cars and house

Little bit different post here!

I've been getting my rides in over the last week, but the focus has definitely been on house and car stuff. I figured I'd share what I've been up to.

We decided that my old Tahoe was just that. It was time to replace it with something nicer and more likely to be reliable for the longterm. We also wanted a little bit better gas mileage. I wound up purchasing a Toyota Sequoia limited. Went with one on the cheaper end of what they sell for used and right away had to put a little bit of money into making it nice. Added 20" Toyota chrome wheels with summer tires (I'll paint the stock rims for winter use). The factory cd player was broken so added a Pioneer avh-2300dvd source unit which gives me a little more control equalizer wise and allows dvd/ipod/pandora etc. to play and has a 5.8" touch screen. I will be adding a small subwoofer and installing a back-up camera sometime in the next few months to finish that up. It also had a "tick" from a cracked exhaust manifold so we added JBA Cat4ward headers. Obviously the headers also meant that the rest of the exhaust system had to be replaced... so rounded that out with a stainless magnaflow muffler that I had laying around and dual pipes- Can't do that without a new high-flow air filer, so did that too. It's actually still real quiet, but you can defitely feel the power improvement. Feels the same as if you cut 300 or 400 lbs of weight from the vehicle. Those changes should also increase the mpg a bit due to increased efficiency.

Here is a picture-

If you are interested in the Tahoe I'm looking for offers over $3000. It has 215k miles and drives very well. Likely has hundreds of thousands of miles left in it, these things last forever.

Continuing on the car things- I have more or less been neglecting my "fun" car and just letting it sit in the garage. The C43 needed a new battery and a couple other small things done in order to be driveable. Sadly, the front brake rotors alone are $500 a piece... small things can add up fast on that thing! Anyways, I figured if I was going to "hold" it and have it take space in the garage I may as well use it. Changed the oil, battery, drained the gas etc. and got her running. Wow is it ever fun to drive too! Got to thinking a bit and decided I may as well combine my two favorite hobbies. Luckily I was able to find this stock Mercedes roof rack and Bicycle Sports helped to round it out with matching wheel holders and wind fairing. For those who haven't seen it before (I haven't mentioned it much in this space) this car is a 1999 C43 AMG. I've added a custom side-mount Eaton mp90 supercharger, air-water intercooler system, tons of gauges, some custom tuning software that lets me do some stuff with it via laptop and a ton of nice stereo equipment. It makes somewhere between 400-420hp and a bit more tq. Doesn't have a lot of traction, but will still do 0-100 in about 10 seconds. Next step is to isntall the massive 14" drilled rotors that showed up last week- before then I had better stay away from the 175 mph gearing limited top speed.

Picture-

We are working on making our house nice too. Plan is for laminate flooring upstairs and new carpet down below. While we are making those changes we will also throw new paint on many of the walls, clean/redo/seal the grout on our ceramic tile, redo the floor in one of our bathrooms. Thankfully, my parent's came down yesterday and helped. We were able to tear out the upstairs carpet, install new dog control gates, clean the upstairs grout, tear down the old dog enclosure that we don't use, etc. etc., and of course make a whole bunch of plans for more things. Now I just need to figure out how to get all the junk out of my garage so the C43 can go back in.

Along with the house work I've also been trying to simplify my life and get rid of some extra posessions (this is not mean to be ironic with respect to the "extra" car as mentioned above). I've sold my large air compressor, car dollies, lawnmower, extra bike racks etc. on craigslist and still have many other items awaiting a buyer.

Perhaps you are in need of a 10 year old wakeboard, some air tools, 26" rim brake wheels, a flat bar Kona Jake the Snake or a 1988 Shasta Travel Trailer?

seriously, Jake the Snake is set up 2x9 and I'd sell for less than $400... you know you want it!

You can add this sweet trailer for another $3500, it's perfect for a 4 man team at a 24 hr race, and it weighs just 4500 lbs.

Hope you had a good weekend