New Car!

When last we left our hero his ride was a 1998 Volkswagen Jetta. Purchased in 2013 its been a wonderful car, I only paid $1500 and have driven it many a mile but, trust me on this one, its done...
The bad: alternator, passenger's rear door, central locking, air conditioning, daytime running lamps, lots of rust, the rocker panels fairly flap in the breeze.

Actually now that I look at the list, other than the rust most of that isn't so bad. The alternator is the straw that broke the camels back, I replaced it a couple years ago but found it difficult to source a proper 120amp unit. The less powerful 90a units were easy to get but the 120a was $450 new but not to be found in a rebuilt. In the end I got a used one out of a junkyard. It didn't look like much but it was cheap and got me through, I think two years. When that failed I couldn't see paying for another, even a $100 90a, replacement for what is probably a $100 car.

So the search was on, I've been kind of half heartedly looking all summer, I knew this time was coming but I really like that car and was hoping somehow, magically, it would get a reprieve. In the end it was not to be and I knew I needed to find a replacement when a 2015 Jetta TDI showed up on Craigslist.

TDI pricing is a funny thing, the older cars command somewhat of a premium, this car has a mere 51,000 miles and while its a base model I really don't need any of the fancy accoutrements. The seller also had a 2014 with twice as many miles for the same money, that car has a sunroof, leather interior, fancy sound system, remote start and so on. I figured the newer, lower mileage car was the better deal. We bargained around a little and the deal was struck.

The engine is VW's 2.0l "common rail" which supposedly sports 150hp, although I don't know if thats before or after the "repair". You see this is one of the "cheater diesels" from a couple years back which VW has detuned so it doesn't cheat on emissions anymore. Actually now that I check, Malone Tuning says its 140hp which I find more believable.

Anyhow the car really scoots and the 6spd manual transmission is fun to row through the gears. The instant read mileage thing says I was getting 46mpg on the run from the dealer to our house, the '98 has been getting 50-55mpg for the last few months and I feel like once I run it some more this car will probably nudge 50.

I do have thoughts on a couple upgrades, it'll want snow tires for the winter which I'll probably put on dedicated wheels. I'm also thinking in the spring we'll do a tune on it, either stage 1 or 2, I haven't decided yet. I'll talk to my TDI before I choose. In theory, while providing more power a tune also makes the engine more efficient which will lead to better fuel economy provided you can keep from squandering it by driving super fast...

Is this car as fun as the '98? Sort of, that car had personality and I'd worked on it a lot so I really knew it inside and out. This one is slightly bland and I know its not going to need much hands on which is actually why I bought it, my work schedule has been crazy busy so I wanted something I could just fuel up and go. Maybe someday I'll have space and time for a project car but that time isn't now...

The boys of summer

Spring is here and Sunday I spent some time puttering around the yard. Put down 6 cubic feet of mulch, put some composted cow manure on the asparagus bed, Angie raked the yard...
While all that was underway I had the oil draining out of the snowblower, got that changed and realized I hadn't changed the oil in the Cub Cadet last year since the plow has to be pulled to do it. So I got the plow off and the oil changed, it sure cranks better with 5w40 instead of the 15w50 I'd had in it previously. I'd gone with the heavier oil since it burns some, we'll see how it does with the lighter oil.

I pushed the snowblower back into the garage and brought out the Snapper. I'd changed the oil in that when I put it away last fall so its mostly ready to go although I want to replace the rubber wheel on the drive. It doesn't do reverse real well right now. The wheel thats on it is one I put on when I brought it back into service. I think that was 2009 but I can't find any record of it in my notes. 6 years would be a pretty good run anyway I'd think, its a cheap part too.

My plan is to drag the Cub Cadet to camp with us in May and drag the Cub Cadet thats there back here. I've got a mowing deck for the one at camp thats never been installed. We don't use that Cub Cadet the amount I'd expected we would, we just don't have that much towing work, so it'd be nice to have it as an additional mower. There are many times when we could get a lot more work done if we could mow with two machines at the same time. So thinking about that I decided it'd make more since to put the mower on my Cub Cadet so it can be a mower when we get it up there.

