KA-CHUNK!

I was pulling out of work Friday afternoon and my Bug jolted like I had dropped a wheel off. It sounded pretty bad, and my car was stuck for a moment. I got her moving, and parked her (rolling back into my parking spot very carefully). I hopped out assuming the worst and noticed nothing unusual. And so I slipped it into neutral and pushed it back and forth a little bit. Nothing. Odd.

I pulled out to the traffic light, sweat starting to form, and hit the brakes. KA-CHUNK! Oh, that's not good. It sounded like something was desperately wrong with my passengers side rear brakes. Later inspection would show that my brake bar (operating link) had snapped. This is a strange thick piece of metal that extends from one brake shoe to the other. It more or less holds the hand brake lever in place, and keeps the brake shoes pushed against the sides of the drum. It looked like when a piece broke off of the bar, it feel down into the drum and got wedged between my brake shoe. Ouch!

So all I need is a new brake bar, right? After a few calls to auto stores I could see I was fucked. They aren't really supposed to "go bad". Mine was broken because we had bent it taking it out, and I had to hammer it into shape to put it back in (which weakened it in that spot). I called Advanced Auto Pro and talked to this crazy old man that works weekends. This guy knows his stuff real well ... but what a strange bird. He said "I have one for old Chevy's, etc ... if you want to bring your old one in we can try to match it ... but you will probably have to grind it to make it fit". He was right.

I took my broken bar to the store and laid it over the generic replacement they offered. It was about 1 inch too long, which was fine. I would have to carve it up.

Working it with a hacksaw was cake. It was nowhere near as durable as the original bar that I took out. After some chiseling, grinding, sawing, etc. it was ready to go back in. No problem. The bar went back in, and all is dandy. A short test drive aruond the block, and no "KACHUNKS!" when I hit the brakes.

G-Mail?

I was reading a magazine article on Google a week or two ago and they mentioned that Google was testing a new mail engine like Yahoo mail, only better. Being a big fan of whatever Google is working on, I just had to have an account. Unfortunately, Google was only BETA testing it, and they wouldn't give an account to just anybody. Today I opened up Blogger.com to put in a journal entry and there was a little link letting me know that I could sign up for GMail if I wanted.



GMail is slick. It's got a great search feature (no surprise there) and they give you a full gig of space for your mail. The idea is that you will never have to delete another e-mail again. You can keep them forever, and easily search your old archived mail if you want. It's impressive. It may just become my new primary mail account.

Fat Fingered Idiots

My phone rang a few minutes ago, I silenced it sending the call to voicemail. It could have been my wife, but I was trying to finish up with my students. My wife is respectful when she calls my cell phone, and the first thing she always asks is "do you have a minute?". Instead of leaving a voice mail message, they hung up and called right back. It could be important, so I take the call. Here it's some idiot foreigner who mis-dialed my number TWICE, and obviously didn't listen to my voice mail message which begins with my full name. And then they hang up on me. No apology. No remorse. No callback number. What the hell is wrong with people? Most people are THAT rude. I know, because when I am at the grocery, they try to run into me with their cart, and I end up being the only one to say "excuse me". If you are one of those people, go fuck yourself ... TWICE.

So here I am in Tiffin Ohio again. I hate driving out here. I end up with nearly 4 hours between classes, and I have absolutely nothing to do. I should be filling out my paperwork that I was supposed to have handed in last Friday. Now that its a week late tomorrow, I should probably get on that. But all I want to do is watch TV and listen to my stupid music collection. I feel like slacking. And then, when it's all over I get to drive home ... which takes over two hours.

True Security Horror Stories

I don't know if you have tried driftnet yet, but you need to. Driftnet is a program that sifts through network traffic looking for JPG or GIF headers. When it finds them, it absorbs the traffic and then displays it in a window. So basically, you can sniff pictures off the wire. My initial results with the program were pretty bleak. I got nothing. Why? Not because nobody was surfing the web, because none of their traffic was coming to me! Damn switches and their secure ways.

Driftnet by itself will reveal little more than your own traffic. I have found that I could run driftnet on my router and set it to focus on my outgoing traffic. Although undocumented, driftnet allows you to specify a nic to use with the -i argument. Of course, I had to pipe the pictures back to my running X session. It was a little buggy, but it did work.

