Kite Photography

We got to spend a portion of our holiday weekend visiting some friends at Fiesta Island.  Since I'm neck-deep in my camper-conversion project, I didn't do a very good job of prepping the van for a day at the beach.  On the plus side, I did bring my kites and new carbon fiber KAP rig, so I was finally able to get some aerial shots with my little $40 Canon SD450 from Craigslist.

From FiestaIsland-2010-07-03

I used the Canon Hack Developers Kit (CHDK) running a script called "UltraIntervalometer" to run a timelapse program, taking a shot about once every 3 seconds. I just launched the kite and tied it off, then started the script and walked down the kite line a little ways and attached the rig, then let the kite fly! This was just my opening experiment, so I didn't spend very long taking shots or changing the aim point. I built my Picavet suspension rig in about an hour from some scrap carbon fiber, so its totally static, (making it very light!) but it means I'd have to walk down the line to change the aim. My biggest lesson learned was that I'll need to spend more time with the actual camera settings. Shooting mostly beige sand left the majority of my photos a bit washed out. I'll work on that. Read More...

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Major Step forward....

My "Astrolander"/Zombiemobile project has just taken a major step forward.  This past weekend I flew to Vancouver and picked up a GTRV-equipped Safari donor van.

A few weeks ago, I found a high-mileage and beatup GTRV Safari on craigslist. 380,000 km (236k miles), and what the seller generously described as an interior "in need of TLC", but the top shell, tent, and hardware are all in excellent shape. Moreover, it was selling for an incredibly low price, cheap enough to justify buying the van just for the parts. Van was in North Vancouver, BC, but the owner was hesitant to deal with me, he thought I was a scammer! Once I explained that I would pay his asking price because the top shell, tent, and other hardware alone were worth that much to me, he agreed to sell. Then it was just a race to get my passport renewed and hope that nobody else stumbled across the advertisement and thought it was as good a deal as I did! Of course, any good road trip has an adventure story.  Here's mine in Reader's Digest:

Finally flew into Vancouver last Sunday, took the SkyTrain and SeaBus to North Vancouver and met the seller. We looked over the van, covered some of the problems, but confirmed that the pop-top and tent are in excellent shape. Concluded the deal, including purchasing a 1-day BC insurance package, and I head for the border.

Border line was massive, almost 2 hours just to get to the kiosk so I can get pulled into secondary to start the process of importing the vehicle to the USA.

First CBP officer at secondary didn't know as much about vehicle importing as the CBP website (and thus me), so we wasted some time with him telling me I couldn't import the van because the speedo had kph on top. (!!?!) After I insisted that the van had all the proper labelling (CMVSS and EPA labels, etc.) and that it was an HS-7, part-2B import, he handed me off to a second CBP officer who within five minutes confirmed that all was well and I was on my way.  It helped that the van was actually built in Minnesota (for the Canadian market, but still), since there was no duty to be paid.  The EPA sticker even confirms California-emissions compliance, so this made things much smoother.

Made my way into Bellingham, WA and stumbled into the driveway of my friend Tom, already besieged by the Sportsmobile of fellow internet denizen Brian. Hey, Pop-Top Party!! After comparing Tom's van to mine and the minor evolution of the implementation, we had some decent beer and some grub, all in all a too-short visit.  Its worth noting that though Tom and I had been conversing for over a year at this point, we'd never met in person.  The internet has truly changed the world.

I have to stop here to thank Tom, Jen, and Brian for such a warm welcome and their fabulous hospitality. By-far the best aspect of the trip was meeting you all and thinking forward about the next visit when we can actually enjoy your beautiful surroundings!!

We picked up my co-pilot Kevin from the Bellingham airport, gathered a few supplies, and aimed the van south.  By 11pm, we were on our journey, and here's where we started finding some of the "features" of this wonderful machine. First, the instrument lighting in the dash was out. Lots of fun trying to avoid a speeding ticket in an unfamiliar machine on the very dark northern stretch of the I-5. With the creative use of the map lights, my EDC Fenix E01 penlight, and/or my ipod, we were able to keep tabs on instrumentation until dawn. Other "features": Door locks are broken in an inconvenient combination of ways (lock cylinder on driver's side, power lock switch on passenger side, etc.); water temp gauge reads 40c constantly; no cruise control; and a few other niggles.

