https://www.printables.com/@atomicalex_1483478
See the incredibly boring and also cool things I have made. I mean, what else do you have to do with your time?
I am very impressed that my most downloaded model is a clutch spline tool. Because save the manuals. Do your own clutch.
Missed opportunities. Gotta grab them back and re-roll. Chrysler Marketing has always owned the meta, and that magic needs to come back before the bean counters get their TI85s out.
First. kill the electric Challenger, hide the chassis for a year, and re-introduce it with some body tweaks as the new Javelin. Capitalize on the nostalgia and the whole America fuck yeah thing and just go straight for American Motors. Purveyors of the Mighty 4.0 and the holy AMX. This protects the Challenger brand and opens the door for a new electric brand. It also opens the door to landing a new Eagle, which is the car Americans really want, but can’t figure out how to ask for. Lifted electric AWD wagon. Sounds like a CUV but with a better roofline. And chrome wheel arches. Just like the allroad but like, more original. Sell them at Dodge dealers like AMC sold Renaults.
Second, get the Ramcharger back on track. OMG. This is the biggest miss possible. The mistake is calling it an electric truck. It has to be a truck that happens to be electric. In fact, it has to be a regular truck with a regular engine that you can also plug in. But REGULAR TRUCK has to come first. And it should be available with both a Diesel and gas engine because it’s a damn REGULAR TRUCK first and electric later. What do you mean, range anxiety, how is that even a thing in a REGULAR TRUCK? Just go to the gas station like you do with a REGULAR TRUCK. And where is Xzibit in all of this? I mean, you put a Ramcharger in your Ramcharger so you can ram the charge in while you charge the Ram. Or whatever. Pimp it, doggone it. Did I mention it pulls like a locomotive? Take that, EMD GM.
Third, Hellcat Pacifica. Literally those two words. Hellcat Pacifica. We are waiting.
A long time ago, a car maker made an engine, and it was a good little engine. It was designed for transverse applications, but it was so good, they put it in a longitudinal applications, too. That required some massaging of the oil pan, and it lost about 20% of its oil capacity.
The good little engine came with a requirement to use synthetic oil because it was equipped with a very good little turbocharger, which got very hot. It was very important to use an oil that could handle the heat, especially because there was less oil that there was originally intended to be, and it was before coolant afterrun pumps were really a thing.
The American dealer network wasn’t too keen on the cost of synthetic oil, so they put petroleum-based oils (dino) into the good little engines during routine maintenance. A lot of good little engines were run very enthusiastically by their owners and put out a lot of heat. The good little engines did not have coolant afterrun pumps, so the very good little turbochargers cooked that oil and made coffee grounds out of it when the engines were shut down hot. The coffee grounds moved into the oil pan on startup and plugged up the oil pickups which starved the bearings and lot of owners became big mad.
Some lawyers also became big mad and made a class action lawsuit of out it. But it was really hard to argue about because the coffee grounds didn’t fit the normal ways engines failed. There was no sludge.
So the lawyers asked around and finally it all ended up in my lap and I got to explain to the world about the difference between thermal oxidative stress that leads to sludging, and thermal stress in the absence of oxygen that leads to coking. And coking is what makes little coffee grounds that clog up oil pickups. And when confronted with that fact, the car maker folded and granted relief to a lot of owners who were big mad and a really really long warranty extension to any owner that had ever had an oil change at a dealership and had the papers to prove it.
The same car maker had a Head of Internal Combustion Technology who tried to tell me to my face that they did not have PCV issues. I was big mad about something else he had said in that meeting, so I offered to bring my intercooler (from one of his engines) in and turn it out on his desk. In front of his team. Somehow, I did not get fired for that.
Well, I get tired from being so project-y and forget to show off what I do.
Custom fabrics using my sticker bomb pattern (same as wagon headliner) but with a colorway that goes better with the BRZ. I sourced from Contrado, a fabric printer in Spain. The vinyl has held up very well for the dash and door cards, but is too thick to be good on the shift boot. I have to go back and find a better solution. The seat fabric might be a good choice – it has held up better than expected also. Still need to deal with the back of the TRD seat.
Yesterday was more fail with the BRZ. I’m fortunate that my cars usually only fail near home because that means no tow fees. Yay.
This time it is the pillow blocks on my Raceseng Cas-Cam plates and yeah, those are unobtainium. It’s such a bummer that Raceseng closed up shop, because their parts are not only gorgeous, they are also very well designed. But no match for alignment techs, and the threads that hold the locaters in the plates are failing. Tiny little 3mm stainless steel bolts into aluminium threads will eventually buy it. Bunch of knocking around and banging over bumps is no bueno.
Car is parked for the week, and the old F650GS is doing what it does best – being there for me – as usual.
Conversion to Verus plates is in process, I’ll grab them Monday from Oakos.
Yeee.