Top 10

Yet another compilation of the best car chase movies of all time had me thinking of the team today.
Blah blah, lots of lists, lots of cool movies. But in the number 2 spot: Ronin.
I quote, in part (emphasis mine):

#2 Ronin (1998) | Video Clip

Although it will never be regarded as Robert de Niro's best dramatic performance, 1998's Ronin doesn't land on our list for its dialogue. In unbelievable realism, viewers are treated to chase scenes with sport sedans such as a BMW M5, Peugeot 406 and, perhaps most famously, an Audi S8.

....

There are few actors that can capture the mixture of terror and exhilaration involved in a car chase quite like De Niro, while Jean Reno is the only actor who could make driving a Peugeot an exercise in steely manhood. Director John Frankenheimer pretty nearly perfected the art of filming gritty car chase sequences in 1966's Grand Prix.

Whew! I'm anonymous so this doesn't count against my 15 minutes of fame.

Jonny Lieberman from speedsportlife.com and Judge extraordinaire for 24 Hours of LeMons interviewed us about our adventures in Peugeot Hell. Like Dante before us, we gave him an earful.

Click.

However, he forgot my name by the time he posted it. Perhaps he'll also forget about all the crap wrong with our car when he's Judging it at Goin' for Broken.


-Sean "Other Guy" Green

Aunt Bea lives on!

So we got a call on our answering machine last week.

"Hi, this is Russell from Spokane, I think you're the previous owner of my truck, I found some... well, it's financial information in it, would you please give me a call back? I have a few questions about the truck"

Yikes. We thought we got every last scrap of paper out of it before signing over the title to the insurance company. Whatever did he find? What questions does he have on the truck? Is this possibly a scam? Well, after several attempts, we finally made contact the other day.

Aunt Bea definitely lives on with a salvage title, she is not being parted out. She's *sniff* living on a farm in her dotage! No really, this guy's brother found Aunt Bea at a local auto auction for apparently a good enough deal that he bought the truck sight unseen. He wanted to know the mechanical details, what had been worked on recently and so on. Sean was able to make this Spokane farmer a very happy man by telling him what a new truck it was under that poor smashed body, new engine at 60,000 miles, new tranny at 70,000, how strict we were at taking care of that truck because we relied on it to tow us over many mountain passes. So, that Silverado is now a "plow truck" ... sounds like a nice good working life. :) We even told him that we'd named the truck, and he felt it was a good name, told Sean he'd keep using it, LOL.

So, our anthropomorphized truck lives on, and has not been parted out for mechanical bits. That makes us happy. :) We even gave him the web address to this blog, so if you're reading this, hello!

(oh, and the financial thing was apparently a life insurance policy statement, and not a paystub or anything tooooo personal)

We're Goin' for Broken!

We've been accepted into Goin' for Broken in May! With any luck, we'll actually make it to the event in one piece. Hopefully it'll stop snowing by then. We have a new tow vehicle, Aunt Faye, to replace our dearly departed Aunt Bea and I'd rather not risk her health on an icy road to Reno.

Speaking of snow, we were snowed out of a Bremerton Sports Car Club autocross last Sunday (3/15/09, beware the ides of March)fortunately we got a look at the WDOT traffic cams before we bothered leaving the driveway. It was snowing hard at my house, but it wasn't sticking. Bremerton on the other hand got 3 1/2 inches in about an hour and a half. Does Bing Crosby dream of a White St. Patricks day?

Pujo! looses his racing virginity

We took Pujo! out some development flogging at an autocross event in Bremerton.



We found the handling to be surprisingly good tolerable and at no point did we scrape any of the door handles on pavement. We did, however, notice a bit of rubbing still happening on the back wheels. They make a loud screeching noise when cornering hard. More sledgehammer and cutting work is called for in the rear.



This was a unbelievably freaking cold weather event - yes, that is snow in the picture below. It was part of the WWSCC's Winter Slush Series and you can see that we didn't do too poorly. The inconsistent times tell the tale of intermittent fuel delivery, intermittent electron flow, and screechy tire to fender contact induced throttle lifting. The little penalty numbers? Those speak to driving mistakes.


As regular readers of this blog [are there any?] know, we Cheese Eaters are not big fans of snow. This event allowed us to, as they say, get back on the bouncey, unstable french POS horse.
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Our horse showed off its Franco-Bastardly nature by starving for fuel at inopportune times. We believe the fuel pickup in the réservoir d'essence gas tank was bent in the trailer tumble into the ditch on Christmas Day. A frightening drive to the second nearest gas station temporarily resolved the starvation issue. However, we still had myriad a few electrical gremlins interrupting our combustion events. We enlisted the aid of an English driver to assist in sorting some of these issues. Some say his nipples are positive ground points and he speaks fluent reverse Swahili, all I know is he's called the Stig.



Now that the first event butterflies is out of the Pujo!'s system, we are looking forward to tuning him for endurance racing success. Team Captain Sean is on top of things and leading the way.

One Peugeot, over easy

Turns out that we were very lucky and the only damage to Pujo! was superficial. A few well-placed whacks with a big sledgehammer took care of the dents that were keeping the door closed and a few more got the trunk closing normally again.

That taken care of Doug and Sean replaced the broken out rear window, driver's door window and rear quarter window with lexan which not only is almost invisible but is indestructible and lighter to boot!

Next up on the to-do list was to figure out why the passenger-side rear tire was rubbing. Our best guess is that when the trunk was welded back on after the last accident (before we bought the car) that something wasn't perfectly straight. Sean solved the problem by cutting out some of the fender liner and the pounding out the fender lip with the big sledgehammer (which is getting to be our favorite tool these days). That made a mess of the paint on the already damaged right rear but a little touch up of Krylon Cherry Red made things as good as new (well if you are looking at the car from 50 feet away and have bad eyesight).

One funny thing that happened is that when Sean took the wheel off he smelled gasoline and saw that some fluid was leaking from the general area of the gas tank. Worried, we emptied the trunk (which was still full of our spares for the race) and discovered that a couple of quarts of diff fluid in the trunk had sprung a leak in the accident and had made a big gooey mess of things. But in a twist of fate the rollover had also liberated a big pile of fine dirt which had been trapped in the bottom of the driver's side rear fender and that made an excellent oil dry!

Next week we're planning to look at a few more small issues and then the plan is to take it to the March 15th autocross at Bremerton for a shakedown cruise!