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If you have any questions, comments or concerns, you can mail me here.
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 Part 57 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Episode 57 of my '76 Mazda Cosmo Restoration picks up exactly where episode 56
ended: fabricating the brackets to mount all the air suspension support components.
Here I complete fabrication of the tank, solenoid and compressor brackets. The idea
was to create a compact and almost modular installation tucked into the inside of the
rear quarter and I am happy with the result. ... (more) |
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| I've added Buy Me A Coffee (BMAC) links and buttons to every page. Why? Well, Google Ads no longer cover hosting the site. Quite frankly, Google ads barely cover a lunch or two every month. BMAC seems to be a great way to casually support content creators and I've used it many times to kick some cash over to the authors of Arduino libraries and other open source projects I use. Since I often have people asking me how to send me a few bucks via PayPal, I figured may as well make it easy. No one is obligated, and the site will continue regardless. At the same time, as I was touching the code of every page, I also fixed a whole bunch of other errors throughout the site: pages missing nav bars, YouTube videos no longer working after they changed their embed code, HTML errors, etc. Also noticed that all the circuits are displaying tiny images (really Chromium? Really?!) so that goes on the list. Oh and forgot the misc. section. Need to do that one. | |
| The Misc. section has been updated with pictures from the 2024 North American International Motorcycle Super Show, the 2024 Canadian International Auto Show, Detroit AutoRama 2024 and the 2024 Forest City Cars and Coffee Season Opener. Enjoy! | |
 Part 56 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. At long last, episode 56 of my '76 Mazda Cosmo Restoration is here! In this episode, I experience a rare phenomenon; a part that almost bolts on! Very few modifications are needed to fit the Air Dynamiks air struts, meant for a 2nd gen RX-7, into the Cosmo shock towers. Though I freely admit the way I went about those modifications was a little weird. Next up, I start on the brackets to mount all... (more) |
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| I just added a big dump of auto show pictures to the Misc. section. With the pandemic over and shows running again, here are pictures from Bothwell 2022, 2022 North American International Auto Show, Autorama 2023, Canadian International Auto Show 2023, Bothwell 2023 Old Autos Show and 2023 North American International Auto Show. For a bonus, also the Bothwell 2019 old autos show. | |
 Part 55 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Episode 55 begins the project I've wanted to do since even before I bought the
Cosmo: air suspension! In this video I modify the rear trailing arm to accept the air
springs, create mounts to allow access to the bolts and fittings, then modify the frame
rails with new spring perches. Lots of metal work and fabrication to get the rear end
bagged. Enjoy!... (more) |
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 Part 54 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Time to tackle two more aspects of my previous work I am unhappy with. In part 54,
I'm re-fabricating the bracket used to adapt the Vintage Air Compac Gen 2 HVAC unit
(parts 29-31) and fixing an issue with the front camber I created when I used Mazda
626 ball joints to allow use of FC RX-7 spindles (parts 39 - 40). Years of looking at my
poorly designed HVAC brackets weighed heavy on my c... (more) |
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| I've just added a large home automation writeup to the Projects section. I've been working on and off on this thing for 2 years and finally, it is live. It covers in detail my fully open source, mostly MQTT, Home Assistant controlled full house automation. Plenty of custom designed hardware with schematics and PCB layouts, source code, how I use Home Assistant and how it is hosted. | |
 Part 53 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. In part 53 of my '76 Mazda Cosmo restoration, I finish the rework of the water to air
intercooler I started in episode 52. With the ideal position established, all the tubing
needed to be changed to match. And if I was doing that, well, I figured I may as well
ditch the pedestrian silicone couplers and clamps for something much more
awesome. This is another episode filled with cutting, gr... (more) |
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| This is a red letter day in the history of this website. Since 2006 the site has been hosted via a Bell dedicated DSL, which became "fibre" (FTTN) sometime around 2015. This cost of this connection continue to increase and with no speed increase possible, there simply was no value anymore in the service. Earlier this week I had a Rogers Business "Ignite" cable connection installed at the somewhat upgraded speed of 1Gb/s / 50Mb/s. Plugged into WAN2 on the router, I swapped the DNS last night to the new IP. There should have been no downtime as the Bell connection on WAN1 continues to serve the site while the DNS propagates. Looking forward to cancelling the Bell contract. Those who are long time visitors to the site may remember that since the late '90s the site was hosted originally on a Rogers cable connection, but only switched to Bell when Rogers started radically shaping bandwidth on consumer connections while refusing to offer business class services to residences. Rogers has since changed that policy so what is old is new again. | |
| My ISP has been having widespread upstream outages yesterday and most of today. Therefore the site was down starting this morning until a few minutes ago. I don't know if it is fixed permanently or whether to expect more downtime later. | |
 Part 51 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Episode 51 of my '76 Mazda Cosmo restoration is here! First, let's talk length.
That's what she said. I know it's ridiculously long. The title of my sex tape. Thing is,
this video contains the entirety of final assembly of the electronic instrument cluster
and it was an ordeal. Stuff broke, mistakes were made, more stuff broke, and add
a long wait for replacement parts.And then I had ... (more) |
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 Part 50 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Episode 50 of my '76 Mazda Cosmo Restoration is packed full of detail and
information. Possibly more than any other episode released. Because after all,
there's a lot to say about designing and building an Atmel 1284 powered CANbus
communicating, stepper motor driving, TFT screen displaying, addressable LED
controlling, rotary encoder twiddle accepting, heart of an electronic instrument ... (more) |
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 Part 49 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. It's been a long while, hasn't it? Who would have thought that retrofitting a 44 year
old instrument cluster with modern electronics and building almost everything from
scratch would be complicated? Yep, that's right. It's part 49 of my '76 Mazda
Cosmo Restoration! And once again, I am continuing to work on the instrument
cluster. This time I'm getting the final touches done by build... (more) |
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| Just finished renewing the SSL certificate for the site. Not a big deal right? Well, just two interesting points. One is that Apple has decided that any SSL cert good for more than a year is somehow insecure and will begin showing warnings on iOS devices that the site is "insecure". This is stupid. All it does is force earlier renewals and thus site owners to spend more money and time (as cert authorities usually offer multi year certs as a discount). The second is that I made a mistake configuring NGINX a few months ago and accidentally include the full certificate chain in my SSL configuration. So some browsers (Firefox!) may have showed the site as "Not Secure" even though, well, it was fully secure. Fixed this. | |
| Pictures from the only two auto shows I will attend this year have been posted. AutoRama 2020 and the 2020 Canadian International Auto Show are now online. | |
| Users of some browsers may have noticed that even though this website was being accessed by HTTPS, the browser still reported it as "Not Secure" (thanks Chrome!). Though the certificate is valid, the site is hosted on IIS6 running on Server 2003 (if it ain't broke, don't change it) which does not support TLS 1.2 that Google decided is the only secure version. Thus they've deprecated TLS 1.0/1.1 and started showing warnings in the address bar, which later this year would turn into a full browser red screen advising the user of the "danger" of visiting the site. So to prevent this, I've placed the site behind an nginx reverse proxy which is capable of negotiating TLS 1.2 on Server 2003. And I've also configured it to redirect all HTTP URLs to HTTPS, enforcing HTTPS across the entire site (as is the style nowadays). So any old links, bookmarks or hand typed access to the site will now be secure. At least until Google decides to arbitrarily force another decision across the entire Web via browser monopoly. Everything should work as before, but if there are any issues, please let me know. | |
