Back to the Jaguar

My car has been at the shop the past month, slowly getting some things fixed:

1) The alternator/charging system. Got a rebuilt alternator, and some wiring fixes. This is now working properly (exc see below). Have a new regulator coming, from ebay.

2) Cooling system. Got the hoses, thermostat replace, radiator core rebuild. This is working nicely. Engine block freeze plugs replaced.

on Oct 21, I got to have the car back for the weekend. The following notes are from the return email I send sunday night.

I was able to drive home ok (Chantilly), albeit slowly because of traffic...Then I drove north up Rt 28 to Sterling, south back to I-66, then to the Fair Oaks Whole Foods grocery, by which point I had a flat tire on the left rear. Because it was dark, we left it there overnight, and I put the spare on Saturday morning after bringing the proper tools. That all went fine, but it was a regrettable surprise. Therefore, I need the wheel that is in the boot repaired--not sure what is wrong with it, but that is the better rim (at least in terms of minimal rust and better appearance). I also put my last inner tube in the back, if it is needed. While going north on Rt 28, there was a thump underneath my feet while driving, like something hit the underside; my guess is that whatever that was caused the flat--it was dark, and I didn't see anything. I hope it was not something falling off the car and bouncing up off the road. I do not have an additional spare. When I got these tires put on the rims, it was at Radial Tire in Silver Spring MD, that could handle the wire rims. I'm ok with you all doing this if you can, else I need to see about it myself, don't really want to drive without a spare (although that is how I got it home in the first place). If it's just needing a new tire, I will get a matching tire (came from a Firestone place in Sterling).


They were very right about the throttle linkage being sticky--it cold-starts very high rpms. Saturday it was near 2500 rpm when I started it after changing the tire. Sunday it was nearly 4000 rpm at lunch time start-up. I had seen Dave poke on the linkage to fix that, so I did the same thing, and it was better, but this is something that needs attention before something goes worse wrong.

The voltage meter often shows something near 16 volts from the alternator, which is definitely too high. Saturday afternoon it was down at 13 for a while, which was fine. the 16 is alarming, not good for the battery. I will have the new voltage regulator in my hands in a few more days, probably time to replace that.

The speedometer is only partially functional--it doesn't rise above 40 mph, and doesn't always drop below 20 when stopped. I have bought a sender off ebay, perhaps we can try that out as a replacement. Or perhaps something is sticking there...

Oil pressure was somewhat variable, but was never down to zero--it ranged from 20-50 (what that really means) over the weekend. This seems ok for now, unless it's supposed to be a very steady pressure.

Headlights worked ok in the dark. I didn't look at the brake/turn-signal lights. They were ok 2 yrs ago.

Coolant/water temperature gauge looked great the whole time, on the low side of normal range, so great job on that. Keeps my feets toasty warm while driving.

There seems to be a low speed at which there is a motion resonance bounce...not sure if this means a tire is out of balance, or what. Noticeable on a really smooth road, elsewhere not so much.

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Comments on the above: the oil system had been a little off, in particular the oil pressure gauge usually read zero or nearly so. I got a new sensor off ebay, it got installed. The speedometer used to work ok, I thought. I think the replacement sensor I am getting is used, so it may not matter. The throttle linkage fix is probably part of a larger system fix that includes better carb tuning.

I could not tell whether the front suspension was showing any effect from the ball joints needing work...related: probably ALL the rubber anywhere needs replacing.

Anyway...it was great fun getting to drive the car...once more things are fixed, it will be even better.

Best part at this point is that we have not yet even hit the halfway point on my budget, although we are close. Still...remaining budget should cover good territory.

I had replaced the stereo soon after getting the car. New unit takes a USB drive to play from, which works pretty well. I made an 8GB drive, which results in a really good lot of stuff. Only flaw: it plays in alphabetic order, A-Z. Would prefer random.

Another new compy...

Gad. My Shuttle died today. Sort of--it's not completely dead, but it ain't working worth a damn.

First thing I tried to do was wake it up, the wake-up screen was a BSOD, and reboot said there was no disk. I thought I had another disk that had Win7 on it, but apparently that disk, although labeled Win 7, just has files.

Now I'm already feeling panicky. I *think* I have a full backup, on my backup server, but I've never had to go look, or try to recover from it.

Tried re-installing Win 7 on another disk (1.5TB; this *was* in my Win Home Server box, but may have been flaking out, I replaced it already, so I had this just sitting around). This isn't working...got a fair amount through, it did some CHKDSK repairs, etc, was beginning to do updates, and that failed to reboot the first time it needed to, and worse still, trying again I can't even see the disk any more. Went by MicroCenter after visiting a friend, got a new 1TB disk, and that too fails to go through the install process, ALSO not showing the disk the 2nd try.

I tried formatting the 1.5TB on my Mac Pro. That went fine, it seemed to be ok; not sure what the deal is, but I didn't try it back in the PC.

This is all very alarming, and after what is now at least 4 tries to install O/S on more than one disk, and trying to view disks on my Mac (mostly failing), I'm feeling a bit alarmed. Looks like tomorrow is another visit to Micro Center for a whole new set of parts...

At least this time I think I won't get the Shuttle-size box, that, although cutely small, hasn't really worked as well as I wanted. I tried to get a new video card for the Shuttle as week ago, saw a good price, only to discover after I got home that the box said it needed two slots, which the Shuttle cannot provide for a video card.

But I will be able to get something faster: 6 core, more/faster RAM (8GB, DDR3-1333). And a better video card before Skyrim shows up.

I don't mind the upgrade aspect, it's the panic over maybe losing my files. That is really worrying me--I'm thinking about how to be even more certain I have backups.

new compy

Well, it looked like time to replace the old G5 Mac...because it was shortly going to no longer be possible to get an Intel Mac Pro with Snow Leopard on it out of the box.

And Snow Lep is important for me, as I need Rosetta in order to be able to continue to run old stuff I can't afford to replace. Lion is not going to come with Rosetta; it doesn't come with Samba either, and I still need access to the Win systems here.

So I got a quad-core Mac Pro with Snow Lep. Upgraded RAM to 16gb, for $160, great price. Upgraded disks to total of 5TB (2TB is Time Machine).

The G5 had Leopard on it, and that was as far as it could go. Q now is whether or not it can be sold for anything reasonable...or should I see about a school donation?

The Rosetta stuff works reasonably well so far...I have not tried a serious 3D game yet. Turns out that EV Nova runs ok, but that's low-res graphics behavior. Most other things have been fine. Only untested thing I think remains is the M-Audio PCI card in the G5. I'd like that to continue to work, too, but I'll have to go hunt for a driver, or give up.

Having a new compy is kinda fun, like a new girlfriend, all the discovery phase.

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And just yesterday the new iPhone was announced. Sprint will finally have one, so we'll be switching phones finally, to a phone I actually will like (have not been impressed with the Android phone).

Steve Jobs died today. Man, that is sad. Quite possibly no one other single person had as broad a positive impact on the world in the past several decades (bin Laden clearly had a huge negative impact, but no one will miss him except psychos).