Car Updates & Adventures

Posted on June 16, 2013 by Cam

When I embarked on my Corvette adventure I really had no idea what I was getting into. I’ve touched on this before and even asked the question “Would I do it again?” The human capacity for hope is incredible. I keep waiting for a positive outcome and, despite numerous setbacks and disappointments, I still believe that success is just around the corner. I write this post mostly to put my thoughts in order. And, in general, I think I’d like to blog in a more balanced way- include both the wins and losses, so to speak. A blog filled with only the good is simply a fantasy and provides no real value to a reader (unless the reader is just the author).

Corvette

The initial engine and drivetrain installation took much longer than I expected. I was okay with that, because there was periodic progress. The first round of tuning and tweaking also took longer that I wanted and I got the car back after three months in mostly drivable condition. But after the injector blew out things just haven’t been the same (there are blog posts on events up to this point if you happen to be interested) …

Premier has now had my car about four months and I just can’t figure out what the hold-up is. On the one hand, it’s not a big deal- I don’t really have a place to put the car right now. And I want the work done right, not quickly. On the other hand from a customer service point of view this is not the right way to handle a job. I have been assured over and over that it’s nearly done, it’s their top priority, etc. but they just don’t make any headway.

I know there are issues that have popped up, but the resolution speed is, to put it nicely, slow. When there was an issue with the methanol kit I felt like I literally had handle it myself and after weeks of “I’ll get to it” I dragged my own mechanic up to resolve the problems. I like the guys at Premier, I really do. But if they have so much business they need four months to work on a car then maybe they need to tweak their business model.

For the final tune they are planning to have the car reflashed back to stock and start the tuning process over again (gotta start fresh!). But, I had thought this was the plan months ago. So to be at this point now is frustrating. And I hope that this strategy doesn’t result in another month of dealy. When I get my car back in great working order all will be well. But if they keep up this pace I might go mad before then…

Porsche

I thought I would be embarking on a fun new adventure with this car. And I guess I am- just not quite the way I expected :). After getting the car back from EVOMS there were still issues with the idle and the tachometer would hang when rolling in neutral. I should have paid more attention to those things from the get-go, but I was obsessed with another issue- emissions. Despite assurances that the car would be OBDII compliant the onboard emissions diagnostic tests wouldn’t initially run.

To their credit EVOMS did update my tune with missing OBDII components and was very responsive to my issues. However, the car was still unable to run it’s tests and when the engine light came on that’s when I really started realizing there was something else going on. It’s disappointing to get your car back “ready to go!” and have problems. I tried to troubleshoot some things on my own (even spending an entire day pulling out engine parts) but didn’t have any luck. I needed some expert help!

I took it to a company in Tooele called RaceCo. My initial impressions of them are excellent. Thus far they have found a hole in one of the intercoolers. It’s large enough that they can’t even do any other testing until it’s fixed. Unfortunately they are not able to weld it so it’s going to be new intercoolers for me.

And, after more research, I have determined that my Sport Button is not functioning correctly. That coupled with intercooler hole means that I may not have even been experiencing the car’s full potential. I wish EVOMS’s inspection had caught these issues and they could have been handled then and there. But at least I found a competent local shop and we’re getting to the bottom of it.

Update (July 12, 2013): Turns out the sport mode doesn’t work because of the aftermarket head unit (stereo). The car still makes full boost in normal mode so no complaints from me. Also, RaceCo was able to locate a couple more leaks – things that vent internally so I’ve got my fingers crossed.

Camaro

I had been planning to sell this car, but it’s become my daily driver now (you know, since my other cars are kaput). Unfortunately it’s also become the victim of my carelessness. I rammed the front side of the car into a shelf in my garage and it’s sustained a bit of body damage. Oops! I need to send to a body shop… I’ll bet I could just do it myself though (update: I did do it myself).

Some General Thoughts…

I try to keep things in perspective. I’m sensitive to the fact that these “problems” are not life threatening and pale in comparison to to what many others face. But in the end, even though I’ve brought it upon myself, they do cause me some distress. I’m learning to work through the annoyed feeling feelings and I think I can still manage to enjoy my hobby even when nothing is working quite right.

One for the road: Ripped off part of the front spoiler why trying to load the car onto a trailer. Whoops!

