Trouble Maker

I went to 2co's cabaret on Saturday and their Christmas show has a great skit about wrapping presents (or lack thereof), very funny skit. He actually talked about how he always leaves a small blank square open no matter how big the piece of paper is and how small the thing is he is wrapping. The conclusion of it was to wrap everything in trash bags and put a bow on it. You’d hate it if my Uncle were related to you. He wraps everything perfect[/i]. He even lines up the patterns on the bottom of the wrapping paper where the two sides come together. Yeah, lots of stuff about this Holiday Season sucks, including wrapping presents. Although I can wrap better than a retard, I still don't like doing it. At least I got all of my shopping done yesterday, just started on Saturday. I usually wait until Christmas Eve.

I read it, I thought you concluded that it didn't work (or at least didn't help your problem)?

I'll check that out. We have a Haynes or something to that effect on the car. Is it a MAF style car or are you just speaking in generalities?

First off it’s a 92 4 door, don’t know which model. But according to Edmunds they all have the same engine in it, some 1.6L with 102hp, 101ft-lbs. It’s fuel injected and has a regular old rotor ignition setup sticking off of the side of the head (cam driven?). Just in case you know this engine at all. So my brother isn’t very car smart and has overheated it twice now. Finally took it into somewhere and they said his radiator is falling apart. Not a problem, it’s only $100 and very easy to replace. We just don’t want to replace it then have some other major problems. The car is oscillating between 1500-2000rpm when at idle. My first inclination is that it’s got too much air coming in and it’s something wrong with the throttle body. Obvious steps are clean it, check the idle steeper control motor and passage, etc. Are the throttle bodies in this car one piece, or can just the idle stepper control motor be replaced if need be? It’s one piece on my talon and they are pretty expensive if you can’t find a used one, which is part of my concern. Is there anything I can do to check compression or for problems with the head gasket/head warping before we do anything else? I’d like to get a compression test or a leak-down test done on it at some point anyways, just have never done one or had one done before so not 100% clear on what it entails and how it is done. If he’s done something that has damaged the engine to the point where he might need a new one, we might look at other options than fixing this car. Anyone’s thought’s on a plan of attack for this car? TIA.

I think I've seen you up there before.

I'll probably be heading up Wednesday and Friday night right after work. Possibly Tuesday night and Saturday morning too. I will probably head up there around 6ish till whenever on the weekdays. If you happen to be up there, look for a guy wearing a black and brown Spyder coat, Black Fly goggles with yellow lenses, and Dynastar Trouble Makers (see avatar and sig for what they look like). First time riding them so don't laugh at me. Need to get 'used' to them before I go out to Colorado.

Wow, you really drug that one out for such a lame joke. Someone get this man some lessons form someone who is actually funny and understands the idea of timing.

Yeah, I don't do anything too crazy in a car so I'm not too worried about it. Just ocasional track days and autocross days. I'm sure even then a full face helmet would be safer, I just can't bring myself to wear one. I just feel a littel clustorphobic when I'm wearing one. Does it also say anything about an SN rating on it? Some people who run track days probably don't know about that standard and might reject it simply on the fact that isn't not an SN rated helmet. If a lot of bike guys wear them, I'm sure they people who do bike stuff would know about it, just very possible not the people who run some car track days around here.

My car is going to be fucked when I get back to the airport on Friday.

The real David Hasselhoff speaks, and so it shall be written! Amen.

Well, at least you got a deal on it. I don't ride right now; will some day but never have yet. I will definitely check them out if I ever get into riding a lot. Only need for a helmet is for track days, autocross, etc. and occasionally at work. These are usually for relatively short periods of time and I don't need a super comfortable helmet. Plus I prefer an open face helmet in a car, and helmets for cars are usually designed a little different. I'd imagine they probably only make (closed face) helmets for motorcycles and maybe motocross (and sports like it).

There is only one David Hasselhoff and you're not allowed to act like you are him.

Did they give you that? If so, that's way cooler as a free helmet, although it's pretty cool to begin with.

Hmmm, I wonder who might be selling something like that?

I'm not sure who you are supposed to be in that quote, but you in this thread is definitely someone who is not funny.

Yeah, I went back and re-read what you said and realized I remembered it wrong. Thanks for the clarification.

DJ, did you ever get that verizon candy bar phone? If so, how do you like it?

You want to advance timing at tip in because I'm dumb? Ok! :asshole:

Yup, throw everything away. IIRC we moved everything I own to our new place in two trips with the van, plus two trips later in my car of stuff I didn't move when we first moved in that I don't use all of the time (ski stuff, hiking stuff, crap I need to sell, etc.). Every time I move somewhere I go through just about everything and throw a bunch of stuff away that I haven't used in a while, that way I don't have to move it.

So Powers, You want to advance timing on tip in to increase EGT, which would spool up the turbo quicker? So, would you also want to be a little leaner on tip in and then at some percentage of full boost go to the AFR you want to see across the board at full boost? Or would you just try to keep at constant AFR once you get into boost and completely take care of that in timing? I'm asking, I don't know very much about tuning timing.

D: See my cliff note from above. I wasn't asking for sympathy, just relaying a story. I did thank those that offered sympathy, that's just the polite thing to do. There wasn't anything wrong with how I was driving, or how fast I was driving. A semi lost control and came into my lane, I'm sure that's somehow my fault. If you want to talk about this anymore, call me. You don't act like this in person, only online. I don't appreciate it when people act condescending towards me to try to make up for their own insecurities and I do take it very personal when it's someone I'm supposedly friends with. You've done this on more than one occasion and it's just annoying. Fucking Douche Bag. As for that other incident, you have no idea about the whole story obviously. I felt extremely luck after that and horrible towards everyone that was around when it happened. I made a huge mistake and offered up a very sincere apology to everyone that was there. Thanks for bringing something up that’s two years in the past that everyone else had basically forgotten about (except for some friendly occasional ribbing that I don’t mind). I’m sure you’ve never done anything even remotely like either incident (see condescending towards others to make up for insecurities because they are ‘perfect’).

You and Faigley can both burn in hell. Drunk, fuck all of you, haha! Oh, except for those that wished my safe return, thanks. Oh, except for maybe Dj.

It might as well have been 71. We were on a 2 lane, modern, highway. The roads were cleared off, albeit for an occasional spot of ice that the trucker seemed like he hit. It wasn't even snowing at that point. 65 was the speed limit (approximately, I think it was 100 or 110kph), perfectly safe, and what almost everyone else was doing... unless someone going quite a bit slower than you all of the sudden lost control and came into your lane. Not only that but I didn't know where I was going and following someone on the highway. It's all right, I knew I was going to get some comments like that. Somehow no matter what anyone post, there has to be something wrong with it or what they did. Cliff notes: Suck my balls Faigley. Yeah, that's exactly how everyone in the car felt afterwards (that we were all very lucky).

Putting it into some kind of convertible?

... for the number of times I've cheated death. So I'm up in Baudette, Minnesota for two weeks for work and we decided to go to Winnipeg for the weekend for something to do. The roads were pretty nasty the whole way up, snowing and some drifting on the two-lane road. Once we got to the highway it was plowed and salted. But this just meant ice on the road and it was very windy at times. We were doing about 65 in the fast lane and this semi was going pretty slow in the slow lane. We were about to pass him and his cab just veered into our lane (his left tire was probably about where or right tire would normally be) and his trailer is a little sideways. I steered a little and slammed on the brakes in our POS Kia Sedona that doesn't even have ABS. I barley touched the trailer and steered out of the way of the cab. But at that point we were slightly out of control half way in the brake down lane, which was covered in snow. As we are going around him we start to oversteer and I counter steered each way about six times hoping that not only could I get control of it but that the semi wasn't barreling towards us still. Oh, I forgot to mention that there was about an eight foot drop off into the median that if we would have went into we would have been rolling. We probably came within a foot of dropping off of that, while we were ‘out of control’. I get the car under control and the mirror was pushed in. I thought we had just gotten so close that he touched the mirror enough to move it in (it's one of those mirrors the can fold in). We get to the hotel and look at the car and the plastic mirror housing has a huge gash in it and about a foot over on the hood there is a long scratch. So we were actually partly under the semi trailer heading for the back wheels of the cab. I’ll try to get pics when we go back to Baudette. I still can't believe we made it out of that. Be careful out there when the weather is bad, you never know what someone else is going to do… especially when they are driving something that weighs magnitudes more that you do. EDIT: It's obvisously supposed to be 'Chalk another one up', but I didn't catch it before I posted and can't edit it.