All Jumbled Up

We used to do the crossword puzzle, 7 Little Words and the Jumble out of the semi-daily local paper. We would do the crossword together and Donna would do the 7 Little Words & Jumble. If she got stumped, I would help out.

Then back in December last year we made a seemingly innocent purchase of a jigsaw puzzle. But we got addicted to doing jigsaws and the word pencil games no longer got done. Our noses have been stuck inside square cardboard boxes filled with cut pieces of cardboard with brightly colored images glued to one side of them since then. But Donna has still faithfully cut out the newspaper puzzles and we have amassed quite a pile of them. Every once and a while she’ll grab a month’s worth 7 Little Words and hand me the same sized pile of Jumbles so we can try and keep the backlog around six months worth. This morning I got a stack of Jumbles from March.

I get the Jumbles because they, for whatever reason, are in my wheelhouse. I also have a better grasp of the pun like answers involved in the cartoon. Most of the time I can get the top two 5-letter words without having to use paper to unscramble them. More often than not I do have to use some paper to figure out what the bottom two 6-letter words are. Sometimes just writing those six letters down in a different order will let me see the word and others I have to shuffle them around a dozen times before I get it. Every once and a while I’ll get totally stuck on a word and I will cheat by checking for the scrambled word answers at jumbleanswer.com. Also, every once in a while, I’ll get three of the four words and the cartoon answer, which allows me to solve that word.

The Sunday puzzle is more difficult than the other six days because instead of 4 jumbled words, it has 6 and all of them are 6-letters long. Plus the cartoon answer usually has well over a dozen letters in it. Today, I almost hung up my Jumble pencil for good because I did something that was pretty improbable. I got to the first Sunday Jumble of March and I aced it. I could figure out all six of the six letter words and filled in the cartoon answer without having to write anything down on paper to solve. I’m not ready to start doing them in pen just yet, but boy did that feel good.

Changing Filters

Today was change filters day.

I have been changing all the filters in the house every 2 months ever since we have been here. This not only includes the two HVAC filters (one upstairs, the other down), but also the Keurig coffee maker and the Brita water pitcher.

When we got the A/C fixed last month the tech mentioned that if we set the fan to ON instead of AUTO it would run all the time, but at a slower speed, which would cause the air to be kept in constant circulation which would help filter it better. And as well, possibly increase the motor’s lifespan because starting up from stopped was harder on it than just increasing and decreasing speeds to match demand, so, this is what we started doing. The ON setting will cost a few bucks more in electricity, but the extra filtering might help Donna’s dust allergy. With the added airflow through the HVAC system we figured that those filters probably should get changed every month starting now.

Although the current HVAC filters have been in there for 2 months they have actually only been in use for a month because in July the A/C was broke and didn’t run at all. Can you guess from the picture below which filter is new and which one is used?

That is the dirtiest filter I have ever seen, and both of them were that color. I don’t think the level of dirt captured has anything to do with running 24/7, but more to do with the air quality here in Klamath Falls.

The first days of the month were the only ones in green, AKA Good, and the A/C was still broke then. So for the rest of the month we got 5 days of Poor, 9 Unhealthy, 10 Very Unhealthy and 4 Dangerous. The skies have been smoke filled from wildfires to the east of us and then when they were finally under control, Northern California started burning.

Maybe I’m going to have to change the HVAC filters every two weeks during Oregon’s 5th season, the months of July to September are called Fire Season.

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

In last week’s verbiage for the VW Transporter I proclaimed my love of all things Volkswagen and that is mostly due to today’s birthday girl, as her first car and what she was driving when we met was 1971 Beetle. So, in her honor, this week we have an all Volkswagen line-up. And any one of them we’d be happy to have in our stable.