| Took a while (to be honest, I sort of forgot until about a week ago) however the 2019 pictures from the Detroit AutoRama show are now online. This of course still leaves pictures from the 2020 Canadian International Auto Show, and AutoRama to be posted. Due to COVID-19 there will be no North American International Auto Show visit as the show has been cancelled for this first year it was rescheduled to June. | |
| Checking the dates for the 2020 auto shows made me suddenly aware I had not yet added the pictures from the 2019 shows to the website. So at long last, the 2019 North American International Auto Show and 2019 Canadian International Auto Show pictures are now online. AutoRama 2019 coming soon. | |
| Last summer I upgraded my old Craftsman 5/22 snow blower with a new engine, operator console, LED headlights, relocation of the chute turner and new paint job. The process can be found over in the Projects section. | |
 Part 48 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Well it's that time again. Yes, time for another installment of my '76 Mazda Cosmo restoration. In part 48, I continue the process of converting the old mechanical instrument cluster to a well integrated modern unit while retaining most of the appearance of that crazy time we call the late 1970s. TFT screens replace rolling odometers, stepper motors replace gauge movements and useless faux gauge... (more) |
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 Part 47 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. The viewers have voted! At the end of part 46 I presented a choice as to what you would like to see next and by a wide margin, we have a winner. Episode 47 of my '76 Mazda Cosmo restoration focuses on converting the instrument cluster from 40 year old analog mechanical gauges to electronic gauges. Not some gaudy named-after-a-US-state Digital glowing green digital panel slapped into a classic loo... (more) |
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 Part 46 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. First things first: I'm going to freely admit that this project is not critical to getting the car finished. Honestly it has just been an idea that seems to have implanted itself in my head a few years ago and rattling around inside me since then. So I decided to inject a little fun and magic into the previously shaved doors (remember part 8?) with the addition of RFID actuated openers. And yes, ... (more) |
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 Part 45 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. As I alluded to in episode 44, part 45 of my '76 Mazda Cosmo restoration deals with retrofitting in a pair of new seats. My ass chose those out of a 2007 BMW 328i, which I then came to know as an "E90". I was looking for a set of modern seats will all the power features and not only did my butt confirm that these were mighty comfy seats, but the measuring tape confirmed they would fit well in the... (more) |
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| Oops. I sort of forgot to finish this. Started just after AutoRama but moved onto a bunch of other projects and this one slipped through the cracks. Well, I fished it out of the crack and finally got the pictures from Detroit AutoRama 2018 online. Enjoy! | |
| Just got the pictures from the 2018 Canadian International Auto Show posted up. A good show, with a surprise showing by Mazda and the first time I have seen the Tesla Model 3 in person. | |
| After attending yesterday, I have added pictures from the 2018 North American International Auto Show over in the Misc. section. Enjoy! | |
 Part 44 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. A new year, a new bumper for my '76 Mazda Cosmo. So in part 44, I finish off the bumper modifications started in part 43. The smoothening continues with flush mounting the light lenses, then moves on to addressing the gaps between the bumper and body. Finally, a duct is added for the oil cooler which will eventually integrate with the front valence. So get ready for a bunch more metal work, a flu... (more) |
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 Part 43 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. In part 43 of my '76 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo restoration, I begin the process of doing something about those horrible '70s "safety" bumpers. It was a dark age from 1973 to 1982 when the US federal government mandated that bumpers must sustain a 5MPH collision without damage. The result being atrocious protrusions at the front and back of a vehicle sticking out 6" on pneumatic shock absorbers. While mos... (more) |
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| For years I've had various product ideas rattling around in my brain. Recently I finally made the decision to start producing them. And thus, I have added a Store to my website. The only item for sale right now are Rotary Engine Stand Adapters however over time, new and innovative products will be added. | |
| In preparation for some upcoming site changes I have enabled SSL on the site. If you wish to browse securely, then head to https://www.aaroncake.net. But be aware that since this is in testing and there are still a few old hard links around on the site, you could be redirected back to the insecure site. Also Chrome issues a few warnings because some of Google's own scripts arrive over HTTP instead of HTTPS. | |
| Wow, I finally remembered to add the pictures from Detroit AutoRama 2017. Better late than never, I suppose. | |
 Part 42.5 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. I didn't think I'd ever have to release an episode like this. But unfortunately we live in a world where someone like me, who just wants to live their life and work on their passions, falls victim to another undesirable segment of society with no goals past finding the way to their next fix. Then it's up to me to put life on hold, spend my time, energy and money to pick up the pieces. Set backs... (more) |
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| Pictures from the 2017 Canadian International Auto Show have been added to the Misc section. | |
| Well, even though it's a few months since the event I was just so wrapped up in other projects that getting the 2017 NAIAS pictures up had to go on the back burner. Now simmering haughtily on the front burner, here they are. 2017 North American International Auto Show Pictures. | |
| This was the first year I had attended the North American International Motorcycle Super Show. The pictures are now up in the Misc. section. | |
| Finally got around to adding the pictures from the 2016 Air Show London to the Misc. section. Enjoy! | |
 Part 42 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. It's here! Part 42 of my 76 Mazda Cosmo restoration, which finishes off the LED tail light conversion, has finally arrived. It's been a long time since the last episode, so let's make this one long and nicely detailed. As I often say, sit back with a drink and enjoy. Or perhaps several drinks if required. This episode picks up where part 41 left off beginning with mounting up the turn signal bo... (more) |
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| Please excuse the downtime. There was an issue requiring a router reboot which occurred during the night. This being a holiday in Canada (Thanksgiving) I slept in, and consequently did not reboot the router until about 10AM. | |
| Overnight, I hit 20,000 YouTube subscribers! That's quite a milestone. Thanks to everyone for their support and I promise as soon as I can, I will be uploading the next episode in my Cosmo build. | |
| Pictures from the 2016 Great Lakes International Air Show have been added to the Misc. section. | |
| Took me a while, but I've finally added the pictures from the 2016 London Speed and Custom Car Show. | |
| After a bit of a delay (hey, I've been busy), I found the time to get the pictures from the 2016 Detroit Autorama added to the Misc. area. | |
| The Misc. section has just been updated to include pictures from the 2016 Canadian International Auto Show. I also corrected a silly error where the link to the 2015 NAIAS would actually link to the pictures from the 2014 show. Oops. | |
| Pictures from the 2016 NAIAS have just been added to the Misc. section of the site. | |
| I've just added search boxes to the nav bar on the electronics page. Slowly and surely the sites navigation is becoming more consistent. Considering most of the content on my site is not template based and each page must be edited manually...this can be quite a job. | |
 Part 41 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Surprise! Part 41 of my 76 Mazda Cosmo restoration is here! Part 41 is the first in a two part episode covering the conversion of the unique Cosmo tail lights from outdated incandescent light bulbs to modern LEDs. I decided to pattern my tail lights after those of the 2012 Dodge Charger, creating an outline of large LEDs, and filling the rest of the lights with small LEDs. I know it's been a whil... (more) |
