bryceandjessica.com

Picking up some momentum

It’s been nice not having any holidays, races, work trips, travelling, etc. to keep us occupied for the last month or so, Jessica and I have made some real progress on projects at the house.  Since our last update we’ve been working really hard on my new year’s resolution of making an electric car.  This is going to take a lot of time and energy, plus a little bit of money, so we broke things down into smaller tasks. 

First task: Get rid of the Suburban.  This was tough because Jessica and I really enjoy having a big rig around and we really liked the whole “free” fuel thing, but the thing is so huge it was a nuisance in the driveway because of how narrow our driveway is.  With the Suburban parked in the street the driveway seems downright spacious!  So, we put the Suburban up for sale and sold it pretty quickly.  Since the veggie oil conversion is done well and the truck is so clean, we got quite a bit of interest just like when we sold our first Suburban.  The added benefit of selling it is that all of the stuff we use for filtering and collecting the oil (filters, barrels, pump, etc.) is out of the garage as well plus it freed up some cash that we had wrapped into the Suburban.  So, aside from not having a big rig around anymore, it was a good thing all around.

Second task:  Get the garage organized better.  Our garage is severely overtaxed.  The little “two tiny car” garage just isn’t made for my gearhead lifestyle, but of course we have to make due because we’re not ready to grow a bigger garage just yet.  Jessica bought me some great shelves at Costco, and while they were a bit pricey they were exactly what we have been wanting for a while.  One was a set of steel shelves that has a good load rating and is easily reconfigured for different shelf heights.  This is good for stacking my piles of engines, transmissions, electric motor/inverter, and random cases of car parts onto.  The other shelves she got is a set of stacking bins.  I have a set of bins for hardware (that I got when a hardware store got new ones) but they’re a bit small to be very practical.  Costco has these bins that are similar, but have much bigger sizes and a heavier duty construction so they’ll take more weight and bigger parts.  These are already coming in handy because I now have an easy way to organize groups of parts instead of stashing them in random piles.  Miscellaneous brackets, springs, hose clamps, electronics, etc. all have a happy place now and I can already tell it’s going to increase my efficiency in the shop big time!  Since we needed to empty the garage to organize the shelves anyway, we took advantage of the situation by cleaning the garage very thoroughly and we put up some white boards on all of the walls.  A few of the boards were peg boards, which help to hold tools, bulky items, and often used tools in high traffic areas.  The rest are just a smooth, shiny wall that works well to reflect the light.  The lighting improvement is drastic, I can now see under cars, under hoods, etc. without an extra light in my hand.  We also hope to implement a “to do” list on the white boards that will be very visible and will help to tackle projects a little quicker.

Third task: Get the LeMons Subaru fixed and ready for rallycrossing.  As it turns out, the Subaru 2.2 blew a head gasket (or maybe even cracked a head) in our LeMons race.  No surprise, of course, we overheated the thing horribly and filled it with cold water into a smokin’ hot engine multiple times…a perfect recipe for head gasket destruction.  As it turns out, it looks like our “spare” radiator we put in at the race had a crack and that’s why we were still losing coolant after we swapped it out for our broken original.  I have yet another radiator that I got with the spare we brought to the race that seems to be holding water for now, but once I got that in we found air bubbles coming up through the reservoir and water coming out the tailpipe.  Fortunately, we still have the reliable old 1.8 that we pulled out for the 2.2 swap, so that went back in.  Jessica and I swapped the 1.8 in over the weekend to find that it was still in good shape except for a leaky water pump.  I swapped the water pump with one off the 2.2 and it is in good running shape now.  We got rid of all of our spare parts now that we’re all done with LeMons racing in the Subie.  This includes a couple of engines, a transmission, a slew of suspension parts, axles, two sets of tires, interior pieces, etc.  Lots more freed up garage and basement space!

Next up is getting the green Volvo up to the task of being my daily driver.  Since the Formula will be going under the knife shortly, I need some reliable wheels to replace it as my daily driver and I think the Volvo will be the one to do it.  Once the green Volvo is ready for life as a daily driver the blue Volvo will be getting some attention.  Jessica and I want to get it fixed up and running well enough to sell for the same reasons we sold the Suburban.  It’s a time, money, and space hog.  This driveway’s not big enough for two Amazons!  We ought to have an update on the Volvo shortly, we’ve got a slew of parts going into it in the upcoming weeks.