PowerShift: When Things Go Bad

What follows is a true story and the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

In the winter of 1992 a friend mine, Pete, had the bright idea of going into the specialty car business. His bright idea came shortly after inheriting what was at that time, a decent sum of money. His idea of “The Specialty Car Business” entailed buying a kit car, specifically one that is tailored after the AC Cobra. Pete, being the fiscally parsimonious type, decided against having it shipped to his house, but thought better of it and wanted to go out to Fargo North Dakota to pick up the car. Had this been after 1996 when the eponymous movie of this location came out, I would have had fair warning. Such was not the case.

At the time, I was between jobs, so Pete asked if I wouldn’t mind riding along. As long as I shared driving chores, he’d pay for the motels. Not being afraid of frugality, even if it wasn’t my own and always up for an adventure, I said yes. I should have known better. In February of 1992 we started off in Pete’s 1972 GMC K20 pickup, pulling a trailer that we would use to transport the kit car back. It was an open trailer, single axle if I recall correctly.

We left Long island in late January of that year and headed west on US 80 across Pennsylvania. The first sign of trouble came in Ohio. At a rest area, I decided to take a look under the hood, checking the oil and other pertinent vital signs as I was suspect of the truck due to it’s age, Pete’s general lack of concern for anything mechanical and his penchant for making a dollar chase a dime. To put this comedy in perspective, Pete graduated Embry Riddle with a degree in Engineering. Anyway, while checking things under the hood, I noticed that the coolant recovery tank, AKA radiator overflow tank was bubbling over. To those that work on cars, as I had,  one would make a couple assumptions: One, the thermostat was stuck or two, there’s a leaky head gasket somewhere on that engine that is pressurizing the cooling system, thereby forcing coolant out of the radiator. When I asked Pete about it, he said, “it does that all the time”. (Note to reader, when someone says this, while it may be true, use your better judgement.)

Like a true victim of Stockholm Syndrome, I went along with my captor, I mean companion, and said, “ok”. At that point, I figured I was already almost 500 miles from home, so I might as well continue on. What was the worse that could happen anyway, break down? If it did, I could always hop a Greyhound bus back to Long Island, so away we went. The trip out there was fairly uneventful as we stayed in Youngstown Ohio and Madison Wisconsin on our way out to Fargo. I had never been through the mid-west before, so it was a new experience for me. The people were much friendlier than back home as evidenced by the pretty girl tending the check-in at the flea bag motel we stayed at in Youngstown. I had never seen such a happy woman, particularly one that could pass for Jennifer Anniston’s sister and when questioned as to the source of her happiness, she said “you two are the first guys I have seen all night”. Well, that made me completely forget about the radiator overflow. The way I saw it, a sharp New Yorker could be running this place in no time and things were looking up.

Well, things weren’t looking up for long. In fact they were looking up for only another 48 hours or so. On a cold night riding across the Red River Bridge from Moorhead to Fargo on I 94, I looked out the side view mirror as a normal check and I saw a large white plume exiting the left exhaust pipe. A quick check of the passenger side view mirror revealed that a plume was not exiting the right side exhaust (the truck had true dual exhaust). In a very short amount of time I surmised that not only was something amiss, but that indeed, we had struck water and in the worst possible way. Luckily, we were at our final destination, so we stopped at a Select Inn in Fargo and pulled for the night. The radiator was down coolant, which confirmed my intuition, in my mind. I would have to wait until morning for further diagnosis as Pete would go to the new owner orientation at the the manufacturer of the kit car, while I worked on the truck.

The next day, and remember this was the end of January so the temperature was in the negative territory, I pulled the plugs and sure enough, cylinder #7 spouted green. I contacted Pete with the bad news and told him that I’d have to remove the heads for root cause analysis, which I did. It turned out that Pete’s 4 bolt 350 was in fact a 2 bolt 305. The hint was the lightweight head castings and it was confirmed not only by the bore diameter, but by the fact that the head gaskets were indeed head gaskets for a 350 as the bore diameter of the head gasket was 4 inches versus 3.736 for the 305. Whoever had done the engine work believed it was a 350, but never questioned gap between the bore and the head gasket. The head gasket was blown around the water passage at 1 o’clock, which was leaking into piston #7, which is on the driver’s side, all the way in the rear. We were able to have the heads milled, proper head gaskets procured and I reassembled the top end of the engine, again in subzero weather. I cannot say enough about the fine folks from North Dakota and Manitoba Canada, who came out to see if I was alright and offered me hot chocolate and coffee.