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| I was awoken from my slumber to the sudden silence, punctuated only by the soft "beep...beep...beep" of the UPSs from the basement. The power, she was out. After about 15 minutes of hanging around on the front porch watching the distant lightning, I shut things down and went back to sleep. Only to wake again 2 hours later when all the normal noises resumed, signaling return of the power, and thus bringing the servers back up. | |
| Search boxes have been added to the Nav bar in the Misc. section. | |
| I've just completed adding the Google site search box to the navigation bars in the Projects section. Over the next little while I'll be adding those to the rest of the site as well. Should make it easier to find stuff. | |
 Part 40.5 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Part 40.5 of my '76 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo restoration is here! And you know what that fraction means. Yes, it means I am joined by my dear friend Rose Cora Perry for this special update episode. The changes I mentioned at the end of episode 40 are happening now, so I thought it was time to release a little update as to what's going on and when the next video can be expected. It's still going to be q... (more) |
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| I finally got around to adding the pictures from the Detroit AutoRama 2015 over in the Miscellaneous section. Enjoy! | |
 Part 40 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. In episode 40 of my '76 Mazda Cosmo restoration, the front suspension is finally finished. This time around I concentrate mainly on steering, completing the Miata rack installation I started in part 1. As I alluded to last episode, there was an easy fix to my rack dilemma; a right hand drive rack which when spun to left hand drive becomes a rear steer rack. With that hurdle out of the way I fabbe... (more) |
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| I've just added two sets of pictures to the Misc. section. First up is the Megasquirt Mega Meet 2014 hosted at DIY Auto Tune. A week after that I visited the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn Michigan. | |
 Part 39 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. I know it's been a while and since the front suspension work is still ongoing, I've decided to split it up into two episodes. So for part 39 of my '76 Mazda Cosmo restoration, I begin the work of updating the front suspension and converting the car from recirculating ball steering to rack and pinion. While my original goal was to mount the entire FC RX-7 front subframe, it became obvious very e... (more) |
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| Yes, the whole site was down starting sometime in the wee hours of the morning November 2nd 2014 until about 11:30AM Nov. 3rd. To make a long story short, I had been complaining to Bell about what appeared to be a line problem since sometime in the summer. I had been seeing 25% packet loss for months which obviously caused many problems. Not only making the website sluggish but killing any VPN, VOIP and video streaming. They had always tested the line fine and then said "We will send someone out" but of course I never saw a tech. Well, early Sunday my router dropped connection and even though there was full sync, could not negotiate PPPoE ("No answer" logged). 2.5 hours on the phone to support and they said someone would be out Monday morning to check the line. He arrived, found no issues. But quickly was diagnosed to be a bad modem and thankfully he had one on the truck. Obviously if I had another DSL modem, I would have swapped it myself on Sunday! New modem was installed, the router connected and traffic began flowing immediately. | |
 Part 38 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. I guarantee that aside from part 38 of my '76 Cosmo Restoration, you will not find more footage on YouTube of someone shaking a fuel tank. You have my word that this is the most tank shaking coverage you will see in any video. Why so much tank agitation? Because in this episode I clean and seal the 40 year old fuel tank using the POR-15 fuel tank restoration kit. This is something which several h... (more) |
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 Part 37 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Part 37 of my '76 Mazda Cosmo restoration focuses on one specific task in great detail. That task is converting the old carburetor feeding fuel tank to one which can satisfy the high pressure needs of fuel injection. The approach I take is to modify the tank to accept an in tank fuel pump via custom bracket, emulating the approach used on modern vehicles. My inspiration for the setup was the Aero... (more) |
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| Actually, 10,007 when I checked this morning. I've crossed the magical 10K threshold. Apparently 10,000 is as significant as 1000. At 1000 I saw a very quick jump up to the next milestone, 5000. Then it was a slow climb to 10K. Let's see what happens at 10K. Thank you to all my subscribers and I am flattered you are enjoying my Cosmo restoration. | |
| Pictures from the 2014 EV Fest Electric Vehicle Show are now posted in the Misc. section for all to enjoy. I attended with my newly painted 2000 Honda Insight and 48V aluminium scooter. | |
 Part 36 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. With any rotary, a robust fuel system is a critical component in reliability. This is what will be covered in part 36 of my '76 Mazda Cosmo restoration. In this episode I set up the engine bay section of the fuel system. This includes the regulator, fuel Y block, and all the fuel hoses using braided line and AN fittings. I also bend up a set of stainless fuel lines for underneath the car. The fue... (more) |
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 Part 35 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. In the last episode of my '76 Mazda Cosmo restoration, the basic components of the water to air intercooler system were laid out along with the considerable amount of fabrication needed to build the throttle body inlet, intercooler piping and water tank. As well as mount the heat exchanger and BOV. In part 35, we finish up the water to air intercooler installation by taking care of mounting the p... (more) |
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| I've updated the Aluminium Bike Cart project with some improvements I made to the cart the next season after it was constructed. A new tow bar was added which vastly improved the previous design and a much better hitch built for the bicycle side of it. | |
 Part 34 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. It's time for part 34 of my '76 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo restoration. This time, I'm installing the water to air intercooler. I've installed and fabricated plenty of air to air intercoolers in my time but never a water to air unit. I chose to use water to air on the Cosmo because it meant that I could keep the piping as short as possible for the best boost response and because of the limited amount of... (more) |
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| I have just completed a major update of the How To Megasquirt Your 2nd Gen RX-7 article to include MS3 and MS3-Pro. New schematics for those ECUs are available as well as settings and a base map. Additionally the MS2 information has been updated to reflect the current MS2 firmware. I've also updated various other parts of the writeup with more information, an installation video, and corrections. | |
| I've started a new BBM channel called "Horrible Fabrication". It's a mean siprited and sarcastic look at fabrication atrocities. A good way to blow off steam, laugh at the ill fated attempts of others, and just generall shake your head is disbelief. Join up at pin:C00396957 . | |
 Part 33 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Part 33 of my '76 Mazda Cosmo restoration deals with what I would consider to be two important, though miscellaneous, tasks. While waiting for the intercooler parts to arrive I tackled what I thought would be a quick and easy job; building a turbine heat shield. I won't admit how long it took but suffice it to say that the intercooler supplies not only did arrive during the heat shield build, bu... (more) |
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| Pictures from my local winter car show, the London Speed and Custom Car Show for 2014 have been posted in the Misc. section. | |
| My pictures from the 2014 Detroit AutoRama this past weekend are now online. | |
 Part 32 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. While I'm done with air conditioning, part 32 of my '76 Mazda Cosmo restoration still deals with moving air around, as I fabricate a cold airbox. After working so long on the Vintage Air system I wanted to do some simple fabrication, so the air box was a perfect choice. Made to accept a cone filter it is a true cold airbox that draws air from the inner fender. So not only will the box muffle the... (more) |