This is what they call a "timed deck" where the sweep of the two blades overlap so they use a toothed belt to keep from hitting each other. Its a nice finish mower but not the kind of bushhog mower we normally use at camp. It'll be interesting to see how it holds up. I don't think we'll use it all that much since it starts so hard. Lately if I don't run it every day it needs a little shot of carb cleaner to get going. My long term plan, as I've said before, with this machine is to transplant a diesel engine into it. Sadly the $600 diesel engines of 2 years ago are gone, these days a 10hp diesel runs $750-$800, a 13hp goes for $900 which is a temptation. The 10hp rating is really a "burst" rating, the engine isn't rated to run at that speed (3550 rpm) long term. Its rated speed is more like 2500 rpm where it makes more like 8hp. The good news is that it makes max torque at more like 1500 rpm. The chart is hard to read but it looks like 18 lb ft at 1500 rpm. An online calculator tells me that the K161 with 7hp at 3600rpm is 10 lbft so it sounds to me like the 10hp diesel will be a nearly 50% increase in usable power...

New battery

First order of repair had to be a new battery. For a car that starts so easy it seemed wrong to have to jump start. I was dismayed to find the Group 49 I pulled out of the '84 190D (when I replaced the battery in that car I turned in the one from my '83 240D which was really old keeping this one as a spare) would fit the battery box acceptably well but the cables wouldn't stay on. My local Car Quest sold me a group 48 for $25 less than Autozone wanted for a smaller group 47, love my local Car Quest.

Before installing the battery I thought I should clean up the battery box some. Battery boxes (really a battery platform in this car) get all nasty and corroded from battery acid dropping on them. I couldn't get the box out so I brushed the worst of the rust an corrosion off and vacuumed out the debris, then hit it with some Rustoleum.

I soaked the hold down bracket overnight in Evapo-rust and painted it also. Hopefully this will keep rust at bay for awhile.

Next step: Why don't the interior lights and sunroof work?

What have I done?

Oh dear readers, I'm sorry to have deserted you but I promise there will be posts a plenty for awhile. You see yesterday I sinned, oh how I have sinned.
Some might remember a few months ago when I looked at a '98 Jetta TDI. Well I wrote about it on the Okiebenz list and it turns out my friend Tom runs a program for troubled kids which takes car donations. They had a '98 Jetta and did I want it? It took some time to work out the details but yesterday Fred and I drove down and came back with a Jetta.

Refueling the Ranger on our way home.

24x,xxx miles with a bad battery, a coolant leak, iffy parking brake and some body issues like typical A3 Jetta rust under the rockers. Otherwise its in remarkable shape. When jumped it starts with just a touch of the key. It roars along pretty good, Tom has a good big parking lot we could try it out in. Fred really flogged it around, enough to make Tom nervous which was pretty funny. No funny noises from the turbo or transmission, it does need some shifter bushings but those look pretty easy.

Anyway its home now:

First mission is to replace the battery and clean the interior, the cure a coolant leak and stabilize the rust...

Jetta TDI

Forgive me for I have sinned, again...

Its a 1998 Volkswagen Jetta TDI, 177,000 miles at a used car lot in New Hampshire. Considering the ongoing problems with my 240D and the rising price of fuel (28mpg is about the best to expect of the 240D) I thought it might be wise to look around for something newer and more efficient. As much as I appreciate the 240D it'll never be all that fast or efficient, it is a big heavy car after all.

The Jetta Mark III (or A3) was made from '92-'99.5 in some fair numbers. The later TDI pictured above has a 1.9l 90hp 4cyl turbocharged diesel. The numbers thus far really don't tell the engine, its the one that comes after 90hp, 149 lb/ft of torque, compare this to the 72hp, 96 lb/ft for my '84 190D which is also a longer and probably heavier. The TDI is quick, the turbo spools right up and its quite fun to drive.

This particular unit has issues though, theres typical New England type rust, along the hood at the grill, in the wheel arches, at the bottom of the trunk lid, nothing too scary but theres probably more underneath. The central locking doesn't work, it seems to be a pneumatic system with an electric pump like on my 190D so it shouldn't be too hard to fix. Check engine light comes on about 30 seconds after starting the car and it started hard cold which make me think the glow plugs don't work. The radio and parking brake both don't work, I think the radio is asking for a code but its generally beat and would get replaced if I were to buy the car.

At this point my iPhone decides that I want to delete all my notes about this car. Well thanks iPhone, just another reason to hate you.

Heres the thing though, around the used car lot this all seems to me to be no big deal. In fact later on I did a cost analysis and figured the car would need around $700 in parts to fix everything I've found so far plus some missing badging and a missing engine cover. Then I took it out for a ride on the road.

