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By Sylverstone, on December 18th, 2009 since caris is planning on making a regular thing out of burning man and the like, and he’s going to live in this rig, i felt that he would need a much better oil cooler than the rig came with…
and out of jegs we ordered a perma cool 4 pass cooler with the 5/8″ turbulator tubes, and a dual remote filter mount and the block adapter…
i’m glad it came with all the parts, but i can’t say i’m happy about the damaged fins…
after 20 minutes with a couple butter knives and a careful bit of massaging…
all better. 
… but the adapter parts are obviously cast…
… as you can tell there’s a lot of rough spots where the molds come together…
but all in all it’s not a bad starting point…
this should work out pretty well, but it’s going to take a few hours…
this should flow better, with less pressure drop and turbulence
caris returns with the bus, so it’s time to get started on it…
to be continued…
-stone
By Sylverstone, on December 18th, 2009 … so one of the main reasons i thought this bus was a good choice is the automatic air ride…
but the compressor that runs it was stolen sometime in the past, so it rides like a jeep. 
so caris called champion bus co and they want 800 bucks for a replacement and won’t tell us what it is.
… dream on.
so i hook my ratty home compressor to it, hook my honda generator to that, and sent caris to randy’s ring and pinion to get a detroit locker installed in the dana 80 hd rear end that’s under it. with the open diff that was in it, he’d be lucky to get out of the driveway…
in the meantime, i start researching what will work and what won’t…
i settled on the viair 450c because of it’s 100% duty cycle @ 100 psi, and a lot of good experiences with this compressor…
so it shows up broken…
but at least i can start building out the air system…
this pile of parts quickly turns into…
an air manifold that does multiple duties.
1) air input (to air up the bus with the shop compressor if needed) with a valve to keep it closed.
2) air output (yes, you can run air tools off the bus, anywhere
3) air pressure shutoff switch (compressor turns on at 95 psi, turns off at 120psi)
4) pressure gauge so i can see what it’s doing
5) air connection to air tanks (which then feed the level and ride height valves)
and 50 feet of air line…
and temporarily hooked up to shop air…
so i then give the big list to caris for his summit racing order…
to be continued…
-stone
By Sylverstone, on December 18th, 2009 or, a modern day gypsy caravan for the wastelands…
and ya’ll thought i wasn’t doing much… >:)
so the fleet jeweler (caris the gypsy)
and the fleet bling mistress (captain tempestra de la bling)
spent the lions share of the summer landed in the bowl at rear admiral somadina’s place outside of yelm…
sometimes i really should keep quiet when someone asks me how i would do something
… so once upon a time, i had advised caris that he needed to buy a bus to tow his castle with…
what he settled on wasn’t what i had in mind, but i had a summer job once, so i can handle this…
so after him and i spent a day looking at high mileage rigs people wanted way too much for, and thrashed hippie rigs with poorly thought out veggie oil conversions (that they also wanted way too much for) i remembered a place that had a rig i wanted to buy once…
so we hit paydirt in fife, and caris bought himself a ’97 ford superduty access bus:
7.3 litre turbo diesel for the win
i’ve never liked asymmetrical vehicles… i mean, really… i literally burst out laughing the first time i saw one of these:
(it’s a nissan cube)
ugh. at least the bus has potential…
the rig has very poor ground clearance, (sits too low, and the steps and underbody storage make it worse) not only that, but it only has one front seat
but it’s a solid runner, and the price was right.
i can fix this.
i can turn it into a house on wheels that 101 would love…
it’s a lot roomier than a van, but nothing like my warbusaur…
(for those of you who are playing the “sylverstone has an intimate relationship with the word overkill” home game, yes, that’s my 1956 greyhound super scenicruiser parked next to it …)
i love emergency exits
see what i mean by low?
lots of space inside though…
handicapped lift is going to have to go… (man that’s heavy, i’m glad fayd pulled it out, i try not to lift things that weigh more than me
and for thermal stability and efficiency we’re going to have to cover up a few of those windows…
to be continued…
-stone
By Sylverstone, on September 12th, 2009 so i’ve taken on another hobby lately…
it’s kinda fun really, and in many ways a natural extension of some of my old ones…
so this:
is me in the hot seat at the heavens club in seattle. (my buddy dave had to bail for a meeting and said “you’re up”) … heh. it was fun, and i don’t think i did too badly
this:
is 80′s night, jazzbones in seattle…
i think i’m just addicted to blinky lights… :
heh
well, that and a little bit of rock n roll…
-stone
By Sylverstone, on September 12th, 2009 so as many of you know, i’m hunting for a new piece of property…
i want a bigger house, land, and an epic shop.