So how can you see any more than your own traffic? That will require a little more work. If you have never learned to use ettercap, you are missing out. Ettercap is an application that will scan your network looking for active hosts, and then it displays them. You can pick a host on the left, and their target on the right, and then sniff the traffic inbetween. If you know anything about routing, you will say "yeah right!". But, it works. Ettercap basically convinces your victim that the gateway can be found at a new MAC address, and it offers up yours. So they will start sending all their traffic to you where you can sniff it with a packet analyzer, or display it with driftnet. The bad news? Their traffic ends with you. I have found you can actually forward the traffic for them to the gateway, becoming that proverbial man in the middle. But as far as I can see, the gateway cannot be set from the command line options. So instead, you have to put everything into a configuration file, and sacrifice the easy Interactive mode that ettercap offers.

Glitches aside, it's surprisingly easy to set up a man in the middle attack and begin surfing the traffic of your fellow network users. It also proves to be a pretty interesting past time. Ever wondered what your boss is really looking at in there? Now you will know.

My advice: Try ettercap on a test environment before taking into a production network. It's tough to configure with a gateway, and without a gateway you will only be fucking up peoples transmissions. And that's just not nice.

Recharging My Batteries

I hate batteries. For the past few weeks my battery in my laptop has not wanted to charge at all. It flatlined at zero percent and never moved past it. So I submitted a request to return the battery, and they obliged. This morning, I get to the office and plug in my laptop. Immediately I am pulled into the firing line to resolve several issues, and I abandon my laptop for hours. Around lunch, I come back and find my battery is charged to 30 percent. WHAT THE HELL? It want's to work now? I guess I might have to cancel my RMA if it continues to work all right.

BLEEP!

What the hell is that? Oh, my cell phone is about to die. It must have been the two long phone calls I had made. Or maybe that battery is on it's way out too. Come to think of it, I think my battery needs replaced. This past week I have had a hard time going to sleep, and then staying awake. And at various stages of the day, I seem to be forced into sleep mode!

Catching Up

I have abandoned my Blog for so damn long, it's hard to remember where I left off. Here is a re-cap of the past few weeks.

• The Bug - My car has been running GREAT! I have been driving it nearly everyday. I finally got some new gaskets for my oil screen which should stop me from leaving my mark everywhere I park it. I try to tell people that I am just marking my territory, but they just don't appreciate it.
  
• My Job - I'm employed! My staff from my previous employer is down by two. I now only work with 5 people. They are needy five people. But I am officially employed with the new, better, bigger training company. Yay!
  
• My Sexual Status - Despite the hopes of many, I remain heterosexual. So stop calling me all ready.

Relics Of The War

My grandfather is getting old. He is only now approaching 80 years of age, but he looks like he's nearing 100. His body is frail, and his mind is beginning to slip. It really saddens me. I never really knew him all that well, but I always admired him for his sense of humor and his wood-working skills. His second wife recently went into assisted living, and he followed soon after.

Last night my mother drove me out to his house where my uncles had arrived to look through his things. My grandfather was there too, naturally. The goal was to divy things out to whoever wanted them. Whatever was left in this house would be auctioned off by the Realtor, or hauled away as trash. My interest was in tools. And boy did he have tools!

It was strange to see my uncles fight over the same items. All of them are wood workers, and carvers, so their interest was in routers, and chisels. There were a few, but my grandfather had all ready put aside many of the carving items that he wanted to keep. So many left with just a few small items. Everyone knew what I was after. Wrenches, sockets, pliers, and anything that would help me work on my Bug. What I found were about 8 full toolboxes. I didn't have to compete with anyone for any of it. In fact, it took me nearly an hour to gather up and load all the tools into my mom's Saturn. She was about scraping the street driving back to my house from the intense load. I made the mistake of saying I was looking for some good C-Clamps. I have three boxes.

Part of me felt really bad. These are tools that my Grandfather had his entire life. Yet, I know that I will have these tools my entire life, and pass them onto my son. So they will stay in the family, doing what they did for him. It was also nice visiting with him. During the shuffle, I dragged out a large wooden box with a leather strap as a handle. It was like a lightweight treasure chest. On the side was my grandfathers name painted onto the stained wood in gold and black lettering. I just had to know where it came from.

It turns out, that my grandfather hand built this box to carry his tools in while stationed on an island in world war II. It was one of the few things he brought back from the war, and he continued to use it for many years after. Inside the chest was written "ASK AND YE SHALL RECIEVE". My grandfather explained that "other companies were constantly sneaking away with his tools and not returning them". It was also about the same time he built in a lock. Nobody wanted the chest, which suprised me. It seemed noone was after sentimental items like this.

