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Winter projects always seem like such a great idea in the fall. You can make a list, either written or not, and just dream about all the great things you are going to accomplish when the garage door is frozen to the ground. Somehow I just don't seem to spend as much time in the garage when there's a fire in the fireplace and a good book next to my leather chair. Even our dog Zach doesn't seem to miss the noise of the drill press or the banging of the dead blow hammer on a bent rim. It took a while to get a set of new rotors and pads for Pearl, the Audi RS-4, and they've been sitting on the bench for a while now. If this were summer I probably would've stopped everything and put them in so that I could go out and test 'em before dark. But the brakes are stopping the car just fine, although they are a little noisy. Since I know where that dragging noise is coming from it really doesn't bother me, I just turn up the radio. Besides over about 40 mph it really can't be heard at all. I know I'll have to replace them before the first ice race because I don't want everyone to see those old grooved rotors but every mile I drive on them is one less mile on the new ones, right? On the other hand I had a fog light bulb die last week and it was replaced the next day. There is just something about having a light out that puts me on edge. I guess when I see a light out on any car it's like driving by someone's house early in the morning and seeing a porch light that was left on all night. That person just isn't paying attention to things around them. There's a lot of that going on nowadays. Of course those things aren't really winter projects, they're more like regular maintenance Winter projects are the type of job that you can spend a lot of time thinking about long before you pick up the first tool. In the closing weeks of summer the Speedster developed a habit of sending out a ear ringing backfire when the engine was coming down from about 4000 rpm. It was actually fun for a while because I could control when that cannon shot rang out. That was followed by a nice ten inch flame out the back of the stinger exhaust. I couldn't see it directly but sometimes the reflection showed up in the window of a building that I was passing. It was awesome. The sound was rather deep so nobody ever mistook the noise for a drive by but as time when by the backfiring became more frequent and less controllable. Having been down this road before, I knew that the cause was an exhaust leak that allowed fresh air to mix with hot unburned exhaust gas causing an explosion inside the exhaust pipe. All that was needed was to remove the exhaust system, replace a few gaskets and tighten down all the connections. If I was going to remove the exhaust system this would be a good time to refinish it with some high temperature paint and since a lot of the engine tin had to come out to get to the exhaust flanges, I might as well spend some time cleaning that too. The tin was powder coated years ago and has held up very well but I sure that there is plenty of collected road dirt and grime underneath where nobody can see it. That means that I have to put the car up on jack stands which means that it will probably remain up in the air for most of the winter. I just need to make sure that it will not be in the way of other projects that may crop up as those dark months roll by. I'll think about that job a while longer before I start, no reason to hurry. I have already moved cars around twice in the lower garage and it took a while just cleaning the stuff off the hoods and trunks. I don't want to do that again because with ice and show on the ground outside I may be able the get a car out of the garage and not be able to get it back in, I've done that before and it wasn't and fun at all. Maybe the little jobs is really where I want to start. Easy to start, easy to end and immediately results. Like cleaning tools that have been thrown in a pile or picking up those cans of WD-40 and silicone spray that are sitting on work benches, window sills and tool boxes. It's almost impossible to walk through the garage without seeing potential projects. I'll give you a few examples just to let you peek inside a car freaks brain Preparing for the Ice Race season I ordered a few rolls of contact paper from the Internet. As many of you know I have cut out some designs to put on the car to make it go faster, like a BMW flag running down the left front fender or the Audi four ring symbols going up the rear doors and onto the rear trunk. The local Ace Hardware store quit stocking solid color paper thereby driving me onto the Internet. I think that I might have been their only customer. There were some great blues and reds so I ordered a bunch. Now I have a cardboard box on the shelf with colored rolls sticking out looking very unkempt and I'm thinking that some sort of rack, hanging on the wall would look good. From the design stage (metal or wood rack?), to the material acquisition phase (how many trips to the Medfield Recycle Center?), to the construction phase might take a couple of months. I'll just put it on the mental list and review the idea every now and then. Big Red ('85 Cinnabar Red BMW M6) has a spare exhaust system standing up over in one corner of the garage that's about eight or nine feet long. It's been there since '01 when I found a stainless system at a local junk yard on a BMW 535 that had been driven into a tree at a high rate of speed. Interestingly enough, the wreck had a lot of go fast pieces on it like front and rear spoilers, sport seats, a nice racing stripe (it was a real painted stripe too!), all topped off with an automatic transmission. Probably another case of customizing the car that your Grandmother gave you. Anyway, the SS system was only $100 and they took it off leaving me with a relatively new stock exhaust system suitable for a wall hanging. I just haven't figured out a way to hang it so that it is 1) safe, 2) artful, and 3) cleverly done. Above all it must be clever, like something that would be used at the Guggenheim Museum in New York that would make people ask "how'd they do that?". So far no easy solution has presented itself so there it sits on my project list. Then there's that poster collection that keeps growing but never seems to find it's way to the garage walls. I did put a couple of them up a few years ago but then when I put up a suspended loft to hold car parts it covered the poster that I had glued to the cement. Poor planning. You can certainly see why I need to take more time thinking these projects over. Besides spring isn't that far away, is it? KTF |
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