… so i fell into a screaming deal on a bunch of stuff for my new place.
the more eagle eyed of you will realize what a lot of this is…
thank you to tuck, chad, aiden and dave for helping me move all of it…
first load:
that’s most of the furniture, the custom filing cabinet, and the big box of doom
the second load:
the fridge and freezer in these pics are both from the 50′s. the air intakes on the freezer look like a chrome grill, and they both look like cadillac built ‘em.. (and weigh like it too heh … that dresser is older than i am, lots of sweet antiques…
sad state of affairs i suppose that i have *nowhere* to put them other than long term storage:
26 pieces of furniture total, and most of it is gorgeous…
(the green dresser i’m on the fence about, it’s really nice wood, but i think it’s worth more if i don’t strip it and refinish it… i need to decide if i’m going to keep it or not first…)
yeah, so i’m sick of moving stuff
-stone
By Sylverstone, on September 12th, 2009 so for the most part, people think i can’t cook.
i appreciate that, since it means i usually don’t have to.
so today i found a pretty large pile of rusty beat up cast iron cookware…
most of it looked like this or worse when i started in on it a few hours ago…
now the first batch is being seasoned in the oven…
for those of you who always wondered how to do this, start by taking off any wooden handles, and load the whole pile of it into the oven, and run it on a self cleaning cycle for at least an hour.
many ovens will only let you do 3 hours, this is fine.
when it comes out, it’ll have a powdered residue all over it.
let it cool down, (do *NOT* quench it or use water on it until it’s cool!) then wash it with a scrubby pad, *no soap*.
if the bottom is rough you can scotch brite it or even sand it (220 then 440 grit) till it’s as smooth as you want it.
then rinse it really well.
when you’re done with that, put it in the oven “naked”.
no oil of any kind and heat it to 450°F.
leave it in long enough to just reach that temperature.
be careful and remove the piece from the oven and let it cool to where you can handle it.
find yourself an old cotton rag or an old t shirt, and wipe it down with crisco shortening.
apply a very thin coat on the entire piece. make sure you get in the cracks (use a q-tip)
once completely and lightly coated (i cannot stress “light coat” too much) put it back in the oven at 400°F for 30 (use a timer) minutes and at that point turn off the oven and leave it
in the oven till it cools on it’s own.
when you remove the piece it will have a nice dark brown uniform patina that shines brightly.
you can repeat with one or more coats of crisco if you like. you’ll be happy you did.
a good cast iron pan beats the hell out of teflon…
-stone
By Sylverstone, on September 12th, 2009 so the other night i was coming down old 99 (aurora) in seattle and i caught something out of the corner of my eye…
i’ve always wanted one of these.
for the uninitiated, it’s a bmw m1.
specifically, [this one]
covet covet covet.
check out the video [here]
-stone
By Sylverstone, on July 20th, 2009 so yesterday i was heading over to the lacey house to put ac in the bus for riley the wonder dog and somadina, and what do i see in the distance…
heh. “some flights of fancy are performed exclusively on pirelli” indeed. >:)
thinking that i should get a closer look, i put the boots to the benz, and …
somadina wanted it for her birthday, but after he turned the corner, well, as fast as my ride is, i’m not touching a countach.
anyway, so today i was heading over to the lacey house to pick up the big top for seadog nights…
and i’m informed that the girl wants the old goat shed gone, but she’s not sure what to do about the possums…
hrm. so i go looking in it, and i don’t see anything…
so i start moving stuff out, and i pull out the feed trough, and lookie what i found…
looks like either a momma possum and a buncha babies, or one of them chernobyl kittys i been hearin’ bout…
she was funny.
blind as a bat in the daylight, and had a 10 second attention span.
literally.
i uncovered her, and she was mad as hell.