I also picked up a canteen and mentioned that it looked to be military issued. It was. It had hung around my grandfathers neck when he was a carpenter during the war. Again, nobody wanted it. It was thrown aside as garbage. I hurried it into the car on top of a gigantic drill press. At some point, I gave myself a really nasty pressure blister and it bled profusely. I reached into the canteen pouch looking for a band aid, and found a whole box! They were obviously not from the world war II, but looked like they had been in there since the Vietnam era.

Up intil the time I left I was still finding goodies to take home. I found a broken magnifying glass that I used as a kid to burn up ants on the sidewalk. I found some flashlights that have a flexible bending end to them. Great for auto work. I found some hotel soap. A whole collection. And some keys too. Not sure what the hell that was about, but the hotel "drinks" looked fun. A Mai-Tai ready to pour? Taken! Near the end I was going through the kitchen drawers. Tupperware? Ice cream spoon? Forks, knives, etc?!?! Now I was just picking, and I had no room left in my mom's car. I was also beginning to feel a little guilty for looting the place. But my uncle's kept reassuring me "better you take it home and use it, than a stranger selling it for a few bucks".

Thats all the Blog I have in me for now. I miss having this journal and I need to get back to it. There is something gratifying about recording your daily thoughts and activities. Thank you Blogger.

I'm sitting at work yesterday. I had hurried through everything I had to get done, and now I was waiting for a classroom to become free so I could turn it into an on-the-fly testing room. While waiting, I thought I might crack open my Audrey (my iBook) and do some messaging, read forums, maybe check my mail. I have my laptop cracked open and running, then *click*, it's in sleep mode. That was odd. I know my battery has been giving me shit (I think it's gone bad all ready) but I was plugged in! I stick my head through the server rack and confirm that I am plugged in. I start wiggling various fittings on my power supply and I confirm my worst fear. I had a short in my power supply. I knew right where it was too. I could see the ground wires threading coming out for the past few weeks. But ... that wasn't the problem. I had a short in the fat connector that goes into the laptop itself. So make that TWO shorts. Shit!!

Audrey Get's a Bypass

I had been planning on doing this anyway ... but I was putting it off as long as I could. My power supply was now dead, and it may have been the reason my battery wasnt charging. My plan was to attach the power supply to the back of my screen and mount it there. Also, use a standard fitting power cable for charging puposes! And so I grabbed the hockey puck shaped adapter and pulled and pulled and .. SPLIT! It was hard to get apart, and I could see that it would not be going back together without glue. No turning back now!



Next I would need to find out how this thing is wired. Looking at the inside of the puck I could find only two wires, and one was ground. Seem's simple! Yet, the plug-adapter that goes into the laptop looks complication. Its like an RCA plug, with an 1/8th inch heaphone jack stuck in the middle of it. The headphone connector has a three ring inner plug, and shielding. So where are the other 2 connections? I cut into the cable and stripped off some of the rubber coating. Inside I found just the one wire, and grounding going over it. So my answers would lie in the plug itself. I tried pulling on the metal shield-like covering and it was not coming out easily. So I grabbed a steak knife and went to work on it peeling off all the rubber.



And I learned ... nothing! Other than Apple designed an indestructable connector, and a really thin cable to go into it. And so I got out the multi-meter and started doing continuity tests. I found that the "tip" (headphone like thing) was all one piece, and it carried the positive current. The "shrouding" was the ground. And that was it! It was actually pretty simple.

Next I had to go 'inside' and rip my laptop apart again. I hate doing it. Those iBooks are a bitch to operate on. After some careful surgery I was able to yank out the power plug-in module from the inside of the laptop. Examining it, and comparing it to the adapter parts I could find where the white wire (positive) and the black wire (ground) would attach.



The next trick would be stringing wire through the laptop. If I wanted to mount my power supply to the back of my screen, I would need to fish wire through the display. It's brain surgery. So apart that came, and I had to find wire that would work. What would carry the voltage well, and still be small and thin? How about the wire that I was cutting off of the power supply. I cut the longest piece I could, without getting any of the bad ends with the tears in the cable. Here you can see I managed to string the wire through the display (I drilled a hole) and then got the display back together.



Next, I had to string the wire through the laptop to where I would be attaching it to the power connector. Luckily, there is a lot of wasted space in an iBook, so fitting the wire in there was no problem.



Soldering would be little tricky, because I didnt want to leave too much wire inside, yet I wanted to cut off enough that it would be out of my way. I think I found a good halfway point. I clipped, and soldered!



