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My last try at a thread only lasted about two weeks, but it's different this time! I'm slowly going crazy in the middle of the desert, and I've got little else to do for the next few weeks other than Feels weird that it's been almost three years since the last thread. Rewind to the beginning of 2017! I had just recently acquired my first house: And promptly filled up the parking. At the time I had a 09 135i, '90 325i, and a '95 540i. My garage space was small, but functional. Garage #2 The second garage quickly filled up with parts, and became a bit of a clusterfuck. I had a sudden need for more storage space, so I had to clean it up: For this! It's an 87 325e that a friend of mind swapped to an M50b25 and blew up. The car has some audio mods too, and that's about it. It had been sitting under a tree for a few years since the incident, and he made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I want to turn it into a daily! I've had an S52 sitting around for a while (I picked it up for $600 when I was looking for a local source for vanos plugs for the M52 in the brown car) that would have a great home in this thing. It's got hail damage, but nothing too terrible - if I find another black hood and trunk she'll look good as new. No rust! At this point I was up to 4 project cars and precious little space. I spent more time working out of my carport than my garage, because I hated taking the brown e30 out into the elements. Also because of the brakes on it, the parking brake didn't work, and the street by the garages had a nice slope. Never popped out of gear but I would have preferred the extra peace of mind. I dreamed of knocking down my two small garages and building a big one in their place.
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# ? May 29, 2019 17:01 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 05:50 |
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I had a lot of projects I wanted to tackle on the brown car. It had been haphazardly slapped together and needed some attention before I drove it from Indiana down to the Tail of the Dragon in the spring. The wheels came off and were sandblasted in preparation for paint Parts started piling up in my "office" The exhaust setup on the brown car was hacked together bullshit. I picked up some stainless and some ebay headers and made a slightly prettier hack job. I was about to get some welding training at work and I really should have waited for that. I had to plug so many pin holes! I welded this with a 120V old MIG, and cut the pipe with a cheap tube cutter because I didn't trust myself to make clean cuts with an angle grinder. I used something called Solar Flux instead of backpurging. I also used the wrong loving gas mix, and probably should have bought a different diameter wire. I learned a lot, and materials for the exhaust itself only ran me about $500, including the headers! I chopped the ebay headers off right after the collector and welded V-band clamps to them. I then ran some bends down to a Y pipe into a 2.5" single. I used a resonator and a straight thru muffler for the rest, with one more V band joining the axle back section to the midsection. Since the 540i had winter wheels on, and I had the wheels for the brown car off for sandblasting and paint, I tossed the Schnitzers on the brown car for fun, and because I needed to get the car out of the garage to paint the wheels. I almost kept it that way.
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# ? May 29, 2019 17:22 |
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I found a pretty neat graphite metallic spray paint to use. It was a normal rear end type spraypaint, so I wasn't sure how it would hold up under high temperature and brake dust attack. I picked up some "high performance" wheel clearcoat too as extra protection. It finally got warm enough (barely) to paint, so with the garage clear I got to work. The surface of the wheels was pretty well etched by the sandblasting, so I didn't see the need for a primer. I was pretty drat happy with how it came out! I probably should have just powdercoated them, though. Once the paint cured I took the car for a nice drive - it had been a while since I had a chance to rip around in it. Thankfully there's a nice twisty road right by my house! So drat fun. The next order of business was my rear end. The seat I had in the car was getting very uncomfortable and I was not looking forward to driving 8 hours down to the Dragon in it. I picked up a new seat! It didn't look quite as cool but it was vastly more comfortable. I had learned how to sew by this point, so I picked up a sewing machine to try to do some interior work. I found an old Singer machine on craigslist, chucked it in the back of the e30, and drove it home. It turns out the maximum stitch length was a bit too long for what I wanted to do with the machine, but it was cheap and I could learn more with it. I had been driving the car more at this point, shaking it down and trying to fix more of the small quality of life things I had some dumb ideas about doing a interior Spring was finally here, and I was running short on time. I did have a nice visitor come by a few times when I was wrenching. I did a quick suspension refresh on the brown car, and tore into my S52 for its cams. The powerband of the M52 was unsatisfying - it really died off at high rpm and the car felt slow. After a cam swap and a remote flash of the ECU, it felt worlds better. I spent my last bit of wrenching time coming up with a rear seat delete panel and putting some sound deadening in the car to make the trip to the mountains a bit more livable. It didn't help much, but it was removable and gave me some ideas for a second attempt in the future. It was also extremely cheap to make. Before I left on my trip, I dropped by a friend's shop and got a decent exhaust clip! He short shifted at around 6k, but it captures the noise pretty well. Needs to be louder I think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAslJNHtTl8
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# ? May 29, 2019 18:02 |
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Brown car lives again! You should totally do the seats Still planning on fall brodeo? NitroSpazzz fucked around with this message at 18:16 on May 29, 2019 |
# ? May 29, 2019 18:11 |
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You know it man. Hopefully the car will have some more work done by then. I think I know what's been causing that misfire, and it's dumb. Plan is at minimum new sticky rubber, a better alignment, and no dumb misfires!
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# ? May 29, 2019 18:13 |
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The car still had a lot of small, annoying problems, but I was out of time. I loaded up my poo poo and drove to Knoxville! A group of us headed out together to the campsite. We hit a nasty storm on the way there. 255s and no driver aids makes for a sketchy drive. This thing really sucks when the water starts building up on the road. Made plenty of runs up and down the mountain with friends. Pictured is my buddy's M62b44 swapped car - I love the sound this thing makes! Most of us took a side trip to see the Foundation in SC THOSE FLARES They really have an awesome museum. This was my last car related event for the year - I had to put everything on storage and head out on deployment.
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# ? May 29, 2019 18:59 |
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PART 2: RETURN FROM THE DESERT I came home to a lot of dead batteries and dirty cars. I actually got the black e30 out of the garage and gave it its first wash. There's a nice car under all that sap Then, I bought my first truck! I found this sucker on CL while I was overseas and as luck would have it, it was still available when I got home. Winter was fast approaching and I wanted a beater and something to haul parts with. Pictured on its maiden voyage, getting booze: Don't know what the hell happened here It's got some rust, but it's not terrible. And it's a stick! With a 300! Just a good ol 2wd farm truck truck. Devalued here because everyone wants 4WD. I didn't really have much interest in offroading so I preferred 2wd - less things to maintain, better gas mileage. All for the low price of 1200 american dollars. And it has LSD! One thing I kept thinking about while I was away was how good my buddy's V8 e30 sounded. I had taken out the S52 the brown car used to have to try and swap one in but ran out of time and money. I had the time and money now. Shortly after I acquired the truck, I headed out to pull-a-part and made a few acquisitions: There was a '94 540i there and I also needed a bunch of random parts for my e34, so I scored a bunch of poo poo! The garage was getting pretty drat cramped: There are a whole host of things I didn't take proper pictures of. The truck got new steering bits to replace the worn out poo poo in the front, and I did a brake job on it too. Then, one of the rear brake lines exploded due to rust. I had a new one made and was back on the road again! Then the starter took a poo poo. Then the gas tank (rear, the only one of the two functioning, and only 16 gallons at that) sprung a leak. The truck sucked up a lot of time. Winter hit in full force, and I got a chance to test out the LSD. It works! And pretty well! The truck didn't give a gently caress about driving in the snow. The 135i had spoiled me with heated seats, so I tried to find a heated seat pad I could throw in the truck. I found one on amazon that fit the bill and worked pretty well for $20. I also found some questionable marketing materials: I also scored some nice parts: And the garage got cleaned up a bit By this point I had resolved to sell my house and move to a place with a bigger garage / shop space out in the country. I wanted the freedom to work on my poo poo whenever I wanted and not have to worry about neighbors. Car work slowed down and house work picked up as I got my place ready to sell and started hunting for a new place. A friend of mine dropped me some info on a few parts cars as well as a rare and very special piece of german metal lurking outside a barn in the countryside near where I lived. Even though I wasn't in a position to acquire much, I couldn't resist looking. It was March, and while things weren't quite as cold, we still had some sleet in the forecast on the day I decided to check out what was on offer. The guy had several e30 parts cars, several late-OBS style Ford trucks, and the aforementioned Special Car. I made a deal for some parts with the goal to return at a later date with better weather and help him pull them. I had decided to take a long country route back home just to scope out the area and maybe, if I was lucky, stumble on a house for sale. The countryside here had lots of old forest and rolling hills. Some of the roads had some decent curves and would have been a blast in a more nimble car. Halfway home, in the freezing rain, I hit a slick spot in my truck and felt the rear step out a bit. I slowed down and trudged on at a safer pace, slush building up on the windshield. I was miles away from the nearest house, in a very rural area with no cell reception. Something ran out into the road ahead. I found a dog. Party Alarm fucked around with this message at 06:26 on May 30, 2019 |
# ? May 29, 2019 22:00 |
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Look at that skookum choocher
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# ? May 29, 2019 22:16 |
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Truly inspirational
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# ? May 30, 2019 00:27 |
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God drat, this thread.
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# ? May 30, 2019 00:44 |
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AI Thread of the Bavarian Century
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# ? May 30, 2019 01:09 |
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Getting in on the ground floor of this poo poo
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# ? May 30, 2019 01:55 |
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PART 3: THE PUP I knew that when I stopped the truck, I was making a commitment - if the dog had been abandoned, I would be duty bound to give it a home if necessary. I didn't hesitate. As soon as I opened the door, the dog jumped into the seat. I cranked the heat to try and warm the poor thing up - she must have been outside a while as she was soaked to the bone. Poor thing could have froze to death. She seemed friendly enough, and had a collar (no tags), so I turned the truck around and headed back towards a country store I passed by around 10 miles up the road. I figure I would have a decent shot at finding the owner or at least putting the word out. Thankfully, they were open, but no one recognized the dog and no one had reported the dog missing. I left my contact info with them and an employee took a photo of the pup. I had cell reception, so I plotted a course for the local shelter. It wasn't far from my house. It was late on a saturday, and I would make it there right before they closed. As I drove, the pup inched closed to me on the bench seat until she rested her head in my lap. By the time I heard they were no longer accepting animals due to capacity, I had already resolved to foster the dog while I searched for her family. I secretly hoped she could become my dog. She had no chip, and no one had reported her missing. They took photos of her and posted them on social media. Those sad eyes didn't last long 4 weeks later after following up with the shelter and the store, I felt comfortable giving her a name. I called her Heidi
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# ? May 30, 2019 06:37 |
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PART 4: A NEW LAND Raising Heidi and fixing the truck sucked up a lot of time. So did all the house stuff. I kept the brown car clean and took Heidi everywhere. Any time I went to a store that allowed dogs, she came. Any time I went to a car meet, she came. She took to training extremely well! Somewhere in the midst of things I threw a bunch of mods on the 135i. The clutch was starting to slip, and since I needed to drop the trans it sounded like a good time to do a charge pipe. And an intercooler. And downpipes. And inlets. And a JB4. Pictures of this are all on my old phone sadly. It was so nice to have the car back on the road. Also holy poo poo, POWER. To give you a better idea of what my old house was like, here's a view from the front: Neighbors EVERYWHERE. The house next door to the left was falling apart and empty when I bought mine. Someone picked the house up cheap and started renovations - it was only a matter of time before I had next door neighbors to deal with too. When they renovated the house, they also tore down most of the trees in the back yard. My back yard suddenly felt a lot more exposed. I could have spent money on landscaping, a privacy fence, and a new garage, but with the way the housing market was in my town I wouldn't gain enough back in equity for it to make sense. Spending a lot of time in a desert next to an active air field had me longing for country life. As luck would have it, I found the right place, at the right time, and made the right offer. Closing was still a long ways off, however, and I had a trip to make. A trip to the VINTAGE! dog, move over, you don't have a license
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# ? May 30, 2019 08:30 |
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PART 5: THE VINTAGE Twice a year, I get together with a bunch of other e30 folks at the Tail of the Dragon for a week of driving and camping. We go in the spring, and in the fall. This year, I was invited to go to the Vintage before our usual Spring trip. For those of you that haven't heard of it, the Vintage is a huge classic BMW car show. See: https://www.atthevintage.com/ 2018 was hosted near Asheville NC. Heidi is a loving trooper, y'all. She made the drive from southern Indiana all the way to Asheville without complaint. I went about setting up camp - most of the crew from our biannual Dragon trips (affectionately called the "Brodeo") were in attendance. The next morning, we headed to the show
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# ? May 30, 2019 09:18 |
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# ? May 30, 2019 09:24 |
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God drat those e9s. Some really beautiful cars and craftsmanship on display. I wasn't looking forward to the long drive home. The brown e30 has stiff as gently caress suspension, it's loud, has no AC, and the stereo sucks rear end. I had several long drives ahead of me this year, so I had just to deal with it. e: More pictures of Heidi being a good dog Party Alarm fucked around with this message at 12:46 on May 30, 2019 |
