it's been a while, i know... but lots is happening.

the "driveway ornament" is coming along well, and i will have a big update once i'm back from europe.

yep, i'm in europe for three weeks.  i'm also taking another 5 weeks off from work in a much-needed leave of absence...  the final 5 weeks will be spent getting the driveway ornament finished and running!

but, to keep the german automotive theme of this blog going, i just spend a day at nurbergring.  this day has turned out to be what's nearly without a doubt "The Best Day Ever[tm].  here's why:

1) driving on the autobahn @ 120+ mph

2) meeting, hanging out, and sharing track day videos w/the amazing folks @ rent4ring.de

3) getting an impromptu tour of the ring and advice before i went on the track from some friends of the owners of rent4ring

4) one of those friends pretending to be an old buddy of mine going for a ride, but instead was a "secret" instructor teaching me the track

5) 6 laps on the ring in a race-prepped opel corsa tubo, breaking 130mph on the fastest parts.

6) pushing aside my fear and trusting in my "friend" as he pushed me to sub 10-minute laps. "don't brake. keep accelerating. move to the right. go! go! go! ok, downshift to third. turn in here. full throttle. BRAKE! hard right. stay in the middle of the track. GO GO GO!"

7) learning to put fear aside and trust in your abilities and the skill of your instructor.

8) see (7). twice.

9) hanging out w/the crew afterwards and comparing notes on the ring.

10) meeting the opel representative that works w/the rent4ring guys.

11) going back to my hotel and meeting up w/another american who keeps a car in storage here just to race on the ring, and finding out it's a porsche gt3. i immediately hooked up a passenger ride for tomorrow evening.

12) drinking a lot of awesome german beer.

13) having "steak und stone" for dinner. that's a 3" thick raw prime rib, served on a red-hot piece of granite. with french fries. oh hell yes.

seriously, days this good should be fucking illegal. i don't know what else to say :)

happy holidays, i think

<standard, expected and mercifully short rant about the holiday season and why they're always not as great as you expect, but always better than you'd hoped, closing with the fact that this really isn't news and that it's better just commit that to memory again, hoping you remember next year, lest you become that santa over there!>

ok, now that i've gotten that out of my system, i hope that everyone's had as an excellent a holiday as possible, and that santa left them something nice (and not empty beer bottles.  that actually was me, i forgot to mention i stopped by!).  holidays mean busy.  that means that not much on the car lately, except for some final painting.  it was nice to take a break from the heavy stuff, but i have a lot to still  do.

today, however, i fully put the cart in front of the horse and bought a rollcage (i did get a great deal, actually)!  this involved a nice 4-hour round trip to sonoma.  in fact, it was my first time to sonoma for any other reason other than drinking wine.  shocking, n'est-pas?  in fact, it was a very un-wine sonoma road trip!




yes, stranger things have happened than trips like that.  for instance, things like the magna carta, and rise of the "art of scrapbooking".

and, if anyone is wondering, i did have a good holiday. it was nice to see my family and the kittens. kittens ALWAYS help. :)

i hope everyone's year is full of promise and optimism.  and if it's not, just remember:  it's the holidays.  this happens almost every year.  next time, move christmas to august and relax over the winter break.

behold, the bailey and curtain wall of the fortress of partitude

well, i have a lot of parts in my garage.  hopefully, when 75% are in the car, and the other 25% have been pawned off through craigslist or forum sales, i'll get some of that room back.  hopefully again, reducing the fortress of partitude, while sad, will go a long ways to having a working driveway ornament.

yes, that ornament:  the reason i'm here wasting time, dirty, and still without a running track car.  :)



however, my serfs (me) have been busy at work building a fortress worthy of serious partitude.

firstly, we begin with the current state of said fortress:

the curtain wall and bailey above are well near completion.  the massive walls buttress a solid bailey resting upon it.  materials for the outer walls lie on the ground waiting for utilization (read:  nowhere good to put the long stuff yet).

their construction is made of boxes and bins.  yep, they all contain parts!  lots new, and some old that will be cleaned up and reused.

