Current News
2002 News
2000 News
- Decmber 31st 2001: Got the front end aligned. The Cat then appeared with Ecco and Road Rage at Hartford's First Night as a S.A.N.E. event. We were parked out front of the Old State House for a couple hours.
- December 30th 2001: I was going to replace the inner tie rods (the guys who aligned The Cat said they were worn out) but found out that it's significantly easier (and only $20 more) to just replace the whole power steering rack (which includes new inner tie rods). So Christa and I did that, ended up having to replace the outer tie rods as well as the old ones were rusted onto the old PS rack.
Also fixed my screwup with the strut tower bushings. Fortunately it only took me 2 hours to redo the strut tower bushings, unlike the 9 hours it took the first time.
I discovered though while doing this that the garage on the corner cheated me and fucked with The Cat when they did the work to get her back on the road back in Feb of 2000. They chraged me an extra $100 because I had a "Variable Assist Steering' power steering rack (turns out the diffence in parts price is $10). Well they then ripped out all the electronics and such for the VAS rack and installed a regualr PS rack. They fucked with my car. They will never work on my car again ,adn I'm goign to tell everyone how they fucked up my car.
- December 25th 2001: Mom gave me a combination CD & Cassette playrer for The Cat for Christmas. I installed it and it sounds awsome!
- December 23rd 2001: I swapped the old horn relay in and reinstalled the heated windshield module. This fixed the problem. I think there must have been a short with those parts changed, but for now I'm going to call the heated windshield module my 'Magic Make Car Work Box'.
- December 22nd 2001: Replaced the battery (yes, again) and that seemed to fix the problem. But when we went out to get parts for Ecco, The Cat started having the same problem again.
- December 21st 2001: The Cat decided to not start in the bank parking lot on the way home from work today. I think it's one of the battery clamps being too worn out to clamp tightly enough, but it was dark and freezing cold and windy as hell and after fighting iwth it and having the wind blow the hood down nearly on my head several times I said fuck it and walked th couple blocks home.
Christa came by later (we were supposed to start work on Ecco) and we replaced the clamp. That and a jump were enough to get The Cat started, but on the drive home I had to shut the headlights off to have enough electricity to run the engine. SHe barely made it home.
- December 19th 2001: Installed the replacement steering column. Only now I have a grey steering wheel in an otherwise tan interior, at some point I'll swap the old one back on. I discovered though that I will have to replace the U-joint between the steering column and the power steering rack to get rid of the looseness in the steering.
- December 7th 2001: Installed dimmer switch. I was hopeing it would solve the problem of the dash lights not coming on when I turn the headlights on. It didn't.
- December 6th 2001: Got another junkyard steering column for The Cat, as well as a dimmer switch. Also discovered I'm going ot have to rewired one of the green bulbs for the 'cats eye' headlights as it seems to have stopped functioning.
- December 4th 2001: Attempted to pick up the station wagon the guy from the tire place was giving me. It didn't have any of the parts I needed and died four blocks from his place anyway. Oh well, no spare parts wagon for The Cat.
- December 1st 2001: Left he interior light on again and killed the battery again. Got a lift to Wal*MArt and exchanged it for a battery wiyth a higher amperage rating. This won't solve the problem of killing it if I leave the lights on, but will be better for if I run a lot of the added accessories and still want to be able to get the motor to crank.
- November 30th 2001: Got new front tires for The Cat, and a four wheel alignment. A clerk there has a '89 taurus wagon he wants to be rid of and is willing to give me if I come get it.
- November 29th 2001: Replaced The Cat's strut tower bushings. This ended up taking me from 9:30am - 6:30pm to do. Not only that but I forgot to put in a set of spacers so they are making a clunking noise and will have to be taken apart again to put the spacers in.
- November 23-25th 2001: Once again brought The Cat to Darkover (a science fiction convention in Baltimore MD). This is the fourth year I've gone and the third time I've brought The Cat. It was interesting how many people remembered her from previous years.
- November 23rd 2001: Stopped to pick up a friend on the way to Baltimore for the weekend and The Cat wouldn't start again. Dispite having started fine for a couple days and having started fine just 15min earlier. Exchanged the battery for a new one at Wal*Mart and that solved the problem.
- November 22nd 2001: Installed the oxygen sensors.
- November 20th 2001: Left The Cat's interior lights on after the work the previous night, and came out to a dead battery. Removed it and carried it down to the corner garage and had them recharge it, she then started fine.
- November 19th 2001: Discovered the climate control wasn't working properly not because of a faulty sensor, buit because the sensor had fallen down inside the dash and was reading the dashboard wiring temperature and not the passenger compartment temperature. Damaged the new steering colmun to the point of unusibility trying to drill out the key cylinder. Installed the rear picnic tray table. Also picked up new front struts & oxgen sensors as well as a tiny portable compressor, a replacement exhaust hanger, and a toy postal van for the dashboard.