We went straight through, stopping only for bio breaks, fuel, and breakfast. By 10am we were far enough into California that it started to get hot. Real hot. The little thermometer on my REI zipper-pull said 100+. Before 11am. Oh, and it turns out the van's AC doesn't work either. Crap. Oh well, windows down, we soldier on. The upside of our late departure from Bellingham was that we had missed any sort of traffic going through pretty much all of Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. The downside is that we hit central California in the middle of one super-hot day. 105-110°F in Sacramento, Bakersfield, etc.

By 4:30pm, we were at the base of the Grapevine. Citibank's Fraud Detection division helpfully declined my card at this fuel stop, because they'd noticed what they thought were "too many" gas purchases. Um, I'm on a roadtrip back from Canada, hello? The guy starts reading off charges in Washington, Oregon, Northern California.... oh, all moving south. Duh. Sorted out that little issue and back on our way.

For most of the afternoon, it seemed the Water-temp gauge had been "waking up". It had slowly begun to register, then read near the middle of the gauge. As we got into the serious climb of the grapevine, it started to move more quickly toward the top end of the gauge. I wasn't sure whether I could trust it, but figured discretion was wise so we took a casual pace up the hill. On the descent the gauge settled back to just south of the middle, so we pressed on. With a last-minute move into the heavy-truck lane, we narrowly missed getting stuck in a massive backup due to a recent accident where the passenger and truck routes of the grapevine rejoin, then had clean sailing all the way through LA. Somehow we'd timed the drive to miss EVERY bit of rush hour traffic on the entire west coast of America.

We entered into San Diego proper by 9pm, dropped off my copilot, and headed for home. Stopped at the store to get some milk, and then.... crank but no fire.

Yep, after 1400+ miles, two countries, three states, and 22 hours, the van has died within two blocks of my house. Oh well, it could have been much, much worse.

I walked home, took a shower and went to bed. The next morning I got up and started trying to debug the van. After half a day of checking the easy stuff, the manager of the grocery store who's parking lot the van had died in got sort of testy about me crawling around the van checking things, so I just had it towed to my friend's shop. Getting it running would have been convenient, but as it stands is not strictly necessary since the donor wasn't expected to survive the transplant procedure anyway!

Next steps? Start taking pictures and pulling parts. We'll probably start this weekend.

One last note, I have to say that this acquisition is also a personal milestone for me. By my calculations, and including my wife's car (which is titled in my name, so its fair), this brings my aggregate horsepower to 1022. Yes, I've entered four digits, and I now have an aggregate horsepower equivalent to a Bugatti Veyron plus a Honda 250cc dirtbike. This is short-lived of course, as I still plan to shed one "real" car from the fleet and the donor will take a trip to the scrapyard as soon as I've stripped it for useful goodies, but still...
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And so it begins...

Some of you may know that I've been in the research phase of a new vehicle project for quite a while. Using the excellent resources of the Expedition Portal forums, I've been scheming on the most affordable way to build a 3-4 passenger Overland/Expedition Camper. This should be the start of a series of posts as I being the transformation from8-passenger midsize van to what a friend has dubbed an "Astrolander".

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Baby's First Hack

Even before Kimberley and I knew we were having a baby, I knew I was looking forward to being that "cool dad" who can build anything for his Kids. Science projects and Halloween costumes are going to be epic in our household in the years to come. I've always enjoyed hacking for myself, and I always knew I'd end up hacking for my kids, but this little project sort of sneaked up on me. Its appropriate that this "Baby's First Hack" fits perfectly in the nature of most good hacks: It was a simple fix for a problem that needed solving only because of limitations in the original design of a product.

As Kimberley and I were starting to move into the nursery after all the paint and wainscoting was finished, she ran into a problem installing her preferred mobile, the Tiny Love "Sweet Island Dreams". She preferred this one because it played real classical music, recorded with a real orchestra, not dumbed down MIDI or electronic noise. However, our new crib has a very wide cap rail (click first pic to see), and there wasn't enough "bite" in the mounting system to attach the mobile. Examining the mount, I could immediately see where the manufacturer could have solved this problem for us by making the mount for the threaded post more adjustable (a few more molded in slots for the "lock" in the back of the plate would have sufficed), but as is so often the case, this was apparently designed as a "one size fits some" solution.

Enter Baby's First hack. I cut a mounting plate from some 3/16" aluminum sheet I had in my shop that allowed me to drop down the mounting spindle to allow the mobile to fit over our wide crib rail. The resulting mount and its clearly Autobot-logo outline was purely a bonus. At least my daughter will grow up to fight Decepticons.