Once I was done, I got everything closed up and realised that I put a piece of plastic in upside-down. No wonder it was so hard to screw shut! Oh hell, I'm not going to care. On the back of the laptop I had taped down my puck, and a Witmans' Chocolate tin. Inside the chocolate tin I mounted a three prong AC connector that I ripped out of a dead power supply. Finally a standard AC fitting, and no adapter to lug around! But ... would it work?



I plugged everything in!



It works! That orange light means that my battery is charging. Hooray! No smoke, no fires! Here I am booting into OS X again.



Now the bad news. Green light! Argh! My battery didn't charge that fast! So my battery is still dead, and I will have to try and exchange it. But at least I have a working laptop again. By this time it was 12:30AM and I had a dentist appointment early the next morning. So I carried my taped up mess to bed and crashed.



Just a short while ago, I removed all the electrical tape and applied some adhesive under my new mounted items. I will take a picture later so you can see Audrey in all her glory.

IRC and MUD Style Bug Repair Journal

* ray enters #thegarage *
ray> Whaassup!!
* ray wields themotherfucker *
* ray set's mode -bolt on channel #heater
* ray set's mode -bolt on channel #heater
* ray set's mode -bolt on channel #heater
ray> Fuck!
* ray drops themotherfucker *
* ray wields vicegrips *
* ray strikes bolt doing 4 damage *
* ray leaves east *
You begin to feel hungry.
* ray arrives from east *
ray> Word! Time to clean up!

Bug Repair Translated

It was a good day to work on the Bug. It was really warm outside, so after some grocery shopping I brought up the garage door a little bit and went to work on the heater channels. One of my first moves was to give some support to the center of the car. Not really for the car itself. The chassis is suspended in air, and the upper body can hold its own. Yet, I wanted to be able to sit my fat ass inside the car and not worry about falling through (ouch). So as you can see here, I pumped up the 10 ton jack with a long 2 X 4 wedged on top. It worked nicely and gave my fat ass some confidence when leaning and sitting inside.



Getting the bolts out of the floor pan was a chore. I expected it to be pretty bad. As I tried twisting out the bolts, the nut-like pieces that are welded into the heater channel were breaking free and rotating inside. I wonder how many others out there have tried a job like this, and had the same problem.



Thank God I had a pair of vice-grips. My wife talked me into buying a pair for $4 at Odd Lots when we were out shopping this past weekend. I was able to peel back the heater channel inside the car like a ripe banana, and then put the grips onto the broken nut-like pieces. All the while I was grabbing onto chunks of 'stuff' and tossing it into a pile. The floor pans and some of the heater channel is still on the car. The rest is in a pile here below.



While laying under the car I glanced up at the door and noticed some wear on the bottom of it. This is definitely from opening and closing the door under pressure from the weight of the car. Without the heater channel supporting the lower part of the body, the whole car sinks on the left.



I also chipped away some more of the area behind the left tire well. Under the riveted aluminum I found some window screen! Looks like the window screen gave something for the bondo to hold onto. Ouch. That will have to come out.



And what was My Pet Monster doing this whole time? Just sitting on the hood of my car, slacking as usual.



And so that is all tonight. After all, it's Sunday night. If I want to work on something, I could work on my Security+ class setup that I have going in my basement. I worked a few hours on it this morning, only to later realise that I had named my server "Server1000" instead of "Server100". That typo cost me the installation. I had to start over installing everything again. Bummer. If I wasn't doing all this at home in my underware I might have been a little more angry about it.

I will close with my Most Valuable Tools awards for the night.



First, I would like to thank the Leather Gloves. These were left in the trunk of the car for dead. They have served me well when working with sharp metal fragments. Also, as usual, "The Motherfucker" was a wonderful aid. It's a chisel! It's a crowbar! And it's still a flathead screwdriver! The vice grips. Oh, were they helpful. I don't know how I would have done it without them. I owe my wife a favor for making me buy those. Oh yeah, and tin snips. They helped me tear away some of that heater channel stuff and get it out of my way.

Good night all! I'm off to shower away the orange hand cleaner smell I am carrying around.

Bleep Bleep!

My wife and I had a babysitter all last night, and most of today too! We didn't waste a minute. Last night we went to dinner. Normally this would be a disaster waiting around for a table with the kids. But with it just being us, waiting nearly an hour for a table at the Crab Shack wasn't too bad. After about 20 or 30 minutes of waiting around, we hit the bar and I got a Guiness. All good nights begin with Guiness.

