So the vents came out pretty good. They look huge when you focus on them but it must partially just be me as no one has noticed them yet. In the pic to the left you can see my hand below as a reference.

I've done a pile of other stuff as well. I was walking into crappy tire and noticed that they had a bunch of freight carts for sale for $5 a pop so I bought 3 of them and used two to build a stand for my MIG and the other to build a stand for my compressor. Sweet deal as I couldn't buy one wheel for $5. I wish I could think of more things to build with them but I can't at the moment.

I also built a new shifter. The old one was alright but it wasn't very ratty so I took an old fake shrunken  head that the previous owner tossed in and made a shift knob out of it. I started by welding two shifters together and then made a threaded base to mount the head to. I used insulating foam to attach the head to the base and poof. It works real well although I had to drive over it a few times to get the right bend in the shift rod so it clear the steering wheel when I wanted to reverse.

The exhast that I rebuild has an issue or two and I'm going to try and tackle that today and fix it once and for all. All that work and welding and the friggin thing will not stay put so I'm going to make a couple of brackets that will attach to the frame and get welded to the muffler.

I also added cat eyes to the new halogen headlight upgrade I did which kicks arse. Before the halogens I was out driving the headlights at round 40mph. People who say stupid crap like "they sure don't build them like they used to" don't know crap about cars. What they used to build were friggin death traps compared to modern vehicles 

Anyway I'll post pix of the new headlights later. 

Checkout  the new shifter I built :) Sweet eh?  I can sense your jealousy though the internet. :)

Ok well I have to go do some shit or the spousal unit is gonna get pissed at me ....l8r

I have a lot of projects on the go at the moment which is fine as I handed my resignation into Century 21 last Wed. I believe that I will simply allow my real estate license expire as well. The entire experience not only ate up 3 years of my life but was very disillusioning. It is just another industry that is more intent on producing income for the participants then helping their clients. I know I shouldn't expect any better but I did.

So I am working on several websites with the intent of eventually making money from them. I'm also working under contract for a company called iCheck that does maintenance for banks and looking for other work as well.  In addition we are working to promote our fledgling cattery WildExpressions and fine tuning the website located at www.wildexspressions.ca.

In between all of that I continue to work on the Wubster. I have her up on blocks inside my temp garage right now and am tackling a few items. So far have dropped the the exhaust system which turned out to need a pretty complete rebuild. The manifolds were cracked at the head flanges and the pipes were rusted though at the muffler flanges. The $200 MIG I bought from crappy tire mat not be the best MIG out there but it was more then enough to allow me to rebuild them and payed for its self on that one job.

Next I tackled the air intakes. This potential problem was brought to light by a friend whose father used to own a local VW dealership. He mentioned the original air intakes did not bring in enough air to correctly cool  the stock engine. Well my engine is 15% larger then stock and my air intakes are 30% smaller.

I decided to mod them as part of the solution. The first thing I did was make a blade for my sawzall by MIG'ing together a couple of old blades. I did this cause I could

A couple of minutes with the grinder and the sawzall and we have this. As you can see my plan was to simply make the vents larger.  It took about 3 hours to do and I quickly found the biggest flaw in a cheap MIG. 

When people are buying cheap MIG's they tend to compare how thick a piece of metal they will weld in a single pass as a means of picking the best one. Folks thats a mistake. The problem is how thin a piece of metal will it weld. I had a bitch of a time as even at its lowest setting it would blow a hole though the steel every 10th or so weld. Major PITA and the reason I'm not posting pix of the metal work in progress. It looked like shit. 

This pic is after the 1st skim coat of bondo was put on and unfortunately there will be a bit of bondo.  I've worked on enough cars to know that most came from the factory with a shit load of bondo so I'm not to traumatized by having to use it. Plus this is a rat rod which means its the best I can do myself with the resources I have at hand. That said I'd still prefer to be able to show off metal skillz  like the big boys over at www.volksrods.com.

I will be installing a CHT (cylinder head temp) guage  this week and then I will know if I am getting enough air to the engine. I will also be instaling an alarm system so I can put the amps, LCD screen and head unit back in. Then I have a little finishing work before I do my first out door paint job. I haven't decided if I'm going to use chalk board paint or not but I am definitely airbrushing a skull where the VW logo normally goes on the nose and the flames will grow out of that. 

The key is that I'm having fun so far. 

I live in an odd part of Ontario and I mean that in the best way. It is probably the most populated rural area in all of Canada and lately its become a retirement area for city folk.

Yesterday there was an Eco tour which involved folks that had homes based on alternative methods such as straw bail, solar powered, living roofs, etc opening their homes up so strangers could wander though and observe their oddness first hand.

It was a stunning summer day, the 2nd such day we’ve had, and we decided to take the VWubster. This was our first extended trip in the Wubster and like all trips in a rat bus you feel like you are in a parade. People wave, honk and holler and you are kept so entertained that you don’t notice the VW bus smell, the shot muffler, hurricane level wind noise, the bad suspension or lousy seats. That turns out not to be the case if you head in to the deep boonies.

People still notice you, some smile, some wave, some cock their hat back and mutter under their breath, some reach for a big stick, but they all notice you.

Our first stop was the Indian reserve ( the rez ) and we stopped and grabbed a couple of cheeseburgers at a place called McDonuts. A little dent of a place squished into the end of a monolithic gas station, leather goods, cheap cigarettes, plastic bottled 4 day old whisky, we don’t need white men but your money is welcome places that have popped up all over the rez. (Personally I think all the power to them)

As we rolled up in the Wubster you could see all the heads in McDonuts swing our way. We got out and went inside and they all watched us intently from the corners of their eyes as we ordered our McBurgers with McCheese. We requested them to go please …..NOW!

Back on the road we were pleased to find the burgers were McFriggin amazing although there was a hair in mine and it didn’t look human …. off into the county we headed.

The county is a special part of the local rurals. We tease them up north that it is where the men are men and the sheep are nervous but in the county, well in the county everything is nervous.

As we pulled up to the first house I never said anything to the spousal unit but my ass was asleep. This home was off the grid completely relying on a combination of solar and wind. It had a sod roof, passive solar design, algae septic system and it was an example of how to do it if money wasn’t an object. I thought to my self that if I could afford that house I’d live in a Ferrari.

Driving back out their mile and half of driveway I felt impressed by the home as well as by the amount of feeling my ass had recovered.

I realized at that point that I had forgot to wire the heating vents closed when I was under the bus the previous day changing the oil.

It is odd how little heat a VW bus produces in the winter I thought as I watched a fly get too close to the heater vent go into a death spiral a second after its wings exploded into flames. The one thing that remains consistent summer or winter though is the volume of obnoxious fumes sucked from the engine compartment and conveniently sprayed into your face. I can see why those Germans are praised for their engineering prowess as this could not be accomplished without great effort. No wonder hippies loved these things. I hadn’t been this stoned since seeing Alice Cooper.

Forty minutes later we pulled off the road into the drive of the second home and I was greeted by two miles of meandering dirt road. It’s these moments that make you question the wisdom of lowering your bus 5 inches. After we parked and half slide, half fell out of the bus I was sure that the numbness in my ass was working it way towards my chest. If I’d had access to a computer I’d have googled the medical implications.

It was nice house and it had an amazing view from a bluff several hundred feet up that over looked the Bay of Quinte on Lake Ontario. They used a wind generator that was mounted on a tower that had to be at least 50 feet tall. There was a blind man on the tour and he suggested that being blind he had no fear of heights and that he would climb the tower. I told him it was great idea and started cleaning the lens on my camera but unfortunately the women glaring at me turned out to be his wife.

Off to the next home. We headed deep into the county now and I really couldn’t figure out where we were going. I pulled over after driving for 20 minutes and squinted at the map supplied by the tour organizers. What the hell is with people that photocopy photocopies that they then send in to someone to photocopy?

A breeze blew though the windows clearing the fumes long enough for my spousal unit to gain consciousness momentarily and she told me there was someone walking towards us. I’m 6 foot and the Wubster has had the roof chopped 5 inches so I have to lean down to see who and there is this slip of a young woman heading up a long driveway. She came over the passenger side and we smiled and said hi and she smiled and asked if we knew where to get any parts for her Beetle…. huh?

Turns out she had a broken VW Beetle. I really don’t think waiting for other VW’s to coast to a stop in from of your house is a good way to find parts but I refrained from saying so.

We explained who we were and what we were doing and she called her friend Peter over and he tells us he knows the people quite well and gives us directions.

The next house was pretty cool. It was a straw bail built by a young couple that raised bee’s, made organic soaps and candles and I’m sure grew their own herb …er herbs. It was my fav as it was something I could see me and the spousal unit doing, the house, not the herb … er herbs.

We spend some time with them and they gave us a tour and it was all very pleasant.

At this point it was getting late in the afternoon. The spousal unit had a headache from snorting fumes, I was having trouble breathing as the numbness spread into my lungs and we had no idea how much gas we had left so we decided to head home.

It was great day all in all but I have plans to drive the Wubster to Nova Scotia at some point which is 22 hours straight though so I’ve gotta makes some changes. We need some seats, suspension, door seals, window seals, and a new heating system. As soon as the spousal unit comes out of her coma and I recover from my ass transplant I’m gonna get right on it.

It’ good to be a hot rodder aint it?

 I have alway had mixed feelings about Michael Moore. It seems to me that he has evolved into the very thing he claims to fight and in fact a couple of film students made a documentary on their experiences in attempting to contact him.

Well that said I watched Sicko tonight. (I know its been out for over a year but I waited till it showed up for free on the dish ) To say I impressed would be an understatement of massive proportions. What a friggin brilliant movie. It was one of the most heart touching documentaries I've ever experienced and I highly recommend it to anyone.

So I am in the process of setting up the QuinteFSBO.com website with the intention of attacking the real estate game from a different angle. I'm tired of the bullshit of working from within a system that simply put, stinks!.  I am going to let my license expire and attempt to make a living from outside of one of the worst systems I've ever encountered. RECO and OREA are both,  in my opinion, self serving organizations who spend that majority of their time inventing problems and passing policies to justify their existence. 

 Time will tell how it works out but it is hard to imagine that I won't do better without their influence.

As I try and figure out how to make a living online I can't help but be a little pissed at companies that have solid products that could do extremely well if they would just get off their asses an take care of business. 

What is spawning these feelings at the moment is that I am looking for a script to base my For Sale By Owner  website and it is like beating your head against a wall. Every time I think I've found one I go to the forums to read message after message about how the script has been abandoned.

 If anyone knows of something drop me a line will ya.

Nothing interesting to report on my online endeavours. I am till in the development stages of the Wildexpressions.ca website but that should be finished this week and then I'll tackle quintefsbo.com as a prioity project. I have not bought any websites yet but that is coming as well.

Adam Soiui has qualified for the Olympic team. Congratulations Adam!  I've never met Adam but his father Steve was our lawyer for a number of years and always seemed to be the decent sort.  Nice to see a local make it big on the global map.

Trenton has made some great strides lately towards improving the downtown and the overall feel  of the community. There have been more improvements in the last 2 years then there were in the proceeding 20 years.

That said it appears they're going to kill off the power generating plant for lock one.  That is likely a mistake but as usual the decisions will be made without people like us ever getting to see any of the data. We have newspapers. Why the hell don't they print the numbers in plain english so we can all see if it is a good or bad project.