Category: Cars

Gecko Peter Parker

Last night, I was driving alone down the highway into a headwind and a small gecko suddenly appeared on the outside of the windshield, probably blown up through the bodywork from wherever he was chilling down below.

Geckos are good to have in your car because they eat bugs and are just cool to watch, but it sucks when they die inside because they stink for ages. Anyway, I have always been fascinated by their sticky feet. I decided to test just how much grip they have by flooring it. I got to about 170 km/h when he suddenly crouched down low in a spiderman pose and leaped off the side of the windshield. The thing is, I have a feeling that the wind carried him into the open window. If so, I hope the little guy eats his share of the mosquitoes that torture Mina in the back… and eventually dies peacefully outside.

Tiger Joker 120S

Since my Crown is being worked on for another month or so, I really needed to find a cheap motorcycle. It took some looking (thx Yon) and trying (thx Matt) and bargaining (thx Nam), but I finally found the perfect ride for my needs, for which there is a serious lack of information on the net.

The ride I picked up was manufactured by Tiger Motor Company of Thailand (website is hosed as of writing this). The Model is the Joker 120S. I have no idea what the S stands for, or what the different grades were. It’s a 120cc carbureted 4-stroke, front disc – rear drum, four speed autoclutch, extremely ugly bike that I would have hated to buy new, but I picked it up for a good price used. The equivalent Honda or Yamaha would have cost three times as much (Honda is the only overvalued brand of both cars and motorcycles in Thailand; for cars it shares company with Toyota and Isuzu in this regard, and with motorcycles, Yamaha). Plus, I fell in love with its Mad Maxed muffler ( I call it a ghetto supertrapp) and getthefuckouttamyway exhaust pitch.

Of course, the trade off for not buying Japanese is that the electronics are Chinese-inspired level cheesy and most were probably broken beyond repair a couple months after it rolled out of the dealer. So I have to do without an electric starter and fuel indicator, which isn’t a big deal.

The big plus is that this bike has loads of torque, which I’m going to attempt to convert to power with an after-market rear sprocket. Anyway, here’s a few photos of this increasingly rare motorbike, which surely looks better slighty rusted and beat up than it did new:

Hunting Parts for a Kujira Crown

After owning a 1971 MS60 for a few years now, I can tell you one thing: It’s been pretty damn near impossible to find spare parts for it. After spending countless hours trying to find parts overseas on the internet (because there were almost none advertised in Thailand even last year) that I could afford to have shipped here, we lucked out. Parts sellers started advertising in Thai forums.

So to start with, I’ve ended up with a shipment sold as a set:

My car is not missing any of these parts, but these are in better condition(the guy who sold me the car aptly described it as “faded glory”). Some of them, like the taillight lenses, will be dissected and combined with my existing ones to make better parts.

Most important to function of the car is the full set of weather seals for the door. I’d heard rumors that new rubber was still being made in Thailand for virtually every Japanese car ever produced. Now I have proof. Perhaps even more important than the parts themselves were the labels on the bags containing parts numbers and bar codes, with which I was able to trace the manufacturer. Do you need rubber seals for an old/rare JDM car? I can probably get them now (as opposed to all of the Toyota dealers and parts specialists I talked to, who most decidedly cannot).

So what’s my purpose here? Why am I searching out parts for my old Crown, of the only generation of this make that was a complete and utter market failure (while being the first Toyota Crown – earlier models were Toyopet)? Let’s just say I’m trying to restore some glory…

UPDATE: This is what my MS-60 Kujira Crown looks like now: http://cosmicbuddha.com/2012/03/the-toyota-kujira-crown-reborn/

Sure formula

Yesterday I slaved out in the hot sun, carefully detailing our black car.

After that, I watered the garden heavily because it looked dry.

Today I woke to the sound of heavy raindrops hitting banana leaves.

This is only the second time it’s rained in four months.

The first time happened after I washed both cars.

—

I am a level 3 shaman with powerful rain juju.

About 3 hours to Chiang Mai

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Justin Yoshida’s location@2:26pm,12/26 Huai Rai, Den Chai, Phrae http://m.google.com/u/m/AL6Y8s

Everybody warned us about the long, windy mountain roads on the way to Chiang Mai, but they aren’t bad at all. I guess it’s because there isn’t a hill in sight standing on the tallest building in Maha Sarakham (my uni’s admin building). I’m moblogging this and eating with Mina right now, and we are in the windiest roads of the whole trip.

The scenery in these mountains looks a lot like Japan, except for the abundant banana trees. I’d rather be sliding around these corners in my old Silvia with speakers blaring ADF instead of bouncing around in a university van, but then again, who wouldn’t?

BTW, Max and Mina are being veritable angels so far.

Car update

The Crown is running better than it ever has before. The problem wasn’t the alternator. It was missing six little spring-loaded push pins that bridge the tops of the spark plugs with the coil packs.

Having this fixed after trying to figure it out for two years is indescribably liberating.

The other car is still in the shop, awaiting new boots for the right side A-arm. Today is the king’s birthday, so everything is closed; repairs will continue tomorrow.