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| Pictures from the 2014 Canadian International Auto Show have been posted to the Misc. section. Look at me, I'm actually getting these pictures up the day after the show instead of a year later. | |
| If you use NTBackup under Windows NT4 - Windows 2008, you may want to have the backup logs emailed to you. If so, then take a look at the VBScript posted under Emailing The NTBackup Log With VBScript. This handy script, combined with the AspEmail component, will find the newest NTBackup log and email it to an address specified. Great to monitor nightly scheduled backups. | |
| Tomorrow (Thursday Jan. 30th) I'll be shutting the site down for about half an hour (give or take) to perform some hardware maintenance on the server. Installed in December of 2006, the machine has only been shut down a few hours (remember the big North American power outage?) since it was first powered up and has never been cleaned. Consequently it is completely clogged with dust and needs a good blowing-out. Additionally I'll be installing a DAT drive so I can run my backups on the server itself, instead of a client computer on the network (which is sucking unnecessary power as it's left on for this purpose only). | |
 Part 31 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. It's time for the conclusion of the Vintage Air installation on my '76 Mazda Cosmo. Yep, it's episode 31! Part 1 and part 2 covered the mechanical components and plumbing. Part 3 concentrates on wiring up the system, installing the ducting after adapting the stock Cosmo dash vents, and then powering up the system for electrical testing. I also explain a bit about how the MegaSquirt MS3-Pro hand... (more) |
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| Pictures from the 2014 North American International Auto Show have been added over in the Misc. section. | |
 Part 30 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Happy Festivus everyone! Part 30 of my '76 Mazda Cosmo restoration continues the Vintage Air Gen II Compac HVAC installation. In this episode I concentrate primarily on plumbing the system. I know I promised last episode that this half would finish off the install but it has been a lot of work. More than I first anticipated so you'll need to wait until episode 31 for the finishing touches (wirin... (more) |
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 Part 29 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. It's been a few months, so I am proud to present Part 29 of my '76 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo restoration. In episode 29 I begin the task of installing a Vintage Air Gen II Compac HVAC system. This is a universal system, so it's up to me to make everything fit in, lets face it, an application that Vintage Air has never considered. In this first part of a two part episode I mount the major mechanical part... (more) |
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 Part 28 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Episode 28 of my '76 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo restoration is a sheet metal episode. Yes, I said sheet metal. In this episode I repair and reinstall a new set of front inner fender panels (removed all the way back in part 19). I was able to acquire another set in far better condition and they have been sitting in the car for several months. While I was waiting for other unrelated parts to arrive (perhaps ... (more) |
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| A very impressive storm ripped through my area late in the evening. Spectacular lightning, awesome winds and a huge amount of rain dropped in a very short time. It was all over before midnight but that didn't prevent a tree branch down the street, damaged in the storm, from falling on the power line at around midnight. I awoke to the sudden silence. After about 15 minutes I asked the power crew (they were already on the street for other storm related damage) "How long?". With the ETA of at least an hour I shut everything down and went back to bed. About 1:30AM, power was restored so I brought everything back online. | |
 Part 27 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. In part 27 of my '76 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo restoration, I focus on the cooling system. It seemed an appropriate thing to do with the hot summer weather. The stock Cosmo rad was leaking, small and hard to obtain so I installed a universal aluminum radiator after modifying it to fit. With the new rad, the oil cooler had to be relocated, the engine water inlets/outlets modified, and a number of other cha... (more) |
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| Thanks to Eric Zizumbo who became #5000, I now have 5,000 YouTube subscribers! Sure, I'm no Justin Beiber, but then again, who would want to be?! | |
 Part 26 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. With the turbo manifold finished and the turbocharger installed, it seemed logical to continue on that route and finish the rest of the exhaust. So in part 26 of my '76 Mazda Cosmo Restoration, I do just that. Starting with the downpipe, I build the full stainless steel exhaust piece by piece to include a catalytic converter, resonator, middle muffler and rear muffler. It was a bit of challenge t... (more) |
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 Part 25 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Episode 25 of my '76 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo restoration is another long one, covering in its entirety the fabrication of the turbocharger manifold. Suddenly the engine bay started to look a little cramped when I began to position the GT3076R, so it took some plumbing to build the required manifold. Constructed out of 1.5" SCH40 304 stainless steel pipe, it was fully TIG welded with an argon back purge.... (more) |
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| Over in the Miscellaneous section I've just added all the pictures from the auto shows I've attended from 2011 - 2013. That's nearly 1000 pictures, so enjoy. | |
 Part 24 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Part 24 of my '76 Cosmo restoration is here! And I'm going to come right out and warn you; this is a long one. There is a lot of detail here, for you see, this episode covers in it's entirety the installation of the MegaSquirt MS3-Pro EFI system. Like the engine build in part 12, I decided to cover the entire process in a way that would help anyone performing a similar installation. And while t... (more) |
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 Part 23 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. After part 22.5 was posted, it took the remainder of November and December to finish the driver side sheet metal. I worked my butt off to get it done before January 1st, and indeed, accomplished that task so I was able to start the new year sheet metal free! So I am happy to say that episode 23 is sheet metal free! In this episode I fabricate the parts necessary for my unique combination of intake... (more) |
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| Navigation bars have now been added to the Miscellaneous section. That's the last area of the site needing the nav bars, so I'm glad that's now done and it will greatly improve navigation. It's quite a bit of work because most of the pages are static HTML, so there's a lot of manual copy and pasting. | |
 Part 22.5 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. June, July, August, September, October and November; Hey, I wasn't kidding when I said in episode 22 that it would be a bit of a wait for the next one! In that time I've been as hard at work on the Cosmo as I could manage, which unfortunately is not as much as I would have liked. It's been a busy summer with plenty taking me out of the shop. Even still, I've been working as much as I can and h... (more) |
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 On September 9th I'll be attending EV Fest 2012: Toronto's Premier Electric Vehicle Festival at the Evergreen Brickworks with my 2000 Honda Insight and 48V aluminum scooter. The show runs from 10AM to 5PM and will feature electric vehicles of all kinds from OEM to home built as well as customized hybrids and EV related exhibits. |
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| Continuing to improve the navigation to the site, I've now added nav bars to the top of all the RX-7 content. Such a simple thing took quite a while because most of the pages are static HTML and not dynamically generated, so this involved a lot of copying and pasting. With the RX-7 section done, the only remaining area of the site needing nav bars is the Miscellaneous. | |
 Part 22 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Part 22 of my '76 Mazda RX-7 Cosmo restoration finishes up the passenger side front sheet metal. In this episode I reconstruct the passenger front inner and outer sill, floor and kick panel. And the great thing is that as promised, this is the last sheet metal episode for a long, long time! While I have the same set of repairs to do on the driver side, that will all be done off camera so that the... (more) |