One for the road: Pulled off part of the front spoiler why trying to load the car onto a trailer. Whoops! Easy fix, but the kicker was that we couldn’t ever get it on the trailer. I had to limp it down to RaceCo. This is the fun stuff I live for 🙂

Hughes Family: May 18, 2013 – June 3, 2013

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Cam

Man, the last couple of weeks have been brutal. We’ve been so busy doing stuff that I had a major meltdown. Maybe I’ll do a post about it – could be cathartic (and blogs shouldn’t all be “look how great my life is” stuff). Where to start… ha, what to leave out?

As I mentioned last time, Fran’s parents flew in from Reunion. We don’t get to see them too much and so we had a ton of dinners and activities. I’m not a very social guy. You could pop me in a sensory deprivation chamber and I’d be happy as a clam for quite a long time. Needless to say these get-togethers took their toll (yeah, and I admit I even skipped a few). Really, I need to learn French.

Part of the festivities involved the wedding of my niece, Natacha. In early May she and her fiancee, Spencer, tied the proverbial knot. They had a lovely wedding at the Salt Lake temple.

During part of the wedding day I lugged the kids around downtown Salt Lake. Everyone was enamored by the idea of going to the conference center roof. We took a tour and after nearly an hour (probably seemed like a few days to kids) we finally made it to the top. It’s a really cool tour if you haven’t been through and the top-scape is remarkable.

That evening we hit up Natacha’s reception, which was beautiful.

Over the next few days Fran’s parents came to see my work (they’ve never actually been there before). They were clearly in awe of my Transfomers collection and Disney wall art. A few hikes and picnics later it was time to say goodbye to the in-laws. Au revoir!

The Sego Lily Dance Festival. At the conclusion of the school year it appears it’s a tradition to force the children to dance. I would have to say that Gabe got the short end of the stick here.

Gabe graduated from kindergarten! I don’t know if ceremonies like this – where they make the kids dance and sing – are typical, but I hope not (yeah, I am a giant party pooper- get over it).

Fran and I went to try out a new restaurant in Lehi called Melty Way (mostly because I am considering opening a franchise of a similar eatery and I wanted to checkout the competition). I have to say it’s not bad. I don’t think it’s Zupa’s quality, but it was a (to use Graham Elliot’s favorite word) yummy.

The neighborhood summer bash was last Friday. Giant jump castles, mounds of food, face painting, live music and a massive outdoor theater showing of Wreck-It Ralph were all too much for my shattered nerves, but my family took full advantage of the party hungry hosts down the street. Next year I’m going. Really. Maybe.

As if we didn’t do enough partying the kids demanded a trip to the pool (is it warm enough for that)? At some point I’d just like the world to stop spinning for a bit so I can hop off, but now that the kids are out of school it will only go faster and faster. Don’t worry, I’m going to get some therapy. Really. Maybe.

Hughes Family: April 29, 2013 – May 17, 2013

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Cam

Time is a tricky little devil Houdini. It got away from me again… Maybe one of these days I’ll have time to keep up with everything going on.

Iron Man 3 came out so the Hughes family hit the theaters. It was a pretty late show but all the kids made it though. IM3 didn’t disappoint- quite a blast.

Fran hosted her niece Natasha’s bridal shower at our hose. I was in the office putting together list basket (on the right) of party favors and it sounded like everyone was having a great time. Congrats Tasha!

Mother’s Day was on the 12th this year. The kids all made cute cards for Fran (I bought a cute card). Despite my protests Fran decided she wanted a new sewing machine. She’s such a good mom that we decided to oblige her.

Look at those kids! So full of mom-love. In the afternoon we went to see some more moms (my mom & grandma). We ate together, visited and played at the local park. Thanks to all the wonderful moms in our lives- we love you!

We decided to start a family puzzle. It took us a few days of work but we got it all together! Claire & Mike were really helpful and put some pretty big chunks together. Remember: Build the puzzle edges out first. Then sort the remaining pieces by color. When you cry don’t get the pieces wet or they won’t fit correctly. Here’s our finished puzzle.

I’m sure ever parent thinks they’re kids are the cutest. But have your kids every put socks on their ceiling fan? Maybe this is more bizarre than cute, but I got a kick out of it. And watching toddlers do grown up things is adorable. Here is Chloe helping me clean one one of my cars (she did a great job).