- November 17th 2001: Left The Cat at a glass place to have the window installed, and went junkyarding with the owners of Ecco and Road Rage. There I aquired a Rear picnic tray table, a steering column, a front grille, an extra 15" rim & tire, and some sensors & relays for the dash. Picked up The Cat on the way home with her new window installed.
- November 16th 2001: Picked up a junkyard replacement 1/4 window for $65.
- November 11th 2001: The Cat is broken into in NYC. They smashed the passenger side rear 1/4 window and took a bag of dirty clothes and The Squirt Gun From Hell.
- Early November 2001: Recieved the check from the insurance company. I ended up with $909.27 that I can put towards repairs and upgrades for The Cat.
- October 28th 2001: The images of Carthedral have finally been recovered from the memory card and put on theHouston Caravan Picture Page. Also my Presentation at Artscape 2001 is also up.
- October 20th 2001: The Cat gets new 'PIXEL' vanity plates.
- October 11th 2001: Got an estimate for the repairs from the accident. A new rear bumper painted and installed will be $1194.29. Now I have to get the guy or his insurance company to pay for it.
- October 6th 2001: The Cat is rear-ended by and SUV while in Boston. Damages the rear bumper and scratches the 'CAUTION WEIRD LOAD' all to hell. Pictures in the New Pics section.
- September 2001: Over the course of a week or so did an oil change, replaced the plugs & plug wires, air filter and fuel filter. Also rewired the connectors for the radio as they had come loose and were causing a whistling & cracking noise to come fro the speakers.
- September 13th 2001: The old passenger door on The Cat is painted in honor of the 9/11 disaster.
- late August/early September 2001: Finished over the course of a couple days puttying the rusty areas on The Cat, covered them in the topcoat and reinstalled the trim. Also POR-15'ed, puttied and topcoated the new door.
- August 28th 2001: The Cat gets new front brake pads & rotors to fix the annoying vibration in the front end. All the parts were still under warrenty so I got them for free.
Also a friend was very frustrated and angry and needed something to damage, so I gave her a tire iron and pointed her to the rusty passenger door, she left quite a few dents.
- August 25th 2001: Another trip to the junkyard. This time I aquired a new passenger side door (has minor rust, but easily fixable with POR-15), two new non-scratched & yellowed headlights and a remote rear hatch release.
- August 24th 2001: Put a second coat of POR-15 on, and reinstalled the back bumper.
- August 23rd 2001: A very productive day. I removed the rear bumper, prepped and painted with the first coat of POR-15 the bottom of the driver's door, the top edge of the rear hatch, and two spots behind the back bumper. Also fixed a loose exhaust shield, fixed the loose side mirror, glued some more toy cars to the dash, installed the junkyard interior lights and fixed the sunroof which had been leaking again.
- August 16th 2001: Renewed The Cat's registration, and changed the color listed on it from 'BLACK' to 'BLACK & GREY' (there being no 'SILVER' option in the DMV's computers). I also aquired the paperwork for getting vanity plates for her. The plates I want in order of preference are 'THECAT', 'PIXEL', or 'BLERT'.
- August 15th 2001: Applied both coats of POR-15 to the areas I treated yesterday. Now all those areas need is to be puttied (to fill inthe rotted parts) and topcoated.
- August 14th 2001: scraped, wire brushed, and degreased the first couple areas of rust (both rear fenders, driver's rocker panel, bottom edge of rear hatch). Then applied the rust converter. Chemical reactions are cool.
- August 11th 2001: Went to the junkyard with the owners of Ecco and Road Rage. I scored a retractable rear cargo area cover (a dealer option I've always wanted) and a couple interior lights off an Aaudi that will be used as rear camping/reading lights.
We then went to Providence and hung out with a couple other artcar artisits at Freeloop Studios. Among other things, this was the first outing for S.A.N.E. the Society of Artcars in New England that we had just recently created.
- August 7th 2001: Got my shipment of POR-15 in the mail today, a really amazingly cool rust converter guaranteed to seal rust completely and prevent it from spreading. I'm planning to use it on the bottoms of the front doors, the rear hatch, the rear wheel wells, and one rocker panel. Those are the only rusty areas on The Cat, and in almost all cases the rust is very minor (not bad for a 10 year old 226K miles car that has spent it's whole life in the northeast). Well while getting a closer look at those areas I discovered the one exception to the 'minor rust'. The bottome edge of the front passenger door is rotted completely through. I can jab a screwdriver through the panel all along the bottom of the door. This is way beyond the POR-15's abilities, so I'm going to have to replace the door.
Also got a $236 speeding ticket for doing 80mph in at 65 zone.