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| Just a shout out to thank everyone for following my '76 Cosmo restoration, and all the positive feedback it has generated! This morning I reached 2000 YouTube subscribers and the subscriber numbers continue to grow. Look out for the next episode, which will be the last sheet metal episode for a long time. | |
 Part 21 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Part 21 is finally here! It's been quite a while since the last episode, and a lot has been accomplished. Not quite as much as I would have expected due to a busy time of year. After a trip to Jamaica at the beginning of February kept me out of the shop for two weeks, we entered auto show season with an auto show every weekend until mid March. Now that's over with, I've been able to get back do... (more) |
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| I've just completed an upgrade of my mail server to hMailServer 5.3.3 (an upgrade from MailMax 2.1). Everything appears to be configured properly at this point, however as with any server upgrade, there is bound to be some weirdness. Let me know if any mail related parts of the website aren't functioning by....uh, emailing me. Or rather, post to the forum... MailMax has served me well since 1998, but it was time to move to something more modern. | |
 Part 20 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Merry Christmas everyone! It's about that time in the day where one starts to get tired of their crazy extended family, so to brighten the mood with a distraction, here's Episode 20 of my '76 Cosmo Restoration. In part 20, I media blast the front end and engine bay, removing 35 years of rust, gunk and dirt. Then POR-15's MetalReady is used to preserve the freshly blasted sheet metal and preven... (more) |
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 Part 19 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Part 19 of my '76 RX-5 Cosmo restoration continues with sheet metal repairs, but hopefully in a less boring format. First off I totally remove the rotted out front inner fenders by drilling out about a billion spot welds. Then we move onto the very complicated rear inner sill repair. This brings the introduction of POR-15, the first time I have used it on this project and by far, not the last. In... (more) |
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 Part 18 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. It's time finally for part 18 of my Mazda RX-5 Cosmo restoration. In episode 19 I continue repairing the rear floor pan, this time dealing with the drivers rear seat area as well as some of the bulkhead and frame below it. Once tired of messing about with floor pans, I move onto some easy sheet metal work involving filling some of the unnecessary holes in the firewall. Included in this episode: c... (more) |
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 Part 17 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Episode 17 of my '76 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo restoration moves from the destruction of the last episode to construction as I focus mainly on one task: repairing the floor in the rear passenger seat area. This was some of the surprise damage I found while sand blasting way back in part 6. I've been neglecting the floor for more interesting tasks and because rust is depressing but after uncovering far mo... (more) |
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| I'd just like to announce that this morning my YouTube Channel crossed the 1,000 subscriber barrier. | |
 Part 16 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. I finally present part 16 of my Cosmo restoration! Has it really been over a month since the last update? I guess I've been busier than I thought and haven't had as much time to work on the car as I would have liked. Regardless, work has been slow and steady when I could find a few minutes here and there to spend in the shop. The work that has been accomplished lately has mainly been grunt work,... (more) |
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| I've just updated the Projects page with two air compressor projects. Both feature complete writeups and video demonstrations. The first is a small portable 12V air compressor that I built as an air source for blowing out computers and other electronics. The second is a twin cylinder 14 CFM upgrade to my 5 CFM oil-less Campbell Hausfeld shop compressor. Read about it on the forum. | |
 Part 15 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Happy Friday everyone! It's been a little while since my last video as I've been busy with beginning-of-season related activities: built a new air compressor for the shop, put a new diff in my RX-7 and helped someone else with an engine installation. It's taken a while to edit episode 15 (the actual work was completed in March) but it's finally here! In part 15, I repair the rust damaged areas... (more) |
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 Part 14 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Part 14 of my '76 RX-5 Cosmo restoration is a collection of three random tasks. First, I add a -10 AN fitting to the oil pan to serve as a turbo oil drain. Next, I continue stripping down the engine bay by scraping off the undercoating and then cleaning off the residue with kerosene. Finally, I begin some of the work on the floor by patching a small area on the drivers side of the transmission tu... (more) |
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 Part 13 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. With the engine built, it seemed logical to focus a bit on where that engine is to live: under the hood. Episode 13 has me stripping all the remaining mechanical components out of the engine bay in preparation for it to be blasted, repaired and painted. This is dirty grunt work, not particularly stimulating but at least it isn't sheet metal. It's been a while since my last update and rest assure... (more) |
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 Part 12 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. Just as I promised last episode, it is finally time to build the engine! Part 12 of my RX-5 Cosmo restoration covers the entire process of building the 6 port 13B Mazda rotary engine. While this engine is a hybrid of GSL-SE RX-7 and Cosmo parts, the process is the same for any rotary from a 12A to a 13B NA, 13B Turbo, 13B-REW or any other variant of the 13B. This video shows the whole process of t... (more) |
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| I've just added a new project to the site, an Aluminum Bicycle Cart I made for an epic (not necessarily in distance, but in fun) bicycle trip I took with two friends this past summer. The project writeup includes the construction of the cart and a little narrative from the trip. Read more on the forum. | |
 Part 11 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. I now present episode 11 of my '76 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo restoration. This episode deals with the task of installing the AutoLoc PW4650 universal power window kit. This kit includes motorized actuators which rotate the existing manual window cranks, driving the manual regulator and thus converting it to power without the need to fit an entirely new window regulator. Additionally it includes all wiring... (more) |
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 Part 10 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. In part 10 of my 1976 Mazda Cosmo restoration, I continue the surprisingly long task of shaving the door handles. Last episode I left off after cutting the patch panel to fill the hole in the passenger door. This time I weld the panel in, fix the huge amount of warpage my improper welding technique caused, then do the same on the passenger side. Shaving the door handles took a lot more time than I... (more) |
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 Part 9 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. I've been doing a lot of engine work lately, so for episode 9 I change gears a little and move onto a random task: shaving the door handles. This involves installing a solenoid into the door which will now electrically activate the door latch, and then removing the exterior handle holes from the door. What I thought was a quick task turned out to be more time consuming than I thought due to the d... (more) |
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 Part 8 of my 1976 Mazda RX-5 Cosmo Restoration has been posted to YouTube. It's a Festivus miracle that I now present Episode 8 of my Cosmo restoration. Now that the engine is fully ported, episode 8 deals with the final prep of those engine parts before engine assembly. In this episode the rear iron and water pump housing are tapped for sensors and fittings, and then all the engine parts are glass bead blasted and then painted with POR-15's engine enamel. Also include... (more) |
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| The seriously old Spudgun section of the site just got a little love as I have just added reCAPTCHA validation to all the forms and navigation bars to the top of every page. Also, I have added reCAPTCHA to the Random Thoughts pages on the comment and email address functions. | |
