I had a trip to the Lab Rat Keeper








The blue dot is where we live.



And that’s all for today, more as I get it.





They missed again




October is somewhat early for this

But what the heck.


Windshield posts (U, N, R)
Front axle (U, N, R)
Spindles (U, N, R)
Steering arms (U, N, R)
Steering wheel (U, N, R)

Now the stuff I don’t have is much longer.
Category engine:
Junkyard 5.3l LS architecture engine (R)


Microsquirt ECU and LS harness (U, N, R)

Category transmission:
Junkyard 4L80E transmission (U, N, R)


Category rear end:






Trying to shift sleep schedules is hard










Just got back from another adventure in overeating





Yesterday was Fair Day

I did a food tour of the State Fair Of Texas yesterday, until I ran out of coupons. I took some pictures but not of everything. Anyway, this was lunch.
Corn fritters and jalapeño creamed corn

$1 root beer 12 oz

I also had a $4 lemonade that I think was 16 oz, and a $1 bottle of water. I forgot to take pictures of them.

This I wanted to stuff into my bag and take home for the Sprint-T, but it didn’t fit through the top of the bag. This is about as far as they could push the rules that required injection at the throttle body, and you can just barely see the coil pack on the front of the engine if you follow the plug wires back to the front. The ECU is mounted to the back of the engine stand but would be on the top of the dashboard under the windshield in the car. The throttle body is a standard Holley part that NASCAR requires, that Holly uses for their EFI conversion kits, because it worked and was cheaper that way.
TRD Cup series engine with manifold runner injection and individual coils for each plug mounted to the front of the engine
And in this picture the coil pack is clearly visible along with the tiny alternator and the Holly EFI throttle body.
Good view of the front of the TRD engine

Something I noticed at the back of the engine was the bellhousing pattern appeared to be the same as the SBC and LS engines. I guess this was to make it easier to use available parts to connect the engine to the rest of the drivetrain.

Something else I saw at the Ford display was they had various sizes of SUVs, pickup rucks, and some Mustangs, and that was it, no actual passenger cars other than the Mustang. Their brochure listed another car, the Fusion, as available in 2020, but I saw nary a one in the display. Now there were some car-sized SUVs on display, basically full-size station wagons that didn’t have a sedan counterpart, some smaller and some bigger than the 1971 LTD wagon the family bought when we got back from when we were stationed in Africa.

And I have been transferring pictures from my phone to my computer to my blog media file for hours, and I’m ready to quit now.

When it’s day but your body says it’s time to sleep

Basically I’m time-shifted about 12 hours now, I fall asleep at noon and wake up about 1830-1900 just in time for dinner for breakfast. Then I do stuff for a while so that I’m spending at least a little quality time with my wife before she goes to bed and I go to work, even when I don’t have any actual “work” pending. Last night I did some work on the cats’ water dish/fountain so that the water in the pool area was also filtered. As configured from the factory the water is picked up from the back pool and forced through the filter to the top of the tower where it trickles back down the front of the tower and immediately goes into the back pool. This leaves all the dirty water untouched in the front pool which is where the cats have to drink from, only they won’t because it’s a little nasty and never gets cleaned.

So, what I’m doing is redirecting the water from the filter out into the front pool in order to set up a current that takes the water in the front pool into the filter so it all gets cleaned. Or at least mostly cleaned. I doubt I can configure the fountain to clean all the water but I’m hopeful that this will get it clean enough that the cats will stop drinking out of the dishwater and toilet, both of which disturb the person who bought the expensive cat fountain because he (not me) spent a hefty sum to buy the fountain only to have the cats turn up their noses at it after a few days of operation. The modification will have the negative side effect of making a splashy noise as the water spills out into the front pool from a height (if you can call less than 6″ a “height”) instead of clinging to the front of the filter tower and going right back into the rear pool and filters.

And since I have to wait several hours for this water-based adhesive to dry before I run water over it, and because today is Seniors Free day (and not Seniors in HS) and I have passed as a senior citizen for almost21 years now, I’m going to go to the fair and have some badunhealthy fried food and see stuff, and then come back and see how the cat fountain works. I’m hoping just getting the water away from the intake for the filter gets enough of the front pool cleaned out and I don’t have to build the extension that dumps the water at the far end of the front pool and sets up a current to get all of the front pool through the filter, but I’m prepared to do the full thing and build the extension that gets the clean water all the way to the front of the fountain.

See you after the Fair!