travis' brain dump

only one more day of work until turkey day! yay!

i’m excited because at least we have something to do tomorrow. i’ve got a big meeting scheduled up which should eat up at least half the day tomorrow then we may bolt out early due to the holiday (we often do) so that’s awesome. it’s been painfully boring here this week with nothing really going on. ive handled a few minor issues here, but for the most part it’s dead silent.

friday will be my first official day of winter sportage. it marks the beginning of the season for me and most of my friends on going up on a rather regular basis. my goal for this year? 100-150 runs. now one might say that’s not much, but let me tell ya. you get past 4 runs on one of our days up you’re doing pretty well since we choose some pretty long routes. however, if i can make it up there 20-25 times, i think i’ve got this goal in the bag. we’ll see though.

i’ve updated the calendar with proposed dates for snowboarding. as more plans get setup and confirmed we’ll lock in those dates, however every one listed on the site is a tentative date that more than likely we’ll be going up. hit me up if you want to join us.  

well, so far so good…

got home wednesday and started taking the engine apart to put the new head gasket on. i got pretty far on it actually… thanks to mike for helping out those last couple of hours, it made a world of difference. within 5 hours i got everything pulled off the engine (intake, alternator, intercooler piping, turbo, manifold, fuel rail, injectors, wiring, cam shafts, etc) and got the head pulled. Mike and I decided it would be best to go ahead and replace the head gasket and the head that night so we went ahead and got that completed. thursday morning was pretty good… woke up at like 9 and got arwen and i some breakfast… i muddled around for an hour or so and finally went out to get the thing completed. it was a good thing i called up monkey wrench to find out what those ARP studs were supposed to be torqued to… mike and i did them to stock specs the night before and well… 36 ft-lbs is great for stock bolts, but terrible for ARP bolts. those were supposed to be at 60! o.O so at least that got done. started at about 11 and i seriously thought i’d never be done putting crap back on my car, lol. i think the longest time was getting the cams back in and timed up, but overall that was pretty easy. after everything was on the car, i wsa able to test crank it at 3. everything seemed ok, aside from one little bonehead move i made but we won’t talk about that… it was petty.. *cough* anyway i proceeded with the cooling system flush which took another hour or so.. yay fun for that. once i got it all flushed out i let the car run for about 20 minutes while i got the coolant added and all that good stuff. mark came over to watch arwen for me while i took back a torque wrench that i bought from sears the night before… oh yeah, that thing sucked! i set it for the stock torque setting for the cam-bearing bolts and the frackin thing broke two of em! WEAK! anyway, the test drive went well… got about 10 miles on it with no overheating so it looked pretty good. drove it to work today and all seems well. hopefully it will remain that way. lol

so i’m driving home from work wednesday… i notice my car is running a lil warm… ‘ odd,’ i think to myself… turn up my heater, temp goes down, yatta yatta…. so i think to myself, no biggie, this is just a thermostat issue. i get home, i pull apart my crap and drop in a new thermostat … the next day on the way to work… bam, i’m getting hot again… ‘ wtf!? ‘ so i head out of work early, get home about 2:30 and tear everything apart… 2.5 hour job. i replace the thermostat (again) the water pump and the thermostat housing temperature sensor (cranks up the fans). i take it for a drive up to get arwen from her day care and wouldn’t ya know it? overheating again… so, i think to myself, what’s the next logical thing to check? fans and hoses. so i check everything out… 3 hours later we’ve gone through the entire system. relays, wiring, switches, fuses you name it… the fans are working. the car is running great at idle, no heating issues.. ok this is good. so i go to work friday… while driving in…. heated up AGAIN! now i’m upset. so i drop my car off at Toyota and have my guy check it out… come back 6 hours later and the only explaination he can give me is that my head gasket has a leak. *sigh* wtf?! well, my thermostat (the new one with the cool locking mechanism in it) i think has locked itself open which meant my drive home my temp fluctuated but didnt get to the H. hopefully i can limp this thing for a week while i wait on parts to come in so that I can replace the head gasket next weekend. wow, talk about a crap weekend ahead. *sigh*

this weekend hasn’t been too bad. my bro Ivan came back from Iraq Thursday so we stayed up that night talkin and stuff. We threw a little gathering with the garage crew (minus Kris) last night. It was a good turnout for what we were shooting for… no way did it come close to last weeks insanity and i am so glad for that. i don’t think my house or myself for that matter could take that again. spent today cleaning and trying not to think about my car. I just wanna get it fixed, because while its screwed up i can limp it along to places, but going snowboarding is out of the question… rawr! oh well, maybe Thanksgiving weekend I’ll be able to do something! I hope so, my schedule is gonna be slammed after that due to stuff going on at work that I want to get all wrapped up before year end. I want to go into Christmas with a clear plate so that when the new year starts I’ve got new stuff to schedule out for the year.

Anyway, kitchen floor is dry so i need to go wrap up everything in there and get a load of clothes running. 🙂

late

i’m craving some so friggin bad right now… wtf is wrong with me?

(no, i didnt do any drugs at lunch, or did i and just don’t know it?)

*ponder* i am really tired… maybe Efrain’s spiked my chimi. o.O

 

*for the record however… Efrain’s owns you. that food is the shizzle.