So it finally happened:

Tuesday after picking up Isaac from daycare I got on craigslist to fart around looking at motorcycles and scooters to see what all is out there. Of course I can’t go on craigslist for long without looking for a possible cheap e30. Just so happens one had been posted that morning. I showed the link to Cody who said if the guy would go down just 50 bucks on the price he would drive up to Cedar Park to go get it for me.

Well, the guy agreed.

I finally have my e30. After 4 years and about 7 attempts there is finally one in my driveway. There are some major differences in this model vs the one I had back in high school. The biggest is probably the fact my old one was a coupe and this one is a sedan which is super cool. This is also an “eta”, which means the engine is modified to conserve fuel and give good gas mileage from the inline 6 in the engine bay. I seem to recall my old 325is getting hysterically horrible mileage driving just from the house to school. Cody got this from Cedar Park to San Marcos on about a quarter tank.

So yes, the engine runs great, no stalling, no sudden death while driving down the road like the 325is did so many times. Most of the power devices work including the windows, sunroof, and cd player.  It has tinted windows as well as 3 near perfect tires, the one that gets power is pretty bald though.

And here you see why it was 600 dollars. The car had run into something quite recently as the inspection stickers are from 09. Possibly a pole or something but interestingly enough only the outer portion of the bumper is harmed.  Of course the hood is dented as well as that fender but I’m not too worried about those because I can easily replace them on my own. Since the bumper is busted I want to do a full plastic bumper conversion on the front and rear. However, I will be taking it to a local body shop for installation because I can’t stand body-kits flapping in the wind. Also I need the entire car primed. While it’s getting updated and primed for paint I’ll have them fix the massive dent in the hood. Cody thought it had been rolled, but there is no damage to the doors and all the glass is factory. My guess is a tree branch fell on it or something.

Great news, this car has about HALF the miles my old one did! The engine starts quickly every time with no trouble. There are a few other problems I’ll need to get fixed during my painting process. As of now the power steering is totally shot. I filled up the reservoir this morning and took it for a little drive around the neighborhood to no effect. However, fluid remained at the same level so at least that means there is not a massive leak, but possibly a busted pump. Whatever it is it will be fixed at some point during painting. The brakes work but not well enough for stop and go traffic so that too will be assessed before painting is done. It will be a very long process and by the time I am done with painting, brakes, steering and suspension the engine may be toast.

So basically here is a rundown/timeline of work that will go into the car:

1. Body prep – Purchase bumpers and rear window moldings, send to shop for bodywork and priming. During this time the car will be started every day and let run 10 minutes to keep parts lubricated, it will be driven around the block average twice a week.

2. Painting – Once body is complete and primed I will be hand painting the entirety of the vehicle with a most awesome design that I have not yet come up with but totally will here shortly. Basically my own BMW Art Car.

3. Functionality – Because I can still paint the thing with a blown engine it only needs to stay running/operating long enough for me to get it to the local shop for the bodywork, brakes, and power steering. So at some point during painting or afterwards (Depends on how long it takes and how much money I have) I will assess the aging mechanics of the car to get it street legal in the sense of passing inspection.

4. Engine Swap – Because its inevitable that the engine will probably eat itself at some point during this process I am not even thinking about updating the exhaust, intake, etc until a clean rebuilt engine is installed. I also do not yet know what kind of engine I want to use for the swap. It could be anything from a stock m20b25 to a rb20det. So until then no changes will be made to anything that would potentially be attached to such engine.

Let the fun begin!

Long time to update, so here is a pretty good one! This Saturday I dragged Cody out of the house to go to the 512project, a “stance centered” car show. It was held at the Austin Driveway track out off 183 east. Totally cool as the entire meet was on the track itself. No moving cars just fun to walk around the tiny Nürburgring nugget they have built out there.

Only downside to the whole event was that it was at 1pm which means it was 100 billion degrees outside:

There was a DJ set up playing music the whole time so it never got boring:

You had your staple car show cars: Nissan 350z’s, 240sx’s of various years, GTI’s and of course no car show is complete without an 86:

Some cars were heavily sponsored, but not too many:

Of course I would have paid 10 bucks and bought a shirt just to see this car all by itself and take pics of it for 3 hours alone:

I almost started to cry because the inside of it smelled like mine:

Some other cool cars were out there including this one that goes to a lot of local shows, the famous two tone koi painted subie:

Another cool hand drawn paint job ehhehe:

We wanted to stay to see who won stuff during the raffle giveaways but it was just too hot and I had gone through a lot of water and we needed to get back. We had a ton of fun taking pics and video of all the cars. The second I got home I jumped in the shower, washed the salt out of my face and put on my spankin new t-shirt:

Video here of me wandering about:

Now, I am no professional researcher or scientist by any means and I don’t claim to be.  So please take all of this information with the knowledge that this is just my opinion/speculation on the issues. Other than that, flame on!