The most complicated part of this whole mini-project was getting the mounting flange off the back of the mobile. Everything in this toy is secured with a weird triangular anti-tamper screw that I've never seen before. It gave me an excuse to finally buy the 100piece anti-tamper bit set I've been eyeballing, and fortunately one of the tri-wing bits included gave me enough leverage to remove the screws, even though it wasn't the correct bit.

After that, it was simply a matter of screwing the mounting spindle to my new mount, then attaching that where the locking flange used to be on the back of the mobile. Since this mount covers the battery compartment (and will thus need to be removed for battery changes), I replaced the tamper proof screws with some Phillips-head screws from my collection of parts removed during previous hacks. In a rare move, I went ahead and discarded the tamper screws rather than save them, as they're a subtle affront from the manufacturer. Remember the Hacker's creed: If you can't open it, you don't own it. Anti-tamper fasteners are just another way that manufacturers try to trap you as a consumer. Devices are designed to be hard to repair or modify so that you have to buy another one as soon as it ceases to meet your needs.

As you can see from this side shot, I've increased the vertical bite of the mount by about 1-1/4". In case it isn't obvious, the threaded spindle passes between two vertical slats in the crib, and is then secured with the giant plastic wingnut. Combined with the flange at the top, this provides a surprisingly secure yet easy to install mounting system. What probably isn't obvious in the first photo (mounted on the crib) is that I've chamfered the edges on the plate and sized the mounting screws for the spindle so that they're flush to the plate, so this is nice and smooth and baby-safe!

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Weekend Project: BMW Double VANOS rebuild

Double-wha? Simply put, VANOS (Variable Nockenwellen Steuerung) is BMW's name for their fancy oil-driven system for variable valve timing in their 6-cylinder engines. Oil is pumped into pistons which move the camshafts fore and aft to hit slightly different cam profiles, thus increasing engine performance and fuel economy. The problem? Due to a failure of materials design, basically every VANOS engine from 1992 to 2006 will eventually develop leaks that prevent the pistons from functioning correctly. If you're under warranty or willing to spend the money, they will happily fit a rebuilt VANOS assembly with the same design flaw and the same failure mode. A full explanation can be found at Beisan Systems, written by the clever bloke who figured out the problem and the solution for his own car, only to be told by BMW that "no further development" would be done on the design.

Luca, one of the members of the local San Diego BMW Z Car Club (SDBMWZCC) had done the research into this problem for his own stable of BMWs. Luca is an awesome shadetree mechanic, and I've never seen him do something half-assed, so if he was going to fix his wife's Z4, it was going to be done right, which meant fitting the upgraded O-rings and Teflon seals from Beisan Systems into the VANOS pistons. And in a display of car-club-generosity unmatched in many months, he also organized a group purchase to bring the price down the price of the parts, then hosted a clinic at his condo where several other Z-owners could turn their own wrenches under his guidance!

With a Sunday appointment, I readied my tools and headed off to the clinic. None of this work is terribly difficult, but quite a few parts have to be stripped back from the head in order to get the VANOS assembly off, including the valve cover, spark coils and harness, and fan. Since the cars are low, this isn't exactly easy, but this process is really good for getting familiar with the more intimate parts of the engine, and I got my first really good look at how the VANOS system interacts with the cam shafts.

Once removed, we drained the VANOS (onto a diaper for easy cleanup, seen here), disassembled and cleaned it, then reassembled it. The actual upgrade takes only a few minutes, its just too bad that you have to spend several hours pulling things off the engine to get to it. After the new seals were fitted to the pistons, everything gets reassembled and refitted, re-torqued, and replaced.

Sadly, getting this intimate with the Z did reveal some of her other flaws, namely some crusty guff near the thermostat housing that indicates a coolant leak. I'll be dealing with that next, but I'll be passing that one off to a professional because I lack the tools and patience to deal with draining, refilling and correctly purging the cooling system on a BMW.

And finally, after a test drive, I can report that yes, the fix was worth the effort and makes a noticeable difference. There is a noticeable increase in "urgency" from the engine, especially at the lower revs. The transition into VANOS can be felt but is subtle, but overall everything feels more powerful now. Most importantly, I know I won't have to look forward to doing this again in 20k or 30k miles as I would with the OEM seals.

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