Donna’s Birthday Edition of SORT
As of Monday, August 30, 2021 at 9:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
1964 Volkswagen
Karmann Ghia		 1977 Volkswagen
Fargo Dune Buggy		 1962 Volkswagen
Beetle
Some may disagree with this being a sports car, but its got a Poor-sha engine, guages and door panels. Perfect for bombing around Oregon’s forest service roads, but only in the summer! This is a beautifully turned example. All except that ugly modern JVC radio in the dash.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to, if the reserve was not met.
Sports: 2017 Ford Shelby Mustang GT350 Sold for $50,000 on 8/30/21
Off-Road: 1995 Mitsubishi Delica Space Gear Chamonix Bid to $29,750 on 8/26/21
Touring: 1959 Volkswagen Type 2 Double Cab Transporter Sold for $125,000 on 8/29/21

Making It Ours

We have been slowing putting our stamp on our Oregon home. When we bought it, its style was Plain Jane contractor flipped (we think in 2012), because every ceiling light in the house was a bronze “boob light” and the upstairs walls were sprayed a sickly tan.

The first thing we did was, tear up all the tan carpet in the three bedrooms and replace it with “wood” flooring. We also spruced up the kitchen, the walls got a bright yellow coat of paint, changed out the ratty faucet and updated both the over sink and room light fixtures. Then the two upstairs bedrooms and baths got coats of paint, blue for one set and green for the other.

That was last year, this year we have freshened up the 2 upstairs bathrooms with new size appropriate vanities, brushed nickel fixtures, new mirrors and lights (even a new vinyl tile floor in one.) Next up were changing out all those ugly ceiling light fixtures, a total of twelve of them. Up went 9 LED lights and 3 ceiling fans, almost all in the brushed nickel finish. Recently the living/dining room got a nice coat of light green paint. The original tan paint still adorns the walls of only the stairwell going downstairs and the area right at the top of them. These are still that color only because I can’t figure out how to paint the top of the wall from the bottom of the stairs.

The bottom floor walls are all white and adding some color down there is next on the list. The hallway might get some wall color, the bedroom will probably get a feature wall of color, the bath/laundry room is also a candidate for a bit of paint. The den/family room might stay white, but who knows, but I have a lot of leftover paint in most of the upstairs colors…

Oh, I almost forgot, we had the outside of the house painted as well, from dull gray to a bold blue:

Switching Switches

My latest home improvement project is changing out all the old style electrical toggle switches and putting in the more modern flat ones. All told there are 24 switches and switch plates in this plastic bag that is sitting on a shelf in the work shop area of the garage. Eighteen are single pole and 6 are of the 3-way variety.

Two of those 3-way switches, one upstairs by the front door and another downstairs in the garage, are a total mystery because they controlled nothing at all as far as we can tell. I hate to tell you just how many trips to Home Depot it took to complete this project, it seemed like a half dozen, but was probably less. The first time we went we bought a 10 pack of the flat switches, four 3-way switches (2 each for the garage light and the downstairs hallway and several varieties of switch plates. Of course I had miscounted (in my head) how many switches I needed. Not only was I unable to count straight, I was surprised by the mystery 3-way switch in the set of four by the front door.

Even with the help of my lovely bride and a tour of the house, when we got back from a second trip to HD we still missed a couple places that needed switches. Then after installing a remote controlled ceiling fan I needed a blanking plate because I removed the light switch entirely. This necessitated another trip to the big box home store. There may have been another trip in there somewhere too, I’m not sure So when I was surprised by the second mystery 3-way switch in the garage, that did nothing, I just put a single pole switch in its place (taping off the extra wire.)

