A bit of a strange day yesterday. I could not get any slashdot or sourceforge pages to load on my machine for most of the day. Everything seems fine now. Scrolled through the stories from yesterday and did not see any note of an outage and when I tweeted about it, one other person retweeted it. Did not have any trouble with any other sites at all. Strange.

SABATAGE trailer, yes you may laugh.

Finally made a short video of my car as she sits now. Not as bad as many, but she sure needs a lot of work.

Was going to do a video walk around of the '72 Charger project car today, but the wind is a bit much, even though I am laying on the narration track later. I did find a bunch of soaked paper and cardboard in the trunk, probably due to leaf debris in the gutter around the trunk opening. Side marker in the quarter panel there is open too, so that might be part of it. Found a phosphoric acid based product for rust removal too, next video will be on how to select and use that stuff, along with what not to use.

Decided to break out the details on my engine rebuild into its own blog: 318 Six-Pack. Yes, part of the project is building up a small block Dodge engine the way it should have come from the factory. The other part is the whole "sleeper" tradition :) Instead of an innocent gas-sipping 318 2 barrel under the hood, there will be a killer bunny rabbit. Original 318 block with the original markings stamped and cast for anybody to peek at, all in Chrysler Blue, but the parts that make it go will be all different. Only outward visible differences will be the big orange breather, six pack stuff, and ceramic coated headers. Even there, she will look like a 318 that gets to eat and breathe a little better due to a better carb setup, but the changes only start there.

Just went into some detail about how I came up with suspension system upgrade candidates and how they were eliminated. Could be helpful to others who like to preserve old cars rather than crush them.

Any of you fellow oldsters out there remember the story about the 100 MPG carburetor that The Man would not let us use because it would reduce petroleum consumption too much? I seem to remember hearing that over 30 years ago, and the story was that Big Oil bought the patent and kept it secret. That patent should be expired by now, and in the US patents are not renewable, so where the heck is the old patent? I'm restoring a classic car and having one of these would fit right in with the period. In sticking with the spirit of the old story, I suppose installing one upside down would bring 100 HP, but will installing them upside down in series have a multiplier effect?

More details about making the first video for this car project over here. The basics are going over the car I am restoring and details about that make/model/package. One decision I made since that post was putting mistakes I made in the first restoration phase into a different video. Otherwise, I just have some ideas floating around and no script, no outline.

Part of what attracts me to the idea of making it a series, perhaps with crowd funding, is that I am coming at this project from the consumer side of the equation. Nobody is sponsoring me, everybody I've spoken to is purely in the vendor category and I might become their customer as I save money to spend on this project.

Another aspect that draws me to making this a public project is the technology end of things. Carburetion, for example, I went from being all on board for Multi-Port Fuel Injection a few years ago to now being firmly in the traditional carburetor corner. This change did not come at a whim, it came from research and looking at my project as a consumer. One is trying to get an optimal fuel/air mixture into a cylinder and make it ready to explode at just the right time. Consumer Steve really could spend the extra $1,000 difference between carbs and fuel injection on a different part of the project, or send clothes to hurricane victims.

The downside of crowd funding is drawing the crowd. I am not Jay Leno, Adam Carolla, or even Henry Cho. I don't have a crowd yet, I don't think I am funny or all that entertaining on my own, and how people grow crowds seems like a mystery to me. Splitting the project, and funding attempts, into sections seems logical. Like "Bucking The Man by recycling an engine and transmission," for the drive train portion of the project. My car has the original factory installed drive train which needs some dear attention, especially in the leak department. Small manufacturers across America have parts to fix everything that needs to be fixed and I plan on using them. Even Big Detroit made better parts later that are sitting in wrecked cars all over the place just waiting to be picked. Something I leaned right away, big companies do not have the advantage in this area and MOPAR Performance proved that to everybody, without any help. Their modern parts could have been on the shelf at parts stores right between Edelbrock and Pro-Comp. The ONLY reason they are not is because they set the parts seller/distributor margins too low.

Another show could be all about protecting and restoring metal. In my car, there might be a good 2,000 lbs. of metal in the body and it is a shame to watch that rust away. Replacement body panels, even certified replacements, leave much to be desired. Preserving the originals is the preferred way, but what if you are not a good welder? I plan on using a product featured on Jay Leno's Garage and introduced by the Skinned Knuckles magazine publisher Neil Maken for filling metal with more metal without welding and showing people where to use it, and more importantly, where NOT to use it. Another product I saw on Capone Auto's YouTube page is great for reducing rust and keeping rust away for a few days as you get that section protected. That one is going to come in handy for one of my BIG mess-ups on the roof. I used a great product in the wrong place about six years ago, now I need to fix it.

So that is the idea. Now to get down to work.

No pix posted yet, but I finally started a blog for my aging 1972 318 Six-Pack Dodge Rallye Charger project.

One of these days if I ever get to restore my Charger, I am making sure to paint the solar panel on the hood like this car. Guess I need to have one of those "Hybrid" badges made for it too Heck, if I ever get to the point where I can work on it again, I'll probably have my own CNC machine by then, lol.

So I guess it is a little too late for a meaningless boycott of a Russian Olympics as a show of dislike.

Jerry asks, "I wonder if there are any Progressive coalminers," in this week's episode. Full episode embedded at the link.

In the State of the Union address last night, President Obama vowed to institute measures to raise the minimum pay of all employees on federal contracts to $10.10/hr. News outlets rushed to a particular report by an outfit called "Demos" as evidence that there are people who would benefit from this act. Problem is, the report does not show that at all. Maybe there are federal contractors out there that earn less than $10.10/hr., but they sure are difficult to find.

Social genius Tina Fey ask Jerry Seinfeld where his kids "are" on Santa Claus.

This journal has all that gluten that the gluten free people have been keeping from you.