My first lady has another man

On my very first post, i posted an entry stating on my intention to give away my first lady to a new owner.

Yes she is old but not rusty! Yes she has aged but very young at heart and will definitely get your blood rushing when you hit the right pedal.

After a long time of hiding her behind the covers finally 1 guy stood up among the crowd to house her.

After a few rounds of interview and negotiation of the "dowry", we came to an agreement and with a hand shake the deal was on!

It was not an easy process but i managed to get it done.

My last photos of her....

As a going away present i dressed her up with a set of 4 new shoes from a well know designer Bridgestone and a nice bubble bath.

Definitely a lot of nice memories but you got to let go to make way for the new lady..pocket does not allow me to have them both, plus an additional REAL lady coming into my life soon.

bye bye..you will always be my first.

Tragic Accident !!!

As i mourn and write this post, a few days ago i over judge my cornering capability of my s40 and ended up with a tragic accident.

It was at night time and i was not under any influence but the influence of a hungry stomach as i was going to the local "Mamak" shop to pack some food.

As i took the corner i was confident that i could make it, but in less than a second my heart just stop beating. I was so shocked to have feel the impact. I knew this days will come but did not think it will be that night.

My first reaction was to immediately jump out the door to see the damage. It was bad, really bad. I just could not believe i scared her due to my missed judgement. 

Well a damage is a damage... 

Lesson learnt: Dont be hungry and think of food while driving.

S40 Wheel Bearings

During the purchase of this S40, i noticed that there is a slight noise coming from the rear wheels when entering corners, to the left only. After much digging under the car, we thought i could be some aged bushing.

Since that was the case, i never really gave much thought to it, just told myself that i will change all of them when im doing the suspensions.

During my last maintenance, (post about it is here) i had to do a full wheel re-alignment which made the same noise now permanent. This drove me mad, and after much of searching, its was the wheel bearing. In a way i was a bit please because it was not a major issue.

Called up the local volvo spareparts shop and to my shocking 1 wheel bearing cost freaking RM500..arghh plus labor its at least going to be RM550-600.

After a few rounds of my fingers dancing on the keyboard, research found that the Mitsubishi Evo 3/Waja also uses the same bearing... :)

This is thanks to the fact that they share the same chasis construction. Big smiles on my face, as this only means cheaper parts!

Fingers continued to dance to later find out that the ABS tooth thinggy that sits at the back of the bearings are different compared to the Volvo and Mitsu. Their gaps are different, and the way its assembly is not the same as well.

Volvo's one are bolted to the hub while the other is just slotted in. hmm...

So after some thoughts, i do not want to disturb the way the ABS works on the Volvo and decided to send the New Japan Bearing, which is bolted on to a new hub to the local machine shop to make 2 holes so that the ABS tooth thinggy can be bolted on. After an hour its done.

NTN Japan produces the best bearings apparently.

Notice the 2 bolts that have been added :)

This is before the extra 2 holes are made.

 All in i only spent RM 110 for the bearing and RM 80 for the labor and machine work. Total of RM190 and i am happy.

Next things to fix/do:

1. Front Lambda Sensor 

2. Steering Rack cover 

3. Belt Tensioner 

4. Service AC

5. Suspension

6. Bushing

7. All parts related to its arms and suspension

8. Rear passenger power window = RM 1 000 (Better find a used one from the halfcut shop)

9. Tint

10. Multimedia system

11. Rims + Tyre

12. Painting = RM 1500 +- (Hopefully 1 layer of paint will do the job)

13. AC fan

14. Rear wheel bearing

15. HID

16. LED Lights 

Wondermilk.. Really makes you wonder

This is actually a really old update which i found in the drafts...

on of the days in my "firefighting rat infested central store converted to an office", at the very last minute after lunch i found out its my good friends birthday..yeah i know good friend but dont even know its a birthday..pehhh

anyway me and another friend thought lets get her a cake...reality check....we are at office at 3pm located in the middle of no where near a shop that sells cakes..so as usual me and my buddy stormed out the office (we are actually a vendor based on client site so a lot of acting is involved) like we have an urgent issue to fix....run and jumped into my buddies "batmobile" drove out to office..and both of us looked at each other and go...Where are we going to find cake??

Yeap same thing happens for lunch as well..but not too far from the office we have a mall so best place was to try there...

no cakes were found but discovered this place called "The Wondermilk"....

So if you are actually as straight as i am what is the first time that hits your head....yeap yeap you got it...Its a Malaysian version of HOOTERS or a shop that sells milky stuff

Walked in to only see a long showcase of cupcakes...

Now they are not exactly cheap but what the hell..it is for our good friend that we did not even know its her birthday..so we licked the thumb  and chose what visually looks good and sounds yummy...

got 8 of them 3 candles and a happy birthday sign and off to the batmobile :p

The cupcakes are actually very rich and moist...definitely worth the penny.

Service of 120k km 24/08/2013

Kinda backdated but what the hell..a blog is a blog :)

Seeing my to do list was getting longer and longer this service i decided to knock off some items from it..