| For the first time in about 10 years, and new section has been added to this website. It chronicles the restoration of My 1976 Mazda Cosmo. The project is being documented as a series of YouTube episodes and now they have a home on this site. To make room, I have depreciated the Features section. This means that it is no longer on the home page, and will eventually be phased out of the site entirely. It has not been updated in years after being made redundant by Random Thoughts. Read more on The Forum. | |
| I have just added nav bars to the top of the electronics sections of the site. I'll be continuing to slowly add these to every page on the site in order to improve navigation. | |
 On October 17th 2010 I will be attending EV Fest: Toronto's Premier Electric Vehicle Fall Festival with my 2000 Honda Insight and 48V aluminum scooter. The show will be hosted by Toyota-Lexus On-the-Park (1077 Leslie St., Toronto) and feature a wide variety of EVs from factory, to home built as well as customized hybrids and EV related exhibits. It will run from 11AM - 4PM. |
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| Sorry about the downtime today. I don't quite know when it started, but it was sometime around 2PM. I was not aware of it until about 4PM, and which point I found out that my network switch had died. A temporary switch is in place for now. Good thing D-Link business class switches have a lifetime warranty. | |
| I'm going to start moving all of the home-grown CAPTCHAs used throughout the site to reCAPTCHA. The first casualty is the guestbook. The old guestbook doesn't see much use these days, so I figured it would be a good test. Sign the guestbook and tell me how much it is rocks or sucks. Next up is probably a CAPTCHA implementation on Random Thoughts. | |
| The RX-7 meet picture galleries have just been updated to include the meets from 2009 and 2010. | |
| To help improve navigation, I am adding top menu bars to every page on this site. As there are many hundreds of pages, almost all of which are hard coded in static HTML, I must do this manually. Over the next little while I will slowly be adding these menu bars around the site. They are already present on the Circuits pages, and I have just added them to the Projects pages. | |
| The power outage is over and we are back on the air! | |
| My power will be cut from 9AM until 3PM on Wednesday Aug. 18th. I may rent a generator if there is time later today, but more then likely I will have to shut down the servers sometime in that timeframe. | |
| Electrical work in my area has resulted in unusually high line voltage. This keeps triggering my UPSs, running down their batteries and shutting down my servers. This has resulted in some periods of downtime around 3:30AM, 7:15AM and just now at around 12PM. I'm sorry about this. I'm going to ask the workers if it can be fixed but there is likely nothing I can do. | |
| I have just added all the 2010 auto show pictures to the Misc. section of the site. Included are: North American International Auto Show, Canadian International Auto Show, World Of Motorcycles Expo, AutoRama and EV Society Of Canada eShow and Shine. | |
| I've just finished posting all the Project Tina updates from 2009 until 2010, bringing this website up to date with the current state of the project. This will be the last Project Tina update for a while because at the moment, the project is complete. | |
| A new project, my 48 Volt Custom Aluminum Scooter has just been added to the projects section. | |
 On April the 10th I will be attending the Electric Vehicle Society Of Canada Show and Shine with my 2000 Honda Insight and my brand new (not yet shown on my website) 48V custom scooter. The show will be held at Scarborough Toyota (1897 Eglinton Ave, Toronto) and will showcase all types of EVs from OEM EVs to hybrids to conversions to smaller vhicles such as scooters and e-bikes. Come on down, check it out, and be sure to say "Hi" if you see me. Even better, bring your own EV (or hybrid) and be part of the show. Contact editor@evsociety.ca for more info. Discuss this on the forum. |
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| I have just completed a writeup on porting the 4 port TII lower intake manifold to fit the 6 port NA block. This is often done as an easy way of turbocharging the 6 port engine. | |
| Should anyone care, I have just updated the about myself page with up to date information and pictures. Yay for me. | |
| Minor corrections were just made to four circuits; the power supply, low voltage alarm, 12-24V DC-DC converter and the inverter. Details are here. | |
| The site was momentarily down from approximately 6:50PM until 7:25PM EST tonight as the main UPS batteries were replaced. This took slightly longer then anticipated, but had no other complications. | |
| Sometime this weekend I will be bringing the servers down for about half an hour to swap out a dead set of UPS batteries. | |
| I once again enabled the navigation bars on the circuits page, but still not the search box until I figure out some style sheet issues. Additionally, I modified the VE, spark and split tables for MS1 and MS2 on the Megasquirt writeup. | |
| Just now I temporarily removed the navigation bar added two days ago to the circuits due to formatting issues. I'll fix it up and get it back there as soon as they are solved (something was weird about how the CSS was formatting the tables and search box). | |
| A navigation bar has been added to the top of each circuit. It improves navigation by providing a direct link back to the circuit category, circuits page and home page of the site. Additionally there is a Google search box to the right for searching all pages under aaroncake.net. Hopefully this will make it a bit easier to get around the circuits and search for information. I will ultimately be incorporating this navigation bar onto every page of the site. | |
| A new project was just added, a digital copper clock I made for my shop. Using a Cana Kit digital clock kit and a hand made copper case, I created it in the style of an old "EXIT" sign. | |
| I made some minor updates to both my car mp3 player project and my computers to bring them up to date and correct a few errors. | |
| My old soldering tutorial was looking a little lame after all these years, so it has received a full rewrite. It now covers the soldering process fully, from tinning the iron, to soldering PC boards, to soldering wire splices. All three processes are explained with pictures and video. | |
| After running a log analysis I found that there were a few old circuit URLs not being properly redirected to the new locations. These have been fixed. | |
| It's been a long time in the making, but the site has been updated. After nearly 2 years I finally completed a major update. In a way, this will be the last major update this site will see. No, I'm not going to stop updating but I will be moving to a more gradual process that will be better for everyone. More... | |
| I just completed a restore of the forum database from the backup copy made Saturday at 2AM. Only a days posts were lost, which I do apologize for. Everything should be up and running now. All users are advised to change their passwords. | |
| Something odd happened and all the forum posts were lost from the database. At this point I don't quite know what happened but am currently restoring a previous version. I'll update this space when it is back up and running. | |
| Sorry about the downtime. Apparently my router went off into space and as I was quite asleep at the time, I didn't notice until I made my daily server check at 9:30AM. A quick reset and we were back on the air. | |
| The power went out this afternoon around 2:12PM. I was at work and shut the servers down remotely a few minutes later. Power was restored around 3:00PM. Everything is back up and running. | |
| Well, it's sort of planned. London Hydro needs to shut down the power between 5 and 7 AM of Jan. 28th to perform some maintenance and repairs. I'll have about an hours worth of UPS and then I'll be shutting down the servers until the power is back on. It would be unfair to run the unmuffled generator at those hours of the morning. | |
| Over the past few weeks this website became progressively slower. After some testing it was determined that Rogers Yahoo! was throttling upstream port 80 traffic. Once one or two connections were made to port 80, traffic would slow down immensely. Getting Rogers to turn this off was unsurprisingly fruitless, and Rogers would not connect a commercial Internet service to my residential traffic. So I called up Bell and had them provision a DSL line for me, then signed up with their High Speed Business Internet Optimum service. A few hours ago I swapped my connection over and now the site is working faster then before. The slowness should now be a thing of the past as I have a faster and more reliable connection. It felt sad to leave RogersWave after 13 years, but they could no longer provide a service to fit my needs. | |
| The site is experiencing some intermittent slowness. More often then not, page loads are slowed to a crawl. I'm currently investigating a cause and solution. It's not a server issue, but a network issue just outside of what I can control. My ISP may be "shaping" (interfering with) outgoing traffic on certain ports. Hopefully it will be solved soon. Thank you for your patience. | |
