Hey Oppos! I thought I would introduce myself. I've been a long time reader of Jalopnik, but like I have read here and agree with, it seems to have been going downhill so I read it much less than before. In one of the comments there I remember someone posting about Opposite-lock so I decided to check it out and have been lurking here for a few months. There have been a few topics I've wanted to comment on, so I finally decided to join.

A little background: Did not come from a car family, so I got into cars a bit all by myself. My first car was a 1998 Monte Carlo Z34. I loved that car and did some modifications including a (hot air) intake, high ratio rockers, and new PCM. Took it the drag strip with an owners club and IIRC ran a best of about 14.2. Also took it to Michigan International Speedway and got to drive it on the track. Hit the ~105 on the back straight. I had it from 52k miles to 180k miles. Later I had a 2007 Sierra and then got a 2014 Sierra and currently own a 2013 Optima. The Optima has been an abject disaster literally since the day I bought it. I'll write about that later.

I worked at GM for about 8 years doing development on the Duramax, so if any of you have/had a 2010-2015 D-max I had a least a small part in your truck. Lived in Germany for a year when I was sent there to work at Opel when it was still owned by GM - one of the best decisions I've ever made.

After listing my cars and not showing one Malibu I'm sure you're wondering about my name. Well, it's for Malibu boats. I'm a huge fan after my parents bought a Response LX for the family new in 1997. Since then I have had a 1993 Echelon, a 2001 Response LX and now a 2003 Response LX. All direct drives. They are like a Corvette on water.
Anyway, it looks like you guys have a nice shi...bus here and I look forward to contributing.

So, I'm super bored at work, so I figured I would write this.

Edit: Hey, I got included in the Best of Oppo!

This is a while back when I was working on the 4.5L V8 diesel (LMK) that was supposed to go into the GMT-900 1500 trucks. My specific job was the cold start calibration. Basically my job was to calibrate all the engine parameters to get the engine started at all temperatures (despite being called "cold start").

Our official limits were down to -29C at sea level and mid-altitude (~5000ft) and -20C at high altitude (all without a block heater). My unofficial record for a Duramax (when I was working on those later) was -36C at sea level. One of the biggest issues that keeps us from starting lower is battery power. Even with 2 batteries and 0W oil, we would only crank at about 50RPM at the coldest temps, and the system voltage would drop under 5V during compression events. The lights on the dash would fade in and out as I was cranking. In fact, the vehicles systems are only required to function down to 5V for a short time, but I remember seeing ~4.7 occasionally and it would still crank. I tried doing a start at -40 just to see if I could do it, and the starter just clicked. Even with full batteries, it just couldn't turn the engine.

If the engine was started when the coolant temp was above about 15C the emissions calibration would take over immediately after the engine start. If it was started below that then I would control the injection timing, boost, rail pressure and other things for a while until the engine warmed up and it went over to the emissions cal.

My co-worker that was doing the LML and LGH calibration and I would always travel together to do our testing. In this case we were in Colorado doing mid and high altitude testing. In Denver we leased space from a testing company that had a cold soak room as well as emissions testing capability. At high altitude we had very high-tech cold starting facilities up in Silver Plume, CO just off of I-70 at an altitude of about 9000ft. By high-tech I mean, reefer semi-trailers. Dug into the dirt. At the edge of a borderline ghost town. The truck barely fit into the trailers and you could always tell which development trucks were the cold start trucks because they always had some scratches on the passenger side. It was just impossible to go in and out of the trailers that many times while trying to bias the truck to one side so, you know, we could actually get out, without scraping the side. They have since moved them, but for a long time we would base out of Denver (and do testing at "mid-altitude", and run up into the mountains everyday to do our testing at 9000ft.

