The thing about doing a big car maintenance job like a timing belt change is it tends to expand due to "while I'm in there" syndrome. It starts with, "while I'm in there, I might as well replace the water pump too." And then, "while I have the valve cover off, I might as well set the valve clearances." And then you notice the spark plugs you took ( Read more... )

I recently acquired an interesting radio from my late grandfather's estate.

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Decided to stick the punch lists for the two cars up on Trello, so I wouldn't have to keep track of the little scraps of paper I'd written them on before. here they are, if anyone's curious. The Honda's is longer mostly because I just got it and have to take care of maintenance items that may have been deferred by the previous owner.

After working on the Mercedes diesel, there's a certain difference in scale with the Honda that's sometimes startling. Today I was looking up how much coolant I needed to flush and refill the cooling system. I was thinking in terms of "how many gallons?" -- the Mercedes takes 11 liters, almost 3 gallons. The Honda's capacity turns out to be... ( Read more... )

Took the Del Sol in for new tires and a wheel alignment yesterday, those being two jobs I simply don't have the equipment to do myself. The alignment was slightly out, which explains why the car had a mild pull to the right; it will happily track arrow-straight with my hands off the steering wheel, now. I also took it through a carwash, and was ( Read more... )

This recipe was born when I wanted to make granola bread, but didn't have any granola and decided to try a different cereal. It's very tasty toasted or as a base for breakfast sandwiches ( Read more... )

About two days ago I noticed the Del Sol had started making an odd, chattery, rattling sound at certain speeds and throttle settings. It was intermittent, and the sort of thing you really couldn't hear well unless the stereo was off. I couldn't duplicate it by revving the engine in neutral. It bothered me because I couldn't identify it. Today I ( Read more... )

The epoxy repair to the window clip was a success. I reassembled the window regulator, adjusted the window height so it met the weatherstripping properly, and reassembled the door. The window works great now, and there's no more wind noise. I'm rather pleased with myself for getting that fixed, considering I don't have a shop manual yet. The ( Read more... )

A couple days ago I bought a 1994 Honda Civic Del Sol. This will be a replacement for the '88 Cabriolet, which was always a stopgap car and which has some issues I don't really want to put money and effort into fixing. The Del Sol is high mileage but seems to have been very well cared for; it runs and drives beautifully and was faithfully dealer- ( Read more... )

Normally I'm not a big fan of meat substitutes, but some of them can work well in certain situations. One of the more successful ones is vegetarian "bacon." Eaten by itself it's not so great, because the mouth feel is wrong, but as an ingredient it can be pretty successful. Tonight I tried using it to make spaghetti carbonara ( Read more... )