Take it to Drew. He likes working on vehicles.
I used to love turning wrenches. Couldnāt wait to get home after 8 hours of work to work on my car projects till midnight⦠Today? Not so much! Still doing almost all of my own repairs, just no āfunā in it anymore. Trying to teach my son those skills so I can pass the torch. Weāre doing the brakes on the Danger Ranger next weekend. Iāll let him do 90% and only instruct.
Yep, only seems fun on my old truck.
Before I bought modern stuff I used to do much of the servicing on my Peugeot 403s: oil changes, clutch, radiator, water and fuel pumps and even a head gasket; however, I wouldnāt do brakes or anything safety related. I got sick of oil, dirt, grease and crap everywhere and stopped doing it after I re-sleeved the engine and had a bolt left overā¦.started it up and quickly worked out where it came from (the sump) when oil pissed out over the garage floor. Parents were not amused!
However, those years of messing about gave me a good basic mechanical understanding and a good BS detector when it came to car dealer service. Example: a friend with a FIAT 124 Sport (Fix It Again, Tony) had oil vapour spewing from around the engine and the alleged service place told her she need a new engine. I had a look and the cause was the PCV valve which had blocked up and ejected itself from its fitting - repair cost about $25.
More recently, a factory service centre told me I urgently needed a new rear main seal for our MX-5 (Miata), despite there being no oil leaks. Justification when pressed: āyouāll need to do it eventuallyā. Five years later, still no problem.
Unfortunately over the years Iāve seen so many people duped by questionable service shops AND mostly dealers! I think the automatic transmission shops have the biggest strangle hold on the general public. People think ATās are some sort of voodoo.
New ones can be. A lot of them have ecuās built into them now. ![]()
Iām replacing the valve body in my Rav4 ⦠again⦠because fucking parts are complete shit now.
Itās not that I ālikeā working on vehicles.. It is that I refuse to place my trust in a mechanic. When I was young I noticed any time my parents had work done on a car it cost them dearly and ALWAYS had to go back because something was not done right. So I decided Iāll not pay for shoddy work when I can do the shoddy work for free. ![]()
One of the many reasons I made it a point to learn how to drive a manual. Unfortunately none of our running fleet are manual. I realy need to get off my ass and get the dead engine swapped on the saturn. Then Iāll be in my happy place.
I took some time to get the Nissan radio to fit an aftermarket adapter plate for the Jeep. Required some massaging of the trim ring with a Dremel. The radio also had a lip around the plastic bezel that needed to go. Iām not a huge fan of the obvious trim ring outline but it will do for now. Crossing fingers this 25 year old unit is fully functional. If so it will be alot easier to live with than the Kenwood unit that looked like a constant fireworks show and felt like the cheapest of cheap plastic to interact with. ![]()
The factory units for Chrysler of this era had VFD displays that simply do not last past ~15years. We had an 06 Sebring. The display also died some time before 2020.
You have a CD player, value! I hate that modern cars donāt have one. When we bought our CX-30 in 2021 and I asked about having one, the āsales consultantā looked at me like I was from Marsā¦
Our 2010 Subaru Outback (aka Legacy) was the last of our cars which had a CD player; our 2000 model Camry before that was, IIRC, the last car to have a cassette player as well as the CD. Extra value!.
Geoff
MAC
Hit an estate sale, guy was a radio/tv repair guy. There must have been a thousand plus tubes in that basement!! I unfortunately was one guy to late as he was also pillaging for audio tubes. I did score some nice units. So many were NOSā
!!
Bought a guitar amp ($55) and a cheap turntable (Project/One DR-11). $113 total for everything. Once I saw the Dynaco output trans on the guitar ampā¦![]()
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Thatās a great score, especially for the price.
Just a life momentā¦
My sister texted me this evening that one of our former band directors passed away. He was the director in Middle School, and worked with the drum line and more in High School. I respected him, and he had a large influence in my music and instrument learning progression.
Iāll never forget his āsound demonstrationā hypothetical conversation about his hat. If it were creating sound as a source, what and how changes to his hat would reflect the outcome. Burn it, smash it, turn it inside out, etc; and the result would in theory sound different than the unaltered hat.
Hereās to you, Kevin Campbell, you taught me a lot!
I had some great teachers, some not so great but I still remember a great music teacher I had in Year Eight: his first lesson was just about enjoying different kinds of music. He played us Bach, Miles Davis, music from āHairā and The Beatles and asked us which numbers we liked and why. He wasnāt judgemental etc, he just wanted to get us involved and interested.
Very nice post Wolf, Hobi. So many of us donāt really appreciate the gifts we were given at the time. One of my faves was Mr. Ehring, 10th grade biology teacher. Great teach, I had him first period. One day came in to class and the school principal was there to āsubā. Turns out he (Mr. Ehring) Slid his TR6 under an 18 wheeler on his way to school. Nobody really knew what happened but he was type 1 diabetic, speculation was he had an event and lost control or passed out or something. ![]()
My Year 12 German teacher was excellent, but had a very sad story.
He and his wife were travelling to London via Paris during an airline strike which meant they had to take whatever seats they could get from Paris: he got on one flight, his wife on another - Turkish Airlines DC-10 flight 981. He arrived at Heathrow, but you all know what happened to TG981.
I never saw him smile or laugh after that; he was a gentle soul who would spend a lot of time with students who werenāt so gifted at the subject.
The 2 Dayton Audio KABD 4x30 boards I order on December 1st shipped today.
That was sure a slow boat.
Still nothing on my IcePower 700AS from Novemberā![]()