One day after a test my colleague came back from a drive and said that he blew the transmission in his truck. It would idle and move the truck on level ground, but that's about it. It didn't have the torque carrying capacity to accelerate or even go up a slight incline, so there was no way he could drive it back to Denver. We called up a flatbed tow truck and when he eventually showed up we slowly drove the damaged truck to the base of the tow truck, but it wouldn't drive up the sloped bed. For some reason this tow truck didn't have a winch or even come-alongs to load our truck so we were stuck.

Except, I still had my (actually another colleagues borrowed LMK) that ran perfectly. I was still fairly new at this point, but my colleague said we needed to get this truck back down to base so he told me to use mine to push his truck up onto the flatbed. At this point the tow truck driver is in the damaged truck and I line up behind him, put it in 4 wheel drive and start to push. After a bit of wheel slip, we started moving. At first the bumpers lined up and there wasn't a problem, but as his truck started up the ramp his bumper rose up and started smashing in my grill. I stopped for a second and he just said "Go!" so I kept pushing as this bad crunching sound was coming from the front. The whole time I'm thinking these trucks are development vehicles that are hand-built and cost a hundred grand and I'm just smashing them up like it's nothing.

Once we got his truck where it needed to be I backed down and the tow truck driver jumps out of the truck and was astonished. He was like "I've seen a lot, but I've never been a part of something like that before!".

After that the LMK basically had no grill left, and I felt bad having to give the truck back to the colleague I borrowed it from for my testing. Luckily we had enough old trucks laying around that the mechanics were able to sorta swap in a new grill once we got it back to Milford.

That is certainly not the only truck I damaged during my testing, but it is the only one where I did it intentionally!

So I came into the office this morning and what do I find on my computer...

Lord UppU's cousin. Why is he there? Because a couple of weeks ago I wore my UppU shirt to work and a co-worker saw it and liked it and made it for me.
But that's not all...what shirt am I wearing today?

It was divine intervention!

So if any of your read my introduction yesterday you'd know that I worked for GM for a while and several people commented about the stories that people who work in the industry have. So here is my first one.

Car paparazzi are real. I never had too much interaction with them, but there was one day when I was driving back to the Proving Grounds after grabbing lunch in a development vehicle when a guy tried to get a shot of me.

I was driving a 2011 MY GMT900 2500 Duramax and even though the GMT900's had been out for a several years, we did a minor facelift to them for the 2011MY to go along with the new LML engine. For a while we had minor camo on the front, but because it was so minor there weren't many restrictions on trying to protect the look. Well, during this drive back to the Grounds, we had just officially revealed the new look to the public a day or two earlier, but apparently this guy didn't get the memo.

I'm driving around the speed limit, following another car when a Ford Focus came up behind me pretty fast and was hugging the yellow line like he wanted to pass in a hurry. He got his chance and flew by me and the car in front of me before pulling back into the correct lane. I didn't think much of it other than "wow, he's in a hurry". Well about 30 seconds later I see him pull to the side of the road and on the brakes hard. As I'm coming up to him, I see the window roll down and a huge lens poke out of the car. I flew past him at that moment, so I'm not sure he got the shot or not.

I really hoped he did, because I always wanted a spy photo of me. I checked all the auto sites and spy photo site I could think of, but never saw it. Either he didn't get the shot (he barely got the camera out before I drove by), or he later realized that the new design had been revealed and no one cared anymore. I was bummed when I didn't see it. Several of my co-workers had been "published" but I hadn't yet. Even though they usually blurred out the faces, we could usually tell who it was based on which exact truck was photographed, or what trailer was attached.

That's my only personal experience with spy photographers, but other co-workers had more interaction. One was filling up with fuel when a photog pulled up right next to him and started harassing him. So one of our techs pulled up and started getting on him, and the guy, who was apparently German, started yelling at our tech in German to which the tech replied in German. This totally took the guy by surprise and he drove off. The tech had been in the military and was stationed in Germany for a long time.