Again, zippy little car but I kept hearing this whine not unlike the noise in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3nQKN2ehCU which bothered me. Upon further inspection this probably means the bearings in the turbo are bad. If I were to guess I'd say this is from using oil not up to the standard VW requires for this engine. There was a bundle of documentation in the back seat which I took a few minutes to look through. Looks like the last owner lived in Watertown and had the car serviced wherever she was nearest to at that moment so I suspect somebody has put conventional oil in it and its cooked the bearings in the turbo.

Surprisingly a bad turbo is not the end of the road, apparently the swap is actually pretty easy, the problem is that a new turbo is expensive. Fortunately used aren't so bad. I decided if I could get the guy to come down $1000 from his asking price, which was $1300 above "excellent" blue book value, I'd buy the car. In the end I got him down $500, which considering I'm a pretty lousy negotiator I was reasonably pleased with. Not good enough for me to buy the car but enough to make me feel like it wasn't a Saturday wasted, I definitely need the practice in negotiating.

Anyway its not all bad news, after I put out on the OkieBenz list that I'd looked at a TDI a friend responded that he has one he might want to sell. Same year although its white, its been sitting in a garage for a year and a half. He runs a charity for kids and this was a donated car so I should be able to get a bit of a deal on it, we'll see.

HEAD GASKET!

When we last left our hero his 1978 Mercedes-Benz 240D was down for the count with a failed head gasket. What to do, what to do? Call out the troops of course! Saturday three of my good Mercedes friends came over and the four of us got to work.

I started before the others arrived, at about 7:30am I started by pulling the washer fluid bottle, radiator, hoses and radiator shroud plus the air cleaner and its hoses. Finally I disconnected the battery. My friend Fred arrived and we had breakfast. While we were eating Dimitri and Dwight arrived, with our team assembled we went back out and really got going. The air conditioning compressor gets moved out of the way but not removed. Mercedes recommends pulling the power steering pump out of the way but I didn't want to deal with the mess so we just pushed it out of the way, same for the oil cooler. With the front of the engine exposed the fan and its pulley get removed, all the belts are now out of the way. The thermostat housing comes off, then the injection lines, glow plug wiring.

Throttle linkage injector return lines and injectors which leaves the valve cover.

With that removed we see the cam shaft, timing chain and lifters, and Dwight's finger :)

Getting the head off and not screwing up the timing was one of our top goals so we spent a lot of time mucking about. It turns out you cannot leave the top sprocket on and remove the head, don't even bother. Fortunately as long as you maintain tension on the timing chain you can lift the head off without changing its alignment on the bottom end. A couple friends are helpful there.

So pull all the head bolts, put them in a piece of cardboard to keep them ordered.

The pull the head, its not super heavy but a helper here is a great idea, an engine lift would do the job too but is probably overkill.

Now clean the mating surfaces of the head and block real good. We scraped with razor blades to get a good clean surface, then ran a wire brush in the drill over them to be sure. We also cleaned all the headbolts good with a wire wheel. These are the hex head bolts which can be reused, unlike the later type which are torque to yield. Fred measured bend in the block, its slightly banana shaped which is normal. Mine is between 0.003 and 0.004 which is well within spec.

With everything cleaned a coating of Hylomar on the mating surfaces:

Thats some interesting stuff, it ate right through my gloves...

Re-install the head and torque it down. Theres a procedure for that of course...

Tighten, tighten some more, wait 10 minutes, tighten some more. You end up at 100Nm, a good long torque wrench is nice.

The rest is reversal of dissassembly which of course leaves out all the fun. Getting the timing chain back together was a bear, we probably wasted an hour on it. First we got the sprocket on but forgot the top guide, then we got the sprocket on backwards. FINALLY we got everything on and in the right orientation, I spun the engine over with a ratchet a couple times to prove it was all going in the right direction and nothing hit or made bad noises. Dwight and Dimitri had to head home, I can't blame them, they both drove many miles to be with me. Fred bless his soul stayed until the bitter end. Finally at 10:30pm we fired the engine up. Of course with no fuel in the injectors it was a tough start but with Fred working the primer pump and me cranking the starter it fired to life. Sounded weird which I realized later was the lack of air cleaner. I backed the car out of the garage and buttoned it down for the night.

I haven't had time to put in the radiator so I can run it up to temp and know for sure the head gasket fixed the problem but I'm pretty confident. If it weren't raining I'd be out there right now. Maybe tomorrow night...