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

Delta Variant Edition of SORT
As of Monday, August 23, 2021 at 9:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
2017 Ford Shelby
Mustang GT350		 1995 Mitsubishi Delica Space Gear Chamonix 1959 Volkswagen Type 2 Double Cab Transporter
The yellow color is sure to remind the neighbors that the exhaust note isn’t the only obnoxious thing about this car. First off, love the name, “Space Gear”, but this comes with an off-road camper too, making it a must buy for me. My love of VDubs knows no bounds, except maybe owning one in real life. This one included as it will end up going for 6 figures.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to, if the reserve was not met.
Sports: 1990 Mazda MX-5 Miata Sold for $15,000 on 8/19/21
Off-Road: 1958 Chevrolet Suburban Sold for $68,000 on 8/18/21
Touring: 2005 Aston Martin DB9 Sold for $67,500 on 8/23/21

Miata Door Bushings

Back about 6-7 years ago, somebody thought up a neat and tidy way to try and stiffen the chassis of the Miata a bit, a pair of hard plastic door bushings. If you don’t know what I talking about, here is a little primer via the Flying Miata website:

The Miata doors are held closed by the latch, but they’re locked into place with a bracket that slides over a rubber bushing. That makes it easy to align everything, but it means the connection isn’t as strong as it could be. In a convertible, the doors provide a surprising amount of structural rigidity if they’re properly anchored.

Ours replace the soft rubber door bushings with a stiff, carbon fiber reinforced nylon replacement. The door is solidly locked into place, allowing it to reinforce the chassis. The effect is of a stiffer car with fewer squeaks. We have measured a 3% improvement in torsional rigidity on a 1990.

Folks in the Miata community were quick to adopt this little gizmo. Opinions on their worth though ranged from ‘snake oil’ to ‘really tightens things up’. Around this time the Emperor had about a 150,000 miles on it I thought, “I could use a little chassis stiffening, what the heck, for $35 its worth a shot.”

When they arrived I went right out into the garage to install the Garage Star black Delrin bits. It was pretty simple, take out the OEM rubber pieces and install the firmer plastic pieces semi-tight, close the doors so they get centered properly and tighten fully. The passenger side door closed as before, but the drivers door had to be almost slammed hard to get it closed. I took the car out for a quick spin to see if I could feel a difference. As I backed out of the driveway and took the little dip at the road, I could swear the car felt tighter, so I took a drive to the closest set of railroad tracks. The there results were the same.

Now I can’t swear there was actual improvement, might just have been the placebo effect, but I wanted to keep them on the car none the less. I looked for advice on the M.net forum and tried a couple things I found there to get a slam-free door closing. Swap the sides of the bushings, sand the bushing a little and bend the metal door cup out some, but nothing helped. I left them on the car and settled into having to semi-slam the door shut. About a week and a half later, I took them off and put the stock rubber pieces back in. The Delrin bushings went on the shelf in the garage.

Fast forward a year and the Emperor gets replaced by the CTBNL. When I bought the car it came with a box of random stuff, the stock horn (it had air horns installed) a selection of plastic Miata related fasteners and a set of Delrin door bushings! This peaked my interest in the bushings again. The “new” Miata, even though a model year older than the car it replaced, had only 43,000 miles on it so maybe the effect wouldn’t be as great. And why did the previous owner have some in a plain marked up plastic baggie? So I tried out both my old bushings and these new ones. This time it was the passenger side that now needed a semi-slam to close. I fiddled around just a little to try and cure the slam requirement and gave up. Both of them went back in their respective bags and then into the “box-o-parts” on the garage shelf.

Well, here we are a couple of years later and that box with those two sets of Delrin bushings still sits on a shelf, but in a different garage. So you would you think that the last thing I would ever need to buy would be a set of Delrin door bushings and you’d be right.

I bought some door bushings made of Polyurethane.

Polyurethane is a slightly softer material compared to Delrin, but it is still a lot stiffer than the OEM rubber bushing. Sooo…there might be a bit more chassis rigidity achieved with them, but that is just OK, because these are more of a fashion accessory than a performance upgrade. These poly bushings are of course offered in black, but the big draw is that they come in 7 colors, plus clear, to dress up your door opening. I went with Translucent Blue which sort of mirrors the blue stripes on the car.

These bushings worked great first time. To make it a little easier to open and close the doors I put a little Armor-All on them and now they need just a scooch more effort to open and close than before, but no semi-slam required. Get your own colored Miata door bushings at Spiked Performance.