Month: November 2024

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

One-Armed Bandit Edition of SORT
As of Monday, November 18, 2024 at 16:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
1955 MG TF 2011 Ford Ranger 2011 Ford Taurus
Due to the default width of my browser, when I browse through the car auctions, I see the listings in three columns. This layout reminds me of the classic three-window slot machines in Las Vegas. Today, I decided to select my cars based on the first row that had a car from each category. However, due to the dynamic nature of auctions, they were no longer aligned in the same row upon my last check. Nevertheless, I captured a screenshot of my ‘jackpot’ as evidence.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sport: 1953 Willys M38A1 Sold for $16,500 on 11/13/24
Off-Road: 1953 Dodge M37 Bid to $4,700 on 11/13/24
Touring: 2001 Stewart & Stevenson M1078 4×4 Sold for $30,800 on 11/13/24

It’s Sunday So…

…its post office hunting day.

Instead of my usual go west into the heart of the big city I turned my eyes east to go a bit rural. And it was worth it. After the first 6 or so miles the roads turned very rural, all twisty, narrow and traffic free with plenty of elevation changes. Perfect Miata roads, almost. Today was a rainy day, so while I enjoyed driving them I didn’t push the car too much because I’m still getting used to the new cars handling and grip.

Chipped Tooth

Sometime in August I chipped a tooth. I was biting into a piece of kielbasa when I noticed what I thought was the bone in the sausage I hit. It was a piece of bone, but it was accompanied by the bottom third of #7 the tooth just to the right of the two big front teeth. I was also overdue for my 6-month cleaning, but August and September were a very busy time in taking care of Donna, so it was hard enough to sneak away for an hour a week to go grocery shopping, let alone a dentist appointment. The broken tooth didn’t expose the nerve, so I just lived with it.

After Donna passed away I starting making appointments, eye exam (it had been 3 years), a primary care doctor visit (a couple months overdue) and a dentist appointment. October 8th was the dental visit. I got my teeth cleaned and besides the broken tooth I also had a couple of cavities that needed filling, so a follow appointment was penciled in for the 15th.

Cavities were filled and the dentist thought he could recreate the bottom 1/3 of the tooth with the same composite material that he used for the fillings. It looked great, I had a full tooth again. It lasted 3 weeks and came out while eating some popcorn. I didn’t even hit a kernel, just came off. They set up another appointment for November 12th. I thought for sure I was going to get a crown, but he thought it would be worth it to try one more time with the composite recreation of the bottom of #7.

This time the fix lasted less than a day, it came off while I ate my breakfast of Chex cereal with banana slices. I called the dentist office and got an appointment for today the 20th. I was just pulling into the dentist office parking lot when my phone rang, the dentist was not feeling well, so he wasn’t coming in.

We’ll try again next Wednesday the 20th.

800 Mile Thoughts

After 6 weeks of ownership, 800 local miles driven and 8 modifications added I am almost totally happy with the car. There are a three more modifications I have scheduled to do next week and I won’t say I’ll be totally finished changing or adding things then, but I’d like to think I will be.

I have noticed three things that I kinda wish were different, but do not diminish the love of the car in any meaningful way:

1. The car has heated seats which are nice, but I wish they operated like in the Mini. Right now, if you turn on the heat at one of the three settings it stays at that level after turning the car off, so the next time you get in the heated seats come back on at whatever level they were. In the Mini after shutting off the car and 15 minutes elapse the heated seats will turn off.

2. The power windows have a one touch feature for down, but not for up, you have to hold the switch to raise the windows. And when you unlatch the roof to drop the top, the windows go down a third of the way so the top will clear the window, but they don’t automatically go back up. MX5Things makes a module that you can add to get the auto up, but I’m not sure it is worth the $120 to me.

3. There is a back-up camera, but the guidelines are static. On every other car I’ve been in with a backup camera the guidelines bend with turning the steering wheel to give you an idea if you will clear the side obstacles or not.

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

Veterans Day Edition of SORT
As of Monday, November 11, 2024 at 11:11 AM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
1953 Willys M38A1 1953 Dodge M37 2001 Stewart & Stevenson M1078 4×4
Okay, all of these items would typically fall under the off-road category. However, in honor of Veterans Day, I’ve selected items that include the word ‘military’ in their descriptions. Next week, we’ll resume our regular schedule of car-related fun.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sport: 1963 Alfa Romeo Giulia 1600 Spider Sold for $47,000 on 11/7/24
Off-Road: 1988 Suzuki Samurai Sold for $8,200 on 11/7/24
Touring: 1973 Citroen SM 3.0L 5-Speed Sold for $50,000 on 11/6/24

Another Post Office Picture Drive(s)

After today I am 1/4 of the way through getting pictures of every Post Office in the state of Oregon. Of the 22 post offices labeled Portland I only have 5 left. Trouble is, of those five there are 3 that I tried to get already, but for some reason couldn’t find them. I’ll try to find those at least one more time. The first picture in the top row was taken yesterday when I took a drive to way southeast Portland to CravenSpeed to buy their Clear Acrylic Wind Deflector. The other five were taken this morning.

Genuine Rear Under Skirt

While out driving around yesterday I stopped in at the Mazda dealer to see if the little tape things (AKA Protectors) arrived. Nope, so my friendly parts guy ordered another set. I have lost all my days that have no rain and will reach to low 60s and now I have a hard deadline of Sunday the 17th of getting the under skirt on. Hopefully those Protector things will get here during the coming week so I can get them on the car by then. The skirt itself can be done after the 17th if need be.

Forget what I just said in the last couple of lines above, f*ck the Protector things, I put the rear under skirt on this afternoon without them. The first of the two YouTube videos I watched made zero mention of those little double sided “protectors” and second vid didn’t show the process, but did mention it was a pain in the ass to put them on. I would be willing to bet if I paid the big bucks the dealer wanted to install the whole kit and caboodle those guys wouldn’t have gone through that hassle and used them either.