Frog Van, Right Spanner

Frog Van, Right Spanner - Part 2

I don't buy spanner's that often so the price of quality spanners tends to be a minor shock to the system. I needed a 10mm fixed head spanner in order to continue work on fixing the Frog Van that I started yesterday.

Looking at the range of spanners in my local auto shop I could either get a high quality, single spanner in just the size I needed or, for two dollars less, get a pack of six cheaper spanners that includes the one I need. No brainer, right? (I bought the cheaper spanner pack).

Rather than go into a long blog post about disconnecting a few wires and pipes and undoing four bolts with my trusty new 10mm spanner I thought I'd just post a before and after picture...

Before (above): This photo is looking from above directly into the top of the carburetor (air filter removed). Notice all the pipes and wires around the top. I'm sure a skilled mechanic wouldn't be daunted but this is me and, as I said in my previous post, I'm not a natural mechanic. I know what the carburetor does but all that other stuff around it is almost a complete mystery to me.

After (above): This photo is the same section of the engine with the carburetor removed. Those four nuts you see on the corners of the blue gasket were the reason I needed a 10mm spanner. What you're looking at is the inlet manifold (the metal pipes that the carburetor was attached to) and, underneath that, the exhaust manifold.

Just looking at the after picture you can see near the top of the image where both manifolds are bolted to the engine block some fairly black deposits that shouldn't be there. It's not oil but carbon deposits (I presume that's what comes from burnt fuel?). That area should be clean like the front of the manifolds, where they are attached to the engine (middle left of the picture).

I'm hoping changing the gaskets will be enough to get a proper seal which in turn will hopefully solve the van's backfiring problem.

We'll see. It's slow going but hopefully it'll all work out.

Comments

New Cat Art Collaboration: TET's Cats Paintings and OpenArt AI Model Workspace (Photobooth)

TET's Cats AI generated art trained on my own art style. Way back in the early 2000's I started painting stylized cat artworks to illustrate some cat themed poems I'd written, that I exhibited and sold online in an exhibition titled 'Sleeping Cats' in 2004. You can see all these early works in my Flickr Album . Many are also available to buy as prints in my RedBubble Store . Leading on from that I began selling my paintings on ebay where the cat themed works were almost guaranteed to sell over any other subject I painted. As a result I became some what known for my cat art to the point where people would commission me to create images of their own pet cats in my cartoony style. Flash forward a decade (almost two at this point) and I haven't painted any cat themed art in years. To be honest I haven't done any traditional painting at all in years. In the last couple of years AI image generators have really caught my attention. Specifically that they are able t...

The Dukes of Hazard Movie - My Thoughts

The Dukes of Hazard is a movie that I wanted to see when it was released in 2005 but didn't because, well, I just didn't get around to it. Not only that but when I heard Johnny Knoxville and Jessica Simpson were in it my expectations were immediately lowered to "it's probably not going to be what I hoped it could be." Which is why I've never been pro-active about hiring the movie on DVD. Last night I saw it was being shown on free to air TV. I happened to have the time to watch, so I did. To sum up my experience... I didn't get fired up by the movie until I watched the 'bloopers' in the end credits. The Dukes of Hazard signature is the car. The General Lee flying through the air in some flat out impossible jumps. We know they're impossible jumps but they're just so cool you kind of want to believe the General Lee can do them. The point is, in the TV series, you never (or rarely) saw the General Lee not land safely and undamaged. Thus, seei...

"Ya Mum Reads it..."

You'l find my own Photography in this blog too. Quite a while back I did a survey that tells you what kind of audience credibility your blog has. I'm not sure what the score was but I do remember the commentary which boiled down to "Your mother reads your blog regularly but you probably don't have much wider appeal". Fuck you survey! (Hi Mum, sorry for cursing! I do appreciate you reading, really I do!) I don't know how many regular readers I have, if any, but I do know, on average this blog receives more than 4000 page hits per month, much of it coming from search engines like Google. Perhaps of some interest is my new current top search entry point of all time, people looking for Bert and Ernie, who I wrote some commentary about when it was officially announced that the Sesame Street Characters were not gay . Which is quite a departure from Krippin Virus from a few years back when the movie I am Legend came out. The thing about this blog is t...