# ? May 30, 2019 09:29 |
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PART 6: TO THE MOUNTAIN AND BACK AGAIN I had a few weeks after the Vintage before I'd be headed on the long drive back to the Smokey Mountains again. I think Heidi was pretty happy to be home. Despite the fact that she must have been uncomfortable as gently caress, she's grown to LOVE car rides and flips out whenever she gets the chance to go on one, even with my driving. Dog likes going fast! I found a good deal on some S52 cams, but unfortunately the seller did not pack them well. Thankfully he was cool about refunding me. I really didn't do much besides troubleshoot some small issues on the brown e30 before it was time to head back to TN / NC for the Spring Brodeo. We had a campsite in NC. I decided to leave Heidi back home for this one - it's more of a driving event and I haven't come up with a good dog racing harness yet. Many vertebrae rattling miles later: A friend of mine brought something very NOT-BMW Yeah y'all, that's a 3SGTE! This thing was AMAZING! It made all the right noises. I had an SW20 MR2 for my first car and I've always wanted to get another. This car made me love AW11s, though. We traded keys, and I got a chance to drive it up the mountain. I fell in love with the car. We had a pretty cool looking dog visit us at the campsite And made some big bonfires I wish I had more time to spend up there. I needed the break. Heidi was happy to have me home, though
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# ? May 30, 2019 13:26 |
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I'M GETTING TIRED OF DOING PARTS Mine. 12 acres, and a 40x30 shop, with 10' ceilings. Just high enough for a lift! The fleet (minus the 325e and the truck) Peach trees! There are grapes, blueberries, blackberries, and apple trees on the property as well The inside isn't bad either. Hopefully this will be the last time I have to move for a while The most important part - the garage! There's a dividing wall separating the garage into ~10x30 and ~30x30 areas. The side area would make a nice machine shop. The best part is the view from the deck. The house is off the main road on a slope, so I can't see the road from the house. It's quiet, and peaceful. I've got basically everything I wanted.
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# ? May 30, 2019 16:04 |
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This is a good thread.
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# ? May 30, 2019 20:47 |
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Your new property is awesome. Jealous of the deck, and with the view!
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# ? May 30, 2019 21:00 |
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Great dog, great cars
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# ? May 30, 2019 21:07 |
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No kidding! The cars, dog, and property are all top notch!
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# ? May 31, 2019 04:07 |
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Things I can turn into booze! Did a bit of TIG at work. I would be stuck trying to sell my old house for the rest of the year, so I was on a very tight budget. It's really pretty out here The garage is starting to come together! I'm short on storage space I need to build some mezzanine storage. What good is a big garage if you don't help a friend or three? Heidi approves of the new garage Two of my best buddies got invited to do a pre-run of the TN Gambler 500! They invited me to come along with them. We'd be in a 1st gen Raptor owned by one of the aforementioned buddies. The TN gambler was being held on a bunch of old coal roads in the Devil's Triangle area in east TN. I drove out to Nashville and met up with my friends, and we drove the three hours out to an old prison that would serve as the main campground for the event. The raptor was not well suited to the trails. It's a bit large The owner of the Raptor graciously let me have the keys for a bit. I spent most of it sliding around gravel roads with the rear diff locked and the 6.2 howling. The truck felt good on pavement too! I was sold on the Gambler - the main event was going to be an amazing clusterfuck. Driving around that raptor had me thinking about my plans for the F150.. Pipe dreams for now, but I really wanted to get a gambler vehicle. The actual event wouldn't be for a few more weeks. I hatched a plan to drive the brown e30 to the event, making a stop off at Markert Motorworks in Atlanta to get the car a dyno tune. The car has an aluminum block M52b28 from a late US Z3. When I rebuilt it, I used M50b25 vanos pistons. They're identical to the M52 units, only they are 1mm taller. Theoretically, this should bump compression to ~11:1 from 10.2:1. I wanted to see how much power I could get out of it. It would be a shitload of driving, but the extra power I could gain from the custom tune would feel really nice when I headed back up to the Dragon in late fall.
