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2001/10/27 Dr Wong's Driving Clinic

π 2001-10-27 00:00 by Merlin in Cars, Ncars

I had promised myself that I wouldn't go to a drive like this before getting my rollbar (better be safe than sorry).
Now that I had it, it was time to give the drive a shot. Dr Wong gave a quick introduction and filled in for the speaker, who wasn't able to show up that day, and gave everyone a warning about not driving over their capabilities.
The drive went fine, and as a bonus, we saw a huge convoy of bikers heading north on HWY 1 (more than 500 of them)
The picts are here

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2001/10/23 Roll Bar Install

π 2001-10-23 00:00 by Merlin in Cars, Ncars

(All the pictures of the install can be found here)
It's a bit embarassing to admit that getting a rollbar was the first thing I wanted to do after buying the car, and that it took me about a year to actually get it. I think it was first a matter of finding the bar that was right for my car, which I got to do by seeing the different kind of bars available on other BAMA members' cars.

I ended up going with the Hard Dog Sport bar (I didn't like the looks of the autopower too much, and I didn't want the diagonal from the hard core bar)

After that, it was a matter of actually buying the bar, and figuring out whether I was going to get it professionally installed or if I was going to do it myself (with other people's help). I knew it was a real pain to install and I seriously considered professional installation (about $300), but several BAMA members talked me into saving my money and accepting their help with installing the bar

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Can't I just duct tape the bar on the car? It seems faster

Even moving the damn bar is hard, it doesn't fit in the trunk

Several people in BAMA kindly offered their help with installing the rollbar, and I ended up accepting John Formoso's help as he organized a tech afternoon at his place (6-7 of us showed up and did miscellaneous modifications to our cars, two or us installed rollbars). John rules, he knows his stuff

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Bigger is better, right?

Some of the others who showed up that day and helped (including Jason Cuadra who was doing his rollbar too)

So, then came the time to get to work. Jason helped me take the car apart, and get to the car body where the rollbar was going to be bolted

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taking the car apart wasn't too hard

You gotta work around that pesky ECU, which not content of broking the back seat, also was in the way of the roll bar

The car need to be jacked up so that you can remove the wheels...

... and install bolt plates to help bolt the bar to frame

The painful part is the holes you have to make in the frame so that the bolts can be passed through (and since they're in a place where you can't really drill holes, the common method is to drill through an innocent piece of frame with a long drill bit so that you can drill the second layer of frame, where the bolts need to go (sorry, I was too verklempt to take pictures)

And it's not over, you thn need to do more cutting a fitting (takes more than 2 hours, especially for the plastic that goes around the bar, down by the door frame

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Cutting isn't very hard, but cutting the right amount in the right place is

that piece of plastic to cut and fit is probably the worst part. Just very time consuming to get it right

I ended up putting the pieces back together around 23:00 (thanks to John for being so patient, helpful, and having so many of the right tools I needed)

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almost done

I guess it does look better than the first picture

All the other pictures of the install can be found here

2001/10/19 Ten15 PvD

π 2001-10-19 01:01 in Clubbing

I was excited to go see Paul Van Dyk for the first time, but it was only one of several disappointments. For some reason, he showed up ridiculously late (04:00), and quite frankly what he played wasn't that great compared to all his beautiful music I had been listening on his CDs
Later on, when I saw him in Ibiza, I didn't really like his sets that much more. It was only years later that finally I hear him play sets that I liked. I guess before that he had the club music he played (which I didn't enjoy) and the stellar tracks he made and put on his CDs.

See more images for Ten15 PvD

2001/10/04 My First Computers

π 2001-10-04 00:00 in Computers

It's nice that I have a few pictures of old computers I had. Of course, I started simply with a PC that I built myself, since well, that was the only reasonable way to do things back then :) Below was my desk when I worked during my intership in LA. I was lucky enough to be connected to a T1 link (1.5Mbit/s), which back in early 1997, was absolutely awesome :)