No Pressure

Amazing. I first photographed the Cressida way back in May -- meaning the offer stood for a full six months before I was able to act on it...

ORIGINAL ALLOY -- MAY 20, 2004

Walked up to the convenience store / gas station to try starting it again today. Starter working fine, no hammer taps needed, but still no fuel to the engine. Then, while at the counter buying a bottle of Tradewinds tea, was informed my Toyota would be towed if it sat there much longer (what ever happened to SERVICE STATIONS?).

Called the one out of five of my siblings who lives in town. Dave has a lot of experience with cars, has owned a Toyota pickup for many years. We went over the relevant pages of the Haynes manual, drove up there, were able to determine that the fuel pump is working, but no start...

Plan B called for being pushed through traffic -- a new meaning to the phrase 'bumper-to-bumper' for me. Let's just say I'm glad there wasn't more traffic, that it was a short distance, and that only slight grades (no hills) were involved.

Ha! But next time a vehicle needs to be pushed that way, I'll volunteer to do the steering. Unexpected fun. Driving the pusher is probably more worrisome...

He lent me a floor jack and a pair of jackstands, in case I need to get at the fuel pump -- or for when I decide to remove and replace that wheel bearing on the Cadillac. He's also promised to bring metric line wrenches so I can track down the suspected clog. THANKS DAVE!

The weather is mild, so maybe I'll have the Cressida running again before next year.

No pressure.

stamped steel

In the future, plates like this one will be on more and more vehicles.

BRUTRUCK

Did you know I was an amateur automotive designer? I sometimes forget...

A couple of years ago, I entered a Peugeot design contest, then worked on a couple of things for a Mitsubishi contest (that never got sent in). One of them was a neat little sports car I called the Brubeck -- Over the past month or so, I've been thinking of how its design elements would work on other vehicle types. The BRUTRUCK is the result.

It just happens that the Flag of Earth is proportional to the doors on this beast...

Herbie the Humbug

Herbie the Humbug -- or The Ghost of Cressida's Past???

If it's possible that cars (like the fictional Disney 'Love Bug' portrayed by a series of 60's Volkswagen Type Is) can have souls, I think my Cressida might be one of them...

[I know, I know, I keep going on about my non-Beetle beater, and you may wish I would write about something else, but if this blog is a sideways glance into my mind, that's what you'll see these days.]

Mysterious things keep happening with this car, as though it were not merely a collection of connected systems integrated for the purpose of transportation. It most certainly has character; Sometimes you would swear it has an attitude...

Without speculating too much about spirits and what they may or may not do, I'd say it's unlikely that a car would be 'born' with a soul -- that being the premise of the Herbie films. However, post-corporeal spirits have been known to do a number of very odd things, and if one were to decide to attach itself to a vehicle (or, alternatively, 'imprint' it), should we be surprised?

Now, before you start thinking this is some horror story like Stephen King's Christine, or an attempt at humour like the old television series My Mother the Car, stop. I am neither joking nor trying to spook anyone. Seriously, I suspect that my Toyota is more than the sum of its aging parts.

Today it started with only a few taps of the hammer (though the front passenger door, which gave me so much trouble yesterday, still refuses to open), then started normally (no hammer required) after a short trip to the grocery store. THEN, close enough to my favourite gas station to coast in, it quit. The fuel guage isn't working, so I figured we'd burned up a full tank already -- not so much from driving, but by leaving the engine running so many times in case getting it started again would prove to be troublesome.

SO. While I was pleased to find that the remote fuel door release still functions, after pumping in ten dollars' worth it was apparent that the tank had not, in fact, been emptied so quickly. Several successful tapping sessions allowed me to TRY to get the engine running again, but sorry, no fuel seems to be finding its way to the injectors.

Somewhere, it seems, the line is clogged. This is a risk you take when you rescue any gasoline-fired engine from years of being left stationary without fuel preservative. Yes, the lines and the tank were cleaned -- apparently, not well enough.