Diesel Jetta?

What with all the talk of my 240D dying I took some time today to visit the VW dealer. Angie announced yesterday that she might like a new VW diesel so I figured I ought to check one out. I've heard talk of difficulty with Toyota and VW dealers but this one in Keene, NH is actually quite nice. The attitude I got from him was that he didn't really give a crap if I bought a car or not as somebody else would come along but he seemed to really know his stuff and was quite willing to stand around and BS with me as long as I wanted. I'm not really familiar with car dealers and I guess acted a bit like a kid, I was rather pleased when he finally offered for me to take a new 2012 Jetta TDI holdover (black on grey, 6spd manual) for a ride. I was doubly pleased when I left alone... A couple impressions: Its bigger than I thought, even with the front seat pushed back beyond where I was comfortable I could still sit in the back seat reasonably comfortably. The trunk is a HUGE cavern, I was frankly amazed. There is a glowplug light that comes on very briefly when you first turn on the key, the salesman says it always just pops on briefly even at -20F. Its FAST, seriously fast, like my Dakota with a v8 was fast. As the salesman says the 158hp rating will fool you, diesels are all about torque. The shifter was smooth and crisp, the steering was nice and crisp, the suspension stiff enough for good handling but compliant enough for a comfortable ride. In fact it reminded me a bit of a well sorted 190D with boatloads more power and slightly heavier steering. One thing that I didn't think of until just now is that its a front drive car that behaves very much like a rear drive car which is to say there was no torque steer. It feels funny to write that because it didn't occur to me at all at the time. Overall I very much enjoyed it, if I were to point out any deficiencies it would be that the turn signal and wiper control stalks felt very cheap... One thing I was pleased with in the discussion of the car was the 12 year rust warranty. The salesman attributed that to "laser sealed seams" which when you look at the doors in particular are very neat and tidy and present no obvious places for water and thus salt to collect. If it weren't for the $23k price tag (I suspect as this one was a 2012 it could probably be had for more like $20k) I'd have jumped on it. I love my old MBs don't get me wrong but I find myself running around with my pants on fire all the time with broken down cars. My plan right now is to fix the 240D and go through the summer socking some cash away so maybe around the first of the year I can go into looking for one with a nice down payment.

Car troubles

As it stands today we have a little fleet of 3 vehicles:

1. 2003 Ford Ranger XLT: The only gasser in the fleet the Ranger provides 4wd and hauling capacity. What it lacks in size it makes up for in offroad prowess courtesy of a limited slip rear differential. Unfortunately the Ranger had sat at some point before we got it (in 2008) and suffers badly from under carriage rust. Lately rust is bubbling the paint under the passenger side rear door.

2. 1984 Mercedes-Benz 190D: I don't think I've written, or at least written much about my addiction to old diesel Mercedes. This one I scored for $250 because it had a "broken timing chain" which turned out to not be broken at all. The timing chain cover was broken and my friend Fred had a replacement. Sadly this car had been poorly maintained and has required rather a lot of work to sort out. On the plus side its still just under 200,000 miles and starts nearly like a gas car.

3. 1978 Mercedes-Benz 240D: My friend Dwight sold me this old solder when my '83 240D met an untimely end due to a ruptured oil cooler line. I've had it since 2010 and put about 35,000 miles on with relatively little trouble until just before Christmas 2012. In fact it was that incident I wanted to talk about.

We were heading to Maine to see my parents, on rt 495 heading north at about 75mph when I smelled something funny, a glance at the gauges showed the temp gauge absolutely pegged, I went from the left lane to the right and got us stopped fortunately just beyond a rest stop which we were able to roll backwards into. An inspection showed a hose clamp on the lower radiator hose had sheered and broken allowing the hose to fall off and the coolant to fall out. I was lucky enough to have a zip tie in the car along with a couple gallons of water and astonishingly we were able to drive back home...

A couple days later I played around with the car and amazingly it seemed to run pretty well. It clattered like crazy on startup but that noise went away after a minute or so. I changed the oil and kept on driving it. Fast forward 5,000 miles until last Tuesday. I was on my way to work and smelled coolant. I was in heavy traffic and the temp gauge was starting to climb. I flipped on the heat full blast and fortunately as the traffic broke up the temp went back down. At lunch I managed to get a quart of coolant into the radiator. On the way home, again in heavy traffic it heated up again. This time I got most of a gallon of coolant in. The next day the problem became clear. I can pour in all the coolant I want but something pushes it back out again. That something is exhaust gasses passing from the cylinder to the water jacket through a failed head gasket almost certainly caused by a massive overheat. I'd left the radiator cap loose as I was worried that putting pressure in the system would cause this but I guess it was just a matter of time.