10 seconds later, she forgot i was there.
had to round up some stragglers…
and once i got them all together, well, it took a bit of doin’, but i finally got her and the little ones in a 5 gallon bucket…
and i moved them off to their new home (about 30 ft away, under a big pine tree…
piece of 12″ corrugated drain pipe about 3′ long, a wooden box (the old feed trough, upside down) and a chunk of siding from the house.. and poof, instant kitten shack…
home sweet home…
baby nuclear kittens are so ugly they’re adorable…
-stone
By Sylverstone, on June 2nd, 2009 so the naked girls in the hot tub kinda calls for a privacy screen…
traditionally i’ve always used prefab fencing for it, just because it’s nice looking and much easier than anything else i cared to use…
but the deck roof supports didn’t match up with the fencing seams at all, and looked like crap.
as i had to move one post, and re engineer the roof supports for the right hand corner, i figured i should probably do them all. i also had to replace one of the horizontal beams, as it had issues.
so here we have the temporary support that is holding up the roof, and the new post going in between the buildings where it will be out of the way (and the backside will support the rain gutter)
the problem here is that if this post was in it’s natural spot, i can’t open the doors on the second building…
so i moved it to the other side of the roof beam, and closer to the house.
then i put a crossbeam on the top of that post, so it supports the last 3 roof beams…
… which allows them to support the end of the main support beam…
then i had to reposition the other 2 roof supports so they didn’t look like they were built by romper room decks, llc…
note the fencing is sitting on the ground in this picture.
here’s another one of those pretentious light pictures…
the roof is tinted polycarbonate plastic. think “sunglasses”.
part of the goal of all of this is that i’m going to be mortgaging this place and buying a big chunk of land i can build a shop and a gigantic geodesic butterfly atrium on…
which means i’ll be moving out of my room.
as my room is stacked to the top with gear, and it’s not cool to have all the network stuff in one person’s room, i’m moving it, and rewiring as i go (right now i have bundles of cables the size of your arm strung from the ceiling into almost every room in the place)
so that means i need a shelf…
and i need to drill some holes…
and i need to put in some conduit and brackets…
(and of course my workbench)
and then i grab the patch panels and one of the network switches…
3000 va apc battery backup, and yes, that is an ibm as/400…
and those of you who understand geometry instinctively are probably asking how i put the roof on the second building…
the answer is we slid the panels in from the top.
and yes, it was a pain in the butt.
now i’m off to move 3.2 miles of cat 5 cable, and my washer and dryer.
-stone
By Sylverstone, on June 2nd, 2009 so today was kinda the death of a dream, as i sadly gazed on what was once the largest excalibur bbs in the world, and my first foray into providing dialup access to said bbs, and dialup internet, webhosting, etc.
this would be the late ’90′s
these are the last known photos of shadows of sanctuary bbs…
the board is actually still up, and accessible from the internet, if anyone really wants to hunt for it.
i still do internet services (you name it) i just don’t host any of it here anymore.
the 12 racks of servers are gone, colocated elsewhere now, the banks of modems are quiet, didn’t bother to try and sell ‘em… the 18kva best ferrups has been offline for years, as i didn’t want to buy 20 new 8d batteries for it…
so today, with the price of network cable being as high as it is, i decided that maybe some recycling was in order.
maybe it’s time to pull the miles of networking cable out of my house…
unstring the huge bundles of cables that are aerial dropped throughout this place, uninstall the 10 line 24 extension comdial pbx, and make the place a bit more like a home and a bit less like the “heaven” set from johnny mnemonic…
i sat out back and looked at this for a few minutes, and my mind wandered back through all the people i had met through my board, all the things i had accomplished…
and how much nothing ever turns out the way you plan.
so remember those 27 runs of cat 5 that were strung down my back fence?
this is the business end of those drops.
yes, if you want it bad enough you too can get uswest (now qwest) to pull hundreds of phone lines into your house…
now this box is empty. i unstrung the wire from here to the network switching and modem rack in my office…
4725 feet of cable if anyone is keeping score…
the blue lines were data, the grey lines were modem lines…
so i reloomed the grey wire…
and sketched out a network diagram and me and aiden started pulling wire…
and pulling wire…
and pulling wire…
and i whipped up a set of brackets for my punchdown panels since i don’t really want to spend the money on rackmount rails for this small of a project…
a bit of stain and they look fine…
framed out a bunch more of the deck as well, in preparation for the ramp.
chris hooked up the hot tub, works as intended
i got a lot done today…
feel kinda sad about it though.
-stone
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