My car, back together at last!

Well, I have good news and bad news. First the good news... my car is
now back on the road, and I night say that we did a mighty fine job of
putting it back together, even if it was a little tedious. There are
only a few little problems with the way my car went back together...
a) the digital clock isn't lighting up at all, I think maybe dad
overlooked connecting it, or maybe I have to set it before it will
display anything?
b) the radio wont work. It shows a blank screen, and wont let me enter
the security code. I can hear static going through all the speakers.
c) the lights on the radio go dim when you make the lights behind the
speedo go bright, and the inverse happens when you turn the speedo
lights down low.
So overall, I really cant complain.. the heater now works, and I have
some nice new underlay under my carpet. And i suppose I have a watch if
i ever need to know the time. Music would be nice, but that can be fixed
later.
Now that I got my car fixed, my computer has decided to be naughty. For
no apparent reason, the USB has decided to stop working, so thats my
next project.

the car carpet hung out to dry.  

the carpet was removed for drying.  

the passenger seat... feeling rather cold and alone after being moved out of bruce 

all the trim and rear seats needed to be removed to take the carpet out to dry it.  

Bruce without seats 

The replacement heat exchanger 

the heat exchanger: where all the problems began 

Another day...

Well, I'm enjoying my little break from uni pressure, with no design
work there is really only dynamics questions to work on. I spent a good
part of 4 hours on them today! and still I am not up to date.
Yesterday afternoon, before Dad and I headed off to Grandma and
Grandpa's house to pull my car apart, I applied for a credit card. I
know... Its exciting! I applied for one with a $500 limit, and they
rebate you 1% of your total bill each month! So that means if I spend
$1900 on it each year, I wont have a annual card fee. (that works out to
be $37 a week) My plan is to use it for everyday purchases. Anyways, I
hope I get it, it will be handy.
This afternoon I spent the afternoon with Shane, we didn't do anything
too thrilling, just hunted for DVD box sets and screen protectors for my
palm. I was most annoyed to see that they don't carry them in my size at
officeworks. Shane very kindly drove me home, and after dinner I plan to
work on my car... this time maybe put it back together.
-Andrew

Now what?? oh dear. 

mmm.... dashboard 

As you can see, everything is gutted from my car! I had no idea how much crap was between me and the engine! 

Before we could take out the dash, we had to undo the steering column.  

Unfortunately, we decided that the only way to get at the heat exchanger would be to completely remove the interior of my car... Thats right kids, the whole dashboard! 

A couple days ago my car started leaking coolant everywhere in the cabin. Dad had a look, and decided that we could fix it cheaper than the people at the service centre could.. (I should have known then that this was a secret code for *there will be alot of time spent in labor to get to the part*) Well, here we are, Dad, and my little brother, Phil. Looking for a easy way to get at the heat exchanger. 

Who's that little rascal? hehehehe 

This is the upshot of that whole door handle assignment. I handed it in today, after pulling an all nighter. I did the rendering on 3DSmax, and I didnt think i did too badly, considering I am a newbie to this whole thing. The teachers liked the assignment, so thats the main thing. Last weekend I went away on a church camp, which was in Mt Eliza, near where mum used to work. It was the best weekend ever.... this weekend is going to be pretty calm in comparison. Tonight I am planning on going to have some after work drinks with CJ and his mates from work. Then we are going back to CJ's place for dinner. Should be nice, then i will sleep and try and recover from my stupid all nighter i pulled for that stupid assignment. Saturday I have work in the morning, then I dont know whats happening in the afternoon, maybe in the evening we might go out clubbing with John and Jeff, but I have to work in the morning on Sunday, so I dont know if it will happen. Anyways, thats pretty much all thats happening my end of the world. Ohh... and a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Ally.. :P 

Door handles

Well, I am back at University, and everything is back into full swing.
The first design project is to design a door handle, which at first
glance seems simple enough... but don't be fooled. It is actually quite
a challenge to design a handle that can be cast out of metal so that it
can be used on both sides of the door with very little or no machining.
Concepts and a detailed drawing of the lock mechanism are due in on
Thursday, and I haven't really started! I guess that can be something
for tomorrow, I finish Uni at 11.30am on Wednesdays, and my only other
plans are to go and see a play in the evening... that should leave
plenty of time for design work.
This semester, one of our lecturers started out our first lecture
saying; "This is machine dynamics, its very easy to fail. This is a very
hard subject." I was scared, he said the f word! Fail. Not just that,
but that it was quite easy to fail. After I recovered from my initial
shock, I made a vow to keep up with all the work for this class. (I
think I promise myself this at the start of every semester, lol) I went
and bought the textbook and I did all the week 1 problems before my
tutorial (I felt square having done everything he was trying to explain)
Anyways, so far, so good, I worked on week 2 questions after Uni today,
so hopefully I will be able to spread out my workload a little bit this
semester.
No more last second lab reports and no more late nights! I am going to
be an angel and goto bed early every night. I'm trying to keep my
weekends pretty clear of homework, so that I can have a social life too. lol
Speaking of things other than Uni, a couple of days ago my computer
decided that it wanted to stop working. It was still having issues with
overheating, so I pulled the heat sink off to have a closer look at what
was happening. Mark helped diagnose the problem over the phone, my
thermal grease had dried up! I reckon its because when I moved my
computer to Kelly's house while I was house sitting, the heat sink must
have come loose a little. Without full contact with both the processor
and the heat sink, my thermal grease started to dry up and get baked
onto the CPU. I cleaned the area, and applied some new thermal grease,
which cost $20 for a grand total of 3.5 grams. I guess it could have
been worse, if I had to replace my CPU I would have forked out upwards
of $250! Anyways, the new thermal grease seems to be working even better
than the Intel supplied grease, making my PC quieter and cooler. Thats a
relief!
I cant think of any other news, ooh... Grandma on my mums side had a
fall and went to hospital, so keep her in your prayers.
There was a youth planned service at church on Sunday, which I had
worked on. It went quite well, and we even had a new member come along.
His name is Toby, and he's almost 21, his birthday is just after mine. I
also offered to take him to Glen Waverly's evening service, which he
came to, so I hope he keeps coming and gets something out of it.