Also of note is this picture of five cubic yards of dirt. If you only need a few bags full, don’t buy this much to get “free delivery” because it may very well end up spread across your driveway (a not cute characteristic of our kids).
Fran’s parents came to visit and we took them to Ruth’s Chris. A delicious meal with delightful people – them, not me, of course.

Golden Oldies

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Cam

Not a fan of the color gold so…

I replaced my hood crest with a silver plated version. Install was pretty straight forward. I don’t understand the wax speednut technology but it certainly seems to work. Ah, that’s better.

I picked up new wheels caps and painted them to match the hood crest. For the life of me I could not get them to fit correctly and one of them fell off within 10 minutes or so. “A” for effort. “F” for implementation.

Hughes Family: April 21st, 2013 – April 28, 2013

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Cam

This past week was the Pinewood Derby for our local Scouts! Win or lose making a car to race is a ton of fun and a good opportunity to spend some time together.

Mike decided he wanted the car to look like a Lamborghini Aventador. We cut out the shape with a band saw and then sanded it down.

Mike hand sanded the car body, we sealed it and then added weights in the rear of the car.

Mike painted the car orange and then we added details by hand with acrylic paints.

We polished the axles and wheels and added graphite everywhere we could think of. Here’s the finished car- it turned out to be more like a graphite-covered monsterghini (sort of reptilian) but it was still pretty slick.

We checked out the competition and it was pretty fierce. The Derby officiator was awesome. He had made his own track and had electronic timers accurate to 1/100 of a second. No arguments about who finished where! Each car ran three times (down the three derby tracks) and the time was averaged. Winner was the fastest overall time. We came in thirteen out of sixteen.

I have to admit that my heart dropped a bit as Mike’s car fell behind the two it was racing. Every Dad wants to see their boy win, but it wasn’t in the cards for us. We did the best we could. We were careful to follow all the rules, Mike did a lot of the work himself and we learned a lot about areodynamics, friction and physics. As we were inspecting the car after the race we discovered that one of the axle grooves in the pine had broken and the wheel was’t aligned correctly causing it to rub on the track. We’ll have to be more vigilant next time!

Second Run for Mike:

For his effort Mike won “Sportiest Car”:

Here are the final standings and the times to beat at the next Derby.

The other day the kids decided to mix some blue chalk with pain and become smurfs. I think I’d like to be a Smurf – they seemed to be having a great time. I gave Chloe her first piano lesson (mostly she hit my hand and said “No!”).
And then my computer decided to break. As soon as I hit the power button the fan would come on full blast and the laptop would shut off. I surmised the computer thought it was overheating and decided to take it apart. I gave it a good cleaning and it seems to work fine now. I love taking things apart, just for the record. But, for the same record, I don’t like it when things break.

We had a marathon game of UNO the other night. This is the first time I can recall Gabe playing with his own hand of cards. He needed a little help but did pretty well! We’re just waiting on one more now- although she certainly tries to play.

911 Stereo – Tuning It Up

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Cam

One of the reasons the 911 I bought appealed to me was the upgraded audio system (I knew I would be unhappy with the stock Bose system). A critically important element of a car – for me – is the way the stereo sounds. I took a bit of a calculated risk since I didn’t know exactly what I was getting, but I’m pleased to report it paid off.

The only thing actually advertised was the upgraded head unit. There was also a picture of two JL amps (but no mention of them in the sale text). The stock Bose system is fiber optic and I surmised that if someone went to the trouble of replacing the head unit they probably replaced the speakers as well.

When I first turned the car on the sound was pretty muddy and there was a distinct lack of clarity and detail. The sub was much too loud in relation to the mids and it was suffering from some pretty bad distortion. The staging was all wrong too. The worst part though was a ground loop buzz in both rear speakers. Not too impressed. The first step was to figure out what I was working with.

The head unit was a Kenwood DNX8120. Back in the day (say 2008) this was top of the line stereo. Lots of features (DVD, Navigation, Bluetooth, etc) and plenty of audio adjustments. I did think about replacing the head unit, but decided this one would be fine for the time being.

The amplifiers were, as I suspected from the picture, a JL Audio HD 600/4 and an HD 750/1 (both top of the JL Audio products and the same amps that I just put into my Corvette).

Poking around further (actually pulling a few things apart) I was able to determine that Focal 165 VR3 3-Way Component Speakers had been installed into the front of the car. The back speakers were also Focals, but I wasn’t able to determine exactly what kind. The sub seemed to be stock.