This particular incident was a tremendous learning experience for me on many levels. While it was fortunate that I was able to perform the repairs and we had the tools to do so, the incident did not have to happen. Bad things do indeed happen to all of us, sometimes through no fault of our own, but this one was preventable. First off, taking a 20 year old vehicle halfway across the country should have been thought through more thoroughly. Pete didn’t have the truck long and he obviously didn’t know it well in terms of what worked, what didn’t and what needed attention. The coolant recovery tank bubbling was a hint. I will say I take some of the blame, because I did know better and didn’t act on it forcefully enough, but I think I paid for that by fixing the vehicle, which taught me a lesson, which is, if something is wrong and you know it, say so with extreme prejudice. When I discovered the first evidence of a problem, We should have turned around in Ohio as we would have made it home. Hind sight is always 20-20.


My advice for taking a trip with any vehicle is:

• Know thy vehicle. If you are mechanically inclined and do your own maintenance, go over the vehicle extensively, to be sure that it is ready for the trip. Do all routine maintenance and inspect everything that you could reasonably think might break or fail. If you are not mechanically inclined, have a trusted mechanic go over the vehicle and service it prior to the trip. 

•  Buy some sort of road side assistance through the AAA or your insurance policy. Also, I would advise that you should budget money for repairs that could arise on the road, especially if the vehicle is not under any manufacturers warranty. If you can’t afford to fix it on the road, you probably shouldn’t be there.

• If you are mechanically inclined as I am, bring tools along, and I would also suggest a repair manual as well. Trust me, unless you fix cars day in and day out, you won’t remember torque specifications, torquing sequences and other specifications that may be important in a repair. Also bring along a Volt/Ohm Meter, some wiring, various solder-less connectors,  fuses if your vehicle uses them and electrical tape. 

• I would also suggest a scan tool for the computer. On today’s vehicles, they are almost a mandatory diagnostic tool when troubleshooting problems with a vehicle. Two overlooked items are food and water. Bottled water is cheap, so having a couple litres shouldn’t be a problem. As far as food goes, jerky is something that works well, as does other dried foodstuffs that can keep without refrigeration. MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat) are favored by some as well. These are food rations used by the military for field use. While not as good as eating at Emeril’s, they are more than sufficient in a pinch.  

• I would also suggest not only having a cell phone, but a laptop as well with a cell card, MiFi or a cell phone that can tether.  Google is a great asset when trying to figure out what is wrong and manuals or other information on your vehicle can be stored digitally on your laptop. In those cases where you are out of cell range in the middle of nowhere, SPOT (http://www.findmespot.com/en/) has satellite products that can save your bacon in an emergency. 

• Last but not least, make sure someone knows where you are going, when you are leaving, and when you are expected to return.

Father's Day

It's that time of the year when on one day, the third Sunday in June that we are supposed to pay homage to our fathers. On this day, I want to honor fathers in a different way. Instead of just paying homage to just my biological father, I'd like to also give thanks to those men who inspired me to wrench and be a gear head.

From an early age, I've always had a fascination with cars and mechanical things in general. I am a tactile learner, so may be that has something to do with it. Even at the age of four or five, I could tell my dad the make, model and year of any given car. I knew the minutia of the design differences and used them to differentiate the different models and years. At an early age, I had two influences, my Uncle Carmine AKA Uncle Cam, and his son Robert AKA Bobby. Uncle Cam was a class A or master auto mechanic for Mack Markowitz Olds in Hempstead NY. He did it for 38 years and was a treasure trove of knowledge. His son Bobby became the chairman of the Automotive Technologies department at SUNY Farmingdale. Bobby could not only tell you what the right thing was, but also why, from an engineering point of view.

A remember a couple instances where they came to the rescue. I was doing a upper end job on the 400 CI small block in my 1983 Camaro. The threads in the bolt holes of the block were rusty, so I thought I would chase them with a tap, using WD-40 as a lubricant, backing out every couple turns to clear the rust and grime. Well, as luck would have it I used a little too much force and aggressiveness in turning the tap in that it snapped. I will in defense say that I am big guy and sometimes don't know my own strength, which used to bite me in the ass at times, from which I've learned to take a more gentle approach. Still, I was befuddled on how to get the tap out. Taps are made of tool steel and it isn't something you can drill out. I called Uncle Cam, who told me, oh, just buy a tap extractor and you should he able to get it out. A tap extractor? What's that? A tap extractor has fingers that go into the flutes on a tap and it has a ring that slides down to secure the fingers in the flutes. All I can say is that it worked.