Two batteries, two alternators, one radiator

We’ve been having a run of bad car luck as of late. A couple weeks ago, a cop from Khon Kaen backed into our parked Cefiro and broke off the front license plate holder. Nam saw it happen from the pediatrician’s clinic across the street where she had taken Max for a booster shot. She took it to my pal Ot’s shop and got it replaced (on the cop’s dime, of course).

The very next day, I lightly clipped a scooter that was running the wrong way down the street and crossed in front of me as I was waiting to turn out. The young female rider must have known it was her fault, and didn’t even stop. Ot was pretty surprised to see my car needing a new plate holder again and gave me a pity discount (the 2-in 2-days special).

Yesterday, we found out that the radiator which we replaced on the Cefiro 2 years ago was already rusting through in several places. We had it replaced, because Nam had to use the car today to go to Ubon (3 hours one way) and translate for her aunt’s fertilizer company. At the same time, we were having power issues and I had noticed slowly dropping battery fluid and corresponding hairline cracks on the battery body after the car came back from repairs for the crash. Not wanting Nam to break down on a long trip, we also replaced the battery. I was pretty sure it was a battery issue, because we’d had the alternator replaced a few weeks ago.

Nam drove the Cefiro up to Ubon with her sister today as planned, but on the way back, they lost almost all electrical power. They struggled back to Ot’s shop, where we bought the battery, and he had an electrical specialist come in to take a look. He took a look and declared it to be a faulty alternator. We’d had it replaced by a solid backyard mechanic named Yon, so we took it to him to start on the claims process with the supplier. By then, it was time to pick up Max, so I got him and picked up Nam at Yon’s garage and took them home in the Crown.

At home, we were readying the house for my mom’s arrival tomorrow. I had to run out and pay some bills that Nam had intended to take care of, but was unable to due to car problems. It was dark by the time I actually left the house, and there was something funny with my car. It was struggling to keep running, and I thought the headlights were quite dim. Oh shit. But the bills needed to be paid, and I needed to head to the other side of town to update our bank book first. So I kept the old Crown running through sheer willpower and curses to that dastardly mongrel in the sky. She got me there. I stopped across from the ATMs, found that the goddamn update machine was out of order, and walked back to the car. It wouldn’t start, and the cranking was real weak. Dead battery. WHAT THE FUCK YOU FUCKING PIECE OF FUCKING SHIT FUCK SHIT FUCK SHIT FUCK. SHIT!

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I stand in solitude as I compose this post. My phone’s display burns into the night, and nary a soul will aid in killing the mosquitoes that are biting the hell out of me.

I am waiting for the good mechanic Yon, who was working on my other car when he got the call to come save my ass in this one… I can find no wifi signal to share my loneliness in this foreign land…

Yon has arrived with a spare battery, and now we shall see what further expense motorized transport hath incurred this very day.

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Next day: So it seems both of my cars will require new alternators. The Cefiro has a new battery (which is in the Crown now so I can get around today, even though it’s not being charged by the alternator); the Crown probably needs one as well, since the current one has been completely discharged a few times, which isn’t very good for it. The new radiator in the Cefiro seems to be fine. But. I need a car to pick up my mom tonight in Khon Kaen. That goddamn dastardly mongrel in the sky and his impeccable timing…

If Yon can get his hands on a new alternator for the Cefiro, I’ll be really happy. But that depends on a lot of things to be lined up in a short time, like the supplier accepting the claim against the original part, there being a replacement one somewhere very close, and for that dastardly mongrel in the sky to keep out of my shit for the rest of the day… The alternative is to load a spare battery in the Crown and replace it if the one installed gives me grief (headlights run down a battery fairly quickly. I can only say, UNGH.

The Accidental Motorcycle Thief

The other day, I wanted to go for a quick lunch at the canteen (cafeteria), so I asked one of the students interning for the Japanese course if I could borrow her scooter. She gave me the key and told me where it was parked, along with a description. She said the license plate number was 85, and that it was a 100cc Honda Wave, with a manual transmission, in gray.

I found the 100cc manual Honda Wave almost immediately, but noticed that the license plate was actually 58 and that it was blue with gray accents. I chalked it up to the student remembering it wrong, or me hearing it wrong, and decided to test it by trying to start it up: No problem. I rode off in the direction of lunch, happily upshifting with my foot in this age of boring automatic plastic bi-wheeled conveyances.

When I got back on the scooter after lunch, the key was harder to turn. I had to work at it a bit. Then, when I got back to my building, I couldn’t turn the key to the far left to lock the steering column. I tried for a few minutes doing the jiggle-turn maneuver, but finally just gave up. When I went back to my office, I told the intern that I couldn’t lock her bike and asked if she’d had problems with her key, but she had no idea what I was talking about. A warning sign flashed briefly in my head.

“You said your plate number was 5-8, right?” I asked.

“No, I said 8-5,” she said.

Uh-oh.

I  looked down at where I’d parked the bike and saw a girl wiping tears from her eyes, our building’s custodian trying to console her, and a security guard talking into a walkie talkie.

I went down and apologized, and in the end, everyone except the victim had a good laugh about it (she was still in shock at having her scooter stolen). I felt bad for making her feel bad, but also because the first time I stole a bike, [A.] it was only 100cc, [B.] it required no skill because of the worn lock, and [C.] it provided zero exhilaration because IT WAS A TOTAL ACCIDENT.