| In an attempt to control the hundreds of spam posts to the circuits comments made everyday, I have added CAPTCHAs to the circuits page. A CAPTCHA is a "Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart". In other words, those little semi-scrambled images of text that you need to enter when submitting a form. Such a task is easy for humans, but much harder for computers. This should at least slow down the torrent of spam I have to deal with. If you see any errors on the circuits pages or other issues relating, please contact me. |
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| Yesterday mere hours after going live with the site update, the power went out. At approximately 5:55PM, I lost power. I kept the servers running on the UPS until about 6:15PM, at which point it was clear the power would be off for a while so I shut everything down. Whatever the cause, we regained power at approximately 7:30 PM. Sorry about that. Maybe the next purchase I make for the site will be a generator? | |
| I've just made a major update to the site. 9 new circuits were added, errors in some of the older circuits corrected, and some of the older content was improved. Loads of updates were done to the information on my RX-7 including the 6 year project of modifying the car; "Project Tina". Many smaller updates were made to the rest of the site as well. Complete details can be found in this forum topic. | |
| But my ISP made changes that blew me off the air for 12 hours or so in certain areas. Things should be back up now for everyone. | |
| I've just made some major changes to the circuits pages. On each page, I've added the ability to comment on that circuit and rank it according to how much you like it (or how useful or not useful it is). In addition each page now tracks the number of times it has been viewed both each day and for all time. The main circuits page has been updated to show all the circuits in a table according to category. In addition it also tracks the most popular circuits today, yesterday and for all time. Ranks and author information are available as well, and a detailed view showing the circuit description can also be enabled. Please let me know if there are any errors. | |
| Moments ago I finished converting the last bit of this website over to MySQL. Overall the conversion from Access was not really painful at all. The only complication was that MySQL expects dates and times in a slightly different format then Access (Access is very liberal with how data is stored, MySQL is very strict), and a few minor syntax changes in the SQL used. I don't expect any problems but if you notice any weird database errors, let me know. The next thing to convert will be the forum but that one is going to be complicated so it may take a while. Now that the busiest parts of the site are running a "real" database, I will be able to do some cool stuff at the next update... | |
| I've started to convert the website database to MySQL (from Access). I'm only moving a few tables at a time while I get used to any syntax changes (I have not used MySQL much before this) and to watch for any bugs. I expect the process to go smoothly but there still is the possibility of a few issues during the transition. If you see any random errors relating to database or records, then I would appreciate it if you let me know (via email or the forum). | |
| For the first time in 6 years, the server has been upgraded! Finally there will be an end to the random slowdowns and random downtime (related to the database) that plagued this site for the last few years. The new server is an IBM eServer X226 running dual 3.0GHz Zeon processors. Read all about it on the forum. | |
| It looks like the newer forum code is a bit slower then the previous version. It can take up to a minute or so for the main forum page to load, but after that things are about the same speed as previously. Sorry about this, but it won't be fixed until the server is upgraded. Just be patient when you hit that first page... | |
| Well, I finally got around to it. For the first time in 2 years, the site has been updated. And not only that, but for the first time in 10 years, new colours! There's far too many additions to cover them all here but be sure to check out several new circuits, a lot of new pictures in the misc. section, a lot of new RX-7 meet pictures, new RX-7 technical information, a new project or two, and lots of other minor changes around the site. I've also finally upgraded the forum to the newest version. Enjoy! | |
| There was about 20 minutes of downtime tonight due to the server network card being replaced. I'm trying to troubleshoot a slowness problem on the network. At this point it appears external to the server, so I might just cut my losses and replace the whole damn thing if I can't get it solved... | |
| Sometime in the next week or so, I will be taking the server down for maintenance. One of the network cards is failing and needs to be replaced. This can show up as extreme delays or dropped connections during busy periods and makes my local file access very slow. I could live with sluggish file access but the backup is also failing about 50% of the time so this needs to be sorted out. This weekend I will be swapping one of the hubs in the chance that is the cause of the trouble. If not, then I will need to pull the server down and replace the card. This may happen on the weekend, could be during the week. Basically whenever I get time. | |
| I'm having problems with the server again. The ASP service keeps randomly hanging. Sometimes I catch it within a Few minutes, sometimes it takes hours. I don't exactly know why, but it has something to do with the database. I'm Currently looking for Solutions and may just have to bite the bullet and go to MySQL instead of Access a little earlier then planned. This is coming at the worst possible time as I do not have the time/money right now to invest. | |
| Late Saturday night the database died, and I did not find out until Sunday morning. Its up and running now, although a little slowly due to high traffic. | |
| On April 23rd, I will be taking part in the Super Cities Walk For MS. The WALK is a critical part of the Society’s fundraising efforts and is a significant program in funding research towards a cure for MS. A ground-breaking $4.3 million study of MS in children and a long-term, worldwide genetic susceptibility study are both made possible through MS Society fundraising events like the WALK.
If you would like to pledge your support, you can sponsor me online. |
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| Tonight around 7PM Eastern time I will be bringing the server down for much needed updates and imaging. Some may have noticed that over the past few weeks this site has become more and more unstable and unreliable. The simple fact is that some of the databases have grown much larger then they were ever intended to (especially the forum). This is causing loads of problems with the Jet driver and MDAC which results in the ASP service dying. In attempt to solve this, I will be updating both those components to the newest versions tonight. Before I do so, an image of the server is long overdue so I'll be taking care of that at the same time. Hopefully updating the databases (and moving them to Access 2000 format instead of Access 97!) will eliminate the problems. | |
| I apologize for the random downtime over the past several days. Once again the server has decided that the ASP service should randomly lock up. This basically renders all ASP pages (for example the main page, forum, the circuits page, basically anything that is dynamic) completely dead. The browser just times out waiting. All regular HTML pages and images work just fine, however. I believe that this is a database problem, so I have just rebuilt all the databases in an attempt to fix it. I don't know if this is the fix as I have been battling this problem for a while and have thus far not found a proper solution...I'm open to suggestions at this point. | |
| Due to an unexpected IP address change, I have had to update my master DNS records. It takes several days for this to reach the far corners of the Internet, so this site may have availability issues over the next few days. Of course, if you can't see the site then you can't read this message, so... | |
| Everything should be back to normal at this point. The forum is back online after I restored the database from a recent backup. This does mean that all posts from Wednesday until Friday at noon are lost. The offending cooling fans in the server have been replaced, so there should be no more lockups or reboots. | |
| Long story short, two of the server's cooling fans seized up early Thursday morning. This caused the CPU of the server to run VERY hot, resulting in random lockups and reboots over the past few days. During one of these events, the forum database got corrupted. I restored it from backup earlier today, but I guess it didn't totally work since there is an obvious problem with the forum. I am hoping I will have some time tonight or tomorrow to get it going again. It may take a few backup/restore attempts, and posts will certainly be lost in the process. Sorry. | |
