Last night a bunch of us from the Australian Electric Vehicle Association went to Sydney Dragway with Mark and his electric Clubman to play on the track.

The previous best was a 16.8, but this time we were going to play with the Zilla (controller).

Unfortunately, we found out that the higher the amps were set, the lower the battery pack voltage was towards the end of the track. While it was nice for the take-off, the continued drain on the pack reduced the top-end, and Mark crossed the line at 17.157 @69.94mph.

Lots of talk was had afterwards about new batteries. Who knows where this fun little car will go.

I jumped in to mum’s car a few days ago, when I went to the place WauloK was house-sitting, and it ran rubbish.

I thought the timing may have been retarded, because every time I pressed on the accelerator, the motor started shuddering, but there were not too many issues cruising at a constant speed.

I took it to Mark’s, and suggested we check out the timing. Mark started with the spark-plugs and leads first.
Turns out there was no continuity on two of the four spark-plug leads, and after a quick trip to SuperCheap Auto for some new leads, the car runs fine.

Now that the car is running more properly, we have discovered a fairly decent exhaust leak towards the back of the car.
I don’t know whether or not I’ll fix it, or just sell the car on eBay.
The only real issue is the hail damage, but at $500, I’m sure I’ll find a buyer soon enough.

Because it’s been sitting around for a while, I decided to take mum’s car out today. It’s running like a bucket of shit, it shudders under load. I think the timing must be out.

I drove it round to the place that WauloK is house-sitting, and we then jumped in to his car, and drove to a place to hide our cache.

After walking for hours, trying to find a suitable location to hide our first cache under the Two Goth Geeks name, we came up with nothing.

River crossings, clambering under road bridges, checking out tree stumps, there was no place at all that we found to hide the cache.

With little daylight left, we thought it best to try and pick up a cache to have something to show for the day, and headed for ‘Rooty Hill Rocks’, and while there were no muggles around, we had very little daylight left.

20 minutes of searching, and it was too dark for me. WauloK tried to stick out another ten minutes or so by the light of his iPhone, but then gave up also.
The comments on this cache suggest that it is really easy to find, and we did find the tyre referenced as “nearby”.
No sign of much in the way of rocks, though, and certainly no cache found.

I’ll get you Gadget..

As I mentioned earlier, I downloaded GeoSphere for the iPhone, and other than the fact that it can’t grab caches directly from www.geocaching.com, it’s a pretty damned good app.

I don’t think any app has the ability to do that, however.

Seeing that WauloK and I live pretty close to the M7, I’ve been giving some thought to the M7 caches. The only way to grab them is on the cycleway.

Now, I don’t know for certain, but I’m guessing that first off, my car won’t fit on the cycleway, and secondly, if it does, I’m going to get in to all sorts of shit from the boys in blue.

Today I went to a few bicycle shops (and a cash converters) to look at mountain bikes.

I saw a great bike, and with the 20% currently off, it cost just under $900. While this bike was everything that I was after (including being black), the price was a bit rich.

Another store showed me some for $499, but the colours were horrid.

Cash converters pricing was much more to my liking, but the one bike there in the colour I wanted was more or less trashed. Maybe it’s time to go see their other outlets.

I am not sure how much I would use the bike, but both WauloK, and a friend of mine, Jon, have both suggested that they would like to go on rides with me. WauloK for fitness, which would help me also, and Jon already rides 50+ kilometres without thnking too hard about it.

How dedicated am I to using the bike after I’ve done the M7 caches?

Me: “Hello?”

Caller: “Hi, I’m looking to speak to Marion Bron”

Me: “She passed away about three months ago”

Caller: “So this is not her contact number?”

Idiot.

For whatever reason, ‘How do you solve a problem like Maria’ is on UKTV, and I haven’t changed the channel.

While the show itself isn’t really interesting, the one thing that has struck home with me watching this is that I’m missing music in my life.

A long time ago, I used to listen to Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Beethoven, Tschaikovski and a lot of other things.

These days the only music in my life is some radio in the car, and whatever is playing at the markets when I’m working.

A long long time ago (possibly in a galaxy far away) Preston and I used to sit in small rooms, working on computers, listening to Tschaikovski. While I’ve heard things like Phantom and Cats before, my biggest exposure to them was late night working with computers.

I think I need to get some classical CDs.

It’s been a long LONG time since I’ve been geocaching.

WauloK and I used to go from time to time, then he moved to Brisbane, and that was the end of it for me.

Last night, however, armed with nothing but two iPhones (with geocaching apps), and a satnav unit, we went looking.

It didn’t take long before our first find, and while we expected to find a travelbug inside, the cache was empty.

The second cache was also a very easy find.

We got real close to two others, but pulled out from the last-metre search due to muggles, and arrived at (but abandoned) two more, also due to the presence of muggles.

Right now we are discussing the forming of a team, getting shirts, car stickers, travel bug numbers, etc.

So I have a blank canvass for the new year.

2010 started with a sleep-in, then a trip to the shops with Jason, to check out EB Games, Game, and some shopping for snacks.

“Dinner” was crackers with Pancetta, Red Leicester and pepper-cheese.

So far its been a great year, possibly because I haven’t ventured int o reality yet, but that doesn’t bother me in the slightest right now.

Most people have all sorts of resolututions for the new year, but I made a newyear resolution a long time ago to not make any, and I’ve stuck to it for many years.

Still, I have goals, but I certainly don’t relate them to the time of the year.

I’d like to work on stability in my life, and if my business makes a bit of money, I’d like to funnel some of it in to the car for some performance upgrades.

Other than that, as I always do, I plan on keeping a decent quality of life. Peace and quiet at home, and making sure that above all, I’m comfortable in my way of life.

With the Australian summer again doing what it does best (pissing me off), I thought it was high time to get the windows of the car tinted.

So I picked up the phone, called Malcolm at Prestige & Custom Car Salon (Castle Hill), and booked the car in.

I’d just dropped the car off, when Mark from MRC Dyno and Performance walked by on his way to the shop for breakfast.

Deciding to join him, we had a big breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, fried tomato, sausages and toast (yum!), then went back to MRC to work on his HR31 Skyline.

Mark’s skyline is fitted with a Nissan Infinity V8, and now has two turbo-chargers on it.

We worked on the shroud for the thermo fan, and removed the exhaust system for welding (it had only been spot welded until now).

The day was a lot of fun, and at the end of it, I got myself a beautifully tinted car.

Freshly tinted XR6

Yesterday I dropped the XR6 off at the hand carwash next to Liverpool Markets, and had them do a full detail as well as leather treatment for the seats.

Mum would be proud. She loved this car so much, especially the time I washed it.

Now that it’s been detailed, it looks practically showroom.
There are a couple od imperfections, but I’ll be having those looked at at some point.

The next thing on my list is the rubber boot mat, to protect the boot from dirt/damage due to the floury mix that I carry every week. The boot got pretty messy, and they did a decent job making it look as good as they could.

The car was dropped off at 7am, and when I returned at 5pm, it was still receiving the finishing touches (getting rid of dried polish in the cracks, a final wipe-over with a cloth, etc).

I can’t believe this is the same car.