The install and wiring seemed to be excellent. It was clear that someone had dropped a good chunk of change this setup.There was lots of potential- I just had to coax it out.

I played with the adjustments on the head unit first. Aside from knocking down the volume of the sub, nothing I did seemed to make much difference. I removed the amps and had a look at their settings. That was the problem. The gain on the sub was way too high and much too low on the mids. And the filters were set backwards (cutting off highs from the mids and tweeters). I changed the settings on the amps (and the crossovers too) and it was like night and day.

I turned the gain down on the rear channel to eliminate the ground loop noise (I’m not sure if it’s ground loop issue, but the rear channel picks up noise from something). Then I boosted the decibel level of the rear speakers on the Kenwood head unit to compensate for the lost volume. Problem solved! With the amps adjusted the audio effectively responded to changes and I tweaked staging and EQ levels with some help from Jim, my audiophile pal.

Sometimes the vocals can be a little ear piercing (it’s not sibilance), but overall I’m extremely impressed by the stereo. The sound is now clear and full; I really like the 3 way component set in the front. The “stock sub” (powered by the overqualified HD 750/1) sounds good to me, but is definitely the setup’s weak link (I may replace it at some point in the future). Overall the whole system seems to blend really well. I’d venture to say the stereo is nearly on par with the Camaro and Vette now. Driving around in the 911 just got way more fun!

Hughes Family: April 1st, 2013 – April 20th, 2013

Posted on April 21, 2013 by Cam

Quite a gap there! Not too much going on right now- not that I have to make excuses or anything. Sometimes it’s nice when things click along slowly. Ahhhh! I feel like we aren’t doing enough stuff. I need blog fodder!

Fran and the kids went on a hike up to Donut Falls (well, to the trail head anyway). The scenery was gorgeous and the kids had fun but they weren’t dressed for the conditions and sustained numerous snow scrapes from falling info holes (and probably from being kids).

We took the kids to Hogle Zoo. I hadn’t been there in a few years so I was excited to go back. Unfortunately they have about a third of the park ripped out for a new exhibit coming next year (I wish my ticket had cost a third less). No train, no playground and some of the animals were in weird spots. They did add a few new things though like a sleeping polar bear and lots of detours. We also made the mistake of going during spring break – crowded!

There was a lot to do and plenty to see. Despite a lot of whining (not all of it was from me) we had a [mostly] good time. Here are a few of the animals we encountered (the brown bears were playing in the water and were quite cute).

The same day we went to the Zoo we decided to see a movie. We rounded up the kids and went to see GI Joe: Retaliation in 3D. I thought it was a fun action flick, but half our crew fell asleep.

The weather is finally warming up a bit! Mike pruned some of our Aspen trees (for money, of course- although he was really excited about the clippers). And now the kids can finally use the new swing set without getting muddy (I finally took a look at it- pretty cool). Best of all five kids can cram around an iPhone to watch Netflix.

We filled our days with puzzles (Fran and I started a 1000 piece puzzle. We got the edges put together, and that might be good enough for me- I am deathly afraid of 1000 piece puzzles), games, movies and meals. I like to think we have wild crazy fun, but puzzles and Jenga don’t seem to give off that vibe.

Next week: The Pine Wood Derby! I hear expectations are high for my car (I mean Mike’s car) since I like real cars. I’m not entirely sure what the correlation is, but we’ll do our best. I just hope the cheating is kept to a minimum.

Camaro Door Sore

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Cam

I was at a business lunch the other day and we briefly talked about door dings. I felt lucky, since I couldn’t specifically remember ever getting one.

Fast forward a few days. I went up to SLC with Fran on a quick errand. As we were about to head home I noticed my Camaro door had a nasty mark on it. Looking closer a small dent was also visible and it became obvious the truck next to me had opened their door right into mine. What’s worse is that the dirt had been wiped away around the mark showing that the offender knew of his misdeed, had inspected the damage and then chosen to ignore it.

Here’s a video of the damage.

I’m not mad, so much as miffed that the driver of this blue Silverado decided that taking responsibility wasn’t necessary. Fran and I tried to find him, but no one stepped forward and we had a deadline which forced us to call off our manhunt.

What is proper etiquette for door dings (if it’s bad and you know it was you)? This seems like it’s more of a door smashing (the scrapes go up about four inches past the paint mark / dent). In any event, I will live and now I have empathy for door ding victims.

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