The other big one I can think of was when a guy was sitting in a parking lot doing some calibration work with the hood open when a photog jumped onto the bumper and took a photo of the engine. My co-worker jumped out and was going try to get the guy, but he jumped off and basically made the threat of "don't touch me". It ended up coming to nothing, but it just shows how aggressive some of the spy photographers can be.

More stories to come.

@Photography
So I kind of like doing photography. It goes in spurts for me. For a while, I'll take pictures of everything, and then I won't take any for a month. Part of the problem is I always feel awkward taking photos of people, or carrying around a big lens. Everyone is used to camera phones, but I'm of the opinion that if I'm going to take good photos, I'm going to take them with good equipment. I've compared my photos to those my dad has taken of the same scene with his phone, and he's blown away by my photos. He even said "I guess I've just gotten used to phone pics..." I also don't like directing people, so there are times I want to take photos, even of people I know, but I don't want to pose them, yet at the same time, I want to pose them. I hate it.

I also wish I was better at the "art" side of photography. I'm really good at the technical side - ISO, aperture, shutter speed and how they affect the photo, and I'm pretty good at using Lightroom - but on how to frame a shot or set up with lighting I'm not very good. I think that's part of the reason I'm an engineer - good at technical, not good at art.

Anyway, one of the things I really like photographing is sports action shots (don't have to pose anyone, and people are usually used to photos being taken during sports activities, so I don't feel awkward). I have a Canon 6D, which I know is more of a portrait body, but since I can't afford a Canon 400mm f2.8 (~$12,000) I bought the 6D because it had the highest high-ISO performance of the Canon line at that time. I figured I would buy slower lenses and just jack up the ISO. So to help with those sports shots, I just picked up a Sigma 150-600 f5-6.3. I used to have an older Sigma 150-500, but I rarely used it because...it just wasn't very good so I ended up using my Canon 70-200 f4 because it was much sharper and had much better color rendition, and even cropped to equate a 500mm shot, it was better than the Sigma. So I sold that and picked up this new Sigma It seems easier to handle than the old Sigma and from what I've read and seen it's a much better lens, so I think I'll be taking more action shots with it. It's still huge and will draw attention, but hopefully it'll be worth it with image quality.

Here are some photos I took with my other lenses (Canon 24-105 f4 L, Canon 70-200 f4 L, and Canon 50mm f1.8)

These swans would chill on the ice sitting in the same spot for hours.

I love night photography




My mom loves gardening, so I take some photos of her flowers.

Super foggy day I noticed as I got up for work so I grabbed my camera and took this.

Found this regular cab pickup in a car lot right around the corner from where I work. I haven't checked it up close, but it looks pretty well done. No idea what it's going for.

So my current boat that I just got late last year was taking on water at a pretty good clip. I just dealt with it for the fall but now I'm trying to get that fixed before I put it in the water for the summer.

Here is my work space. The garage isn't quite long enough to fit the whole boat and spring time in Michigan is wet, so I didn't want to take all the shrink wrap off, so I cut a slit and am working under the covers. I tape a tarp over the opening while I'm not working to keep the water out. The tower is folded down and it in a really bad spot for working on the boat, but it's not impossible to work. The lighting is weird under the blue shrink wrap - everything had a blue tint and some things even glow like under a black light. My boat also has red stripes on the upholstery and those just appear brown since hardly any red light gets through to be reflected.

I was pretty sure it was leaking through the "water box" (technical term: Hydrophonic Dampening System). The box is supposed to fill up with water. But what it's not supposed to do is leak that water into the bilge. The water box is that rectangle box between the mufflers. The prop shaft goes through it and I guess the extra water is supposed to dampen vibration.

Apparently it's a weak spot on these boats, especially as they get older. Reading the Malibu forums, they said how to check for the leak. While the boat is on a trailer, put all the drain plugs in and fill up the bilge and see if water drops out from where the prop shaft goes through the bottom of the boat.

There are a few likely area where the water could be coming from:

• The shaft seal

• The rubber hose that leads to the shaft seal

• The lid of the box

• A steering knuckle that is anchored in the box

• The actual fiberglass molded box itself.

