterwards.

@ttyymmnn I once locked myself out of my Corvair at the grocery store. Keys were in hand, but I had the set for my ‘66 GMC, and while the ignition key apparently worked on both, the door key did not.

@AestheticsInMotion I received counterfeit Oakleys from a Prime seller a few years ago. They were pretty obvious (wrong style hinge, different plastic, no box…). I stopped ordering car parts from them years ago after several mishaps. Returns were easy, but it kind of defeated the purpose of using them (quick delivery), and I’d rather spend a bit more money than waste my time (rock auto is generally cheaper for car parts anyways). A good friend of mine also worked for them both here and at the Seattle HQ and it was a nightmare. He worked in corporate security and saw some pretty heinous stuff from all around the country. Guy who recruited him ended up committing suicide which drove him to finally quit. He described his experience there as very dystopian, with his previous work experience consisting of combat tours in Iraq circa 2005.