There was a space at the station for me to push it to, and that's where the Cressida sits, until I can walk back up there and disassemble certain bits -- after more study of the Haynes manual, of course. Oh yeah -- and I'll try spraying starter fluid into the intake, hoping the system will build up enough pressure to unclog the line. And -- first I'll try again normally, because you simply never know with this thing.

Humbug? Next on the agenda was yet more Xmas shopping -- I call it Xmas (sometimes FNXmas) because the holiday never seems to have anything to do with Christ... For that matter, it has little to do with Saint Nicholas -- but I digress. No, it's all about stress, stress, and more stress, which I have little of myself -- but I still suffer when those around me succomb to it.

Our kids already have much more than I ever had at their ages anyway, and there are plenty of presents under the tree. More and more, I resent this holiday for the mad consumerism the masses submit to, playing right into the hands of their capitalist overlords.

If my car IS haunted, perhaps that spirit shares my feelings (about more than this wretched holiday -- hint: front passenger door)...

Vroom vroom, beep beep. Happy New Year.

Gaussing and Guessing

I TEND to think it was an accident. A vandal would not be likely to wipe years of algae growth away to see how much damage was done (time that could have been spent busting out another section).

AARRGH

THERE WAS, however, no note -- so either it was blown away in recent brisk winds, or it was never composed, never left. Which level of carelessness was it? No way to know, and besides, I'll be trolling the junkyard for parts anyway. I may even find an intact pair of taillights from a slightly newer model, and decide I like them better...

YES I finally have my project/getaway car legal and on the road, but yes, it still has the problematic starter which sidelined it half a decade ago.

WHICH IS why I travel with a hammer. The remedy, you see, for a starter with a stuck solenoid is to tap the housing -- fortunately Toyota starters of that era are mounted high enough to be reached from above the engine (but be careful with that claw when you pull the hammer back out).

BUT WHY does this work? Personally, I didn't see why it would, even after a few successful whacks -- that is, until I noticed a magnetic attraction between the housing and my hammer...

A SOLENOID is a very simple electrical device that uses an electromagnetic field to move a steel core in one direction, usually with a spring to push it back (this is the mechanism in a standard doorbell). Somehow, my starter's housing is becoming magnetized, and this interferes with the function of the solenoid (which moves a gear into contact with the flywheel, so that the starter motor can turn the engine over). Whacking the housing with a hammer doesn't physically unstick the solenoid -- rather it degausses (nullifies the magnetic field of) the housing. With the interfering magnetic field removed, the solenoid can function as it was intended to.

A REBUILD of this starter will not solve the problem. Oh, it might behave fine for a while, but sooner or later the magnetic field would generate again. A replacement starter may behave in the exact same way -- as past replacements seem to have done on this car...

THIS SORT of thing isn't covered in the Haynes manual I picked up today, but my limited knowledge of electromagnetics gives me some clues. Though it wasn't meant to, the starter solenoid is generating excess magnetism, temporarily magnetizing the housing. The housing's field degenerates over time (or abruptly, through judicious use of the hammer), but not at a predictable rate (variables such as temperature and humidity are factors). There may be a low amperage short somewhere, giving the solenoid enough charge to slowly build a larger and larger magnetic field, until the housing becomes gaussed enough to keep the solenoid from functioning.

THAT SHORT, if it exists, will be tracked down and corrected. If one cannot be found, the solution will be to rig up some kind of anti-gaussing device -- perhaps an induction coil...

THE MECHANIC who nursed this Cressida back to life reported a short (which he could not locate) that drained the battery over a few days, but something tells me the key was left in the 'on' position during that time -- it did not drain a second time when left to sit again. If there is indeed a short in the starting system, that was likely the culprit -- not the glovebox light, which is on only when parking lights and/or headlights are on. Then again, it might have been indicator lights in the instrument panel...

"BUT HOW does it drive?" you ask. Well, it goes really well, and stops just fine, and the ride and handling aren't bad either. For now, at least, there doesn't appear to be anything mechanically wrong with it -- except, of course, the starter.