| For some strange reason, the server blue-screened and locked up sometime this morning around 2 or 3 AM. I rebooted it around 8:45, and everything seems normal right now. Can't guarantee it won't happen again, but I can find no obvious problem so it may just be a random event in space/time. | |
| I'd like to thank London Hydro for fixing the low voltage problem last night. I called them at about 5:20PM, and a truck showed up outside my place at roughly 9PM. They had to cut power to the whole street for a few minutes (the neighbours will LOVE me for that one) while they moved us all to a higher tap on the transformer. I'm now seeing 112-115V at the wall. Thanks again! | |
| Sorry about the downtime today. We are once again experiencing brownouts, and the UPS can only stay on battery so long before it shuts down. I have called Ontario Hydro, but they have given me the runaround. Hopefully as soon as they get their act together and stop dropping our voltage (right now I'm getting 105V out of the wall...ridiculous) things will calm down. Hear that Ontario Hydro? FIX IT! | |
| My ISP has begun blocking outgoing port 25 for all residential and commercial customers. Therefore, this website can no longer send email. I am currently working with them to solve the problem. If they cannot unblock me, then I will set up a workaround while I look for a new ISP. Details in forum topic: Forum Email Functions Disabled | |
| Some of you may have noticed that the site was down early Saturday morning to late Sunday night. Sorry about that. The webserver basically crashed, and I was unaware that anything was wrong until late Saturday night. At the time, I was in Toronto without any internet access past what is available on my Blackberry (I couldn't even find an open WiFi network). On Sunday, I spent the day at an autocross, so again, had no access. So there was nothing I could do. First thing I did when I got home on Sunday was to restart the webserver, which came back on around 10:30 PM. | |
| Due to inbox corruption, I have lost all email sent to me regarding my website from Oct. 29th until Nov. 15th. Sorry about this, but due to the massive amount of mail (including spam and viruses) I get, sometimes this happens when a message with an invalid header comes through. You are of course free to resend any message you have sent in that period of time. | |
| My website is slowly coming back online. As DNS records are refreshed and updated, the site should be back for everyone by the end of the weekend. Thanks for your patience. | |
| On Wednesday July 14th and Thursday July 15th, the site will be down as network hardware is upgraded. The downtime may extend to Friday for some areas. Just letting people know. | |
| For the first time in 5 years, the "Universal Remote" on this site has been updated. Many thanks to obout inc., who graciously provided the server sideTreeView control that makes this possible. Let's face it, the old remote was neat, but entirely useless. The new one allows you to get to any page on this site in a few clicks, using a fraction of the time it would take to navigate there manually. Check it out by pressing the "Remote" button on any page on this site. | |
| Finally, I was able to update the site. Major changes almost everywhere. Two new projects and updates to previous projects, major additions to the RX-7 section, additions to the misc section, and even a new circuit (try and spot it). There may be a few minor issues and errors over the next few days, but everything should basically work. Feel free to post any problems or concerns to the forum. | |
| Due to the shear size of my website email box, and the amount of spam and viruses floating around, the mailbox became corrupted sometime in the last few months. Therefore, I may have lost your message as I was only able to receive about 50% of what was there. You are of course free to resend it if you wish. | |
| Last night I installed a brand new Netopia R910 router to replace the overstressed LinkSys BEFSR11 I have been using. Compared to the LinkSys, the Netopia is a "real" router. Unfortunately, this results in about 2 days of downtime due to DNS updates that have to propegate accross the entire Internet. The site should be back up to full operation by Friday. Note that I cannot guarantee there won't be future outages, since I am a little unsure about the Netopia. It doesn't appear to be working 100% reliably yet. Please be patient. | |
| Due to routing issues, there was downtime last night/this morning. It should be solved, but there may be lingering periods of unavailability. | |
| Due to major DNS changes, the site may appear to be up and down the next few days as the changes make their way through the Internet. Of course, those who can't get to the site will never see this message, so.... It's been the summer of downtime, and I apologize. | |
| As some of you may be aware, there was a major power outage that began at approximately 4:10pm on Thurs, Aug. 14. This effected New York state, all of Ontario (where I live and consequently where this server is), Ohio, Michigan and Indiana. Power has just been restored here after being out for 28 hours. The biggest UPS in the world won't help when your ISP is knocked off the planet. The site should be officially back up, but I can't promise it will be totally stable as there will be rolling blackouts and my UPS tteries are exhausted. | |
| There will be some downtime tonight sometime after 8PM EST while the server is imaged and patches verified. Thank you for your patience. Expected length is about an hour. | |
| Everything should be back to normal now. The Real Media Server has been reloaded, and loose ends have been tied up. | |
| I apologize for the downtime most of yesterday and the wee-early hours of today. I applied some Microsoft "critical security updates" to the server, which promptly broke everything. I had to reload and configure the entire server from scratch. Good thing I had reliable backups. Real Media (ie. go-kart videos, RX-7 videos) will be down until I have the time to reload the Real Server. But it's like 2AM now, and I am going to SLEEP. | |
| Endless free electricity is possible! At least, that's what "jim" says on my forum in the Power Supply section. And he can't be convinced otherwise. Check it out: enless free electricity (sic). | |
| There is random downtime today due to routing issues. Not sure when it will be solved, but it is temporary and things should be back to normal soon. | |
| There was a coding error in the guestbook jerk-filtering that actually prevented anyone from signing for the past two weeks or so. It has been fixed. Sorry. | |
| Just to let any AOL users know, AOL appears to be blocking mail from me for no apparent reason. I am not on their spam or open relay list, yet any mail I send to an @AOL.COM address gets rejected without explanation. My advice is to get a real ISP instead of AOL. As we all know, AOL is crap. Sorry about this, but if you want it fixed, complain to AOL. | |
| I updated the About Myself page with a more recent picture. The 3 year old picture previously shown did not accurately represent what I looked like. | |
| It seems that due to a corrupt mailbox, I have lost all the email from my webpage since Nov. 2/2002. I apologize to those who have tried to email me since then, but this kind of thing happens once and a while with all the viruses and spam that are floating around these days. You are of course free to resend your message if you wish. | |
| Due to server upgrades, the website was up and down today between about 1:45 PM and 6:45PM. I apologize for the inconvenience, but I simply ran out of hard drive space. A new array made up of 3 Seagate Baraccuda UltraWide SCSI drives was installed, which not only doubles the capacity of the server, but should provide a significant speed boost during peak useage. | |
| To make things more consistant, I updated all the tables across the site to use the same layout and style. Also, I removed the irritating black background from forms and replaced it with a more readable colour. The site search engine has also been upgraded to provide two different searching methods: fast and slow. | |
| This site was down during that time period due to a power outage. Looks like a breaker tripped at the substation, and when they reset it, a transformer on my street blew up. Took them 3 hours to swap it. On a related note, it appears that I need a new UPS battery. Sorry about the downtime. | |
| I have just fixed an error on the Forum. If email notification was selected when a topic was posted and a user replied, the forum would error out and the reply might be lost. This was due to anti-spam features I have on my mailserver (prevents it from being hijacked and used to send spam). I have modified the forum to fix the error. | |
| There were some script errors on the "Email Me" or "Contact Me" page that made it impossible to send me an email. I have just fixed these errors. Sorry for the inconvenience. | |
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Last Update: Sunday, September 01, 2024
Part 52 of my