Angie quickly decided it was time for a new car but has balked at what new cars cost (more on that next time) and frankly I'm not real excited about a big car payment. I put out a note on the OkieBenz email list about the issue and suggested that if my friends pushed me I'd probably do the head gasket but if I had to pay somebody to do it the cost would quickly run up to the value of the car. As I expected my friends responded that I should do it and they would help.

This my friends is a big step into mechanic-dom which I've never made before, the head gasket is under the head which is connected to the engine by not only the bolts but also the timing chain. Breaking the timing chain (which you have to do to take the head off) is a big deal and I'm scared of it. Get it back together right and everything is good, do it poorly and the valves meet the pistons and the whole engine is junk. Currently I'm tentatively planning the job for May 11, probably going to order parts tomorrow. If worse comes to worst I'll haul the car and the parts to my mechanic for installation but considering the low value of the car I'd like to be able to do it myself to hold down costs...

Cold starts

People who drive gas powered cars made in the last 20 years generally don't pay any attention to temperature. Those of us with older diesels (23 and 25!) do, at ~10F my 240D will get a little ornery at -10F it'd be difficult and at -20F it won't start without help. With the magic of the block heater it'll start no problem at all temps.
Anyway if you take a look at Youtube there are tons of coldstart videos. The interesting thing I find in those is that they're mostly from metric countries (not the US basically) so you get "Coldstart, 10C" or "Coldstart -10C".
This winter will be the 6th in which I've driven a diesel car, so 3 winters each the 240D and the 190D plus one winter screwing around with my 300TD. The 190D has a more modern engine and starts WAY easier than the 240D but either way I figure I've got a masters degree in diesel engine cold starts. Let me start by saying -10C isn't cold... Thats 14F which isn't even the beginning of cold. Cold starts at -10F, real cold starts at 0F and bitterly cold starts at -10F. Here in central MA we can expect one or two mornings a winter at -20F which is the start of take your breath away cold. The guys in the extreme north scoff at all this of course.
Anyway what follows here is what you need to know to start your old diesel Mercedes in the cold. This should basically apply to other makes too but I dunno...

#1. Throw that starting fluid away and smack yourself for even suggesting it. The MB is an indirect injection diesel with glowplugs, you use that crap you'll crack a prechamber and the engine is toast.

#2. If your battery is older than 3 years its automatically suspect, if its older than 5 you need to replace it. Don't kid yourself into thinking you can get "just one more year" out of it, you can't. I spent one miserable winter where the 240D wouldn't start even at 15F because the battery was bad. It finally failed completely and I was amazed when a new battery fixed a host of issues. If the battery is older than the toddler next door it needs replacing.

#3. Synthetic oil is your friend, Mobil 1 5w40 is best followed by 0w40. I'm not a huge fan of the 0w40 as my cars both clattered a bit more with it, I don't think it hurt anything but still... 15w50 will do in a pinch if its all you can get. 15w50 will still flow better than conventional 15w40 at cold temps but the other two choices will flow better still. Put a bottle of conventional 15w40 oil in the freezer and you'll see it turns into honey. How well is that honey lubricating your engine when its cold out? If you've got a block heater you can get away with conventional oil but remember you might want to travel somewhere that plugging in isn't an option...

#4. Glow plugs. Marshall used to chide me for my suggesting to change the glowplugs before they failed. He said that glowplugs would go 100,000 miles without being changed. I contend that when glowplugs fail its always at the least opportune time. If you've ever change glowplugs outside at -10F (I have!) you know what I mean.

#5. Water is the enemy. It'll condense into your fuel tank then freeze and you're in trouble. It'll also give a place for algae to live. Treat your fuel tank with a water remover at least once in the fall. I use isopropyl alcohol at 2x the recommended strength once in October sometime. Then I run a bottle of Diesel Kleen (from PowerService) in Novemeber sometime. I use a whole bottle of Diesel Kleen in about 1/4 tank of fuel which is probably 10x the recommended concentration but I never have water or gelling issues.

