Mint Condition

Well a lot has happened over the past month or so with my car, and yet at the same time, not very much has happened at all. It’s been a bit frustrating though.

First, after my backfire adventure, I bought a PerTronix Ignitor III and Flame-Thrower III coil from JEGS online. I was very excited when they arrived and I installed them carefully as per the instructions. I had to bypass the resistor wire to provide the full 12V to the coil and Ignitor. However, after installation, my car started wanting to stall when I came to a stop… sometimes. I took a video of what my tach showed when this happened:

So after running some tests from PerTronix, I decided the Ignitor III (or possibly the coil) was defective. I switched back to traditional points, and the stalling problem went away, confirming my diagnosis. Thankfully JEGS has great customer service and they let me send both PerTronix units back for replacement. In the meantime, I put in new points and the car ran just fine.

Unfortunately the coil was—and still is—backordered, but I received the replacement Ignitor III and installed it using my stock coil. I started having the same stalling issue, only less frequently: once, maybe twice, per trip. So I knew it wasn’t the PerTronix coil, but what are the odds of getting two defective units in a row?!

So I bought some nicer points and switched back to those, but then my car started acting up, running rough, and having poor acceleration. This was rather discouraging, especially after a tune-up revealed no obvious problems. However, today, I went into the garage to work on my car and see if I could track down the problem, and I found my #8 spark plug wire dangling free, pulled out of the spark plug boot! That’s not good at all. Thus, I went down to the auto parts store and got a cheap set of new plug wires.

The guy said they should last about 2 years, and next time I replace them, I’ll get a much nicer set. All this to say, after new plug wires, new points, and a thorough tune-up, the car is running great right now!

In other news, I dropped my transmission pan and replaced the filter and gasket, in hopes of stopping my tranny leak. Well, after torquing the pan bolts down slowly and carefully, I managed to squeeze them out pretty far and even break part of it. But I used some gasket sealer, and so far, it appears the leak has stopped, or at least slowed. I think the leak may have actually been caused, or contributed to, by the tranny being overfilled; it’s at the correct level now.

Also, the other day, I got cut off by someone and I gave my horn a nice slam with my palm. Well he slipped in front of me and flipped me off, but what’s this? My horn’s still going off! Yup, it got stuck. I had to drive while trying to hold my horn back so it wouldn’t go off, intermittently honking at everyone all the way across town. So embarrassing! When I parked, I threw open the hood and yanked the wires out of my horns. Today, I pulled the horn trigger off, cleaned all the contacts, and made sure it was only going off when I hit it, and all seems to be in working order now. Phew!

Well, perhaps the title is misleading. Perhaps not men’s fashion as a whole. But from my perspective as a DIY clothier, there seems to be a severe lack of options for men to wear when compared with women’s wardrobes. Girls can get away wearing nearly anything (or nearly nothing), while guys are pretty much limited to pants and shirts. So, as kind of a backlash against that—no, I’m not going to start wearing skirts, at least not yet—I tend to make clothes that kind of push the boundaries of Typical. I end up with items such as the Sleevepocket:

Not your run of the mill shirt. But it’s hard to come up with things to make when society says it’s not acceptable for a guy, or anyone, to wear, and you’re tired of the limits of popular male fashion. Keep in mind I’m not talking about thousand-dollar fashion like you see on avant-garde runways, but fashion that you see on the streets. I don’t think I’m going to stop making boundary-pushing items, I’m just tired of the boundary.

After focusing on school for the past 6 months and finishing my computer science degree, I’m finally get back into sewing. Let’s make fashion.