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If you’re simply looking for raw data (numbers), skip to the bottom of this write-up. Otherwise, continue on for some background and other info.

In my previous LED writeup, I found that LED bulbs when used in a vehicle happen to use much less power than regular bulbs. In my own case, replacing the front side-markers, rear side-markers, and rear park lights (essentially, all the lights that come on with the headlights with the exception of the headlights themselves), the current draw was brought down from 2.14 amps to about 0.26 amps. This means that the LED’s used about 12% of the power. Not bad.

Next, it was time to replace the bulbs in the instrument cluster. continue reading…

The title says it all. For the benefit of the search engines, I should mention that this should apply to most 1.0L 3-cyl Geo Metro, Suzuki Swift, Pontiac Firefly and Chevrolet Sprints made around 1991 (89-91).

Basically I can sum it up by saying this. We had an engine that started to perform badly and over the course of 2 weeks really took a hit to the point where it didn’t even want to go over 90 km/h. It seemed like the timing was retarded, and would sputter, cough, and had terrible performance at low rpm’s. I’ve read through the teamswift.net forums often enough to know that these engines are prone to burnt exhaust valves, so we figured that was probably the cause. A compression check verified this.

We pulled off the head and took a look. Sure enough, there was a flat section where the valve wasn’t sealing any longer. Seeing’s how we had a parts car and weren’t looking to feed any more money into this one, we pulled the head from the parts car which fortunately still had 1 non-burnt valve left on it (you can guess why it became the parts car). We grabbed the good valve from the parts car and swapped it with the bad one from the current one. Since we already had the head out, we took the opportunity to lap all the valves which was probably a good thing, since most weren’t in the greatest of shape. Once it was all said and done, we oiled everything up and put the head back together.

Before bringing the head back to the car, we thought it might be a good idea to turn over the camshaft a few times just to make sure the valves were all opening and closing properly. It’s a good thing we did, because the exhaust valve we replaced wasn’t closing all the way. continue reading…

Mac OS X is a fantastic OS. It’s not perfect though, and there are a few annoyances that do come along. One is that it creates a file called “.DS_Store” in every folder which contains information about that folder. continue reading…

Recently, I decided it was again time to look into getting a cell phone. I’ve had many in the past on contracts/plans, but the fact is that I really never used them all that often. It’s too easy to get into the habit of using it constantly, which can cause overcharges if you go over your montly daytime minutes. That is of course why so many providers do offer “unlimited first 3/6 months of calling” on a contract. If they can get you into the habit of spending a couple hours a day on the phone, it’s going to be tough for you to throttle back your usage when the 3/6 months is over. Many people will either end up going over their allotted minutes, or will end up having to upgrade their plan to one that offers more.

Can’t blame the companies for that… it’s simply good business practice. Kind of like in the drug trade where they pull in new customers with the the “your first hit is free” line of thinking. Well not exactly the same, but you can see the similarities.

Regardless, that’s not my issue with the contract phones. My big issue is with the fees. For example, you can get a phone on a basic $20/month plan, which usually gives you something in the neighborhood of a some daytime minutes and free evenings and weekends. You might think that after taxes, you’re looking at maybe $22-23/month.

Guess again! continue reading…