#6. Make sure you've got winter fuel. When I first got my 190D it had been sitting for months and had summer fuel in it. It would start but wouldn't go in any gear but first. I put a full bottle of Diesel Kleen in and ran it. That car has a fuel thermostat that heats the fuel so after 20 minutes or so I could drive fine. I drove until the tank was mostly empty and refilled.

-The actual cold start -
So its -10F out and you need to start your car. Lets say you don't have anywhere to plug it in either. When I was driving the 240D that was how things went most of the time for me as we lived in an apartment...
Okay get in the car, turn off all electrical loads. You made sure to turn off the wipers last night right? Make sure the heater fan is off too. We're going to need every amp available. Key on, the glowplug light should come on. Wait the 20 seconds or so until the light goes out and then wait 10 seconds more. Cycle the key back to off and then on, wait the 20 seconds again and then again 10 seconds more.
You're only going to get one shot at this, if the car doesn't start you're in the hurt...
Pump the throttle (gas pedal) to the floor 3 times, then hold it all the way down, FULL THROTTLE!
Okay key to start, the engine cranks, HOLD THE KEY ON START. Yeah I know, your dad told you to only crank for a couple seconds, he told you you'd ruin the starter otherwise because it'd overheat. Hey, its -10F, its not going to overheat. If you stop cranking now the car will be harder to start than if you don't and it will thus put more wear on the starter, crank until it starts. This is what momma benz says to do and thus the best thing for your car... Except maybe for my alternate start method, more on that later.

Within 20 seconds you should start to hear encouraging noises. If your battery starts to die at this point it needs replacing, even if the car does start. The battery should be able to crank for a good minute at this temp without dying. The encouraging noises should get more and more consistant (pop.....pop, pop......pop, pop,pop.....pop,pop,pop,pop...etc) don't give up yet keep at it until the car is actually running. Once the encouraging noises are mostly constant release the key and ease back on the throttle. On these older cars when its real cold out if you come off throttle too fast at this point lots of times they'll die, so ease back on the throttle, keep it at high idle for maybe a minute. You've used up a lot of what your battery had to offer, if the car dies now you might have a hard time restarting. My 240D has a high idle knob for situations like this, it'll keep the idle above what it normally would be. I've never had it working enough to try it. I've bought all the parts so I hope to try it out this winter.

So your car is running, take off eh? DON'T hang around waiting for it to warm up. All cars warm up best (most quickly, most evenly) by driving around. That isn't to say romp on it and merge with freeway traffic right away, drive easy for a mile or two and you'll be all set.

-Curt's alternate diesel Mercedes starting proceedure-
So the above didn't work, or you've got bad glow plugs or a bad battery or heavy oil or your block heater croaked or its -20F and your 240D won't start no matter what, what now? I had this a lot that year the battery in my 240D wasn't any good.
Start your pickup truck, its a gasser right? It always starts, no worries. Why do you drive a diesel then? Well economy of course.
Go wake up your wife, you'll need help for this. Get out the strap and connect the pickup to the car.
Let your wife drive the pickup, give her CLEAR instructions on where to go and how fast to drive. Don't make her guess about anything and remember not to yell at her.
Your car is manual trans right? So she doesn't have to pull you very fast so lets say 25mph. A fullsize pickup is better at this but any truck (or car) will do a smaller vehicle may have traction problems so your tower may have to go faster, you'll need to experiment.

So at 25mph you put the car in 2nd gear (maybe 3rd, experiment) and ease out the clutch. Don't just dump the clutch or the tow vehicle may lose traction... Ease out the clutch and you should hear the engine cranking over. You may need to let it crank over for awhile (especially at -20F) before it'll fire. Careful with the throttle here, you don't want to smack into your tow vehicle! Once the car is running and everybody's stopped get out and take the strap off. Put the strap in your car with you, you might need it later...
Thank your wife, appologize for yelling at her, bring her something nice that evening.

-Curt

Oddities

I'm a big fan of odd things, if I weren't would I drive a diesel car? I'm not generically a big fan of Jay Leno which itself is kind of unusual since he's pretty odd. That said he's got a cool website jaylenosgarage.com and one of his newer videos is pretty amazing:

Its a Tatra T87. I'd never heard of Tatra before, but its a Chech car with a 3l aircooled v8, how neat is that? Check out his site, theres lots of other interesting cars. I like the Packard twin six and the old Saab especially. Only a couple Mercedes though and they aren't diesels, maybe I should see if Jay is interested in my 240D?