- July 27-28th 2001: Brought The Cat to the Falcon Ridge Folk Fest. I had fun with her there, and swhe was well recieved. The only downside was someone trying to steal from the donations box, they failed though, miserably.
- July 24th 2001: Removed the splash page here and moved the main page from http://www.blert.net/thecat/index2.html to http://www.blert.net/thecat/, added links to carthedral.com and otherwise cleaned up The Cat's site.
- July 13th - 15th 2001: Artscape 2001. We caravaned down with Road Rage and Ecco, and the weekend was a blast. Spoke at the symposium, hung out late friday chatting, was in the CARavan and parade on saturday then displayed our cars late into the night, went to the Paper Moon diner with a group of artcar artists, stayed up far to late talking, displayed some more on sunday, then the long drive back to CT, getting in at 2am.
- July 5th - 12th 2001: Been working every free moment to get The Cat ready fopr artscape, and also to write my presentation for artscape as well.
- July 4th 2001: We appeared at teh Ancients and Horibles parade in Chepatchet RI along with Road Rage, Ecco and Sarah Clover's star car. IT was lots of fun, though the fact that the freeloopers (who had invited us there) didn't show confused us greatly.
- June 30th - July 2nd 2001: New motor mounts get put in by yars truely. THe original ones where even worse then I though. One was rusted badly, one was split almost in half, and one was cracked upen and leaking fluid. Now there is no more Clunk when I shift the transmission.
- June 25th 2001: The Cat gets new halfshafts, and an alignment and is back on the road again. Turns out she doesn't need the lower control arm, she does however need motor mounts.
- June 5th 2001: Updated the links page.
- May 15th 2001: Pictures from the Northeast to Houston ArtCar Caravan are up. Also pictures from The Cat's front end rebuild are also up. I removed a lot of old pictures, and cleaned up the New Pics and Old Pics sections.
- May 5th 2001: The Cat and I return to Connecticut. Her half-shafts have been clunking loudly for the entire drive back from Houston. So for now she is parked until I can afford the $500. or so it will take to replace them.
- April 22nd - May 3rd 2001:We're off for the Orange Show's Artcar weekend. For more details & pictures from the trip, visit the ArtCar caravan to Houston page.
- April 20th 2001: A friend surprised me by having the hood taken out and professionally painted. This is good. However I won't be able to put it no The Cat until Saturday afternoon, and we leave for Houston Sunday morning. This is bad.
- April 17th 2001: Well I figured today I'd polish out the hood, then get started in on masking in the cat face and transcribing quotes onto it. Well once I moved it from where I had painted it to where I was going to work on it I could clearly see in addition to the overspray marks I knew were there that there were places where I hadn't managed to cover the original silver paint! So I stood it back up and started to spray yet another coat on it. Well in addition to the overspray problems I've been having all along with the hood this coat managed to also run, fisheye and get dust in it (dispite wipeing it down with a tack-cloth which should have prevented that). And there is no way I have time to wait for this to dry then sand it down and try a fourth coat of paint. Not sure what I'm going to do now.
- April 16th 2001: Well Christa gave me an old CB radio of her father's to use on the trip, only thing was it was missing the microphone. I figured replacing it would be no big deal, I figured wrong. No one uses that style of microphone connectors anymore. Oh well. Went to Wal*Mart and found a CB radio for sale there for only $35. Piceked up the CB and some silver spray paint to repaint the front grille & patch rear window. I actually managed to repaint the grille tonight, the window has to wait until the next day of nice weather.
- April 15th 2001: Got the 'cat's eye' headlights redone yesterday, also put the chrome fangs on the front bumper. Installed the new side mirror, put the bicycle bell on it, and transfered all the quotes. Damn but The Cat looks good. Of course the old hood on her looks really bad now. Oh, and I sanded down and repainted the hood yesterday as well. I'll see tomorrow how it looks.
- April 13th 2001:Today was a banner day for working on The Cat. I decided today was the day to install some of the parts I've been working on. So first I ripped to old fender and bumper off. (It takes a certain sort of mindset to look at a car that looks like this and honest think 'Oh good, I'm making progress) then I fixed some faulty wiring I discovered while taking the lights off, and scraped and painted the rust I discovered where the bumper bolts on. Then I installed the new fender & bumper, taking forever to get them lined up to my satisfaction. Added the lower trim to the fender, hooked up the turn lights on the bumper, and reinstalled the headlights (including putting on the replacement turn signal). The Cat's front end was much improved. At the car wash I removed the old tattered vinyl 'cat's eyes' from the headlights, and gave The Cat a through washing. Arriving home I waxed the portions of her that I've already redone the quotes on, and recopied the quotes from the old fender onto the new one. Because I wasn't putting some stuff from the old fender onto the new one, I fit all the quotes from the old fender on just the upper half of the new one!
