Light a ... pipe?

I forgot to take a candle picture last night, and I don't know if I'll have a chance to this afternoon. So instead, you'll have to suffer with this one, which I *did* take last night:



Thanks for the idea, Weerd.

(Connemara 12, M&P9, and a pinch of Ashton's "Smooth Sailing". It was a good night.)

Truck Repairs, again

Last time I had the truck in for an oil change, the tech mentioned that my radiator was low. I'd occasionally gotten a small sniff of hot antifreeze, but never noticed anything obvious. I topped off the radiator, and shortly thereafter noticed a small drip of antifreeze under the truck. Not consistent, not huge, just enough to be terribly annoying. I was adding about a gallon every two weeks. I did check the hoses and connections, and those were all tight.

I finally crawled under the truck and pulled the skid plate (which involved removing the front air dam as well) so I could try to track down the leak. "Somewhere on the radiator" is the best I could come up with. I priced out radiators from the local parts shops and OEM. $250-300 for aftermarket and over $400 for OEM. Ouch.

I dropped a note on ClubFrontier.org looking for advice and someone suggested checking RadiatorBarn.com ... so I did. A lifetime-warranty aftermarket radiator was shortly on its way to my door for about $120. Including shipping. Awesome customer service from those folks and I'd gladly recommend them.

It arrived towards the end of hunting season, and was shuffled to the back of the to-do list. Then the weather got cold and snotty. I have a garage so I can at least be dry while working, but above freezing sounded good too. In the meantime I read what I could find, watched videos on YouTube, and re-read the appropriate sections of the Hayne's manual.

Yesterday afternoon the weather was fine (High 40s and sunny. Sold.) so I decided to jump in. I dragged my tools out to the garage, put the truck up on ramps, and started taking things apart.

Let me tell you this now: the videos on YouTube and the Hayne's book are misleading. And the factory tech manual, which I had the correct chapter of, is written in Engrish and uses circular references. "Section 2: To remove X, see Section 4." *flipflipflip* "Section 4: To remove Y, first remove X." ... and "With lifting and pulling radiator in a rear direction, disassemble lower mount from radiator core support center." (That second one's a verbatim copy/paste, btw.)

That turned into the biggest clusterfuck of a repair project I have experienced in a very long time.

Here's how it went:
- remove the air dam and skid foil
- drain the old radiator
- disconnect the hoses
- remove the top clips on the radiator
- remove the bolts connecting the condenser to the radiator
- remove the bottom bolts on the radiator
- remove the bolts holding the fan shroud on the radiator

At that point it should have been a lift-out, drop-in, reconnect, and done. At least according to everything I read and saw. They all lied to me.

I can't even begin to describe all the steps, but it was resolved by:
- removing the air filter box
- removing the intake tube (clean side of the filter)
- removing the lower fan shroud
- removing the condenser fan
- removing the engine fan blade
- removing the top fan shroud (Yes, AFTER removing both fans inside it. Fun trick and it shredded my arm.)
- wiggling the radiator until it came out
- wiggling the radiator back in
- multiple bouts of swearing at the A/C condenser while trying to line it back up
- get condenser back in, and lose lineup of the radiator in the meantime
- rinse, repeat
- install bolts for radiator to support bracket and condenser to radiator
- put upper fan shroud in place
- reinstall engine fan - blind lining up four bolts
- reinstall condenser fan
- bolt in shroud
- reinstall lower shrow
- reattach top clips, grill clips
- reinstall intake tube
- reinstall air filter box

Make sure there's no leftover screws... nope.
- reconnect upper and lower hoses
- fill
- turn on and run to temp

In all, with a break mid-afternoon for me to swear at things for a while and calm down playing video games, I spent SEVEN HOURS working on this project.

If I ever have to do it again I will be asking a garage what their quote is. A couple hours of shop labor may well be worth the money to NOT do it myself. I managed not to throw tools, break down in tears, or simply light the truck on fire and get something new ... barely.

LaserLyte Followup

I had kind of let this slide by the wayside. In early December I posted an email I'd sent to LaserLyte about their Rear Sight Laser.

A combination of my schedule, the gun shop hours, and them being closed for inventory led to my not retrieving the slide for my M&P until last night - and the defective laser along with it. I'll be sending that off to LaserLyte today, but I wanted to post the reply they gave me last month:

Thank you for your e-mail.  I am very sorry to hear that you have had these issues. You have a one year limited warranty.  I can assure you that all of our lasers go through extensive testing to withstand recoil before released on the market and we do back our product 100%.   We have discontinued all of our Rear Sight Lasers except for our best selling units.  You may send the laser in and we can evaluate it.

I'm no psychic, but "discontinued all..." doesn't have a good ring to it. I checked their site, and the only rear sight lasers they have continued are for Glocks and Springfield XD-series.

Further outcomes will be posted as available...

Ladies, get trained

AGirlAndHerGun is offering up a chance at free training for the ladies out there.

There are reputable gun schools all over the US and she's willing to kick in $300 towards your tuition. For the price of a comment. How hard is that? Can the deal get any sweeter?

...

Actually, it can. I'll sweeten it up if she'll agree (and I'll put this offer in comments over there):
I'll throw in 200 rounds of factory ammo in any one of the following calibers:
9mm
10mm
.40S&W
.45ACP
.38Spl

I'll ship it to the winner in adequate time for the class she chooses to attend. No cash substitution, local laws apply, etc.

Tuition and free ammo. Tough to beat, kids. Go enter.

(Qualifier on the ammo: this will be range-quality FMJ (or lead, if you choose .38) of my choice. If your range/class requires frangible rounds, you're on your own - I'll still send the 200 rounds, but you may not be able to use them for class.)

PS3/GT5

I got a PS3 a few weeks back, and I've been enjoying it. I've never been a huge console gamer, but there are a few games I really enjoy. The Ratchet & Clank series in particular has been a long-standing favorite. Unfortunately, it won't install and/or hangs up during the first level. Emails to Insomniac are thus far unproductive.

So I've been spending my time on Gran Turismo 5. It's billed as one of the most complete racing simulators out there, and I would tend to (mostly) agree with that. The one thing it doesn't have is damage modeling, which means you can smash into the wall at 140mph, hit reverse, and be back up to speed in a tick. But I can overlook that.

Then I ran across the following video from Sony, comparing the Nurburgring simulation to the real thing:


Damn. (Click through and watch it high-def/full-screen.)

(I'd love to get a good force-feedback wheel-and-pedals setup, but have no place to put it.)