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# ? May 31, 2019 09:29 |
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REAL TIME UPDATE: I caught a camel spider in my tent. I named him Fred. Also I'm trying to buy another car that's back home in Indiana, wish me luck! It's got a V8, three pedals, and 5 doors BACK TO THE PAST First, a trip to Atlanta! And the results! Just kidding their temp sensor thought it was 160 degrees outside. Uncorrected on a hot Georgia day: I picked up a lot of power in the midrange, and it was very noticeable when driving! The car felt so drat smooth. I headed straight for the campsite for the Gambler I was riding with the same two friends in the Raptor as a support vehicle for our friends in the Suzuki Side-Chick (not pictured) The event was a blast. They didn't have reverse or working windshield washers so we kept doing brakestands in the mud in front of them The loud rear end raptor made some locals mad, though I should have taken more pictures of the event. Anyway, back to Indiana AGAIN. Remember the guy with the parts cars and the special car? Remember how I said I loved the Gambler and wanted a ride for it? I now own two Mercedes, for the low low cost of $200! I also snagged some very important parts. I took the brown e30 apart once with V8 dreams in my head, and it ended up sitting for years only to get another 24v stuffed in it. I have no intention of doing that again. I want to do all the fabrication work without having to sacrifice a shitload of garage space and the ability to drive the car. A buddy of mine in Knoxville did this once, and I thought it was a great idea! Also Heidi continues to be the best dog
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# ? May 31, 2019 20:30 |
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Also while typing this post I bought that car I was talking about
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# ? May 31, 2019 20:31 |
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Heidi Fall was here, and the weather was perfect for wrenching I just relaxed on my deck and drank instead ~*~ MARGARITA RECIPE ~*~ 1 part honey 1 part fresh squeezed lime juice 8 parts Tequila Time flies - it was time to head back to the Dragon for the fall! We stayed at Fontana this time, thanks to Kadunza (Knoxville BMW resto shop, great people!). Way nicer than we are used to. Heidi stayed home again She got plenty of car rides back home, though Fall went by far too quickly. I was still stuck paying two mortgages so my car work ground to a halt aside from some small maintenance items. I had time to work on the garage, but I just wanted to relax and enjoy being home. I was deploying again soon. I got to see a little bit of snow My brother gave me an awesome Christmas gift - a badass welding table and a smaller fabrication table with mounts for a portaband and belt sander. Getting it into the garage on my own was a bit of a pain in the rear end. The garage is a mess. Every single car needs a laundry list of things. I was going to have my hands full when I came back from my trip, and that's before I got
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# ? Jun 1, 2019 11:29 |
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Party Alarm posted:The garage is a mess. Every single car needs a laundry list of things. I was going to have my hands full when I came back from my trip, and that's before I got More dog and more cars, living the life
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# ? Jun 1, 2019 15:37 |
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A Good Thread Refresh my memory--you're the (brother of the) TrackOne guy, right?
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# ? Jun 1, 2019 17:49 |
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This is an incredibly wholesome thread :heart:
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# ? Jun 1, 2019 18:17 |
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Echoing the sentiments that this is an excellent thread, with nice cars and a lovely doggo. Also a great picture of the Swedish Chef in your dining area that makes it just
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# ? Jun 1, 2019 18:25 |
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Thank you for the 5's y'all! Yes, my brother is the guy who started Track One, although he parted from the business some time ago. He's an Aston Martin / Lotus tech now! It's fun to visit him at work I don't remember how I got there, but I ended up on this dude's page: https://www.mojoswork.com/paintings and I ended up having that painting commissioned. He's great to deal with! I just noticed he added the Chef he painted for me to the collage on the website :3 So that first car I was teasing about earlier in the thread: MINE!