Here is the list

1. Castrol Fully Sys (lucky had balance from the old bottle so no need to buy 2 --> RM220

2. Volvo Original Oil Filter - RM 45

3. Steering Rack Cover (Driver Side) - RM 105

4. Toyota ATF (I was told its the best alternative) - RM 145

5. Drive Belt (Since i was changing the tensioner) - RM 195

6. Belt Tensioner - RM 275

7. Front O2 Sensor - RM 650

To reset CEL - RM 45

Labor - RM 180

And total burnt = RM 1860

on top of that an additional charge for using my card so in total = RM 1906

The charge of using the card to pay should actually be paid by the merchant legally but they are conveniently charging it to their customers..sigh

Post Service - Well the CEL came back on after some time with the same error so im really getting pissed off now with this issue. Starting to think this workshop is unable to solve this issue but more of trial and error arghh..

On top of that i had to do alignment for the front as the shocks were removed to help with installing the rack cover. Took it to a shop recommended by Wyn as well and did it for all 4 tires. The prize that i got now i there is a new noise coming from the rear of the car that sounds like bearing...and bingo it is bearing.

You would think that after spending so much of your hard earned $$$ to actually solve all the issues and make the car as perfect as possible but one by one it is testing me, hmm no worries i still can hold it together.

so now back to the list:

Next things to fix/do:

1. Front Lambda Sensor 

2. Steering Rack cover 

3. Belt Tensioner 

4. Service AC

5. Suspension

6. Bushing

7. All parts related to its arms and suspension

8. Rear passenger power window = RM 1 000 (Better find a used one from the halfcut shop)

9. Tint

10. Multimedia system

11. Rims + Tyre

12. Painting = RM 1500 +- (Hopefully 1 layer of paint will do the job)

13. AC fan

14. Rear wheel bearing

15. HID

16. LED Lights 

Item 13 & 14 is on priority and need to keep checking why the CEL keeps coming on..

 

Challenge against time!!

Its been really long since my last post and i know some are not so happy as well because i owe them past blog post and updates.

Many things have been happening lately which i am suppose to blog about but failed to do so...just to update below are the happenings which i will try to blog about in a separate post

1. Post BBQ pictures and seeing the grill in action

    Well the BBQ was awesome and the pit really did a good job but unfortunately all the photos       were lost as my phone got bricked along with the entire marination process as well..bummer

2. I was hospitalized...arghh..Prolapsed Disc

    Well this happened at the beginning of the month of July and it was worse than a bitter                 journey, thankfully i am the luckiest guy in this world as my gf took emergency leave and               come to take care of me with her dad. Thanks for that sweetheart, it really meant alot. So             happens she also has her own blog and she did write about it which can be found                         here....Crazycurle

3. Updates on the moose

    Well the moose on the other hand received some handsome addons. I managed to get the         windows tinted (3m), eyes were upgraded with Xenon Conversion Kits and with Philips LED     bulp for the evening lights/DRL (which ever you call it). I actually took photos of the entire             process of getting the tint done but as mentioned on no1, its all gone along with the phone

4. Food trip

    2 weeks back me and my close mates made a trip back to my home town just to eat and             literally that is all we did. It was indeed a very well and fun trip. Now this i promise i will share       the experience here, im just pending the photos from my buddy.

5. First love still not sold

    From my first post you would know what im trying to sell my first car but i have not been               anything about it to get it sold, but not that the car has been sleeping under the tree for some       time now, the car actually looks bad. The last i started the car, found out that only 3 pistons         were moving which means one of the plugs were dead. So plans are to fix everything and do     some handsome selling really soon (need funds for the moose).

That's all for now..

DIY BBQ PIT

One of my close friend had just moved in to his beautiful new house and decided to throw a nice bbq dinner. 

When we were talking about it and looking at bbq pits, the idea struck our heads (me being a typical "why buy when you can built one", turns out he is just another hands on junkie) lets just build a pit!

So we picked last weekend to construct the pit, ill let the pictures do the talking....

Blueprint - all great ideas starts on a paper (ignore the right diagram, that's a multi layered pit)

Angle Line used to construct the main structure 

The Smith doing what he does best - playing with his man toys - referring to the power tools of course! 

Bare in mind that there were alot of calculations, physics theories and laws were put to the measurement before cutting it up

45 degrees cut to avoid them from overlapping 

Aircraft grade titanium bolts were used with thread sealant (just kidding, normal bolts found in our local hardware stores) 

This is the key to holding the structure in place, without it, you will have a dancing bbq pit

Half a day went by and walllaaaa...the main structure is up and standing  so solid as if it were on Viagra! 

Here comes the pain in the butt part....shaping the 1mm zinc to sit on the structure

From here on my hands were really tied down (no picture taken during this process) as it was not easy making the zinc shape the way you want it to...after all the pain, cuts and back ache, below is the end results.

The top part of the angle line needs to be copped off

The center bar was added to give the structure of the zinc some rigidness 

Its not really visible but the base on the zinc is layered with a thick grill for the charcoal to sit on and the ashes from the charcoal will go right under. 

As this was the first time for both of us to construct this piece of art, i took us the whole day to complete, several cans of beers, several cups of coffee, and most importantly a big fat bag of laughter and joy.

The end results made it look like as if it had eyes..haha...its actually an opening to place the charcoal so we dont have to remove the top part when we want to top up the charcoal.

All in all, very satisfied with the results and wait to see this in action!

Weekend Shootings...........

For the very first time i managed to give the car a personal hand wash by no other than me :)

As promised on my previous post i decided to take some photos but unfortunately i was only armed with a 5mp Samsung Galaxy with the help of Camera 360 on HDR. 

Introducing my Volvo S40 2.0 Turbo Phase 2.5.....

The puney snail

B4204T

Since this is the final Phase 2.5 of this model, its comes with Remus Exhaust..