You can see the water I have in there in the above picture. I slowly filled up the bilge to see if I could kind of isolate where exactly it was getting in. Once I got it fairly high, it did start leaking out the prop shaft, but I couldn't isolate where it was getting through.

I don't think it's the molded box itself or the lid. Those both looked good. The shaft seal is getting old, but since there wasn't water pouring out of it last summer when we were looking I don't think it's that (plus, the shaft seal is supposed to leak a little bit).

That leaves the hose and steering knuckle.
I loosened the hose clamp on the hose and turned it around and found this.

Hmm, looks like a bit of rot. Can't guarantee it's leaking there, but it's looking likely.

I filled up the bilge until the steering knuckle was covered and starting hearing gurgling/bubbling noises. That's a pretty good sign that water is leaking. Plus, I don't know how loose the knuckle is supposed to be, but it has fairly excessive lateral movement which isn't a good sign.
Here is a picture of the knuckle

So it's possible I have two leaks. I guess it's time to open up the box and find out.

Well, there were two spots of water, one near the back (near the steering knuckle) and one near the front (near the black hose). So I dried out the box and filled up the bilge again and fairly quickly I noticed water in the box coming from the shaft.

I wasn't able to isolate the steering knuckle, but after hearing the gurgling when the box was sealed, and seeing water in the box in that area I'm 99% sure it's leaking, and since I have the box open, I'm going to replace that mechanism since I don't want to have to redo this.

The steering knuckle should be easy, it's just bolt with some washers and I'm assuming some rubber washers too. There is evidence of what used to be rubber washers between the metal washers, but they're basically disintegrated. I'm hoping the Malibu dealer can help get those parts.

The hose is going to be MUCH more involved. I have to disconnect the prop shaft from the transmission output shaft and then pull the mounting block off the shaft so I can get a new hose on. Usually the shaft is pressed into the block so hard it takes a puller to do it, and I'm not sure I can find one. My friend built one for his boat, but we're not sure if it'll fit on mine. While I'm doing it, I'm going to replace the shaft seal since it's super easy at that point, and I have no idea how old the current one is, and the new seals are virtually leak-less and reduce friction.

I'm hoping to get this done this weekend, but it's going to depend a lot of if I can get a puller for the shaft and if I can get any necessary parts from the dealer. It'll most likely be next weekend by the time I get it all done though. I can't wait to get the boat in the water.

Also, [Zoolander] No one makes me bleed my own blood[/Zoolander]

It's funny, I almost never wrench on anything. I love designing, but I hate wrenching. But I'm trying to save some money, and I don't think this will be that hard. I'd much rather do this than work on the car because here everything is either stainless steel, aluminum or fiberglass. The thing that gets my blood boiling is rusty fasteners that are seized and end up stripped.

So what's everyone drinking tonight?

I've been reliving my Germany days, so I'm having an Erdinger Weissbrau hefeweizen in an authentic Erdinger branded German glass that I stole never returned for my 1 Euro Pfand (deposit) while at a festival.

I usually save these for special occasions, and I had a really stressful night last night, but couldn't have one then, so I'm taking it now.

Ok, going a little off topic...but I'm really reliving my Germany days. Here is the place I got the glass. The Mainland games held near Mainz. Basically, the Celtic games, but played in Germany. This was in the first month or so of being in Germany, and also where I really became friends with some other expats that I ended up doing a lot of things with.

@trivet Not sure why this reminded me of this old story, but it did.

When I was at GM there was a guy that did transmission calibration and he liked quick, solid shifts, so that's the way he calibrated the transmission. When other people drove it they would sometimes complain that they were too rough and his response was always they're "authoritative shifts".

So, one day I was going out to eat with my boss, and as he was pulling into the parking spot just bumped the curb right as he was putting it into park. He just looks at me says "authoritative parking".

