1977 Celica GT Liftback Ad on Craigslist

One of the Celicas being advertised was in (barely) running condition, albeit with poor cosmetics, a leaky cooling system, and carburetion issues.  However, the seller was willing to part with it for almost nothing.  The second was in much better cosmetic shape, but did not run due to a half-completed swap of a 22R-TE motor (a somewhat rare turbocharged variant of Toyota’s fuel-injected 22R-E).  After some negotiating, I bought both of them for pretty reasonable prices.

Ryan securing the rustier of the two Celicas

A couple days later, me and a friend (Ryan) set out with a truck and a car dolly to pick up both cars and bring them to his house in Eden where we’ll be working on them.  The running Celica proved little trouble, as we simply drove it onto the dolly, disconnected the drive shaft, and rode off into the sunset.  The non-running one was rather more troublesome.  Ryan suggested we try using ratcheting tie-downs to haul the car up onto the dolly.  It seemed such a simple idea in theory, but the tie downs I had were light duty and the ratchet mechanisms certainly not designed for bearing the kind of load we tortured them with.  After about an hour (in the rain) of laboriously tightening ratchets a single tooth at a time, moving and swapping tie downs, ruefully evaluating the per-centimeter progress up the ramps, and muttering muffled expletives, the second Celica was ready to go and made the trip to Eden with no further issues.

Less rusty Celica stares down a deceptively long distance for ratcheting tie strap hauling technology to overcome

The current plan is to start stripping down the “better” of the two Celicas and assess how much rust damage it has, then start repairing the body.  Hopefully we’ll be able to restore it to a nice looking and running condition.  In the mean time, we hope to get the rustier RA29 running smoothly for future use as a parts source and possible LeMons race car.  Whatever pans out, we sure will be developing a lot of experience doing body work and rust repair, and hopefully without inspiring too much head-bashing frustration.  More photos of the Great Celica Retrieval of 2009 follow.

T-T-T-TURBOVAN

At least, that’s the back story I prefer to believe in…  Otherwise this is pretty stupid.

Steering stem tightening procedure from the SV1000 service manual

Not so helpfully, the tools mentioned cost about $140 + shipping from the cheapest supplier.  Finding this preposterous, I went to the local Suzuki dealer in hopes of borrowing the tool for a day.  Oddly, they couldn’t find the exact tool to fit the nuts and suggested I might use a spanner wrench instead (um… no).  So it was time to get creative.

Not about to shell out $150 for a single-purpose tool, I picked up a $6 1.25 inch deep socket from good ‘ol Northern Tool and some heavy duty Dremel cutting wheels.  After an hour and a half of bathing in a shower of incandescent sparks, I had this:

Home made Suzuki steering stem socket

Take that, obscure expensive proprietary Suzuki tool!

Conveniently, the mainspring is clearly visible from the front.

Sure it will require occasional manual winding, and it’s horrendously inaccurate by modern standards (accurate to a few seconds per day at best), but the sheer Steampunk awesome-factor is nearly sufficient to impel me to buy a Victorian suit and a top hat as period-appropriate accoutrements.  Just watching the balance wheel oscillate and the lever escapement rock to and fro could entertain me for hours.

Mountain twisties near Hanging Rock Park, NC.

Our trip took us up Highway 89 and back down Highway 66 into Winston-Salem, with a brief diversion into Hanging Rock Park for some fun on a few steep hairpin curves.  My co-worker went his own way after we reached Winston-Salem, and I re-traced the route backwards to get home (certainly the long way, but far more fun than Interstate 40).  Highway 89 is fantastic as long as you don’t get stuck behind (or cannot pass) cars in one of the handful of little towns it meanders through.  Highway 66 also has some great curves, though for much of it the road quality is somewhat poor, and the uneven pavement and potholes can be somewhat unnerving when you’re pinned in a tight turn.  It’s still a worthwhile stretch of road, just one which you might want to tackle at a slightly slower pace than normal.  Next time I’d like to take Highway 89 all the way out to Mount Airy and see how the curves measure up.  Here’s a link to the route on Google Maps, good for as long as Google doesn’t change the map URL API.

I didn’t bring a camera with me this time, so no obligatory photograph of me in my riding regalia against a scenic backdrop.  However I did take this photo of my throttle hand soon after arriving home (no that’s not leather color from my gloves).

War wounds sustained during six hours of pounding mountain curves.

To: sale-958016510@craigslist.org
Subject: For trade or sale: 1997 Suzuki Bandit 1200 (naked) - $2400 (Greensboro)
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:45:46 -0500
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.930.3)

** CRAIGSLIST ADVISORY --- AVOID SCAMS BY DEALING LOCALLY
** Avoid: wiring money, cross-border deals, work-at-home
** Beware: cashier checks, money orders, escrow, shipping
** More Info: http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams.html

I have a g5 power mac that is well worth over $3987.32. It has a 2.3
ghz dual processor, 2 gb of ram, 250gb hard drive, os x leopard
10.5.6, 20" apple cinema hd display.It has logic pro 7 fully
functional and working, ilife 08 and microsoft office 2008. All
aluminum body and upgradable to 16 gb of ram and 1 terabyte of hard
drive (1000 gb) I'm looking to trade
let me know thank

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this message was remailed to you via: sale-958016510@craigslist.org
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Neglecting the sheer oddity of even offering a PC in a trade for a motorbike when the ad leaves no doubt about what I’m willing to trade for (specific motorcycles), the Power Mac described is about 2-3 years old, and most of us know just how well computers hold their value against time as Moore’s law marches on.  Perhaps the Mac cost $4,000 brand new, but even if it did it’s worth a fraction of that now.  Upon consulting a friend and eBay, I’d expect a 2.3 GHz G5 Power Mac + cinema display to fetch a little upwards of $1,000 today (and personally I wouldn’t pay that much for three year old hardware).  Just for kicks, let’s see kind of Mac I could get through retail channels for the asking price of my bike…

Dual 2.8 GHz quad-core Xeon Mac Pro

Wow, that’s quite a lot of Mac! Oh craigslist, you’re incorrigible!

Google Chrome rendering my site

I’m actually writing this post using the Chrome browser.  Above is a screenshot of how it renders my web site (correctly) and of the nifty memory manager which shows some stats on the resource usage of each tab process.  Neat!  There are a few glitches I’ve seen so far, but this is still a test version and what I’m seeing right now is very exciting.  Now I’m just waiting in expectation of the Linux and OS X versions.

P.S. – Try typing about:internets into the address bar in Chrome.  Read this if you don’t get the joke.