[Rockysan]

Hey, Greg - thanks much for the crisp, colorful pics - very well done. When I was a grad student (way back in the '60s and '70s), one of the faculty (a physical chemist) owned a beautiful, red Alfa coupe, but I don't remember the model.

I haven't been visited Walnut Creek in years; I hope all is well in your neck of the woods.

Jer

Thanks, Jer. Things are great here in Walnut Creek, thanks for asking. I'll be making a road trip to Texas this spring with a good friend who is from Breckenridge. A little time there and then to New Orleans for a few days.


Greg

[johnmflores]

Gary at Hawk's Nest his well-ridden and well-maintained 2000 Honda VFR motorcycle by john m flores, on Flickr

[digitalCG]

I was in the US last month and (surprise surprise) they didn't have my prebooked, prepaid hire car available. They soon found out that a tired, sarcastic Brit who has just spent 17 hours either queueing or sat on his backside makes a mean negotiator and I ended up with this Camaro SS:


by digitalCG, on Flickr

It's not a particularly special car in the grand scheme of things but it allowed me to tick off some items on a typical Gearhead's 'must do' list and scare myself half to death a few times.

Of course, when I got home I had to make it up to the bug before tucking it away for winter hibernation:


by digitalCG, on Flickr

[grhazelton]

Gary at Hawk's Nest his well-ridden and well-maintained 2000 Honda VFR motorcycle by john m flores, on Flickr

Hawk's Nest ... is that the park in West Virginia??

[dngr]

I was in the US last month and (surprise surprise) they didn't have my prebooked, prepaid hire car available. They soon found out that a tired, sarcastic Brit who has just spent 17 hours either queueing or sat on his backside makes a mean negotiator and I ended up with this Camaro SS:


by digitalCG, on Flickr

It's not a particularly special car in the grand scheme of things but it allowed me to tick off some items on a typical Gearhead's 'must do' list and scare myself half to death a few times.

Of course, when I got home I had to make it up to the bug before tucking it away for winter hibernation:


by digitalCG, on Flickr

Lovely shots there, and nice bug!

[smf]

+1 on the "Bug" image!

[johnmflores]

Hawk's Nest ... is that the park in West Virginia??

No. This Hawk's Nest is in NY, near the NY/NJ/PA border

---------- Post added 12-06-14 at 11:07 AM ----------

Of course, when I got home I had to make it up to the bug before tucking it away for winter hibernation:


by digitalCG, on Flickr

Sweet shot of a sweet Bug!

[Ratmagiclady]

It's not a particularly special car in the grand scheme of things but it allowed me to tick off some items on a typical Gearhead's 'must do' list and scare myself half to death a few times.

They seem respectably Camaro-ey to me, anyway. Never even been inside one of the new ones, but I actually approve of them going retro for this sort of thing.

Also, going through a few contortions from old compies, , here is hopefully this, rather delayed.



There. I'd promised to show off the Ratmobile in a state of being shiny and with that bumper-blacking stuff from Meguiar's that Rupert was recommending: (I since blacked that out as well, but the air dam in this photo used to match all the bumpers themselves: I delayed treating that because there was a ton of dirt to remove from down there at the time. ) Amid the move and the like, I've yet to repair computers but amid the new house and health concerns, I *have* been able to finally replace various functional parts, which I'm glad to say have smoothed a lot of things out greatly. Nothing like restoring proper intake manifold pressure to make the automation work as intended, it seems.

[r0ckstarr]

Nice wagon. I like the older Volvo's.

[Ratmagiclady]

Nice wagon. I like the older Volvo's.

She's getting there. You can see where the clearcoat needs to come off and probably be resprayed, but especially since I got fresh taillights, she's met objectives of not being too impoverished for the new neighborhood. the fun bits will be tightening up the suspension once I catch up on a few more reliability issues.

Cause more importantly, I was finally able to get....Parts! Got her running a lot better this past month or so just cause of being able to obtain some long-needed parts. To fix actual functional things that we'd been limping around on various bodges and such. I suppose the tail lights partly count there, cause it took a lot of time keeping the old ones together, at least unfoggy, and occasionally in bulbs. Also mental effort of suspecting shorts and leaks back there. Since i didn't have to buy something I'd allocated for, I thought they'd be worthwhile.

Anyway, got her running and shifting a lot better. Feels worthy of celebration, there.

[r0ckstarr]

How many miles do you have on it?

[Ratmagiclady]

How many miles do you have on it?