And so it was our anniversary today! Notice how I skipped over the rest of the night? You see ... I don't put everything in my journal.

This morning we slept in. Then we got up and went out for breakfast. Neither one of us were really hungry, so we did some shopping first. We hit a couple of thrift stores and a few Odd Lots. After a couple of stores, I found what I was really after, an air powere hammer-chisel. Oh yeah, this split blade will peel my old floor pan off the bug like a ripe banana peel.

And while thrifting I found some REAL gems. Check out this cool pillow I bought for "THE MOTHERFUCKER".



We are planning on building a little platform to put it on. I think I will try to weld one with the futon' parts. I also think we need to attach a light to it, so that the motherfucker can remain lit like a rare diamond.

I also found this neat little Fisher Price key-chain. It makes noises when you push the buttons. Like the car-alarm arm/disarm noise. I plan on using that one. So when I am walking to my Bug I can pull out my oversized keychain and make the bleep-bleep noise.



Also while I was stumbling around the garage I remembered that I never took a picture of the inside of my Bug. So here is a photo looking in from the drivers side. You are looking at the floor with the seats removed. Messy huh? It looks pretty rusty in there, but the passenger side is actually in good shape. I am thinking I can buff out the rust, repaint it, and toss the carpet back over it.



Anyhow, it's been a great weekend so far. Seeya later.

The Rotting Running Bug

So I was sitting in my basement yesterday with my wife and kids and I said "I should go see if that battery in the bug is holding a charge". I also wanted to roll the engine around a little bit and get some oil splashed up on those cylinder walls.

Much to my surprise, I started the car. I wasn't really aiming too. I thought if it gave me any trouble, I wouldn't get into my 'project clothes'. Boom! It was running. My wife poked her head into the garage and yelled "it runs!". We were pretty excited. I let the car run about 5 minutes. It needed no help at all. I was able to climb out, and take a look for myself. I also snapped a picture of my engine while it was running. It probably looked like every other picture I have taken of my engine, but you can see the belt looks blurry because it's vibrating!



Then I popped the emergency brake and let the car pull it self forward in 1st, and then back in reverse. Worked flawlessly. Then I cut the engine and dumped the oil out. I think I got it just hot enough to give it a good bath inside.

I made some plans to go to the auto store. I had called them to check for valve gasket covers, and they said I had to come pay for them today, so I could pick them up tomorrow. I obliged. They were $3.50. I also picked up a set of metric "feelers" to adjust my valves, and a long neck funnel which I desperately needed for oil filling.

I called Jeremy a couple of times with no luck. It would be later that my wife got a hold of him and shared the good news that it was running really well. He couldn't wait to see it himself, so he came on over. We hadn't really planned to work on the car this particular night ... but why not! As Jeremy was on his way, I darted out to Meijer in search of a work light.

I HATE Meijer. I'm so fucking happy that they are building a Wal-Mart about a mile and a half from my house. Never will I go to that dirty, retard staffed Meijers again. Naturally I get there, and they are out of stock on the small halogen work light I needed. So I had to buy the $20 carry-all version of it. It's still a tiny halogen light, but it comes with a tripod, a clamp, and a cool pastic case. I'm not so sure it was worth $20, but it turned out to be a pretty good addition to our tool collection.

Once Jeremy arrived, we had to refill the oil and let it run again so he could hear it. He was pretty impressed. The leaking exhaust concerned him a bit. Nothing like a leaky muffler to screw up your engine compression. But the engine purred. Letting the oil out once again, we plotted our next move. Also by this time, I had made one hell of a mess on the garage floor I tried to mop up what I could. But yuck!

Floor Pans!

Jeremy was ready to dig right into the badly needed body work. The floor pans and the heater channel on the drivers side of the car had to come out (what was left of them). Thankfully he borrowed his dads jack for the job ... I think it's a 10 ton. The labels and such wore off of this beast about 20 years ago. It's quite the garage gem!



You can also see the Futon' there to the left of Jeremy. It's the most uncomfortable piece of furniture I have ever put my ass onto, this coming from a guy that things the VW spring seats are comfy! My wife wants it disposed of. I suggested we keep it for welding practice, and she suggested we make a glorified tool rack out of it! Good plan. And Jeremy's father is letting us borrow his high amperage Arc Welder. Yahoo!