Sounds like nothing! – Sure the biggest thing most folks who switch from a gas/desiel to electric car will be the “VAROOOM”  being replaced with “WOOOSH”. However, you find that out the instant you take it on a test drive. What I am more worried about is the lack of you being able to hear the car coming…at all. Folks on bikes, pedestrians, etc won’t be able to hear you coming which can be a horrible horrible thing. Not to mention the terrifying idea of a motorcycle you can’t hear changing lanes beside you in a car they can’t hear going down the road. I guess we’ll all have to get louder horns or yell “MOVE!” really loud like kids who ride bikes on busy sidewalks.

Distance Driving – Imagine for a second that your going on a cross country trip. Lets hypothetically make it a trip from Georgia to California.  If your using a fully electric car you would have to stop when your car runs low on power. Not a big problem because if everyone has electric cars they will have more recharge points at gas stations and hotels. What IS  a problem is when your driving along and suddenly realize your car is out of juice just like you do when you ignore your iphone all day until your ready to call someone and it’s red bar tells you your screwed. Your then stuck somewhere between Barstow and have to call a tow truck to come bring you a jump-generator or spare battery that will cost you the rest of your Disney vacation money.

Refueling – While I’m on the point of refueling, let’s say your on a schedule and have to be at the dry cleaners at 7:30, work at 8, lunch meeting at 11:30, pick up kids from after school program at 5pm, soccer at 6, dinner at 7, dance practice at 8. You get home and flat out forget to charge the car. With a recharge time of anywhere from 2-8 hours, your’re taking a sick day from work if you don’t live anywhere near a bus or train station (99% of Texas). Also, what happens if there is a natural disaster? Say a snow storm or hurricane hits and your car is dead, no power to recharge it and no time to get out. Not a good thing….

Battery Issues – They keep talking about how new lithium Ion batteries are going to save the world. They can make them cheaper and longer lasting and all that good stuff. Now take in mind what you use that has a lithium ion battery right now, your kids gameboy, your laptop, cameras, etc all use very small ones. Now look at the biggest battery, the one in the lap top. What happens when it is on for too long? It gets HOT. Not only hot but have a tendency to overheat and as the case with a “bad batch” can even EXPLODE. So yeah now lets take LOTS of those batteries and put them in a pickup truck on a nice 112 degree summer day in San Antonio idling on I-35.  You fill in the blanks there. I can’t wait till it becomes cool to have a 4ft wide Zalman coming out the top of your hood like some sort of space age intake. If yall thought the Pinto was bad just wait.

Big Brother - Not that they can’t do this NOW thanks to computers controlling most of the internals of the car your driving today but I just see it being pre-built in on every electric  car that comes out. OnStar can already stop the car if it’s stolen, now just imagine driving car thats fully electric. They could block you from starting the engine, opening the doors, using the panic button, etc. What would be the worst is that in an electric car they could monitor your acceleration, braking, turning to find out if your speeding or driving unsafely and ticket  you without the need of speed cameras or cops on the road. You car will be telling on you.  They could even go so far as to increase the rev limiter afterwards as a way to keep you from speeding again.

That and I saw a pretty schweet GTI 2.0 tarbo at Chuck Nash this weekend, anyone wanna buy a Subaru? XD

Been throwing ideas around for shirts to print this summer. After looking around and doing a little bit of research I have come to the conclusion that to start I should get a one color press, a half dozen screens, a few pints of ink, and a wholesale account at American Apparel and I’ve got it made.

Why 1 color prints?

• Forces me to be creative with the design
• Easiest to align and register
• Uses only one screen

Why discharge ink? (waterbased)

• Environmentally Safe
• No hand (super soft feel)
• Easy to cure (when its white its done)

Why American Apparel?

• Sweatshop free
• Made in America
• Ring-Spun 100% cotton.

Doing the shirts this way I can sell all the shirts for a set price and I won’t lose money having to sell a four color job for the price of a one color job just because people are timid to spend over 18 dollars for a t-shirt. Considering they can just go to the mall and get a t-shirt for 19.99 themselves, why would they want to buy a shirt online for 20 that they also have to pay to ship? This is where educating the customer comes into play. 99% of people who buy a t-shirt get it because it says something cute, quirky, or has a branded logo on it. Folks will pay 35 dollars for a 1 color JohnnyCupcakes t-shirt only for the fact that it is limited edition and may not be available if they wait for it to go on sale at 25$. Seems crazy right? Well it works for him, and he has been doing awesome for the past ten years.

Don’t worry, I won’t and honestly can’t charge people 35 dollars for a t-shirt. However they will be limited edition runs in selected colors and sizes. It is probably easier to sell someone a blank t-shirt than one with a printed design on it. If customers do not like the design they simply won’t buy the shirt, no matter what you charge, it’s that simple. Eventually I would like to graduate to multiple colors at which time I would adjust the price of the shirt accordingly. Rather than a straight price all across the board the profit margin would be the same for one color shirts as well as 4 color. That way I don’t have to worry about not selling enough of the high-profit shirts in order to justify the ones I don’t make enough on.