Another time, I was helping a friend work in his 1980 GMC Jimmy, which is the same as a K-5 Blazer. Chris Cerlenko bought the Jimmy with the infamous 5.7L diesel. In the process of changing the fuel filter, he disconnected the fuel lines and reconnected them. Anyway, the engine wouldn't start. The 5.7 diesel is a creation of Oldsmobile. I placed a call to Uncle Cam and found out that there was probably air in the fuel lines. He told us how to bleed them and voilá, then engine started. These are just two example of the fatherly help I and others received from Uncle Cam, there are many others.

There are others I'd like to thank too. Thanks to cousins Don Seals and Don Ness (East Coast Restoration), Freddy Schenck who introduced me to Volkswagen, and a couple friends, Phil Saccio and Chris Modugno, all of whom taught me more than they ever realized. Happy Father's day to all of you and thank you for being there when I needed you. I'd also like to thank my real dad, who taught me the best skill of all: Patience.

Thank you for reading this blog.

I Don't Know Dick

No pictures needed here. I admit it. I do not know dick...about a lot of things, in spite of an alleged education and experience. One thing it seems I don't know dick about it journalism, specifically motojournalism. I would like to know dick, but I don't. I admit it. Coming clean is the only way to get better.

Once upon a time, back in the days when I had no gray hair, I had no spouse let alone children, I had a dream. You see I had many interests, but topping the list was cars and motorcycles...and guns, but that is another story. In my so called mind, I thought I could do it. I thought I could write about what I loved. At the time I had a freshly minted degree in American Studies. I even graduated with honors. I had the bright idea to apply to New York University's graduate program in journalism. Today it's called the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. I studied both broadcast and magazine journalism. I had great teachers like Jon Katz, Udayan Gupta, Jane Stone, David Dent, John Capouya, Bob Spitz and Mary Quigley. I also ran out of money, but that is another story too. I used to joke that I got a Harvard education for the price of a NYU education, but that sentiment is lost on most. It was and is a very expensive school, but you will be exposed to people and opportunities not found anywhere else.

Back then, the new media didn't really exist. There was newsprint, magazine and broadcast. I did a hybrid as both appealed to me for different reasons. Broadcast is fast paced, exciting and there's nothing like being in a studio with a live broadcast ready to go and the director counts down to show time. On the other hand, traditional print allows for more development of ideas and it appeals to my cerebral side. That said, life happens and through a series of circumstances, my life changed direction and the idea, the dream of writing or producing content for journalism went into the dustbin. One of things I did carry away was computer technology. When producing an issue of Manhattan South, the school magazine, I learned how to do magazine layout on a Macintosh. You see, no one else in the class wanted to do the dirty work. The other editors wanted to edit other students work or write the articles themselves. I ended up volunteering for the job of doing layout, but at the time I didn't realize where it would lead me.

Not long after this, I met my future wife and I decided to change careers. I wasn't doing journalism at the time, and I ended up going into technology, which I have been in for 17 years now. I specifically went into Macintosh technology, supporting pre-press shops and service bureaus in my first IT job. I got married, we had kids, bought a house and life moved on. During a period of underemployment after 9/11, I had gotten a new bike, a Vulcan 800 Classic, and the idea of writing crossed my mind again. At the time, I read several magazines and one of them was Roadbike. The tech editor at the time was Mark Zimmerman. I decided to email him and ask him out to lunch. To my total bewilderment, he accepted, and not only that, he took me out to lunch and although I had to ride up to Danbury, it was worth the trip. Mark is an incredibly funny, articulate and knowledgeable person. He's also gracious and open. I asked him if he could read some of the stuff I had written at NYU and give me his opinion. Like others before, he said I could write, but I need to work at more and develop my voice. Once again, life intervened and I ended up taking a job in Iowa, which move our family 1200 miles away. Over the years I have kept in touch with Mark although we haven't talked shop as it were.

Now, some years later I find myself at a point in life where I feel I need change. May be change isn't the right word, may be truth is the right word. I am tired of IT and even though I can do it, I feel no affinity for it, not anymore. It's like being able to do an autonomic bodily function. At that point, it becomes just that, if you know what I mean. So at the advanced age of 49, I have examined my options. Underlying this though is what I call "the four legs of the stool", and I am not talking autonomic bodily functions either. Consider it like a bar stool. One is engagement. I have to be engaged mentally, emotionally, may be spiritually and sometimes physically. I have to use my faculties to their fullest extent, if possible. Two is voice. Do I have a voice not only in what I will do or how I will do it, but just the act of being able to be heard, to have my opinion valued? Three is the social aspects. If I am with a group, how do I fit in, do I have a place where I am comfortable and am I accepted? Four is, "do I make a difference?" Is what I am doing shedding any new light, offering some value, making a difference in someone's day, in a more meaningful way than just "I fixed X".  Honestly, right now I am 0 for 4. My options are to do nothing, to look for something in my current field and "settle" for a leg or two, or to change careers. Problem is, I don't know dick. I don't know Dick either. I'd like to as he seems like a good chap (someone I met on Linked In who gave me some advice), but where do I start (besides from the beginning)?

Hope is a funny thing. Not funny ha ha, but funny interesting. For me it has ebbed and flowed with the days and weeks like the tide that comes in and out of Monterrey Bay, which is down the block from where I am writing this now. If anyone has pointers, advice, words of encouragement or even deridement at this point, all will be welcome. Like Sisyphus, I need a rock to push against, but unlike Sisyphus, I need to push it over the hill.

Thank you for reading this blog.

Nuts and Bolts

As a kid, it was always a joy of a treasure hunt to rifle through the nuts and bolts bins in dad's garage. In my mind I could assemble almost anything my imagination dreamed up, so long as whatever materials I mustered had holes in them. Dad didn't give me rights to the power drill right away and when he did, I am sure he regretted it. I was and I am very hard on drills. In the course of rummaging through the bolt bins, I also became acquainted with nuts and washers, which are very important to the efficacy of bolts in the process of fastening things. Dad also had screws, which were just as useful, especially when working with wood, but there are differences between bolts and screws, and I will use the definition supplied by wikipedia here to show the differences:

A bolt is an externally threaded fastener designed for insertion through holes in assembled parts, and is normally intended to be tightened or released by torquing a nut. A screw is an externally threaded fastener capable of being inserted into holes in assembled parts, of mating with a preformed internal thread or forming its own thread, and of being tightened or released by torquing the head. An externally threaded fastener which is prevented from being turned during assembly and which can be tightened or released only by torquing a nut is a bolt. (Example: round head bolts, track bolts, plow bolts.) An externally threaded fastener that has thread form which prohibits assembly with a nut having a straight thread of multiple pitch length is a screw. (Example: wood screws, tapping screws.)

As you can see, there is a difference between a screw and a bolt. As a child, I was fascinated by the markings on the tops of the bolts. If you look at the illustration to the right, you can see the different grades of bolts, which refer to the strength of the bolt.

Plain bolts are called grade 2 bolts. These can be 1/4" through 1.5" in diameter and are made from low to medium carbon steel. Minimum tensile strength can be from 60,000-74,000 psi.  That sounds like a lot, but if you use these bolts in place of grade 5 or 8 bolts and torque them a bit too much, you'll find out rather quickly how substandard they are for the job. Luckily they are also the softest of bolts and are easier to drill and use an easy out to remove. If you've ever tried to drill a grade 8 bolt that seems hardened, it can be a chore, if not impossible, trust me.

Up from Grade 2 bolts are Grade 5 and Grade 8. Grade 5 bolts are 105,000-120,000 psi is tensile strength, again depending on the diameter. Diameters under 1" are stronger than those over 1" Grade 8 bolts have a tensile strength of 150,000 psi. The king though are metric bolts with a designation of 12.8, which have a tensile strength of  about 175,000 psi. What is tensile strength? I am glad you asked.

According to the Bolt Depot, tensile strength is "the maximum load in tension (pulling apart) which a material can withstand before breaking or fracturing". Grade 8 bolts are used in high stress places like main bearing caps, head bolts of yore (head bolts are a subject unto themselves), and suspension parts, to name but a few. Use bolts of lesser grade and quality and the least worst that could happen is that you are stranded. The absolute worse is loss of control of a vehicle due to a breakage in a control mechanism. Not good. If you work on cars, make sure you use the correct fastener for the intended purpose. End of lecture.

Mark Zimmerman, my inspiration.

Back to Dad's Garage. I have no idea where dad got these bolts, screws and nuts. I don't think he was a collector and he wasn't a car nut. Dad was more into wood, like Norm Abrams, whereas I was/am, more of a Sam Memmolo or Mark Zimmerman, both of whom I hold in very high esteem (I am surely delusional in making that statement as I couldn't carry their jocks). It must run in the blood though, my uncle Carmine, AKA Uncle Cam,  was an auto mechanic for 38 years at Mack Markowitz Oldsmobile and his son Robert or Bobby is chair of the Automotive Technology program at SUNY Farmingdale for many years. May be I just had a lot of incentive. Who knows. I do you know I learned a lot of from them, and others like like Don Ness, Don Seals, Freddy Schenck, Chris Modugno and Phil Saccio. Always listen well to those that know their way around a car or anything else for that matter.

Anyway, Dad's garage was a treasure trove for after school missions into mechanical glory or just futzing around. I miss those days of exploration and just total immersion into nothing special. There's nothing better than a day spent letting your mind and hands work together to create something from your will or just getting lost in that process. It surely beats a day at work, no? Or am I just nuts?

Thank you for reading this blog.

Dad's Garage

Working on cars and motorcycles is nothing new for me as I have been working on vehicles of mass transportation for over 35 years. I got my start in dis-assembly, assembly and troubleshooting of vehicles big and small in a garage in the backyard of my parent's house. This house on 2349 Lafayette Street was built in 1913, a two bedroom Dutch colonial, which means it was a two story home with gambrel roofs and if anyone had a car back then it probably was a Ford Model T. Dad's Garage was a two car garage, but in the sense of fitting two Model T type of cars, which is to say, it was smaller than a two car garage of today. The floor was concrete that even as a child was not in great shape, showing cracks and larger fractures. The building certainly was not insulated and in fact, it did not have dry wall either. It had two swing style doors that my father later converted into a wall with a window on one side and a tracked overhead garage door on the other. He also put a side door in and ran 220 volt service to the garage. Heat came from a Round Oak No. 18 wood stove.

My first ventures in the garage were to take wood scraps and make things out of them or pillage bins of various nuts, bolts and washers in my trying to create something from whatever I'd find laying around. Dad was into woodwork, something that I myself never got into, like the game of golf (my Dad was a greens keeper), time spent in frustration. My artisanal pursuits were or should I say became oriented in the mechanical direction instead. Uncle Cam (Cam is the shortened version of the Italian nickname for Carmine, Camminuccio) was an auto mechanic for an Oldsmobile dealer, Mack Markowitz Oldsmobile and to whose expertise I am indebted to this day. My seemingly eponymous uncle would come over when dad had a problem with his car (we tended to own Oldsmobile) and Uncle Cam would fix it in the yard (like when the Vista Cruiser overheated and Uncle Cam replaced a head in the back yard). This lead to my own experiments with cars.

I remember being something like 9 or 10 years old and after seeing some hot rods on TV or may be in print I must have concluded that obviously, the stock air cleaner assembly was insufficient to do the job. I fashioned an air filter from a old can of wax or compound for my dad's 1967 Vista Cruiser, which had a 330 2bbl engine. I drilled holes in it and cut a hole for the carburetor with tin snips. I loved how it sounded, but it did not impress dad and it did not stay on the car long. Not long after, I found some spare hoses from our pool's filter pump and had ideas of making a ram air setup like I saw on a 1969 442 W-30. Lets just say that hose was a little undersized for the 425 in our 1965 Delta 88. Man that thing howled trying to feed air to that engine! I had the right ideas as in how to get more and colder air into the engine, I just did not have the engineering expertise to make a truly well thought out and finished product. It was not long after that though that my dad would have me help him change the oil and other aspects of maintenance on the family cars.

