It's been a while

I haven't felt like blogging much lately so it's been a while since I last wrote anything. Let's see what's new around here? Well, I sold my '97 F250 so I could buy a '99 F350 Dually Powerstroke diesel to pull my trailer with. I really like this truck, it's big and has no problem pulling my trailer. My goal is to get a car hauler that can hold 2-3 cars and work part time with my friend Mike hauling repo's and dealer cars to the car auction.

The race car saw some action for the first time in a month last Friday, it was disappointingly slow though. I did a test and tune session in March and it was running 11.80's @ 113 mph, but Friday it ran a 12.0 @ 110, 11.91 @ 112 and a 11.94 @111 (in a first round loss no less). The weather was pretty bad, damp cold conditions which really took hold on Saturday and washed out that day's racing. Our next race will be May 8 & 9 and I hope the car's running better by then.

Since my racing was washed out on Saturday, I took the time to work on Carrie's '68 Mustang, the problem has been a noise coming from a weight on the flywheel (flexplate actually), hitting the starter. I had a shim on the starter to space it out but it still hit and made that stupid noise (a lot like a rod knock). So I got to thinking that since this is a late model engine maybe it needed a late model starter. So I borrowed one from my friend Steve, put it in (with the shim too) and yes, no noise now!! It appears the late model starter has a little shorter snout on it to keep the weight from hitting it. So that's done, let's keep going and see what else we can fix. The shifter has needed a new set of bushings to tighten it up so I took that apart and fixed that and also fixed the gear indicator light so now that works too. Call me butter cause I'm on a roll now.

Up next for the '68 is to buy new carpet and get that installed, finish putting the remaining body chrome on it and then it's ready for the Rocky Mountain Mustang Roundup.

My weight loss as continued very well so far, I'm down from 218 in January to 182 this week. I'm going to keep it up and see what weight I end up at.

That's all from around here, sorry for not blogging in a long time.

Time to rant a little

Here's the story: Over the winter a friend of mine sold me his wheels off his race car so I had Discount Tires mount my slicks on them with steel valve stems. Steel valve stems are needed in drag racing, the rules require it. Well, after getting them mounted one of the wheels wouldn't hold air very long and the other would eventually leak out too. So I thought the wheels just couldn't seal well enough and bought some very expensive drag racing inner tubes for them. Now Tuesday comes along and I decide to finally get them put in so I head over there and they tell it's going to be $100 to put two inner tubes in my slicks!! Yes I was shocked, I just looked at the guy and no thanks I'll do it myself and walked out. As I leave I'm telling myself I'll never go to that store again, little did I know I'd have an even better reason after what I learned today.

I called my friend who I buy all my tires from and he tells me he's not surprised and to just bring them to him and he'll take care of me. I went by his store, a Discount Tires store, and he takes the wheels to unmount the slicks and he tells me the valve stems aren't in correctly. One of the pieces was upside down and wouldn't allow the valve stem to fully seal against the rim. So he suggests we try it and see if it leaks, so we do and hooray it doesn't leak, but the sidewall does. This means the tires are bad and I have to buy new slicks now, which I was planning on for later in the year, but still a shocker.

So the Discount Tires that's less than a quarter mile away has lost my business due to their incompetence. I was fully expecting to pay to have the job done, but $100 is flat ridiculous especially when I buy all my tires from them. Forty dollars wouldn't have been a bad price and then they can't even put a valve stem together correctly, sheesh.

I wonder if I should take my Explorer to my friend, I had to have a tire replaced and now wonder if it's done right.

Take care of your customers and they'll stick with you for life, or reject you for life your choice.

Opening day

Today is opening day in baseball, and being a big fan of baseball I'm loving it. I have a subscription to MLB.com so I can watch all the out of market games I can, mainly the Padres games. At one point today I had three computers running each with a different game and the TV on tuned to the Rockies game (currently in the bottom of the 7th tied at 8-8). If you like baseball at all I recommend getting the package, and with a laptop and wireless you can take it outside with you.