Did the Seventies even happen or what

New shiny thing is in, ran car and no leaks, gonna let it sit over night and make sure nothing drips, then figure out what they did to the skid plate tomorrow, would leave it off for a bit, but this pan has a plastic plug where a level sensor could, would rather have that protected.

Stupid pan is out! The one tried to strip on me and I had to hammer the bit into it, but it's out finally. This has not helped my opinion of how "wonderful" German engineering is......

Tools found, that was a pain in the ass since the proper tool places aren't open Sunday. Also found, food, so now is lunch.

And here's why I hate VW, and German cars in general, two bolts you can't go straight at and partially hidden, why?!?! Good thing I have 1/4 swivels

Fix shit time

Some real car stuff, my niece brings me the most interesting things, brand new oil pan like 3 months ago, landlord told her today her car has a leak, yes, yes it does. Apparently the shop that put the pan on told her they "bent the skid plate up so it wouldn't hit again." Well.....

Some more pics to show off how cool this thing looks!

And it's complete! Some stickers are a bit wonky but that's not the fun of this for me, it was the build itself. The hood on the back also has a neat little hinge as well that holds it up nicely when you open it!

Bag 5 done, one more to go! More fun moving parts too, I figured that hinge sitting loose on one end had a reason, and it's actually a quite smooth little door hinge!

I did bag 4 because this is how I'm dealing with con crud, this time it's not a lie to say no new moving parts, but it's starting to look like a real car now!

Bag 3 of bits has been placed! No new fun moving bits but it did add a bit of livery, also seats!

Finished bag 2 because why not? And now it has steering! Not sure why the mechanism is that high, but as the rest of it comes together I'm sure it will make sense.

Finished bag one, very fun to build since it's not overly simple, especially since this appears to be the engine, stuff like this tickles my brain in all the right ways!

Many days off left after VF, feel kinda like hell because I ran myself ragged at the con, no real responsibility for the day, so time to chill with this I guess!

I finally have a working inductive heater again! Only been 5 and a half years since the last one melted.....

Those control arms needed to be done, the left ball joint has a torn boot and the right isn't sitting correctly after I tried to swap them awhile back and the new ones just popped back in by hand, so I had to pop the old one back in. Sadly that wasn't the clunk I was after....

Sky jail again..... I think this little shit just enjoys riding on the car go up machine.

Frustration.... The fog lights I bought for the Escape have glass lenses, I specifically ordered ones with plastic because the OEM glass ones got shattered by rocks. They were also 25 bucks a piece and the OEs lasted close to 20 years, so I guess I'll send it and see.

Fixed! Hopefully! I can put a good bit of pressure on it and it doesn't budge, probably because it has 4 staples melted into it now XD Was a bit more of a pain than I thought, not as easy to get the staples in where they needed to be. Also pictured, other parts :3

New thing time, now I can actually fix the driver side visor in the Escape properly! And many other plastic things!

Bruce Springsteen: “ICE should get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”

Organization! Anything with an LCD or that may freeze gets brought in for the winter, up until now it just sat on the floor in a pile, now it doesn't! Very satisfying :3

"What do we do with 20,000 unemployed ICE agents afterwards?"

One thing I forgot, my push to get back into guitar, having bought my acoustic so I can bring it up for work, and even to work. I can actually mess around a bit now and hope to get to a point in 2026 where I can actually play songs on my acoustic and electric, not just my bass.

I don't post much but as 2025 winds down I wanna do a recap of the year. Overall it was a pretty stressful year with all the stuff happening in the world, while I personally stayed in a pretty comfortable space I do have friends from all over that I was concerned about.

I put my Lego Gameboy @coffeespots.ca got me for Christmas together, been a moment since I've gotten to put together Lego and it was a lot of fun, never done a set like this and it had some really cool features and Easter Eggs hidden inside!

Accidentally realized a nice bonus feature of the built in tuner of the acoustic guitar I bought, it can be used to see any note played and thus is useful for learning what each note on the fret board is, as well as if a chord is being played properly.

Something different, decided to do some maintenance on the snowblower after it refused to start when it snowed. New spark plug, oil changed, checked tire pressures (what pressure?), finally replaced the broken sheer pin properly, and lubed the auger.

Someone finally gets to sleep outside again. Power steering feels better, exhaust leak is as sealed as I'm gonna bother with (that metal is pretty much see through), and I even got around to replacing the stripped diff plug. Still have to center the steering but that's purely aesthetic.

New struts after many years of meaning to do them, ball joints were a no since the new ones just slide in, thankfully the one I pressed out wasn't damaged and still pressed in, so I just put it back, still annoying, steering does feel better though, not gonna worry about them.

I feel like I might as well just give Rock Auto access to my bank account at this point, decided I'll do both ball joints, and I've wanted to do the struts for years, considering I just did the sway bar links and most of the work to remove the struts anyways, I decided to bite the bullet.

On top of my vehicle deciding to become an attention whore, my dad's Ranger that I've been driving in the meantime, that I recently replaced the water pump in and fixed an issue with the doors, now has a vibration I think is a u-joint and now an airbag light, bleh....

Thought I'd have the little shit out of sky jail today but the steering still feels kinda stiff after doing the power steering pump and high pressure line, though it has felt kinda like that for a bit, turns out the right side ball joint is kinda sticky, back to Rock Auto I guess.....

*Replaces the horribly rusted and several times repaired section of exhaust finally* *Next section of exhaust* I fucking hate cars.....

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A polite bigot is a bigot nonetheless. A true warrior knows that courteous words do not dilute the poison, but only serve to conceal it until it has spread. Civility in the service of hate deserves no polite response.

Furries, do NOT buy this game if it is using any of that generative ai BS. Even if it is "just a little". This is how they slowly add it in and make it more accepted, and they WANT that. THAT is their plan.

Forgot to post that I got the valve covers back in and a lot of the wiring reconnected, sadly much of my day yesterday was spent on boring training and driving north for work, so I had to tell my productive mode brain no more.....

Oh hey, I'm in this and I don't like it XD

Timing cover is back on and the motor mount has been installed again, that was the goal because I didn't really wanna leave it supported by a jack for an extended period of time, kind of annoying that unlike the 2.3 inline 4 version, the 3.0 doesn't have anywhere to support from up top.

In contrast to the unbendable and incredibly brittle old seals XD

One of the "rubber" seals came out in pieces, it feels more like hard plastic than rubber, I may have been onto something......

Timing cover finally out and it's telling from how much oil leaked out from the bolts how bad these seals are, they're about as flat as a flat fuck on flat fuck Friday. Also unsure if I may have a leak at the power steering pump, but that's a later issue.

Happy Halloween, aka National Put a Hat on a Ferret Day!

I love having to modify new tools to make them work, that but that has been ground to hell is meant to go into the piece under it, guess what it didn't do :3 The other end for installing the balancer fit just fine, for some reason this side was 0.020" thicker.....

It’s his day.

Put this little shit in sky jail to finally get some work done so I can start driving it again instead of my dad's Ranger. Only broke one fastener pulling the exhaust cross over, too bad it was for the cross member under it :3 Yay for making my life harder! Also ran into some parts to replace.

Was starting to feel stressed out and needed to do something that felt like I was making progress, ended up finally cleaning up in my garage, apparently there was something under all the crap on my various boxes. Didn't manage to find my missing inflator gauge though, which is annoying.