My first two-wheeled motorbike was a Rupp Mini Bike. I was in 8th or 9th grade and I remember Mom bought it at a garage sale for a song and brought it home one Saturday. My brother Tony and I painted the frame Chevrolet Hugger Orange, and the gas tank Argent Silver. It had a tired three and a half horsepower Tecumseh flat head engine and under dad's supervision, we honed the cylinder, re-ringed the piston, rebuilt the carburetor and did a valve job. It ran very well after that. Before, it could barely go faster than 15 mph. Afterward, we were clocked at 35mph. It could go faster if the governor rod was held in. Eventually the engine threw a rod through the crankcase, probably from exceeding the governor once too often.

My first car was a forest green 1969 Volkswagen Fastback. We bought it from a neighbor, Mrs. Piner, and it was the first foreign car in our family. Mom drove it for a couple years until I got my license and then I inherited it. We did paint it in Dad's garage, using an oil-less craftsman one and a half horsepower compressor, no tank. It came out ok. My brother took it to 95mph and not long after the engine needed an overhaul. The car did have over 90K miles on it, so I do not know what he was thinking. You have to realize this engine had 66 horsepower stock, which is less than most motorcycles I have owned. A local mechanic named Freddy Schenck worked on VWs out of his house. If I recall he had a three or four bay garage in his back yard and knew the VW better than most people and certainly better than I did. He rebuilt the engine for us and did some of the work on the car until I learned how to properly maintain a VW. Changing the oil was not a big deal, but the car had idiosyncrasies. It had electronic fuel injection, which was space age for the year that car was built. Even when I had the car in the late 70's, it was way ahead of American cars. It had front disc brakes too, automatic transmission and radial tires, although the tires were smaller than the rear tire on my R1200RT. One of the problems was the fuel lines. They were of the cloth and rubber variety and would leak after awhile. I replaced quite a bit of fuel line on the injectors and the fuel pump. Often.

Since then I had spent many hours in Dad's garage on many different projects: Rebuilding a 350 and a 400 cubic inch Chevrolet engines, rebuilding and upgrading a KZ1000 engine to 1260CCs and rebuilding various automatic transmissions of the Hydramatic variety. Did I mention carburetors? I used to be an expert in rebuilding and modifying Rochester Quadrajets. I would work on Holleys too, but believe it or not, I liked the Qjets better. I also liked to go out there and do homework sometimes, especially in the winter. I would fire up the Round Oak, put a pot of coffee on the stove and do my college chemistry homework. All of this is what I did and does not take into consideration what my brother and father did in that garage as well.

Many years have passed since I lived at 2349 Lafayette Street and after Dad passed away in 2008, we sold the house and now someone else lives there. It was sad to drive by the house and know it was not my home anymore; not a place I could go to visit pops, work on my car or just relax. The new owners will never the know what mechanical plots were dreamed up, what bench or other types of racing took place there or the challenges as well. In fact, I fear that some day I may drive by when visiting back east, that the house will be gone, as people are tearing down the old small homes and putting up McMansions. Sometimes memories outlive reality.

Today I live in a subdivision in central Iowa with an attached 2 car garage that while bigger than Dad's garage, I find woefully small as it is always filled with stuff. It was only last year I finally bought an air compressor and some air tools to augment my old tool set I have had for almost 30 years. I like my bench better though, as it is longer, wider and taller than Dad's (I am 6'5, so a tall bench is a godsend). With 5 kids ages 5 through 15, it's time I have my own version of Dad's garage and pass something on to my kids in terms of memories and skills. The garage may go away, but the lessons learned there will always be with me. I hope it is the same for my children.

Of Any Age

As the old saw goes, if there is any constant, it is change. So it goes with another year gone by and it becomes self-evident that I have more years behind me than in front of me. So what has changed?

That realization reports a transition from the ignorance of youth, where like an heir to a seemingly endless fortune spends wildly, to the place of knowing, possibly wisdom, where the account is more singularly defined and whose limits are not only have become clearer, but known.

Reflecting on the age I have lived so far, and we all live in an age, a common age for people born at a particular time and those experiences mark a greater transition of society as well as with ourselves, I see that things have changed quite a bit. Not as much for me as for my paternal grandfather, who was born before the advent of the automobile yet lived to see men go to the moon, even if he didn't believe it. In my age, I was born before the age of the Internet, personal computer, cell phone, iPods, GPS, satellite radio/TV, cable TV and widespread use of the microwave oven.