So stupid, but I still remember that years later, lol.

@derp said in zoom culture and why it needs to die:

sorry, but my job is what i do to get paid so i can do other shit. it's not my life, it's not my identity, and it's not what i'd prefer to spend most of my day doing, even if my job itself is fine and i actually do like most of my peers, subordinates and bosses.

Ditto.

Also, it is funny how many middle-school pep-rally things still happen in corporate culture. I thought they were cringy in middle school. As adults it's straight up weird. Luckily, none of my companies did that, but I've heard stories...

Ok, this might make me seem dumb, but I have a traffic right-of-way question. I run into this exact situation multiple times a day and there is always confusion on who should go first.

Image this intersection where the north-south road has stop signs and the east-west road does not.

Let's say a car is going north and wants to turn left to go west. He arrives at the stop sign first. Then, while he's waiting, a car going south and wants to go straight arrives second.

Who gets to go first? The guy that arrived first, but is taking a left, or the guy who arrived second, but is going straight?

@ash78 Yeah, the capability part I totally agree with you on. Going IRS and lengthening the wheel bases on both versions was the right thing to do. But there is just something "off" about the design of the new ones.

The BOF SUVs are GM's Wrangler. They own the market (>70% market share). Don't. Screw. It. Up. And based on sales it doesn't seem like they have, despite my reservations about the design.

@ash78 I have definitely noticed that as well too. It seems odd and does kind of take away from the design.
However, the T1 Tahoe/Suburban are the first ones that I'm not a huge fan of. They just look too narrow and too tall, and horizontal double-line going through the Bowtie looks bad.

I liked the GMT800's when they came out. I liked the GMT900's when they came out. I really liked the K2's when they came out (and still do). But I just can't get behind the T1's, even if they are a better vehicle.

@Long_Voyager94 Admittedly it was going through our office, so the owner wanted everyone to get tested. It was a WalGreens test, not a at-home test. So there is a chance it was a legitimate infection, but it was still interesting since I was 100% asymptomatic.

@trivet Not sure why this reminded me of this old story, but it did.

When I was at GM there was a guy that did transmission calibration and he liked quick, solid shifts, so that's the way he calibrated the transmission. When other people drove it they would sometimes complain that they were too rough and his response was always they're "authoritative shifts".

So, one day I was going out to eat with my boss, and as he was pulling into the parking spot just bumped the curb right as he was putting it into park. He just looks at me says "authoritative parking".

So stupid, but I still remember that years later, lol.

@RallyWrench He is too adorable! Awe-some!

@Rusty-Vandura My Kia is always wildly optimistic. It's usually 1.5-2MPG high. My old Sierra and all the development Duramax's I used to drive (we were required to record DIC MPG, actual MPG and other things at every fill up) were really accurate. +/- less than 1MPG.

@ttyymmnn said in TTYYMMNN's Travelogue:

Somebody asked me which engine it has. It has this engine:

UppU is disappointed

Even the picture of your Oppo light mode burns my eyes!

Thanks for the quick roadtrip review though. Sounds like you had some fun. When I was a kid our family did some epic road trips as well, which were always fun. Once, toward the end of one when we were all exhausted, I slept through 3 states in the very back of our Expedition next to the tailgate.

@Just-Jeepin Had it last April. I got my J&J vaccine on Thursday and I tested positive on Monday. Not sure if there is any relationship there, but I thought it was interesting. I kept testing positive for 3 weeks and had to miss work that whole time. Luckily I was basically asymptomatic.

Welcome!

@Britishvillaininatl said in A Brit moves to the States and buys a Jag F Type:

The only slight problem I have really had with driving here, is to be mindful that street furniture – especially traffic lights - are often placed differently

Yup, I noticed the same thing when I moved to Germany. They place the street lights at the front of the intersection, as opposed to the middle or back as the US does. It took me a while to get used to that and I almost ran a couple of lights because I "under"looked them.