DON'T GET me wrong -- there are plenty of problems, but none of them get in the way of getting down the road (once it's been started). Power windows, doorhandles and locks, rear armrests, and the glovebox door will all need attention, as will the fuel guage...

OH, AND the steering column surround is cracked -- leading me to believe that someone, at some point, tried to steal (or succeeded in stealing) this Toyota sports sedan.

IT HAS more wrong with it than I thought, but nothing that can't be taken care of, certainly nothing that will make me regret spending what I did to get it going again.

THE SHAKESPEARE play? I tried, but could not slog through the flowery dialogue, and found nothing to support the idea of the title characters -- either Troilus or Cressida -- being ghosts, beyond one line with a reference to India... Oh, never mind. I skimmed over the Cliff notes. BFD (yawn).

AS WITH any project car, this one may never be 'completed'. However, it could theoretically be driven coast-to-coast as it is now. Seriously -- it is that solid.

FUTURE ENTRIES here will be from the road...

The Grey Ghost

Not yet a classic, quite likely never to be revered as one -- and that's fine by me.

TAKEN ON THE EVENING OF FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2004

You may ask, "What's so special about an old grey Toyota that's been sitting for five years?"

Several things:

• inline 6
• rear drive
• not too heavy
• crisp, well-executed body lines
• original alloy wheels, nicely designed
• rare, but not flashy (and in grey, nearly invisible)
• traded for a six-pack of Irish Stout

...but perhaps most importantly, this is the first vehicle in a decade that has my name on the title. I've enjoyed the other cars I've driven in the meantime, but this one is -- and will remain -- MINE.

It was parked because of repeated and seemingly unending starter trouble, becoming an obstacle that had to be removed. My old friend's offer came along just as I was tiring of the seven-liter Cadillac I've been piloting -- a sublime yet ridiculous land yacht whose fuel consumption is merely its most obvious problem. With this Cressida, I expect twice the fuel mileage...

...that is, once it's back on the road. Through the week of Thanksgiving, I must wait patiently as the mechanic I entrusted it to spends his time in the woods with a compound bow, hunting for deer. On the plus side, this gives me plenty of time to work out the legal hassles and seek out the Shakespeare play, Troilus and Cressida...

The title characters were ghosts -- that's all I know so far.

Stay tuned.

- Phil Smith

"Of course, he only had the two arms, and the one head, and called himself Phil..."

Yes, because of that line in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the girlfriend I had in the mid-Eighties called me Zaphod. I, in turn, called her Trillian... But no, I never took to wearing the orange sash of the Galactic Presidency, and I never stole a spaceship. Not one. At least, not yet...

So who am I? Merely the founder of the Unified Settlement, a new nation created for each and every Citizen of Earth. Now, hang on -- that may never be quite as important as it may sound. I'd be quite surprised to find that more than a thousand individuals are aware of the Unified Settlement, and I'm pretty sure only 60 or so understand what it's about.

I'm just a guy in his late thirties, with a small family and a struggling marriage (struggling, that is, to find a way for us to be comfortably divorced), trying (but not hard enough, apparently) to be self-employed -- and planning for the future.

My trouble has always been that I look too far into the future, and that I'm always looking at too big of a picture. Then again, if I hadn't been doing that, I would not have come up with an idea that may, if I can get it across, finally bring World Peace.

The idea is pretty simple. People are people, and if they were allowed to decide for themselves, would not choose to go to war.

The solution, however, is incredibly complex and difficult -- or is it? Sure, governments and corporations, steered by the Machiavellian machinations of secret societies, have a stranglehold on the world -- but they have no power over anyone without consent.

Visit http://www.unifiedsettlement.org/ to find out more. I've got a lot of building to do on that site, so check again, and again and again, over the next few months -- and sign the guestbook if you have something (anything) to say.

If you REALLY want to know more about me, well, there's not much to tell. "Zaphod's just this guy, you know?"

- Phil Smith