So, what should I print on these shirts? Do I cater to folks my age? Other artists? Nerds? Car Enthusiasts? The answer is all of the above. There are so many companies out there selling shirts for gamers, nerds, etc that the market is simply over-saturated. With the advent of sites like Zazzle, CafePress, etc anyone can get what they want on a shirt for around twenty bucks. So what does that leave me? Well thats simple, I would have to sell designs/concepts/artwork that they could not just mock up themselves and print somewhere else. I’m not going to look at current trends and go “ok I need one skull design, one flower design…” because thats just the same generic design you can get anywhere else for cheaper and in more colors. I have to make the shirts witty and artsy at the same time. They may or may not be funny, or have text, etc. They just have to be good designs!

My angle is the same as all the other indie shirt printers. I would be selling manually printed high end designs on premium garments using water based inks. Doing so I would be offering customers not only a semi-unique garment but a piece of art as well.

What I won’t be doing: Do not ask me to print your shirts for you. I am not setting up a screen print shop, there are plenty of totally competent mom and pop shops in your local area that can print as many colors on as any shirts as cheap as you want them to on some totally rad Garbage 8000′s. I am not a custom shop, I just work for one. I may from time to time do shirts for a friend or relatives but thats as far as I go.

This week I have been messing around with some t-shirt templates I found on the interwebs. This one is set up in photoshop so its great for getting shirt colors the way you want as well as mocking up a design. Too bad 99% of my designs are done in illustrator hahaha, no biggie tho. The first shirt I played around with is this layout for a “Captain Slow” shirt. Yes I was watching TopGear when I did it. Don’t worry BBC, I wont be printing this one as the pic of May is way too low rez to print as big as I want hahaha! Still fun to mess around, and this is just about exactly what a large one color discharge print will look like.

This second shirt I mocked up yesterday I will be printing as party favors for my sons 3rd birthday party in May this year. The only issue right now with this design is that you can’t discharge royal blue, so I am on a quest to find a blue that will discharge

I would really like to find out how and where to get the custom sewn in tags you see on the bottom left of the shirts there. Several shirt companies have them and it’s just one of those fine touches that makes a limited edition garment worth the extra money you pay for.

Saturday morning Isaac and I packed up and left for Aunt Susan’s house all the way up in The Colony, near Dallas. We left around 6am and wonderfully ran into zero traffic. We beat my parents there!

I had only been to Aunt Susan’s house once, several years ago so I thought it would be difficult to find the house given the directions and my iphone’s drunken gps coordinates. Luckily my cousin Michelle was kind enough to drive her new car making it incredibly obvious which house it was.

Isaac and his Nana got to drive around the block in it and had way too much fun!

Now, the cool thing was that the day before the entire Dallas/FortWorth area had been hit with this freakish snow and spots of it were still left in the shade! Isaac got to play in what was left over and he somehow knew what it was! (Horray daycare!)

After we arrived we all sat down to lunch and yes MORE HAM! It’s like they know me or something. Susan’s ham was roasted with flavors so it had a different flavor and texture than our classic ham the day before but still really really good. She even set aside some potatoes for me so I could have sides

That night we left Dallas and drove all the way to Mineola. We got about to Mckinney when my parents wanted to stop for non-ham dinner. Becca knew of some Mexican food place downtown so we gave it a shot.

Since I was travelling I ate safely and just ordered a side of rice (wasn’t that hungry after all the food I had all day) The one issue we had with all the food was the heat of the hot sauce. We each had about one or two bites and thats all we could stand. But they also cooked the food with it, so EVERYTHING you got was thermo-nuclear. Which is good if you wanna sell margaritas to folks but not to ppl who want to sit and eat something lol.

So were driving back and about 10 miles away from Mineola me and Joanna spot this cop on the side of the road with his lights off. We pass him (following dad who is driving 59 mph) and notice he puts the car into drive and turns around (he was on the left facing the other traffic). Then sure enough about two or three minutes later we see a car come up on us really fast and the red and blue lights kick in. Great…. Turns out my license plate lights were both out. Good thing was I just got a warning and the cop was really nice about everything. The funny part was my parents didn’t realize we weren’t behind them until they nearly got to the house! HAHA. So the next morning I got up relativley early and ran to O’rileys and picked up some bulbs. Sure enough both were totally blown. Easiest car repair … ever.

Once we all got back to the house we opened presents! Look at all the fun stuff Isaac got: He now has is very own suitcase for traveling to grandparents houses, new clothes and toys and his very own little card table and chairs!

Here is everything my parents got me: More 10-12 inch pans! (cant have too many of those!) dvds, Forza3, gummies, a vegan cookbook for baking, and a holder for our K-Cups!

The next day, after fixing my lights, I ran the car through the carwash downtown and filled it up with gas before leavin’. Went by mawmaw’s house and visited with Kristen and her kids.

Isaac had fun playing toys with his cousins, before leaving we were getting hungry so I opted for EDIBLE Meixcan food, plus I was in Mineola for more than 4 hours it’s a law you must eat at Two Senoritas:

After lunch I finished packing and headed back to Austin on my own. Isaac is still up there with his Nana and Papa having a good o’l time!