I started the Subaru today, and it ran just like before--shitty. It can mean only one thing--the head gaskets were ok, but the engine was blown. The cylinders looked fine when I had the heads off, but apparently something is very wrong internally. The car started right up, but it wouldn't rev higher than about 2300 RPM. After running for about 15 seconds, the exhaust started smoking really badly from the gear oil that I spilled on it when filling the transmission, but it shouldn't have been that hot that soon.

I'm not as pissed as I should be right now. I never really got my hopes up that this car would even work. I spent about $350 total on it, and it was worth the risk--had the engine not been shot, it would have been a pretty reliable car at a dirt-cheap price.

Since I was willing to spend the money registering and insuring the Subaru, I'll just do the same for the Mazda instead. At least I know with absolute certainty that it'll pass the safety inspection, and the registration fee is the same, but it will cost slightly more to insure.

As long as it's dry down near Moab, the Mazda should be able to get us two miles closer to the cache and save us a lot of hiking. Here's a picture of Sister Superior. The cache page says that it's a 2,000 foot gain in elevation over 0.8 miles, but by looking at the topo map, it looks more like 1,500 feet to me. Either way, that picture shows what the slope looks like, and I'm glad I'll have somebody there with me just in case I take a tumble down that hill.

I got an email from Scout Master this evening, asking if I wanted to hit Sister Superior on Friday. So it looks like I'll be meeting him in Moab!

I got the Subaru entirely put back together tonight. I went out just before midnight to start working on it again, and got it wrapped up in two hours. I hadn't originally planned on working on it any more today, but Traci wanted to go to bed early, and I'd slept in this morning and wasn't the least bit tired. I also wasn't in the mood for crawling on the ground attaching the exhaust and a few other things, but I just sucked it up. I spent a lot of time just looking for the four bolts that hold on the electric fan, but I eventually scrounged some bolts from all the A/C parts that I removed.

Tomorrow, I'll fill 'er up with fluids and give the engine a crank. I hate this part--I've spent countless hours working on this car, and it's nerve-wracking to think of all the things that can go wrong when the moment of truth arrives.

Assuming all goes well, and that it passes a safety inspection, it should be on the road (legally!) Monday. I realized today that the reverse lights don't work--the wiring for the manual trans is different from the original automatic that was in this car. I'll have to figure something out, but only if they give me shit about it when I get the safety inspection done.

If possible, I'd like to drive the Subaru down to Moab. It will save us four miles of hiking, because there's a dirt road leading up to the start of the hike that I doubt the Taurus can handle. I'll have to make a little test run, maybe down to Castle Dale and back, to see if the car can handle longer distances without problems. I'm especially concerned about it overheating on long runs.

Entrada Utah--exploring southern Utah. Hiking, mountain biking, and scenic driving guides for the southern half of the state.

I worked on the Subaru this evening for six solid hours. My body is sore from standing up for so long, most of the time in weird positions to reach bolts and such. I got EVERYTHING done except for installing the radiator and fan, and hooking the exhaust pipes back up. I tore out all of the A/C stuff from under the hood, since the compressor was shot anyway, and it really robs a lot of power from the small engine. Hopefully the radiator will work better now with the condenser out of the way, plus the car should be about 40 or 50 pounds lighter.

Installing the alternator turned out being a little tricky without the A/C compressor. The alternator brackets actually mount to the compressor, but I managed to remove the brackets and install them anyway. I might have to make a brace to hold up the front of the top bracket, though, since the compressor is no longer there for support.

I'm hoping to get a webpage layout done this weekend. I've tried a few times this week, but I haven't been able to turn out anything that I like. It's all gonna depend on how long it takes me to finish up the Subaru, and whether or not I go hiking Sunday.

I thought I was coming down with the flu last night, but this morning I feel fine. After I got done working on the Subaru yesterday, I started feeling like crap, and eventually my body got achy and I had a slight fever. I took some NyQuil and went to bed, then woke up in the middle of the night just sweating like hell--literally dripping. I guess my fever had gone away then, and when I woke up this morning, I felt alright (but still really tired).

I'm almost done putting the Subaru back together. All I've got left to do is install the intake manifold, air cleaner housing, radiator, fans, alternator, and exhaust. After that, I'll need to add all new fluids (engine oil, transmission gear oil, and coolant), then I'll see if it'll fire up. I always get nervous when I start wrapping up a project like this--I can't help but wonder if I spent all this time only to have something go terribly wrong when I start the car.

When I put the new timing belts on yesterday, one of them was misaligned by half a tooth on the camshaft sprocket. There's nothing I can do about it, since adjusting it would just put it off by half a tooth in the other direction. I noticed the other day while looking at some pictures of the last head gasket job I did (see the camshaft case and cylinder head pictures), that engine looked nasty--the oil looks like it was cooked onto all the inside surfaces. The Subaru I'm working on now, however, looked great inside. All the interior engine surfaces are silver, like bare metal should look. Hopefully that's a good sign that this engine has been taken better care of.

I decided to not bother importing my entries into the new MySQL database using the old filenames, so my archives directory structure is going to be quite different from now on. MT is now using the post title to form each archive filename, which means it won't matter how I import my entries in the future--the filenames will remain the same.

I've still got to find out where sendmail is on this server--I've IM'd Solo, but no reply yet (I wish I just had telnet access). Besides that and the obvious layout changes I'll have to make, I'm done with this MT install. I'll be doing a few things differently this time around, namely the archives and quickies indexes. I never even bothered creating those when I first installed MT. I'll also have search boxes for both types of entries, either on the main page or the main archives page--I'm not sure yet. I'll probably work on it more this weekend.