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# ? Jun 1, 2019 19:31 |
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Oh heck yes brother This is a fun and good thread and I love Heidi she's a good dog
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# ? Jun 1, 2019 21:41 |
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# ? Jun 2, 2019 10:41 |
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Party Alarm posted:
Stop. I can only get SO erect.
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# ? Jun 2, 2019 14:07 |
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Party Alarm posted:
More puppers and kitters?
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# ? Jun 2, 2019 14:58 |
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So, if you looked closely at that last picture, you can see there's a lot of daylight in that engine bay. She, uhhh, needs some love. It's the perfect M3 for me, though, because I was never interested in a stock one. If you can't tell from the brown e30, I also like weird colors. This car is a great blank canvas to build into whatever I want. I'm going to try and apply the things I've learned messing with the brown car and what I learn building the black e30 to make this car special. I can't see myself ever getting rid of it. The brown car and this car are ones I definitely plan to keep for life. It's a diamond black / cardinal red car, '87. The motor had a spun bearing, was rebuilt, and promptly spun a bearing again. Not sure the cause. It was reclaimed from the machine shop it was sitting at. I think they had done some work on it, but I'm not sure. Supposed to be a 2.5L. I need to inventory and inspect all the bits. I'm planning on selling off the engine, and any other bits I don't need. I'm probably going to end up parting a lot of things, because this car needs a special motor. At minimum, an S54, and maybe an S65 or S85. I'll have plenty of time to make up my mind, because this car is going to take a long time and a lot of money to finish I really love the Singer Design 911s (I mean, who doesn't?) and I'd love to apply that level of craftsmanship to this thing, but that's beyond my current talents by a long shot. Pipe dreams for now. It'll probably spend a long time stripped down and under a car cover before I start on it. MEANWHILE, OVERSEAS Heading to chow one morning, and I find this little fella curled up on the concrete. It looked like she had been there all night. Barely even responded to me being there, and wouldn't take food (note my attempt with a vanilla wafer cookie). I carefully put her in a box and brought her to our shop. Poor thing seemed like she was injured, and yelped when I touched her neck. I gave her a big box to hide in, and my coworker gave her a blanket and a bowl of tuna. She didn't touch the food. Eventually I caught her yawning and put a small piece of tuna in her mouth. Her eyes went wide and she scarfed down the whole bowl and immediately went to sleep I managed to give her a bath, and noticed some bite marks on her neck. Eventually I got the full story from some other folks: she was wandering around with her brother, and they got too close to another dog (named Socks) that had some puppies and was known for being aggressive. Socks attacked and killed her brother, and they found the pup curled up next to her brother's body. They tried to move her away from Socks and unintentionally introduced her to another group of dogs who were unsurprisingly also territorial. Thankfully they weren't quite so murderous. So, she had a pretty rough night. My coworker made a safe place for her in our shop, and after a few days she trusted us and started acting like a puppy again! I got her rescued through Operation Baghdad Pups. She's safely home with a friend that volunteered to foster her while I'm deployed. I named her Syri - it was temporary, just for the paperwork, but it ended up sticking. She's being raised right I also found out she's going to be a big pup. She's 41lbs and ~7 months old. Everything I own is a coupe aside from my e34, which IMO is still not big enough for both dogs. I needed a wagon.
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# ? Jun 2, 2019 15:35 |
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I love this thread so much.
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# ? Jun 2, 2019 15:46 |
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How was the process getting her out of Iraq? My wife used to do the health certificates and USDA forms for people moving out of the country (usually troops moving to an overseas base) and it can be difficult depending on the destination.
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# ? Jun 2, 2019 15:52 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 05:50 |
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That's just the name of the organization - they work worldwide now! It was really easy - I put her on a truck, they took her out of country. She ended up in Erbil where their main rescue center is, and they took care of everything else. I just had to pay for her flight from NYC to the state she was picked up in
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# ? Jun 2, 2019 16:11 |