In spite of all the advancements, it seems that while it has freed us to do more, we seem to think less. Some might posit that we are now free to think about more important things instead of using our mental capacities for controlling processes that are now self-evident. I have to wonder. A lot of the technology today has lead a lot of people to be believers in FM or F@#$ing Magic. It is the black box, the mystery that somehow performs a task and somehow we are better off not knowing how it happens. From my perspective, may be this dulls critical thought.

Take automobiles and motorcycles. They still use the internal combustion engine, but ask kid today how it works and you are as likely to get a blank stare as a plausible explanation. I bet though the kid will know how to buy a computer programmer to get more horsepower out of it even if he or she isn't sure exactly why or how it works. Astounding. Suck, squish, bang, blow, the 4 cycles of a 4 stroke motor. Fuel, compression and spark must exist for such a device to work. Today, add a fourth: The computer. In a new vehicle, it manages almost everything. Even in it's simplest form, the computer controls the amount of fuel that get burned by an engine. It does this by measuring multiple variables in the engine and combustion process such as oxygen content in exhaust gases, coolant temperatures, atmospheric pressure, internal vacuum pressures in the intake manifold, measuring the mass of air taken in by the engine by measuring the change in resistance in a wire by shunting current through the wire as air passes over it, RPM, and throttle position, to name a few. Given all these inputs, matrices in memory are consulted by a computer and for the given parameters, the fuel injectors are pulsed at a specific frequency as to create the proper fuel/air mixture. This is constantly being adjusted by the computer to match any operating conditions. In other words, it's FM to most people.

When I was a kid, I learned how a carburetor worked (Venturi Principle), spark (induction coil), and the effects of timing, both static and cam have on compression. These principles hold true today in a sense, but the black box makes in unimportant even to the Friday night drag race impresario. If there is a problem with the car, just use you cell phone to call the mechanic. Oops, I mean automotive technician. With the advent of electric power vehicles, it's only going to get worse, be less fun and less challenging.

On the other hand, they were the bad old days too. Cars did not stop well, steer well, got poor fuel mileage and if you wanted to have a lot of power, you needed to do a lot of modifications to the engine or use a bigger one. Cars also did not stay in proper state of tune for as long as they do now and engines certainly did not last as long on average either. You had to know how stuff worked, even to the uninitiated, as a matter of functionality and I am sure it was an improvement from the previous generation of automobiles.

In spite of the advances in engineering and FM, I have to say there are times I miss the bad old days at times when I am troubleshooting one of my cars or trying to modify something on them or my motorcycle. A lot of the technology today requires special equipment and doesn't tolerate tampering so much. Take my BMW motorcycle. You have to buy a special computer tool just to reset the service reminder that blinks on the computer display on the dash. Either that or take it to the dealer. Talk about discouraging the shade tree mechanic. I mean motorcycle technician. The entry fee for that is a cool $299 for your own computer scanner. It's really just a interface adapter that has the proprietary connector on one side and USB on the other. The software is what does the work. Forget about getting the tool BMW uses, it's not for sale. BMW stands for Bring Money Wilhelm. All I can say is the cheapest thing on a BMW motorcycle is the rider.

So where does this this bring us? Back to the beginning I guess. Change is constant and we are defined by not only our age, but the age in which we live. As this year draws to a close I realize how fast time has flown, how little I have accomplished and how little time I really have left. Steve Jobs said "I want to put a ding in the universe." I used to feel that way and sometimes I still do. Sometimes though, I would rather just kick back with a highball glass of 18 year old Macallan, an Arturo Fuente Churchill Natural and just be content that everything is going to be alright, no matter what. Is that silly?

Thank you for reading this blog.

Welcome

Welcome to What's Under The Hood. This blog is dedicated to the pursuit of what matters, what is real, what is relevant to most men, at least from my generation. While in some ways it is a sort of protest to the "Motherproof" crowd, I will give that blog props for Motherproof being successful, if not facile, but I really don't care where the baby car seat anchors are and I don't care about the Mary Sipes excursions into automobile development which has lead to such facile publications, BUT, obviously they are reacting to market demands and they are successful, so who am I to say?

What I do want to produce is an honest publication that I think addresses a demographic that has been ignored in the metro-transmogrification of our society. Direct, honest, reminiscent and funny at times. I welcome feedback of all kinds and I hope to hear from you soon and soon you'll be hearing from me.


Thank you for reading this blog.