TET Artwork Diary: Nansen The Cabin Boy's Cat of the Belgian Sailing Ship, RV Belgica, Trapped in an Antarctica Winter, 1897

Belgica in the ice. 1897. Photo: Adrien de Gerlache Y ou wouldn't ordinarily think of cats and penguins together in the same image but that's what I found myself creating when thinking of an idea for my next painting. I have painted penguins before as part of my Australian Animals series from the early 2000's, and I have a couple of cartoon penguins (that you can see in a very old post, Designing Formal Penguins ) I created for a Yeti skateboard graphic, so, I didn't just randomly think, 'penguins'. Recently I had a revelation about my art, in that I don't simply paint pictures of cats, I paint 'relationships'. Almost all of my paintings of cats feature two or more cats, or a cat with something, such as a butterfly, bird, fish, goat... and why not a penguin? However, I didn't want to just paint some random cat with some random penguin. I wondered if there was ever any real cats in history that may have a reason to meet a penguin? Turns out, on...

Boom Crash Opera Born Classic But Not Again

Boom Crash Opera are an Australian Band that reached the peak of their popularity in the mid to late nineteen eighties. They are a band that I knew about at that time but was never really excited by until they released their ill fated double album Born and Born Again in 1995 (Album cover pictured). At the time of its release I was very much into emerging Australian musical acts and was also looking out for new sounds that were different and had kind of a futuristic/electronic sound. Artists that I was buying at the time included; Swoop , Nine Inch Nails and Pop Will Eat Its Self . As well as a really interesting release by David Bowie, the concept album, Outside . Born was a fairly radical departure for Boom Crash Opera (BCO). The first single, Gimme , was often compared to the sounds of Gary Glitter, particularly his single, Rock n Roll part 2 , because of the pounding drum loops. Watch the video below. My favorite single from the album is dissemble which probably went now...

Embarrassing Yourself with Doof Doof Music

Ever since Spinal Tap popularized the notion of turning an amp up to eleven audio systems have been rising to the challenge of louder, more awesome sound. In particular, car audio systems have embraced the notion of the bigger the noise the better the sound must surely be. What I'd like to know is, if these sound systems are so good, why do they make all music sound the same... Doof, Doof, Doof? You've all heard them. Pimped up cars, with audio systems seemingly worth more than gold, volume blasting way past eleven. Sound waves booming long before you make a positive visual on the car... Doof, Doof, Doof. It has to be the audio system right? Surely all these people can't be playing the same tune? Doof, Doof, Doof. Could it be that the more money spent on a car sound system the less musical range it will actually play? Maybe these people can't afford to buy music after purchasing the audio system so they all play the same demo track? Doof, doof, doof. In my own car I hav...

Review: ArtHelper - The All-In-One AI Writing + Marketing Assistant for Artists - 'ChatGPT for Artists'

ArtHelper prides itself on being all 'human-made' art. T he idea of an AI, trained specifically on art business marketing, that can not only offer advice on marketing your work, but also assist with creating all the content too, is certainly appealing. Especially to those of us who would rather spend more time creating our art than trying to sell it. ArtHelper does just that whilst attempting to be your 'home' on the internet. A destination for your profile and portfolio, a marketplace for your art, and a directory of artists as well, with one distinction - all the art must be human made. Which, for you AI artists, doesn't count the prompt for AI generated art - because the idea, according to ArtHelper's creators, isn't the art. Which is a fair point, in terms of promoting art 'made by a human', but can get kind of murky when you understand that not all AI art is generated from a single prompt... and 'found object art' isn't actually ...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog