I don’t know how valuable these slice-of-life posts are, but here’s another one of those things that keeps me from working on the comic.

See this little booger –

That’s a supercharger coupler. It connects the supercharger snout to the gears we were just looking at. While this nearly-new part looks like it is in good condition, the holes are wallowed out just enough for it to make a racket when the car is running. Pretty disappointing! Here is a different brand (ZZP) coupler, installed in the snout –

And here we are, all assembled again –

When I woke this car up from hibernation, she sounded like crap, and leaked radiator fluid. Now she sounds great, and still leaks radiator fluid. One of the cooling lines to the transaxle didn’t get seated right, so I will have to try that again. I had a bad feeling about it when I screwed it in, and it turns out that was for good reason.

It’s quite a thing to see a car all the way through its life’s journey. I remember the generations of cars before this one, then the first time these appeared in magazines. Seeing the first ones on the road. Seeing the production run end, and the first owner cars becoming affordable on the used car market, many years later. Buying this one when it was good budget hot rod material, making internet buddies with fellow owners. Seeing my buddies move on to other cars as the years went by – the forum died, almost all their cars are gone now. But mine still lives on. At a time when it should be ancient history, people are coming back to this generation because the new cars blow up when they’re new. Even though they cost as much as a house used to, they’re trash. So, while this car doesn’t have 400+ horsepower and rubber band wheels, from a certain point of view it’s a desirable car to have again. It still does a great job of floating smoothly down the highway.

I’ve been learning more about Awstats, and things may not be so bad after all. About 99% of the traffic falls into the 0-30 second range, but that doesn’t mean the traffic only stayed for 0-30 seconds. It could mean readers only loaded the most recent page, and moved on, which would be normal for a webcomic. 50 readers spent over 30 minutes on the comic, and 37 of those spent over an hour. I don’t know if that means they were reading the whole time, or read one page, did something else for awhile, then clicked on another page and lost interest. But it could be good news.

We’re at the halfway point of July, and Awstats is reporting 10,100 unique visits already. It turns out that Awstats is bad about inflating traffic numbers. The worst case scenario I’ve found is that Awstats inflates uniques by 150% – but, if my math is right, that would mean the actual number of unique visitors as of the middle of July is not less than 4000. Which is still pretty hefty, at least for me.

So why is there zero interaction, and no voting? It seems like I ought to be killing it. Do you guys only talk to your A.I. girlfriends and boyfriends? I’m kinda joking, and I kinda don’t know – maybe that’s how it is now?

Look ma! No radiator!

I’ve put the new one in, but have not run it.

After draining the old gas out of the tank and replacing with new, I discovered that what I thought was bad gas sound was actually the supercharger coupling. I replaced the coupling years ago, but it doesn’t have many miles on it, so I am a little bit perturbed that it is worn out already. That’s another $50 and a couple hours of time down the drain. I’ll tackle that job today, then I won’t have to listen to it knock while I flush the radiator. Then this car, in theory, should be mobile again.

It certainly needs a bath after sitting for so long.

In other bad news, my truck developed a dragging sound in the brakes, and I finally located it. It was a rear caliper that was failing to release, which destroyed a pad and rotor that are not even a year old yet. I had that brake apart a few months ago, and didn’t notice any unusual wear. Apparently when a caliper sticks, the pad and rotor tear up fast, and without enough warning until it is too late.

So that’s more money out the door.

I haven’t faced this problem before. It looks like the slide pins could be sticking. On this caliper, the pins stay with the bracket when the caliper comes off. I don’t know how the pins come out, but it looks like I’m getting to learn. Greasing the pins is a much easier and cheaper fix than replacing, or rebuilding the caliper; another thing I haven’t done yet. Hopefully that’s all the problem will be, but I’ll still have to get new rotors and pads.