Category Archives: Car

On Projects

Projects are fun, well, because it gives you a sense of satisfaction and a feeling of accomplishment when you complete them.

With cars specifically, there’s something very human about utilizing tools for accomplishing tasks to deploy technology for purposes that make our lives better, something that connects us with the tool-making of early humans for basic survival.

While I am no techno-fetishist or techno-futurist, understanding the technology of the day and how it changes us and how we live in the world and with each other is important, even if we don’t think technologies necessarily always improve our standards of living or ways of life and sometimes create unanticipated problems all their own (i.e. the space race or climate change). In many cases, I think technofuturism is more about getting us to buy the latest iPhone than it is about making anyone’s life better. Although, honestly, if you don’t stay in the game, and abreast of change, you will be left behind. As Kai Ryssdal once said of the global capitalist economy: it “waits for no one,” so strap in or buy a nice hut somewhere.

Ramblings aside, here is a list of car projects: completed and to-do:

Another Fix

Made some progress with the cold start issue. Car wasn’t starting well in the cold, and I replaced the battery cable, and this seem to be doing the trick! Here’s the beauty down below. Forty years old and runs pretty well.

Rocinante Rides Again

After two years of hibernation, I have revived the white stallion, my darling Volvo 240, once again. As a back up car.

I am no car expert, but I have replaced more parts on that car then I can count, many of them on my own, and it still drives, almost 300,000 miles later. It was a gas fuel leak this time, and I replaced the relevant hose without igniting myself or exploding the car. And it rides again, much like Rocinante did so long for Don Quixote. For a car that’s older than me.

I am not a car guy, but the feeling of troubleshooting a problem, identifying the solution and bringing it to fruition: what a great feeling. And it saves you a bunch of money.

Some pics of the stickshift beauty below, as well as some of the gory, mechanical car innards.