We decided to jack up the car and bleed the brakes, since we never did that. It's always a good move. We really didn't have to do it because we never opened the brake like doing the drums. But I wanted to exchange some of the old brake fluid out and also get the bleeders moving again. If you let those things go for a few years, they become a lost cause and you end up buying calipers over a broken bleeder bolt. The procedure took maybe an hour. Because I bled each wheel about 5 times or so, and because we were drinking and bullshitting all the way. Per John Muirs advice (famous VW author) we did the left rear, then right rear, then right front, then left front. The idea is to start as far away from the master brake cylinder as possible, and work towards it. The brake cylinder is easily located underneath the front drivers side tire. And see if you notice what I noticed.



The brake warning light was only hooked to the rear brakes. I'm not sure how that all works. I would guess that it's one complete circuit, and so either only the back brakes work the light, or the circuit is always open, and the whole warning system is pointless. I will need to check my wiring diagram later. At any rate, when this cars engine was rebuilt, and all the wiring was re-done, you can see they put new wiring and connectors here. I think they knew what they were doing.

Now onto the body! We thought we had better get the drivers side seat out since we would not want to do excessive kicking and budging of the car once it was onto the jack stands. We had no idea of how to get the seats out. I consulted my Beetle bible and found no instructions, so it HAD to be simple. The "twenty dollar light" and it's tripod came in handy for lighting up the floor and helping us figure it out.



In the end it was very simple. You just have to dis-engage the 'teeth' holding the seat in the track, and then slide the seat forward until it derails. We had both seats out in no time, and we took this photo inbetween.



Behind the front drivers side wheel we started to uncover some of the damage that lead to the destruction of the floor pan and heater channel. Rust behind the front wheel had eaten through. Somone had patched over the hole with a body repair kit. So we started poking at it with a screwdriver, and chipping out rotten steel and bondo clumps.



Pretty nasty in there! As you can see in the photos, there is a darkened band extending from left to right above the holes. That is the patch kit. I'm sure it held up for a good couple of years. But the rust continued in all directions and rotted everything in its path. Luckily, the rust didn't continue on the other side! It looks like we will only need a single heater channel, and a single floor pan. Lucky us!

At some point I stopped and flashed a picture of my crooked wheels. These rear wheels land a little funny after jacking up and dropping the car. They straighten out in an hour from the weight of the car bearing down on them. But the first time we saw this happen working on the brakes we about shit our pants. "Did we bend the axel? WTF!".



We chipped away quite a bit of nasty stuff. We also found an aluminum patch behind the tire well that had been riveted into place. It help up well, and being aluminum, there was not a bit of rust on it. We will probably leave the patch as it, but we will definitely need a small panel to weld into place to cover the other damage. Jeremy things he might be able to get some scrap from his place of employment (a plastics and chemical company).



We realised that the running board would have to come off and it was in the way anyhow, so we started unbolting it. It was a real pain in the ass because there were about 3 different sizes of bolt and nut combinations used, and they were all rusted to each other through the body. The board itself was not in terribly bad shape and we will probably re-use it if a new one seems to expensive.



Here you can see Jeremy putting the bolts into a bind by forcing "The Motherfucker" into between the nut and bolt combo. His maneuver freed nearly all the bolts but one. The last one was a real bastard. It was badly rusted, and we were having no luck gripping what was left of the lock nut. Eventually we would get out the hacksaw and lop it off! You can see a silver streak where we exposed some fresh metal. The are underneath was badly rusted from water forming under the running board. So we're going to buff all that paint off and touch it up with paint and primer.

I took several shots of the underbody so you could see the horrible rotting of the floor pan and the heater channel. But all my pictures look like this one ...



I will take some more pictures under there once we get the new parts, the welder, and we really dig into it. There is a seam that gets welded all along the right side of the pant (to the chassis). The other side has a dozen or so bolts holding it on. I started twisting those bolts, and I was just turning them around. The heater channel that they are bolted to has turned to dust. And so we were nearing 2:00AM, and wrapped it up. I sprayed an assload of penetrating oil all over the bolts in hopes of freeing them at a later time. We washed our disgusting hands of, and I headed up to bed. I stopped and took one last photo of my shoes. I have found that it's really hard to stop working on a car long enough to change clothes. But whatever you are wearing when you do a job like this, will be ruined. Just look at these sad old Chuck T's. They have seen a finer day.



Thats all for now! This weekend Jeremy is working, and my wife and I will be celebrating our NINTH wedding anniversery. AND we have a baby sitter. I don't see much auto-work in my future. Perhaps late Sunday I will get around to adjusting my valves and replacing the gaskets.

Seeya!