I finally got Movable Type working again, this time with MySQL rather than the Berkely DB that I used last time. Unfortunately, that means I have to meticulously import all my old entries in order to preserve the old filenames (or else search engine links and many of my own links to entries will stop working). I should be able to copy over all my old HTML templates, however, so that'll spare me some headache.

Today, Michael turns four years old. We're having a party in just a little bit, so I've got to go start getting ready. Happy birthday, kiddo! Time flies...

I didn't bother going on any hikes today. I drove up Spring Canyon to check on conditions there, but there's quite a bit more snow than there was last week.

Instead, I just went on a little road trip (about 250 miles in 6 hours) from Price, down UT-10 to I-70, east to US-6, then back north to Price. I'd never been on part of that stretch of I-70, and it is just awesome. I found a few places where I'd like to go hiking this spring (if it's not too muddy), and found a few caches along the way as well--even got FTF on one.

I think the transmission on the Taurus is starting to have problems. Occasionally at low speeds, if I'm coasting, then give it a little gas, the RPMs will go up but the transmission won't catch up for a second or two--basically, it's starting to slip a little bit. I think I'm going to have the 100,000 mile service done on the transmission next week, and I hope that will help it last a little longer. The car has 102,000 miles on it, only 7,000 of which are mine, so I have no idea what this car's been through. I think if the transmission goes out completely, I'll try to replace it myself with a new or rebuilt trans that has a good warranty. God, I hate automatic transmissions!

It's still snowing outside--has been since Friday afternoon, and it's now early Saturday. I had plans to get first-to-find on a bunch of caches this weekend, but I may not be able to get out in this crap. There are still two near town that I might be able to get on Sunday, if the weather cooperates. It should be warm enough for this snow to melt tomorrow, and if we don't get any more Saturday night, I might be ok.

I've gotten quite a bit done on my Subaru the past week. I finished replacing the head gasket on the left side. It wasn't in bad shape at all, but the right side is definitely the one that's blown. It's not quite as catastrophic as the one on my '88 Subaru was. Several of the head bolts were just plain cruddy, and the heads themselves have a lot of carbon buildup. It looks like the problem developed over time, and finally got critical soon after I bought the car. If I can get this head gasket job to last longer than my '88 did, it'll have been worth it, especially with as hard as I am on cars.

Ok, apparently Dermabond isn't suitable for use on kids. You'd think they'd know a little bit about using that stuff at Casketview, but apparently that's not the case. Bradley tore it right off, then started crying and bleeding all over the place (again). So we had to take him back to the hospital, and they gave him three stitches. Not fun.

Last night, Traci and I were talking about how we were both amazed that neither of our kids have had to go to the emergency room--especially Bradley, since he's always getting into things and is quite accident-prone. I think you can already see where this is going.

Today, Bradley fell down, hit his head on a wooden part of the couch, and got big gash just above his right eye. It's just under an inch long, but it was deep. I was downstairs working at the time, but I heard Traci upstairs yelling for me. I went up to see what was going on, and she had her hand on Bradley's head, and blood was running down his face and all over her hand and arm. I took them both into the bathroom and got a washcloth to clean the blood up so I could get a good look at the cut, and I immediately saw that it was going to need stitches. I called my mom to come watch Michael, and as soon as she got here, we left. I sped all the way to the hospital, and passed quite a few cars illegally (not that it was 100% necessary), but I did't care. I was amazed that they got us back to see a nurse immediately, and the doctor had already seen Bradley before I was done signing papers. The doctor ended up using Dermabond instead of stitches, and it looks just awful now. It looked pretty bad before, but the Dermabond has a purplish tint to it, so it looks like a big gash with a big bruise around it.

I've still got Bradley beat by a long shot--I had my first stitches at six months of age, and I've had about 70 stitches total throughout my life. I hope neither of my kids are as bad as I was, but it's looking like Bradley is well on his way.

Solo switched servers, and I'm having a hard time getting MT working (I think I may need him to install some Perl modules). For now, comments don't work (along with a few other things), but I'll work on it when I get a chance. I'm not feeling too great right now, so I doubt anything will get done for at least another day or two.

I had to go to Provo for work today, quite unexpectedly. Yesterday, I was trying to share my printer from my company-provided computer to my home computer, and I accidentally messed something up to the point where I couldn't log in to my work computer this morning. I'm sure the network admin was happy about me screwing things up--at least, he said, I wasn't the first to have that problem. =)

I grabbed three caches while I was up there, so it wasn't a total waste. I only worked four hours today, since I hadn't planned on three hours of driving, so I've got four more hours to make up tomorrow. At least the work I've been doing lately is different than normal, and it won't suck too badly having to work on a weekend.

I've gotten my Subaru to the point where I'll be able to start putting the driver's side cylinder head back on tomorrow. It took two evenings just to scrape the head and the engine block clean of the old gasket and grease and grime, and several razor blades and countless paper towels. I'm almost halfway!

I spent a good deal of my free time this past week making a new geocache container. So far, it's involved a cardboard box, a waterproof match container, 2.5 cans of expanding insulating foam, several small sheets of plastic, and 20+ pounds of concrete mix. It should be pretty cool when I get it all done. =)

Cool--Wayne Brady will be in tomorrow's (Feb. 4) episode of SG-1. Hopefully this will be good.