There was a time I enjoyed working on cars so much that I even considered becoming a mechanic when I grew up. How times have changed! Now, the less time I spend under a propped-up hood (or worse, underneath the car), the better. This section documents some of the car projects I have undertaken.
“Real sports car enthusiasts,” the first new Mini Cooper convertible advertisements seemed to imply, “have their tops down regardless of how much it is raining or how cold it is outside.”
Indeed, this seemed to be the attitude of the vintage British sports car owners on the Scions of Lucas email list I had subscribed to a dozen years ago, back in college. It is a philosophy I had adopted not only for my MGB but for the BMW Z3 and Alfa Romeo Spider I had subsequently as well. It helps that here in Fort Collins has 300 days of sunshine and hardly receives any rain, especially in winter. Continue reading »
It took me forever (well, four months), but I finally got Goldie the MG running again for the first time since the epic drive to Colorado from California in late July. This entailed obtaining and refreshing a new (used) smog-legal cylinder head, which turned out to be quite an ordeal. How much of an ordeal? Well, this is what happened: Continue reading »
In the past month or so, Chevrolet — one of General Motor’s several struggling marques — held a create-your-own-ad contest for one of their new products, the Chevy Tahoe. (See chevyapprentice.com.) Winners have yet to be picked, but if it were up to me, I’d pick some of these: Continue reading »
“Look at what Stanford mechanical engineering PhDs do in their spare time,” advised my friend Tom B.
Apparently, Ron Patrick likes to “smoke” other sports cars on the street. He also could “burn” high-performance vehicles on the drag strip.
How? With his jet-powered/4-cylinder hybrid VW Beetle. Continue reading »
Usually I do not blog about anything I had absolutely NOTHING to do with. But anyone reading this website has to be interested in this event, as it involved cars, racing, engineering, Death Valley, and a two million dollar grand prize. Also, it was won by my alma mater’s robotic vehicle (a VW Touareg) named “Stanley”! Stanley is now off to its new home in a museum in Germany. Let’s just hope the technology is primarily used for civilian purposes instead of starting yet more wars. Read more about history being made! This may be a glimpse of our transportation future.
While drivng back from Yakima, Washington, I missed a turnoff and ended up driving back on a horrible section of Washington State 14, where construction workers were doing a (rather poor and irresponsible, in my opinion) road rework job, with loose gravel strewn across the entire width of the road. This stretch of road spanned 10 miles or so, and as if just driving down this road with no cars around wasn’t doing enough damage to the car already, everytime other cars would pass in the opposing direction, a ton of loose gravel would get kicked up and fly into the car. Finally, after several stones had hit the Alfa’s windshield, one of them caused a crack. I was able to console myself that at least the crack was not in the field of vision, and that the crack (shaped like a star) was only the size of a quarter. However, I knew from prior experience that the crack was likely to grow. So what to do? Continue reading »
 back to the header rail and frame.&title=Convertible Window Replacement "Riveting in the convertible top (now with replaced rear window) back to the header rail and frame.")
&title=Jet-Powered VW Beetles "Volkswagen does not currently make any jet-engined hybrid cars. So, Ron Patrick created his own. (Photo by Ron Patrick's sidekick.)")
&title=DARPA Grand Challenge "The Stanford team's robotic car Stanley came in first at this year's DARPA Challenge. (Photo copyright Associated Press)")