towering above this all is a structure destined to command the landscape, and be just out of reach for the easy grabbing of a wrench 1mm bigger, because you always second guess what sizes you'll need.  or the four bolts holding something on will have random sized (yes, this is common.  and irritating.)

however, as my astute readers will well know, any major civil engineering project entailing all sorts of medieval technologies will generate rubbish.

the midden heap above will either go for scrap or destined for craigslist and web forums.  there's actually some nice stuff in there...  some.  :)

behold, mortals:  my impregnable, growing (and mostly german) FORTRESS OF PARTITUDE!!!

you know i can actually hide behind it.  it's fun.

work has actually been progressing -- check out the album: http://picasaweb.google.com/incomplete/ThePorsche944TurboProject

and, because it's just that awesome, i took a photo of my favorite tool, coincidentally being my most favorite 24v cordless impact wrench in the world, also freshly promoted to CEO of the fortress!  congrats, impact wrench!

prepare to enter the fortress of partitude

all ye tremble with fear as you approacheth my fortress of partitude.

the elements of the castle arriveth at a frenetic, and almost daily pace.  the squire of delivery brought to me my new oil cooler seal gasket set +1 less than a fortnight ago, and my power steering pump rebuild kit +2 (vorpal vs leaking fluid) was handed to me by a maiden's hand thrusting up from a lake.

however, it's not all renn faires and maidens.  the rustonic plauge has been sending the nuts and bolts to meet their maker, and they take their plight out on me.  plus, they're wily little suckers, requiring a rather dexterous approach to helping them on their way out of the car.

the monks of the forums are telling me the end is in sight, and i think it is.  but first, i must complete my fortress.

really.  i'm gonna see if i can make a box fort.

then i'm gonna hunker down and prepare to put a lot of crap back IN to the car that i just removed.  only this time, it's all at least +1.

new parts arriving like the tide coming in!

i bet, if i tried, i could sell a couple of refrigerators to some eskimos.  really.

of course, i'd ply them w/booze.  then i'd get the hell out of town.  during my flight, i'd probably trip and fall, allowing them to catch up to me.

never get caught by enraged eskimos.  no fun.

on a slightly more bucolic note, the money pit project continues to swallow money, but at a much, much more reasonable rate.

one of my talents (other than fails-man-ship, ha!) is scrounging.  i have a slew of google alerts and scan a few select forums semi-regularly for porsche parts.

today, i scored big.  the first thing i picked up from a fellow forum member were a pair of brake ducts.  $50.  cool.

then, it turned in to a battle of salesmanship.  the gentleman and i were chatting and he offhandedly mentions a certain refurbished intercooler sitting in his trunk that i should probably just take a look at.

yanno.  just one little look.  $80, man.  hardcore refurb.

my internal purchase defenses immediately went in to code "omg".  i tried to not look too excited, but i bet he noticed my attempt at suaveness.

"sure, i'll take a look.    ok, how much?"

so, in about 10 seconds i became the new owner of a $70 intercooler.  yep, i couldn't resist, but my scrounge-dar went off the scale.

...and i thought picking up a full set of koni yellow shocks w/less than 16k miles for $450 (retail $900+) was great!  those arrive monday, and it's gonna be a metric fsckton of awesome to open that box up.

yep, people parting the sea for me.  now i guess i should start putting all this stuff in the car.  or, maybe build a fort from all of the parts i've acquired.  no girls allowed, unless they have air tools.

(i actually have a plan to fix the car.  december is most likely the month that endeavor starts...)

long time, no posty

hello, all faithful 4 followers!  i'm sure you've been wondering where my inane ramblings have gone, but needless to say it's been a heckuva busy couple of months.  in no particular order:

1) burning man.  it was great.  dusty, too.  i even took some pics.
2) porsche work.  i painted some stuff that didn't need it, wrapped tape around a wiring harness, and am scrounging the hell out of the porsche forums for stuff.  hopefully in 2-3 months, it might run!
3) work work.  wow, work is work sometimes.  my "new" position is 6 months old now, and i'm feeling like my swimmies are partially deflated in the big kid's part of the pool.  :)
4) flea infestation.  instead of getting karma points for rescuing a loving, poor and starving stray kitten, the ladyfriend and i got fleas.  two doctors were convinced we had contagious skin conditions, courtesy of the kitty, but it ended up being a false alarm.  that was a week and a half gone to quarantine, however, and in two weeks i must have done 20+ loads of laundry to kill any of those dirty little flea bastards.  this did cause me to miss what would have been a kick-ass dj gig, however.  :(
5) computer lovin'.  i finally installed my new RAID array, 10k rpm system drive, and upgraded my gaming box to windows 7.  i took the opportunity to clean up my cabling, too.
6) skydiving!  yep, for tiffany's birthday i had her thrown out of a plane.

this week is no exception:  i'm spinning records at blowfish sushi in SF on wednesday, and then flying to NC to see my mom (and eat oysters at the southport oyster festival).  i might be co-driving a robot at combots the weekend of the 23rd, and then it's partying my ass off for halloween.  i've got work somewhere in there, too.  and maybe some video games.  :)

staying on course and a high-tech archaeological dig

the wacky idea i had last weekend, while intriguing, was but a pipe dream. why?

CARB.

yes, my great state has deemed that the 4-cyclinder dead-dinosaur consuming and carbon spewing turbocharged german death motor is preferable to a modern, emissions-happy high tech v8.  i'd get better gas milage, spew half of the emissions, and generally be a much more reliable motor.

there is an option, but it's so far out of my price (and sanity) range, that i have to banish it from my mind:  the E-ROD.  $9k for the motor, and another $10k for the mounting kit, heater/air conditioner adapters, upgraded brakes (as the stock power brake booster has to go), catalytic converters, and other sundry items.

but it'd sure be pretty awesome to have a v8.

anyways, back to reality.  let's fix what i got.  there are some rumors of other combos that will work, but before i take a plunge like that, i would need to be damn sure.  for reals.

this week, i got the engine computer(s) and harness out, which is a big step.  the computer chips, like my fuel pressure regulator were built/programmed by "ProMotion Racing".  nothing currently shows up on my favorite search engine, but i checked out the internet archive and found an old website.  i posted this on the rennlist.com forums, and a gentleman who's having a car built by this gentleman got in touch with me.  now i have the phone number of the guy, and can find out what, if anything, has been done to the engine internals!  yay!  i can hopefully find out about the programming on the chips, and whether or not they're updatable, and worth keeping in my car.

the trick fuel injector harness has just been spliced and soldered to my donor engine wiring harness.  all that needs now, besides replacing ALL of the stupid little plugs, is some cleaning and taping on the end that goes in to the passenger compartment.

now, i just need my new wiring harness replacement kit to come in the mail, so i can refurbish my donor harness.  that, and new battery leads, will then remove all fears of electrical shorts from my mind and engine bay.  after that, it's time to reassemble the beast with my new speed/crankshaft reference sensors, vacuum lines, fuel pressure gauge, braided fuel lines, hot plug wires, and wideband air/fuel monitor.

then i will try and start the car.

class car:
  def __init__(self):
    self.State = ''
    self.type = ''
    self.year = ''

  def Start(self):
    if crank_motor:
      if engine_catches:
        return True
    return False

  def TryStarting(self, start_count)

    start_count = start_count + 1

    if not self.Start():
      if start_count <= 3:
        TryStarting(start_count)

      elsif start_count > 3:
        self.State = 'dead'
        return False

     else:
       self.State() = 'running'
       return True

  def GetItOutOfDriveway(self)
    if self.State() == 'built':
      return self.TryStarting(poorsche, 0)

    else:
      logging.fatal('put the damn car together before you try this again!')
      return False

  def DriveToShopToGetTuned(self)
    if self.State == 'running':
      return GetToShopAndPayMoneyForTuning()

    else:
      return False

if __name__ == 'main':
  poorsche = new car.Porsche(type=951, year=1986, state='built')

  if poorsche.GetItOutOfDriveway():

    poorsche.DriveToShopToGetTuned()

  else:

    poorsche.Debug(desc='maybe i should try scrapbooking')