Standard Mischief

I did the preliminary repair work myself on my car for the past week’s venison collision.

(clickable photo)

At the first junkyard automobile recycling center, the pickings were slim. I scored an intact passenger’s side headlight with a broken aiming hardware. I bought it anyway because then I would be able to drive at night with two headlights, instead of being “revenue enhancement fodder” for the county’s finest. I figured that I’d just cable-tie the thing in there roughly aimed the proper way and look for a better one. Meanwhile, I’d still be able to drive past dark.

At the second junkyard automobile recycling center, I found a hood, a intact headlight, and an intact side marker light. I had already determined that the passenger’s side fender was salvageable and there was almost no damage to the front bumper.

I installed the hood first, as it made a reference for the rest of the front-end. I would have to get the hood latch lined up properly and the hood gave me a good target. Then I did a little frame straightening with a borrowed hydraulic bodywork tool and the BFH. I only needed to fix the front-end and hood-latch area, wheel alignment was not affected. Then the headlights and such just bolted in. No pictures, I was too busy. All around I think I spent 25 hours or so shopping and beating panels.

Costs:
first (broken) headlight $23
Second headlight $23
side marker light $8
hood $42

Total ~$96

If the prices seem cheap, they are. It helps much if you go to a “u-pick it, u-pull it” type of junkyard. It also helps if you have an old enough and common enough car such that they end up getting to the yard in the first place, unstripped.

I’ve still got to attach the front grill, and I’ve got to paint that new hood, but at least I’ll not be meeting officer friendly.

Insurance? Well, it’s an old enough vehicle that I don’t keep comprehensive coverage on it. It’s a personal gamble that I’ve won already many times before. I’ve already had this car for two years or so and saved more than this repair in insurance payments even counting in my labor.

Using fscking Rust-Oleim no less! The car looks pretty good, and you don’t end up going through a case of rattle-cans. Bonus, you don’t get CMYK-lung from the overspray.

Yea, I have a beater and as soon as I get all of god’s mistakes fixed on the thing, I’m gonna have to try this. It’ll look a lot better than a rattle can primer camo job.

Details here, and no, I don’t think this Corvair is a beater.

Photo stolen from the linked page (but he says that doing so is OK), and I reduced the size/quality via gimp.

This is here mostly for future reference and for Google’s sake. No warranty, blah blah… Comments are welcome.

Rough steps for moving a WordPress blog to a new server, while also moving the blog out of the root and into a subdirectory such as /blog/

Before starting, make sure you have the needed essential mod_rewrite skills.

1. Turn comments off on old blog
2. (Optional) Navigate to SK2.2 plug-in interface panel and flush all the spam out of your MySQL database to save a bit of space.
3. Using the backup plug-in, backup your entire WP database, and save it on the server. Include those needed SK2.2 tables in the backup
4. Download entire backup of your blog to home PC, including server backup file.
5. Create /blog/ subdirectory on new server
6. Upload files to new server
7. Uncompress your database backup and upload WP database to new server using MyPHPadmin.
8. Edit and upload (overwriting the old file) an updated /wp-config.php so that the new blog will query the proper database
9. (Assuming you don’t already have some special stuff in .htaccess), rm . (your old) htaccess;
10. Close your browser and other web tools. As root, edit your local PC’s /etc/hosts file to point to your new server. This should override worldwide DNS for just your machine.
11. Go to http://standardmischief.com/blog/wp-admin/upgrade.php and do an “upgrade” (might not be needed, but I did it)
12. Log in to blog, and go to http://standardmischief.com/blog/wp-admin/options-general.php . Update the both the WordPress address (URI) and the blog address (URL) field to http://standardmischief.com/blog/
13. Navigate to http://standardmischief.com/blog/wp-admin/options-permalink.php . Update your permalinks
14. Add “If you can read this message, the server switchover is working”, type post. Also add a test comment.
15. Do a “chmod 644 /blog/.htaccess”
16. Do whatever is needed to properly create the root .htaccess, and then also set the privileges to 644.
17. Test blog, test mod_rewrite. Make sure your feeds are properly redirecting with the proper 301 code.
18. Once you are convinced things are working, edit your DNS records on your domain to point to your new blog
19. Remove that line in your /etc/hosts file (/etc/host is the file in Linux, it’s different for different OS).

I overpaid for this can, I think it was 11-something bux at a gun show, but if it saves you half an hour under the greasy metal beast it’s totally worth it.

I don’t know what’s in this stuff, or why its not sold everywhere on the planet, or why people keep telling me that they no longer make the stuff because of EPA regulations, but it works. It seems to dissolve rust. It’s fully an order of magnitude better at penetrating than olde water displacing number forty.

Once I had to move a lot of studs off of an engine block to transfer them over to another block. I’m not exactly sure why the rebuilt block didn’t come with the whole 10 bux extra worth of studs. I would have even ordered and paid for them if I had the documentation that told me what I needed. If you ever do an engine swap, you will burn up an amazing amount of time running around to pick up this or that, but it’s not like I could have ran out and bought new studs at the local, convenient, 24 hour, metric weird hardware emporium. So I either had to reuse the studs I had, or overnight them from someplace like MSC (also recommended, a mecca of pure unobtainum).

I used the Kroil, let them sit for 30 minutes, and then put on double nuts locked together so I could back the stud out. The short story was that I got every single stud out intact for reuse.

Tonight, I tackled Toyota half shaft number 4. I should have tried the Kroil first, but I thought I had my magic mojo in the silver slapper I had rented. About to give up in frustration, I gave it the holy sprinkle drenching of Kroil, and stepped out for a brainstorming half mile hike. I attacked with the prybar when I got back and actually made some progress. I reattached the silver slapper and finally got the damn thing out. The bearing was rusted pretty well to the steel casting it was mounted to.

Besides hardware stores, lots of shooting supply mail order places carry it too. I’ve used both the liquid and the spraybomb cans and they work equaly well. Try Froogle.

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Extra tags, for Google’s sake: driveshaft, half-shaft, camry, repair

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Although it’s not a complete step-by-step, the driver’s side half-shaft was covered in my blog here.

I must say, one of the worst remove and replace jobs on Toyota Camry cars is the driveshaft (ugh, I mean “half shaft”, that’s apparently what everyone uses). I’ve only done three, and this one has been by far the worst.

I’ve done other makes, and they have been removed via some hex bolts, or roll pins or even just yanking hard, without even disassembly of the suspension. Toyota sux in this regard (though I think they get the rest of the car pretty much right).

Unless you have arrived here via a search engine, this is going to be a boring post. It’s also most unchristmas-like, despite the date, so you have been warned.

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