Oh, well, the car's very close to the 300K mile mark: engine and transmission, I was told, have about half that on them. (I've only added less than a thousand since I've had her, myself.) Still totally rust-free by New England standards, but there are a lot of parts that'll need replacing to really have her together, notably suspension bits that have likely gone the whole distance. I plan to accumulate/save for those parts and maybe something a little more modern in brakes to do when the warm weather returns, so that there'll be at least all fresh bushings in there: I expect I'll get in a few mild upgrades. Shocks, springs, whatnot. Those need doing anyway, if doing myself, no reason not to go with touring bits.

It's kind of been something where I'd been hoping to get a thing or two done a month and have more parts-related things done, but poverty set in a bit suddenly back there, so there has been catching up to do on like anything I couldn't mostly do just with working on her and all. Oof, tired.

[r0ckstarr]

Those volvo motors will run forever if taken care of. Good luck finding parts. I know some volvo parts are a little harder to come across. Touring parts sounds fun.

[Ratmagiclady]

Those volvo motors will run forever if taken care of. Good luck finding parts. I know some volvo parts are a little harder to come across. Touring parts sounds fun.

It's not quite so hard as people think, I'm finding. These old bricks are like the Pentax of cars, in a way, complete with dedicated forum or two a bit like this one. (I suppose it's more like cars in general have caught up with or passed Volvo parts for expense and availability-ness, So it depends a bit. Most of the hangups I've encountered have really been about *which* parts I might need when Volvo changed certain systems within or between model years, but most of the vehicle really was the same over decades. )

Anyway, I basically chose this vehicle for mechanical simplicity and what seems to be an engine that's quite good internally. (Therefore I'm rather counting on some of that 'will run forever if maintained.' At least long enough to really have the rest of the vehicle so nice that if I should ever need or want an engine swap, she'll be well worth doing it for.) She's among the last of the rear-drive bricks so most of the things-not-right that brought the price within range are things that shouldn't be outside my ability to do with the right tools and haha, once again access to a carport. (I really overestimated the amount of time out of a year my old driveway there would be OK for vehicle maintenance. Also my ex, unfortunately, signed away most of my starting parts budget by paying the full asking price while I was collecting the mechanic's report...which I paid for in large measure to *negotiate* with. So I'm sort of only now doing some things I intended to like immediately. (Now that I've replaced some of the harder-to-order bits and gotten my intake manifold all sorted, I couldn't stand not-walking out of a parts store with a new cap and rotor. Baddabing, she's running all kinds of smoother, instead of searching for an idle speed: the good news there is I probably don't need much in the way of any of the harder-to get control boxes and valves, etc. And it resolves a lot of nagging worries about what else could be causing various quirky engine/trans behavior.

Anyway, suspensionwise, it shouldn't be hard to do what I'd like: I've been eyeing some load-levelly sporty springs for the rear, (It's pretty easy to find lowering sets but I wouldn't want to lose too much ground clearance/carrying capacity, etc. Actually with those rear ones, being able to safely carry more weight is kind of the justification for better-than-stock springs in the first place, though I think anything new would be an improvement there. Can have my choice of struts and shocks and polyurethane bushings to tighten things up, and a stiffer rear sway bar might be findable used with patience. (The stock one in front seems pretty beefy to me, but they do sell whole sets. However, I think I'm very likely to replace these end links with dispatch: those can usually be done without a lot of jacking or undoing and redoing lots of things I want to have out anyway. And they seem to be about the worst off part there: seems that as the rubber wore out, someone just tightened them down more. They look like black peanut butter cookies now. Amazing they're still holding, really. )

Chatter. Anyway. The smoother other things go, the more I can think about turney-stoppey improvements.

Still intend to see about some lighting improvements, just with all the fog and blind corners around this neighborhood.

[hks_kansei]

So yesterday I purchased a motorbike on an impulse......

It's nothing special, it's a Honda CT110, known more commonly in Australia as a "Postie bike" as they have been used by our postal service for deliveries for many, many years.

It needs some work, it's running, but rough, as it has spent a substantial portion of it's life on a farm.
I'm still waiting on confirmation if this one can be legally used on the road, as Honda made two versions, an AG version (for agricultural/farm usage only) and the Post version, specially made for the postal service (road use)

I suspect my one to be an agriculture version, due to the knobbly tyres, and the fact it has a high/low range gearbox fitted.

Regardless, it is so much fun, and gives me somehting to take around some dirt track etc and learn to ride (plus, I dont actually have a bike licence, so I need to get around to that)