Tomorrow's plan is to redo the 'cats eyes' headlight covers, add chrome fangs to the front bumper, and get the hood sanded down so I can put the second coat on it. I also might be able to install the side mirror.
Altogether thought The Cat looks much improved now, from the way she used to look. No more cracked & patched bumper w/missing turn light. No more bent, bondo'ed, rusted, and chipped fender. And no more missing turn signal lense (though I don't know how long this one will last, I've replaced that lense at least five times at this point) - April 5th-12th 2001: Been doing a lot of various stuff at various times to get The Cat done in time for Houston. Among them is replacing the brake pads on the passenger side front rotor (and finding & repairing a brake fluid leak I hadn't previously realized I had). Also I've repainted the 'CAUTION WEIRD LOAD' back bumper and redoing the text on her (I've finished almost all of the top half of her [except the hood]), I've also replaced the 'TAURUS' emblem on the back hatch with lettering that says 'THE CAT'. A new bicycle bell has been located & installed on the side mirror. Also the replacement fender, bumper, and side mirror are painted & ready to be installed, the hood is currently awaiting a final sanding & a second coat of paint.
- April 4th 2001: Replaced a snapped emergency brake cable, The Cat's e-brake is now working again for the first time in a year or so. I also did some more touching up of the outside text, and have been working the last few days on prepping the new panels for paint. I don't know yet if they will be done in time for Houston, but I'm going to try.
- March 31st 2001: Went to a pick-your-part junkyard in Blackstone MA today. Picked up a replacement hood, driver's fender, front bumper, driver's side mirror, driver's side turn signal, and a neat change tray/cupholder to put in the empty spot in the das where the CD player used to be. Once I get the parts painted and installed all visible damage from The Cat's past accidents will be gone. The new hood has also been modified to hold the new hood ornament.
- March 30th 2001: The Cat gets an overdue oil change.
- March 24th 2001: did some cleaning up around the site, removed some oldpics that weren't worth keeping, and reduced the side of a lot of other images of faster loading.
- March 23rd 2001: Fixed the intermittant problem with the starter, also (hopefully) fixed the leak in the rear hatch and got the rear defroster & wiper working again.
The big news though is that The Cat and I are going to Houston!! We've been offically accepted to the Houston ArtCar Show next month. This is without a doubt the BIGGEST artcar event on the planet. I'll be caravaning down there with Christa and Ecco. This of course means I have to get some serious work done on The Cat before then, she needs:- new front 1/2 shafts, and a lower control arm.
- the rear brake pads replaced.
- all the quotes on the outside of her redone, they've faded badly this winter.
- a new hood, driver's side front fender, and front bumper. The current ones are rather battered, and the paint is badly pitted on the repaird area's of the hood and fender.
- the new winged-cat hood ornament installed!
- the 'shattered mirror' roof finished, or at least done a lot more (aside from asthetics, this will also help keep her insides cooler.
- some odds 'n ends electrical parts in the dash replaced to correct some nagging problems.
- the headlight covers redone as the current ones are badly tattered.
- The front driver's side turn signal replaced & rewired, the current one was broken during one of the blizzards this winter.
- the bicycle bell on the side mirror replaced, the current one is three years old, and almost completely rusted.
- the patched rear window repainted, the paint on it and the lego plate attached to it are both flaking badly.
- the 'caution weird load' needs to be repainted on the back bumper, this time with real reflective paint.
- make the curtain for behind the front seats, and modify the other curtains slightly.
- aquire and install a C.B. radio, as my other one has completely given up the ghost.
- oh, and add more quotes...
Now that I write that all out, um... eep! Looks like I've got a heck of a lot of work ahead of me. If you can help out with any of the items or work needed outlined above, please Contact me, it would be greatly apreciated. - March 22nd 2001: My dear friend Christa, owner of Ecco Gave me an Amazing gift. A custom cast & chromed winged-cat hood ornament. It's amazing and will look great adorning the hood of The Cat.
- March 8th 2001: I was able to borrow some money for the brakes. She needed a new caliper & rotor on the front driver's side (yes, the side I put a new rotor on this past summer). The wild part is the rotor was about $25, but the caliper was only $12! If I had known it was so cheap I would have replaced that this summer too. I managed to mangle a lug nut on the other side of The Cat, so I counldn't get teh wheel off to put new brake pads on that side, I'm going to have to bring her to a garage and have them get it off.
- March 6th 2001: The Cat's brakes go out! Fortunately it was only a few blocks from the house, adn I was able to limp home.
- Feb 16th 2001: Put pictures of The Cat buried almost to the roof in snow over in Silly Stuff.
- Jan 19th 2001: Asshole of the Week Award. Someone from Dark Side Tattoos decided The Cat would make a great free billboard for their company, and stuck one of their stickers on her without asking.
- Jan 16th 2001: Installed a new horn in The Cat, she now *meows*!
