Who'll Stop the Rain

Short answer: no one. Today's post is about managing around that unstoppable rain that appears every autumn in the Pacific Northwest.

Before I begin, my parents have been experiencing health issues and appear to be entering their last chapter with us. My musings here have not included them much, but my son T and I moved them here 12 or 15 years ago from the Boston area. They have been a consistent presence in our lives ever since, especially for Boo. Their recent health decline started almost immediately after we signed the paperwork on the NewOldHouse. Accordingly, our time has been split between tending to them and the NewOldHouse projects. Boo and I have also hosted various family members who travel into town for well-wishing and visiting the folks. If you were wondering why we were moving so slowly, these factors are certainly part of it. In truth, the time spent doing something on the house is a welcome respite from the near-constant gravity we feel as we watch their final days approach. We welcome your prayers (in whatever form that takes for you), and encourage you to connect with your elders, or your youngers, if even just for a few minutes.

 

UPDATE.... I wrote this entry on Thursday (3-November), and my dad's health took a nosedive almost immediately afterwards. My family members who are not local rushed to Oregon on Friday, and we said our final goodbye to my dad on Saturday (5-November). A week earlier, Dad and I were sitting around talking to T about his life in LA. Time really can be unpredictable. 

 

On to dodging the rain-

Garage Coveting

one can dream

I have been working on a fleet of cars without a meaningful garage, much less a shop, pretty much since I started this blog. The house we have been in for the last 6 years, much like the house we were in for the 3 years before that, has a basic 2-car garage. Prior to that, we were in a condo with no garage at all. Unlike the last house, this 2-car garage really is too small to fit a car any larger than an English compact (Mini, MG, eg). So, the only car that has been parked in the garage for a meaningful duration has been Oliver, the 1978 MGB. For a short stretch, Zed, the 1979 280ZX sat in the other bay. Zed is wider than Oliver, and that other bay is where all of my shelving of parts and tools was, so actually working on anything became impossible. So, I worked on cars in the driveway, and when it rained, I worked in the rain. When it was 95* with a blasting sun, I set up a small shade, but generally worked in the heat. So, a couple of years ago, we got those canopies for the driveway. These were absolutely heaven-sent, allowing me to clown on cars out of the worst of the weather extremes nearly year-round.

NewOldHouse has an original, attached, single-car garage with the original door. That door alone, is pretty cool in that it has cables and pulleys connecting to a large counter-weight to help you open and close the door. Regardless of the cool factor, only one car can fit, and after asking Boo to park in the rain for 9 years while I took up the indoor spots and the canopied area, that one garage spot needs to be hers for the next 9 years. Or longer.

Sheds and Canopies

the "fourth" canopy

The NewOldHouse came with 2 chicken shacks, that I mentioned last time. One of them will hold my parts and tools. The sheds lock, and at 8 feet wide by 12 feet deep, plus nearly 10 feet tall at the peak, they are large sheds. Some of the tool-shed floor needs repair, but that's a weekend day of work. Otherwise, it's clean enough, and after I shoot the interior with Kilz and then basic white paint, it will feel like an entirely different space.

But, what about the cars? I have too many of them, yes, but I still need to keep them in fairly good shape, and not let them rust out from below nor get rained on all winter. To remedy, I started by moving the 2 canopies around and behind NewOldHouse. Under the one closest to the house, I parked Zed. The one next to it is dedicated to the car I am working on other than Zed. For now, that will be Nemo, I think, to get the passenger window regulator replaced, the power steering working and maybe add a stereo. To compliment these 2 canopies, I bought 2 more ($140US each at Harbor Freight), and assembled them nose-to-rear adjacent to the side of the first 2. The furthest of these canopies is now 40 feet from the house, and will protect Oliver from the rain. For a floor, we got gray tarps, again, from Harbor Freight. These will act like a vapor barrier, keeping the wet ground from encouraging rust from below. Because rain doesn't come straight down, I will need to get out there with a squeegee after rain storms to keep the water from pooling under things.

The fourth canopy (between the old and new canopy) is set up outside the shed, and will be my staging ground for parts from the old garage. I expect to spend a few weekends this winter simply going through parts, sorting them by vehicle and purpose so I can find things more easily. After getting that tool cabinet (See $50 Tool Chest), and sorting my tools, I was stunned by how much faster I was able to work simply because I could find the tool I needed so much faster. I figure if I can do the same for my parts, I could see a similar improvement.

At some point, these canopies will correlate to work bays. Rather than number them, and accidentally create some kind of priority or pecking order, I have named them after my Grateful Dead heroes: Jerry, Phil, Pigpen and Bob, from nearest the house to furthest from.

Downspouts and Diverters

spider legs, right

I mentioned the foundation vents being below grade, and some of my efforts to resolve for water getting into the crawlspace (basically digging out around them) in my Vehicular Paperwork post. Part of the below-grade problem is the location of the downspouts and the fact that they, like so much of the rest of the house, are original to 1948. Back then, houses did not have their downspouts connected to a central sewer system; they simply dumped water on the ground next to your foundation. If the ground is higher than the vent, then that water dumps into your crawlspace or basement. Neat. To remedy, Boo and I got a few box-style diverters (like this) which have a square catch bin that you set under the downspout. Attached to the side of the catch bin is a 8-foot long, 2-inch diameter flexible hose that you route away from your house. We did this for the downspouts which dumped near a vent. For the remaining downspouts, we used old-skool technology: a simple u-channel style diverter (like this) that you set on the ground under the downspout and the water runs down the u-channel to the other end, moving the contact point of water-to-dirt 2 feet or so further away from your foundation.

new canopies

We tried a few other things before landing on these solutions. We tried digging ditches for the water to follow. It wouldn't. Then, we tried flexible hosing attached to the end of the downspouts. Those worked, sort of, but we needed to gang a few together to get the water far enough away from the vents. And, they were white, so from a distance, it looked like the house had grown spider legs.

The day after we installed the linked diverters, we got almost 1/2 an inch of rain. While the rain was its most intense, we were at the house, and looked at how the diverters performed. They handled the volume easily, routing the water well away from the house. The below-grade foundation vents remained completely dry. While I still intend to do something to protect those vents from water entry, I don't feel like that is an emergency any longer.

That's it for today. Thanks, as always, for following along-

Car Ports and Car Noises

What a difference a week makes. In my last post, I mentioned that I had helped T moved some stuff out of the one garage bay. Since then, K got the rest of his stuff, so Oliver is back in the garage. Also, the 2 carports from Harbor Freight arrived. So, I quickly moved from all cars out in the open and no sheltered space to work to 3 cars under some kind of roof, creating all kinds of work space. So, today's brief post if about getting the car ports up, and some diagnosis into the noises coming from Nemo.

Car Port Assembly x2

400 sqft of not raining

I have a small 2-car garage. I underscore small because Oliver (1978 MGB) barely fits between the garage door and the walkway along the opposite wall. Considering the MGB is one of the shortest cars out there, I couldn't imagine parking a Caddy or one of those big pickup trucks. Simply put, it wouldn't fit. So, when I think about how I'm going to complete Zed (1979 280XZ) this winter, I shudder. It's way too small to shoot paint, and with the gas furnace in there, I couldn't paint while heating the house, so the plan unravels fairly quickly. So, I got a couple of those 10' x 20' car ports that Harbor Freight sells (~$120US each). My driveway has a slight tilt towards the garage, but it's otherwise fairly flat.

V between

While I would have preferred a purchase ship-to-store option, the harbor freight website doesn't offer that. Instead, they offer $7US to ship it by FedEx Ground. That sounds like a cost-loss on their part, especially for a pair of these car ports, but they arrived before the primer from Eastwood (which still hasn't arrived). The assembly is actually very easy. The instructions have only a handful of steps and the exploded drawing is not as bizarre as IKEA furniture. I used a rubber mallet to get the pipes to fit together quickly. I was able to get each one assembled in about 2 hours, measured from when I walked out my garage door with a full box to walking back in after set-up and recycling/throwing away the packaging.

I set one over the top of Zed, and the other right next to it. I would rather not have a 20' dripped seam between them, and pushed the posts right next to one another. I took the 8-inch-or-so hangdown from one, and flipped it up over the top of the neighboring car port. The other hangdown, I pulled across and clipped to the tie-down seam, which runs along the inside, above the bottom rail. Then, I forced the pipes together and cable-tied them. This created a small V shape of car port tarp between the rails, running all the way front-to-back. My plan is that this will direct the water down to the lower end of the carport. I think this will work except for those super-heavy rain events we get sometimes. We'll see.

A4 Front Clunk

top of front strut, example

Now for some car content. After getting all the little things fixed on Nemo, I took him for a short test drive to see how he felt. He felt pretty good. Lots of boost, and plenty of power, but he made lots of noise. I could hear a clunk pretty much on every little bump. I figured it was the sway-bar bushings and replaced them: 13mm bolts hold the clamps on, and the bushing has a slit in it so you just need to remove the clamps, pull off the old bushing, slap on the new one and put the clamp back on. Times 2. The noise got a little better, but after pushing the fenders up and down, I believe the problem is in the strut-mount. From what I've read, after market struts that lower the front end (like Nemo has) put more pressure on the strut-mounts than the stock ones do, transferring some of the burden from the springs to the mounts to hold the front end up. This causes them to wear prematurely. So, I will be looking to replace those. Since I have a very healthy fear of strut springs, I will probably remove the struts and have new mounts installed by one of the shops around here. Better to pay with some hard earned cash than with some body damage.

A4 Rear Hum

Also on that test drive, I noticed that the rear end would make a humming noise once I got above about 30mph. I figured it was the wheel bearings, so I put the back end up on jackstands to confirm. The wheels had no play in them. None. Curious, I pulled it out of gear and spun the wheels, listening for noises (that would translate into a hum at speed). I heard clicking coming from the inner CV joints. So, that means at least removing one or both rear axles. Fun. Of course, with the AWD, I can't be 100% sure the bearings aren't bad. I may not have gotten the wheels spinning fast enough to make noise.

the diff oil fill, example

I intended to drain and fill the rear diff while the rear end was up in the air, but the fill plug is stripped. While I was under there, I got to see just how much caked on grease could remain attached to the outside of a differential without falling off. The answer: a LOT. I am really concerned about the health of this diff, and the whole rear-end, for that matter. Before I go any further with it, I will collect a second opinion. After that, I think it will have it's ass-end in the air for a while as I replace CV joints, and/or wheel bearings and fight off the fill plug so I can refresh the fluid. I'm not sure a 20+ year old 230k+ mile A4 is worth terribly much, but this is how we learn, and this could be a useful daily-driver for someone, maybe, eventually.

Well, that's it for today. I have not gotten back into the Zed paintwork since I put up the car ports. I really wanted to get Nemo road-able first. With the car ports up, I have more paint prep to do, and I need to figure out some sides for the car port space so I can heat and paint. Thanks, as always for following along-

Enter Rainman

In much the same way Metallica describes the arrival of Sandman, we in the great Pacific Northwest greet the seasonal rains. Today, I describe alternatives to prevent the rain putting a hard stop on all of our projects.

Tarp

We start with the most obvious water protection: the basic tarp. I tuck you in, keep you free from sin... til the (Rainman) he comes. A tarp thrown over your made-of-steel project works great if you are trying to hide it from the neighbors. The benefits end there, however. No matter how awesome-fantastic your tarp is, it will capture / trap / hold moisture.. against that made-of-steel project. Your best-case outcome is that you have lots of mold or moss growing under there come spring when the rains stop. Your worst-case scenario is your project acquired a new rusty patina or one or more of your seals leaked and now you have mildew inside or rust inside. In the end, I think throwing a tarp over your project is possibly worse than nothing at all. At least when it is uncovered you will feel motivated to do something about it. A tarp just hides the truth from you.... until you remove it. All winter you're sleeping with one eye open.

Car Cover

I got one of those fancy $200+US bus covers from BusDepot a few years ago. It worked great the first year or two. After that, the UV light or something caused it to not work so well anymore. Last year, when I pulled the cover off, there was moisture all over the inside of it, mold on the fiberglass poptop, and a slime on the rest of the bus. Yuck. I know my seals are good, so this year, he is going without a cover, and I'll just cycle the cabin furnace (See Parking Heater 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, final) more frequently to keep him dry inside. Recall from Seasonal Cleaning, I use a desiccant as well. In the end, a car cover is little more than a collection of tarps that have been sewn into the shape of your car. They may last a little longer than a single season, but for the price, it just makes more sense to invest in something more.

Instant Canopy / Sun Shade

So, we can't have some plastic sheet draped over a car for 7 months and expect the car to be better for it. Who knew? So, we try one of those $99 pop-up canopy things. These are great in the summer when you're working in an otherwise sunny spot. They go up in minutes and you can do it by yourself. Most excellent. Of course, they are only 10 feet square, so the only kind of vehicle that could completely fit underneath it would be a motorcycle. Not even Oliver, the MGB, or the old corvette pictured here can completely fit under one. But it's close. So, you move it around to create shade where you're working. Enter Rainman. These things cannot withstand rain. I mean 0 rain. They are not designed for water to run off the edges. If you look at the picture on the right, you can imagine this scene: it pools up along the lower edge, slowly stretching the top until you have these large pools of water suspended over your project. At $99, the structure is not terribly strong, so something bends and then another thing breaks and suddenly, you have gallons of water dropping onto your project all at once. And, your canopy is trash.

Farmer Market Canopy

How about an upgrade? The canopies that the vendors use at farmer's markets and music festivals, for example, are great. They can withstand some wind, and some rain. They come with detachable sides. So far so good, except they cost about 3x an instant canopy. Of course, they are also 10 feet square, so no normal car can fit inside, just like the $99 deal above. I got one of these a while back, and I am using it for now, while I await my next solution. I have removed the front clip (front fenders and hood) from Zed, so the rear 2/3 are covered by the canopy, and put a tarp (yes, I know they are not great) over the engine compartment. No pooling water. The wind doesn't seem to touch it. Still, the 10 feet deep part makes it fairly unusable for working on a car in the rain, unless you don't mind either having half of the car sticking out into the rain while you and one end are dry or having the other end nice and dry while you and the thing you're working on out in the rain. The latter of those seems silly, especially since you just spent $300US on a rain-capable covering.

Temporary Carport

My last effort to foil the Rainman is a Harbor Freight temporary carport. These are 20 feet long by 10 feet wide, have no sides, but appear to be able to withstand rain. I don't know about wind. The videos I have seen online are unclear since most of them show a carport that is mostly protected on the sides by trees and/or shrubs or by a more permanent structure like a shed, garage or house.

Unfortunately, getting one of these things is becoming quite an undertaking. It seems that every restaurant that wishes to remain viable during the rainy season has concluded that these are the best way to keep their patrons dry during the CoViD no-inside-seating thing. As a result, as soon as a truck arrives in the greater Portland area with some, they are gone. So, I went online and ordered from their website. In a normal world, delivery is about a week. In this modern dysfunctional dystopia, I can't get an estimated delivery date. Why? Between COViD and the wild/forest fires, FedEx has effectively ground to a halt in the Portland area. For example: I ordered primer for Zed in early September. It took 2 weeks for it to get to a Portland FedEx warehouse, and it has sat there since. I called FedEx and asked about it. The response? Forest fires. They could have said "sunspots" for as helpful as that was. We still have no idea when it will move out of the warehouse. I may have to take a Saturday and drive out to the airport to collect it in person.

Temporary Garage

Similar to the carport, this is a Harbor Freight item which costs more ($170US versus $120US), but it includes sides and a roll-up door. Based on what I can see in the videos, however, you can't assemble them without the sides, so that reduced flexibility turned me off to them. Recognizing that I could roll up the sides, I looked for them at the big Harbor Freight in Tigard, and they were out of them just like the carports. So, either the restaurants are getting desperate or lots of folks decided that it was time to fight off the Rainman this year. Or, maybe, the supply chain issues we are all experiencing with seemingly everything has hit Harbor Freight as well. Regardless, I will wait for FedEx to get their act together since I'm already into this solve with an order, and my packages will eventually all be at the airport, waiting. I suspect these garages are fairly good, though the reviews indicate that they are not as weather resistant as their carport brothers. Maybe the sides catch more air, causing the structure to fail.

Car Content

After the last post about Zed's Bondo (See Bondo Zed), I continued to perfect his body with cycles of Bondo aplication and sanding for another couple of weeks. I found a technique that worked very well for getting the patch fairly perfect: on my sanding block, I had an old 320 grit paper. I held some some 80-grit onto the sanding surface and sanded down until I got to where I wanted to evaluate it. I then set the 80-grit aside and did a quick cuff with the 320 already on the block. This got the Bondo as smooth as the body so I could check for dips without getting false feels from the rough Bondo. And, this allowed me to use one block with 2 different grits, speeding the process.

I guess that's it for today. I have some winterization for Hapy to do: pulling the luxury battery, removing the cushions and fabrics, etc. Of course, that's hardly post-worthy stuff. There are things that need doing on Nemo, the A4, and Oliver. I just need to create a workspace that will keep me and the projects out of the rain first. I helped T load out of one garage bay, leaving just a few of K's belongings blocking up Oliver's spot. When the carports arrive, I'll get those up and get the projects moving again. Until then, we sit and watch Rainman have his day. Thanks, as always, for following along-

Where There's Smoke...

With a title like that, this post could go almost anywhere. I could ramble about the elections, or about newspaper articles, lying public officials, whistle-blowers, conspiracy theories, you name it. Instead, today I will focus on literally smoke. As in the smoke that has sat outside my house, and up and down the west coast for almost 2 weeks. Fortunately, we were hit with a big storm at the end of last week that washed the smoke away. Still, 10+ days of hazardous air was absolutely post-worthy. Before I begin, Hapy first day of Fall.

AQI
The various Star Trek series like to have moments sprinkled through episodes where they get to say how "adaptive" humans are. While this is awfully self-congratulatory, we see it every day, if we look for it. Case-in-point, we have the "AQI" (Air Quality Index) that tells us how badly polluted the air is. I'm sure this measure has been around for decades, and folks who are much closer to air quality or environmental spaces have known about it and its importance for years. For the rest of us, this is a new number, like when we learned about Kelvin or Hg (vacuum measurement, not Mercury) in science class. 2 weeks ago, someone would say "it's, like, 90 in here" and we, Americans, would all know that they were saying it is hot. For my worldly readers, 90*F is about 32*C.

Fast forward 2 weeks where we have had dangerous air in the Willamette Valley. When it started, we just heard "it's bad. don't go outside" and that it will be gone in a couple of days. Knowing that the weather folks are about as good at predicting weather as coin-flips, the industrious, curious Oregonians searched for something that would give us a little more to go on than "its bad. stay inside watching our program, after this commercial". I first spotted the PM on the AccuWeather app on my phone, but it would only show current state. I want to see if it is getting better or worse. So, I downloaded the Plume Labs app. This thing shows a pollution forecast. While it isn't very good at projecting, or showing historical data, at least it tries. I can see that it will be getting worse, so if I have to go outside for something, I understand that waiting would be a worse idea than just going now... with a mask on. By the way, the picture on the side here is a T-selfie fighting the Obenchain fire in Southern Oregon.

Going back to talking to our friends and relatives, 2 weeks ago, we would talk about temperature and compare how much cooler it was on the west side versus downtown Portland. "It's 85 here". "Oh, it's over 90 there?". That was pre-LaborDay2020 thinking. Now, our conversation is like "it was 350 earlier today, but now it's 460". Or "overnight it looks like it dropped down below 100, but now it's over 250 again." The number itself is super important, but without context a 3-digit number could be super-bad (like over 130*F mid-day outside temp would be) or a 3-digit number could be virtually meaningless (like how many meters from my house my mailbox is). So, what do these numbers mean?

range	rating	description
0-20	Excellent	typical air in Oregon, perfect for any outside activity for everyone
20-50	Fair	generally good for most. Sensitive people might feel some minor to moderate symptoms from long term exposure. So... sensitive folks can take short walks, but no soccer
50-100	Poor	unhealthy for sensitive folks. non-sensitive people may feel some minor to moderate symptoms. Sensitive people should reduce time outside
100 - 150	Unhealthy	Health effects felt immediately by sensitive. Healthy folks may have difficulty breathing or feel a sore throat
150 - 150	Very Unhealthy	Health effects felt immediately by sensitive. Healthy folks will probably have difficulty breathing or feel a sore throat
250+	Dangerous	Health effects felt immediately by everyone. Any exposure, even for a few minutes, can have serious health effects

So, when I tell you that it's 368 here, you understand just how bad that is.

Car Content
I bring all this up because the smoke has been keeping me from my cars. Mostly. After a week of dangerous smoke, I heard that we were going to be getting rain. Before the rain was supposed to arrive, we were supposed to get fog blended in with the smoke. So, smog. Literally. The ash from the forest fires is not a big deal to your car while it is dry. Once it gets wet, however, it can start to damage your paint. So, before the rain was due, and shortly after the fog rolled in, I pulled on my old house-painting respirator and hosed down the herd. I was not looking for clean, I was looking for dust-free. The fog passed, and the rain did not arrive for another week. Instead, we got morning dew, in the smoke. Still, my preventative placement of a tarp on the stripped-to-metal Zed and a tarp on the convertible top of Oliver should help them from getting damaged even worse.

... there's FIRE (Political Rant warning)

One upside to all the mask-wearing we need to endure to protect our fellow citizens from CoViD-19 is we have grown accustomed to wearing one. So, when pollution is so bad that we need to wear a mask outside to simply get the mail, we already have the masks on hand (I hope, for your sake). Thanks for screwing up the CoViD response, Mr. Trump, or many of us wouldn't have had a mask available when the forest fires grew so large that most of the population on the West Coast now needed to wear a mask all the time just to avoid pulmonary issues. But, will this finally get the anti-maskers to put on a mask? Unlikely, based on the pictures of the Estacada gun-toters who are stopping cars they don't recognize and asking the persons inside about their political views. When better to debate politics than maskless, in "Dangerous" air, in the middle of a pandemic, while a forest fire is forcing an evacuation around you, at gunpoint? Really... just... wow.

/Political Rant
Looking back, my first post of this year, or last post of last year, was on December 31, 2019 (See GenXplained). Looking at that post about a dystopian present seems almost prophetic. When I consider how much has gone down the tubes in this country since I wrote that post, it is staggering. If you told me then that I would have spent 6 months working from home followed by 2 weeks locked inside because of a pandemic and historically unprecedented fire season respectively, I would have thought you were a total doomsdayer. Let's not forget the police violence, protests, unmarked vans nabbing people off the Portland streets and protester-versus-protester violence. And yet, here we are.

I have spent my woulda-been-wrenching time watching how-to-paint-your-car videos. I hope I will learn enough to paint the Zed well enough that Boo will want to drive it, and proudly so. Time will tell.

Thanks, as always, for following along. This has been a hard few weeks/months for all of us. I sincerely hope this rough road is coming to an end. Better days lie ahead, I'm sure of it. I wish they would just arrive already. In the meantime, please wear a mask when in public and remember that a mask covers your mouth and nose. It is not a fabric chinstrap.

Z - Work that Body

Today's post covers some more of the efforts on the 280ZX.

Rain Rain Go Away
In my last update about the 280ZX, I described some of the efforts that were going on. The oil and oil filter were changed, but the main focus of the work was dismantling the body. This included removing and stripping body front fenders, removing the dented driver door and removing the hood. If we had a garage larger than a freight elevator, this would have all been done in the friendly, climate-controlled confines of my garage. Instead, we were doing this under 10x10 canopy. Enter a wicked storm. The first night, the wind blew so hard that the canopy flipped over, leaving the Z exposed. We righted it and that afternoon set some things on the feet so they wouldn't move in the wind. Well, they didn't move from the wind... exactly... but they moved.

The torrential rain that fell the following night destroyed the canopy. All four legs were broken, the supports under the main tarp were twisted and mangled. The car was kinda dry, but the canopy was suspending huge bowls of water over the top of it. Boo and I got the water away from the car, but all over ourselves. Hahaha.. The canopy frame was moved to the yard where T could cut it into pieces with the angle grinder. The canopy top was laid on top of the Z to try to keep it dry. The wind remained relentless, so we held it down with whatever we could find: pain cans, old rims, etc.

If you thought the front yard looked bad before, imagine the scene now. Like many yards, it is in it's late-fall least attractive state anyway with leaves and overgrown landscaping. Of course, we have the 7 cars in various states of repair. One is in pieces under a make-shift tarp that is covered in paint cans and rims and other stuff. The canopy frame is sitting in a heap. And, of course, there are bits and pieces of the Z project strewn about the driveway and lawn. Did I mention the large blue tarp where some parts had been primed and left? Yeah.. it's a mess. So so bad. Or it was. And the inside of the Z was still getting watered better than my yard in the summer.

Move-a Move-a
C has been working very hard on this car. He comes over on the afternoons he doesn't have work and spends at least one day every weekend on it. He usually works at least one day every weekend at his job, so, basically, if he isn't in school or at work, he's on his car. Proud dad. He is steadily preparing the car for a re-paint, but the more he exposes, the more he is creating opportunities for rust on the panels or water to get into the inside. The panels have been getting stored inside the 2-car shed (technically my attached garage, but it's really barely 18 feet deep) where the MGB sits awaiting funding.

On his last visit we noted how much moisture was still getting inside his car. By moisture I mean standing water, not just vapor or dampness. Standing water. So, we moved things around in a full-scale version of Tetris. We moved cars all around, some car parts got aggregated into big unwieldy piles, and found a way of fitting the Z next to the MGB in the garage. Now, C can climb in and out the driver side and work on removing windows or tail lights inside. When necessary, we'll move the Z straight back into the driveway for grinding and then move it straight forward into it's indoor storage spot. We were all very pleased with the net results. Overnight, we ran fans to get the moisture off the car so with every step he takes forward he won't be watching his car deteriorate from the weather.

So.. Where's the Progress
Yeah, Okay. I know. Lots of words there but no tangible update about the car itself other than it is now stored indoors. Here goes: T went down to Sacramento and picked up some interior plastic bits as well as a driver door (Thx T!). The door, like the fenders and the hood, has been stripped down to metal. We swapped out the power window guts from the donor door, replacing with the manual crank style from the folded up original door. We test-fit the door card and rolled the window up and down. Perfect.

On the next dry day, C will be setting all bare metal outside on that awful blue tarp and shooting them with primer. Of course, he will follow the standard process of wiping the parts down with mineral spirits first so the primer adheres well. Also, he has started to remove the small triangular rear windows. It appears that these were installed with that black windshield caulk, making their removal more difficult. Still, those are the places where rust can go unnoticed, and he wants his paint job to last longer than a few months, so he's going where rust hides.

Ahead, he plans to remove the trim around the windshield and remove the glass so he can address the small rust spots he can already see. Next is removing the tail lights, rear gate and the glass from the gate so the rear tailgate can be prepped. Once all pieces are ready, he wants to learn how to shoot his own paint, so we'll be looking into that. I sincerely hope we get a dry spell or we'll have to figure out a temporary painting shed. Since so much of the car is in smaller pieces, the "shed" may not need to be as large as a car. We'll see.

One last thing: when it came time to move the 280ZX from where it has sat almost since it arrived in October, it started right up. The only other car we have that starts that fast is the VW bus. I took that as a really good omen.

That's it for today. As always, thanks for following along.

4Peaks 2017 Road Report

So I understand that this blog is supposed to be about my bus and my travels in him. And I realize that the last bunch of posts have had nothing to do with the bus. I'm taking a break from the MGB front end rebuild set of posts to hit a couple bus-related ones (pause for applause). For starters, I'm starting with a classic road report, detailing our annual trip to Bend for the 4Peaks music festival with our good friend Grateful Ed in his trusty '73 VW Riviera Poptop, Belle.

Not Really Prepped

In prior years, I've used a local music festival as a way to knock the kinks out of the systems before taking the 4-hour drive to Bend for 4Peaks. Since the Hootenanny isn't held anymore, I don't have that built-in system. So, my road-ready testing isn't quite as, uh.. exhaustive. I made sure Hapy could start, he was clean and empty of not-camping stuff. I verified his oil and coolant levels were right. He was ready enough to drive around town, I figured. I did replace the front door seals, though. I remembered from the year before how cold the bus was on the drive because the seals were gone. I bought the really nice grey ones through CIP1, replacing the black Brasil-sourced ones I had been wrestling with for years.

Tank Fill
About a week before we were supposed to leave, I fired up Hapy and drove to the corner fueling station to fill it up. I took Boo and K2 with me, and thought I'd show off just how much better Hapy's off-the-line acceleration is. Well... he wasn't as snappy as he was before I ran him out of fuel, but he left the stop line pretty quickly. We got to the gas station, and got the diesel flowing while I washed the windshield a couple of times. Once filled, I turned the key... and nothing. I figured I did something electrical, so we pushed the bus into a parking space. Boo and K2 walked home for another car to give me a jump while I started diagnosing things. I was fully stymied until Boo got back and we started with her at the wheel trying the key while I wiggled wires and re-set relays. I went to the battery and was messing with the thick cables and Hapy started acting like he had the right voltages. During my efforts, I moved the battery ever-so-slightly forward, and then Hapy fired right up like nothing happened. I remembered that the battery sliding back into the rear tail light housing causes this problem for some reason. Grr.. I really need to solve that permanently.

After that, Hapy drove great the rest of the week. I didn't try to show off his acceleration again, nor did I really stress him, but I got him up to temperature, and puttered around town.

Drive There
The night before we left, Boo accepted a new job. In order to keep things moving forward, she needed to fill out a bunch of paperwork and take a pee test before we left town. So, we fit all that around our exit. We had initially intended to meet Ed at his place south of Portland around 10AM, but we ended up leaving closer to 11:30. We were still well out of heavy traffic periods and headed south on I-5 towards Salem. With Belle leading, Hapy drove great. His temps stayed down, and it wasn't long before we had turned onto OR-22 heading east off the plain and into the forest. Belle was driving without windshield wipers, but the Rain-X was pushing the sprinkles out of Ed's line of sight. We visited the Maples Rest Area in Gates, checked Belle's oil and took a brief break. It was after we passed through Idanha that Hapy started to have speed issues. I wasn't able to get the throttle to respond on hills. While it wasn't a huge deal, it started to weigh on me as we worked our way up and down and up and down through the Cascades and over the Santiam Pass on US20. Still, the drive was beautiful and the new front door seals really held out the cold draft and rain. The little heater produced a little heat, so while Boo had a blanket on her lap, I was perfectly comfortable in little more than a jerga.

We hit Sisters before 3, and we were feeling really good about our progress. For the first time I can remember, we made it from end-to-end through Sisters without coming to a complete stop.

The venue for 4Peaks was moved this year. Until this year, it was held in Tumalo, NorthWest of Bend at the Rockin A Ranch. This year, it was held South and East of Bend at Stevenson's Ranch so we had an extra 10 miles or so to travel, but through the city. We stopped at a gas station near the ranch for Ed to fill Belle with petrol and I got ice.

I'll have a separate post about the festival entry, the location, the scene, the people, the music, etc. Suffice to say, it was awesome. We drew the conclusion that the sluggish accelerator pedal was because of gunk getting into the fuel filter when I ran the bus out of fuel. Not having a spare fuel filter (bad bus owner), nor access to a parts store meant I was driving home with a restrictor in my fuel system.

Getting Home
We didn't really want to leave, but Ed had to be at work on Monday, and the festival, though open longer than past years, still closed at 4. And, of course, we had a 4 hour drive home to do. While the weather on the way out was a test of our buses against wind and rain, the drive home was a test against a summer solstice sun and desert heat. We left the festival around noon and hit a filling station before doing anything else. Since we had traveled over 200 miles since the no-start fill a week before, I concluded I would need fuel before leaving civilization and entering the central Oregon desert. I bought just over 6-1/2 gallons, recording 32mpg on the drive out plus the around-town driving the week before. Ed joked about how you can't burn too much fuel if you can't get it to your engine. Good one, Ed.

We had decided before we left for the festival that we would drive home a different way to change the scenery. After the sluggish hills on the way out, we thought that driving US26 through Government Camp might not have as many ups and downs as US20. We hadn't considered that the US26 route left us in the desert for far longer, and that the temperatures were in the 90's compared to the 50's on the way out. This created a different stress... on the cooling system.

Hot Stop Hot Again
The drive north on US97 was steady going. Redmond had some traffic, but Metolius and Madras were mostly unpopulated. Actually, when I consider how large an event is coming to Madras for the total eclipse in August, the town appeared largely for sale. Many store fronts and undeveloped lots had for sale signs on them. That's not a very positive statement for the health of Madras. It is in Madras that we left the US97 for the US26 and our flat uneventful drive changed. The road out of Madras starts with a long uphill pull. Hapy didn't have that lack of acceleration, but his temperatures started to climb. When he reached 195* I pulled over and let him cool back down. More hills, more desert heat and more altitude meant that his temps would rise again, and again. I started letting his temps run up to 202* before pulling over to cool him down. Each time, Ed would pull over with us, or somewhere ahead of us so we could continue our carabus. That is, until finally, we had to let Ed go while we let Hapy cool way down. Boo and I had a roadside picnic in the middle of the Warm Springs Reservation and Hapy's temperature dropped down into the low 170's. Still, it didn't take long before we were climbing again, and his temps were high again. All told, we stopped 6 or 7 times including the picnic stop between Madras and Government Camp.

SkiBowl
I've mentioned SkiBowl a number of times. I love playing in the snow there. After such a hard climb up the east side of Mt. Hood, Boo and I decided Hapy needed a longer rest, and we could use a beer so we stopped at SkiBowl West. The bar (Beer Stube) isn't open during non-ski season, but the cafe is, and they sell beer in cans, so we split a tallboy on the back porch. As we sat, we could see that there is still snow at the top of upper bowl, even though it was over 85* at the lodge. SkiBowl is in the process of switching over from winter to summer sports, where they leverage their ski lifts to enable mountain bikers the ultimate: a lift to the top so you only have to ride downhill. Although it was Sunday, we only saw 2 cyclists the entire time we were there. We will be back, with as many boys as we can muster, to play on that hill. That's just too fun.

Home At Last
The drive from SkiBowl on home was completely non-eventful. The accelerator was responsive and the engine temp never climbed above 192*. I don't know if it was the desert, the higher altitudes or what, but once back on the west side of the Cascades, Hapy drove like a champ. We drove US26 to OR212 through Boring and then connected with I-205 around to I-5 and finally onto OR217 home. He even handled the interstate traffic easily. Still, I need to look at the coolant. I think the coolant / distilled water mixture is off, and that caused the radiator to be unable to manage the engine heat.

I haven't filled up since we got home, and I know I need to soon. Overall, Hapy was great. As a camping vessel, he was a pleasure. I'll get into that in another post, but simply as transportation I know I need to do a better job of getting him ready before taking him out of round-town puttering or he'll leave me stranded. And it will be completely my fault.

That's it for this time. Thanks, as always, for following along. I'll post about the festival, and a new bus-change I did to improve the camping experience soon.

Little British Car (part 2)

In my last post, I started the tale of how I acquired a new project car. I'll complete the story today. I left off having just arrived at the PO's house, in the outskirts of Molalla Oregon.

Well... there it is
As we pulled up, the property and car owner walked out. We started talking about the brief history of the car since his son picked it up. Since the real info about the car was buried in the head of someone living in Arizona, I had no alternative but to take what he said at face value. Meaning... it might be true... The convertable top was gone, leaving only the metal frame. The interior smelled like animal, and the carpet was trash. The seatbelts didn't retract anymore and the radio didn't work. Did I mention the top was just a frame? And, it had a 10 foot paint job (meaning that it looked good from at least 10 feet away). Long as the list appears, that really seemed to be the end of the bad news. The body didn't have rust on the panels, rockers or wheel wells. The interior and engine bay seemed to have handled the weather worse than the body, making me think that the car sat outside under a tarp rather than in a barn. Or, it sat next to an open window. Later, once I got a better look at it, I think it was the barn window theory since the driver side interior and engine compartment were in worse shape, leading me to believe the car was parked with the driver side next to the window. Oddly enough, the accessories (brake master cylinder, alternator, water pump, etc) on the top of the engine had more dust-rust than the underside. Perhaps an oil leak / grease was protecting the lower half of the engine? Regardless, the rust wasn't cancerous, so we kept going.

Test Drive
The owner's father and I jumped in and fired it up. The engine sounded good, but it had been running earlier that day when he drove it out of the barn so, again, face value. I revved the engine and when pulled my foot off the gas I could hear pop-pop-pop noises. That's an exhaust leak. Otherwise, it ran well. No weird noises. So, we took a spin down the drive and out onto the country road. I hadn't had much experience driving a tiny sports car like this, so I didn't have a whole lot to compare it to. I knew it was fun, and for the price it was probably worth it. It held corners, responded to the gas pedal well, and shifted firmly. Most of the accessories worked (fan, wipers) as did the lights. The dash lit up correctly with the idiot lights flashing before starting, so I had reason to believe it was a pretty good little car.

Which Way Is Out?
We settled on a price, we signed the relevant papers and the Little British Car was mine (cue the Bottlerockets "Thousand Dollar Car"). T agreed to follow me to make sure there weren't any mechanical failures on the way home. It was about this point that I started asking the now previous owner if he thought it could make it an hour away and whether the gas gauge worked. We put a couple of gallons of petrol from a red can into the tank and the seller started to give directions for finding a gas station. The directions were an instant classic containing such favorites as "take the second or third right after the big bend" and "you're gonna cross the river a couple times before..". Of course it had a couple landmarks too, like "the house without a porch" and "the place with really good pie". I'm sure if I could have understood the directions, they would have delivered us to a gas station. Instead, we ran some math, and figured that with 2 gallons of fuel we'd be most, if not all, the way home before we were in trouble.

Truckin'

Roadster in the Rain

As ominous as that sounded, the MG handled fine. As we passed through Molalla, T waved me over to let me know the brake lights weren't working any more. Neat. This was when I also discovered that the windscreen washer didn't work either. Note to self (you can use it too): check all the systems and write down your findings. Driving into a setting sun with a filthy windscreen wasn't how I wanted to start this relationship, so I dumped my water bottle onto windshield and rubbed it clean-ish with a towel we found in the Subbie. It sufficed. With T following, we put the little car through more paces, testing it's acceleration, braking and steering. The brakes grew soft, indicating an issue there, and the steering held well, but it felt like there could be more precision. The car's get up and go, however, had no problems. Once we hit the Interstate, the little car was able to cruise at 70mph and dip/dodge in traffic. T stayed right behind me, acting as my brake lights until we were in our neighborhood. We completely forgot to get fuel. We didn't need it anyway.

That's about it for today. I've since done some work on the MG and I'll post about that in the future. In the meantime, thanks as always for following along-

Cold Rain and Snow

Today, I'm going to geek out on our Pacific NorthWest snowfall this season.

Snow in the Mountains
Last Summer, the weather folks were calling for a La Nina pattern to develop over the late fall. This usually means the Pacific Northwest is colder and wetter than normal. If you don't live here, nor watching weather patterns here, let me tell you: they nailed it. Mt Hood, our local 11,000+ foot high mountain, has an incredible amount of snow. Based on the historical data, Mt. Hood is way ahead not just of average, but of historic highs. Based on the decade graph, most years Mt Hood has around 115' of snow. To date, they have over 150' and we have another month before the traditional snow pack peak. Snowfans (like me) are thrilled.

Rain in the Valley
There's a saying around here: "rain in the valley means snow on the mountain". It's usually true. This year, being a complete departure from normal, snow on the mountain could mean snow in the valley. To wit, Portland Public Schools closed for 9 days due to weather. Between the heavy snowfall, lack of plows and extended cold days, the snow became ice and travel actually got worse before it got better. We have also had multiple sub-freezing stretches which did not have precipitation. While that's not really a travel challenge if you're in a car... it is if you're in an old car or, as has been my case recently, riding public transit. Standing on a train platform in a stiff wind and below freezing temps is reality for so many. It's quite humbling for those used to driving every day (like I was).

Batteries Lost
On a personal level, standing on a platform wasn't really the biggest impact. Of our fleet of cars, we lost 3 batteries to the cold. I'm sure you're reading this and thinking "aw, the cold didn't do it". Maybe. All I know is these cars ran fine and then we didn't run them because the snow piled up and we didn't want to drive them on the ice. Next time we went to start them, they wouldn't start and wouldn't take a charge. In two cases, we took the batteries to Les Schwab and they confirmed they were in need of replacement. Honestly, I don't trust shops who benefit from giving you information that they generate themselves. But, I tried to charge them, and the charge wouldn't stick at home, so I figured they were all goners. The third one took a jump and after jumping it a few times (more like after taking a long drive), the battery is working correctly again. Still, we're thinking about replacing it anyway.

Installs

Funny thing how time just slips away. The cars who lost batteries were obviously not cars we drive all the time. Dude, our old Saturn, is on the block for selling this Spring. Getting the old battery out isn't too bad, but the new battery sat for a week before K, our now 21 year old, came over and installed it. It is literally 3 bolts holding it in. K needed to borrow the car, so he had the motivation that I lacked. The other dead battery was for our beloved microbus. That battery still hasn't been installed. Part of it is laziness, part of it is not really planning to drive him until the weather improves and part of it is that I've been distracted with a few different things. I'll go into those eventually.

Cedar Ridge

Rather than focus on the electrical stuff this weekend, the family and I took a couple of days off on a church retreat to a place called Cedar Ridge in Vernonia, Oregon. I'll about that today and give you a break from the near-constant bus-content.

Unusual Weather
Our weather this spring has been a-typical: unseasonably cold with lots of rain. If you aren't in the Pacific NorthWest, and you haven't been watching the weather for this area, we have had record-setting monthly rain falls since March. This made for epic spring skiing at the area resorts, but misery in the valley. Our average daily temperatures have been up to 10*F below average as well. Usually, the month of May is highlighted with multiple full-sun days with temps in the upper 70's to low 80's. In recent years, May has become a dry month, giving us a respite from the spring rains before June hits. This year, I don't think we got above 75* once all month and had measurable rain almost every day. Usually, our June is a rough re-entry into rain before July arrives to dry us out. This year, we didn't get the break, and tempers are starting to show it. All the more reason to get out of town and have some fun (albeit wet).

Cedar Ridge
This camp is located just outside Vernonia on Bridge Rd above Rock Creek. The creek runs along the western border, and the site is a long rolling hillside that probably drops close to 500 feet in elevation top to bottom. They house many sports camps and Outdoor School events over a typical year, as well as spiritual retreats (including yoga camps). Unlike many other similar locations, Cedar Ridge only houses one group at a time, which makes for a much deeper community-building opportunity.

It should be noted that Cedar Ridge is the best maintained camp I've ever been to. Usually, you'll go to one of these types of places and something will be closed for repairs or the cabins have leaks or some toilet doesn't flush right, etc. I couldn't find anything like that. In fact, it became kind of a game trying to find something broken. With all the rain we've had and the steep pitch of the hillside, you would think there would be muddy ruts all over the place. Nope. Not one. In fact, the ground was practically dry between showers. Pretty amazing.

When our church has these family camps, it is a very casual affair. Folks arrive as their schedules allow on Saturday and we have our first meal at dinner. Dinner is followed by a campfire. Sunday morning, we have a brief service after breakfast, and then its off to play. With all the sports camp facilities and open outdoors, it isn't hard to find something that fits your taste. My kids usually spend nearly all of their time at the creek-side skipping stones and wading to "the islands"or exploring the forest. This year my wife led a yoga class, and I visited with friends while the boys ran around. The afternoon was dominated by the 300-foot water-slide / slip 'n' slide.

Out of respect to my fellow parishioners, I won't publish any of the pictures, but it is fun, fast and the adults usually outlast the kids. By the end, there were about 20 die-hard sliders, including maybe 5 kids. Way fun. After sliding, the kids grouped at the heated outdoor pool or joined my wife and I in a service project of pulling weeds in the labyrinth. Before dinner, we had a hillside happy hour, and after dinner we put on a no-talent show (my wife sang beautifully and I bumbled my way through a skit). Monday morning, a new group was arriving, so we enjoyed a breakfast, cleaned up and checked out. The kids, of course, needed one last visit to the creek.

I have heard that Cedar Ridge is up for sale, and that the current owners spend so much time out of the country now that they can't give it the attention they would like. This makes me sad. I sincerely hope they are able to find a buyer who really understands how unique and special Cedar Ridge really is. Our church group starts planning in February and the level of anticipation starts growing immediately. We've only been going there for a couple of years, but the level of participation and enjoyment far exceeds our prior location.

That's all I have for today. I will be getting the rest of the pop-top stuff this afternoon with my friend Gr8fulEd. My wife and I spent Monday afternoon clearing the garage, so I'll blab about that and our inevitable sale items next time.