Bicycle Update: Maintenance and Paying it Forward

I did a lot of work on bicycles this morning. I had borrowed my brothers Giant bicycle earlier this week. While on the ride the front shifter broke. I then ordered some new shifters and grips. Today I installed them. This meant I had to disconnect the old ones install the new and then learn how to adjust the derailleurs to get everything to work properly.  The process was actually easier then I expected because it was relatively straightforward.

Then I worked on my new bike, a 2004 Specialized Expedition Sport that I've started calling "blurple" because of it's bluish purple color. At first I didn't like it, the frame is a little bit too big for me and the riding position was too relaxed for my riding style. To remedy this I bought a new seat and have been playing around with the adjustable handle bars. I also tightened the front shocks all the way to take out the bounciness and disconnected feel. Today I also washed and waxed it. After all of this I took it for a ride. I was about 3 miles in when I had a big blowout, the rear tire popped and took out the rubber tim strip, which protects the tube from the spokes. It blew out so hard that the strips were blown outside of the tire after. I of course found this to be impressive and then promptly called for a ride.

After returning home I went out and bought two tubes(the front can't be far behind), the rim strip and some bolts so that I can mount my rack onto the bike.

The rack was on my old bike which I gave away to a new friend whose bike was stolen. I was really attached to it but had outgrown it and wanted to be able to help her out. It was a 2008 Diamondback mountain bike that I bought with birthday and christmas money when I was in middle school. To me it was like my first car because it gave me a lot of freedom to be able to buy something like that for myself and be able to ride wherever I wanted. I hadn't been riding it anyway because it was too small and then I was given blurple so I figured it was time to pay it forward. It was much easier for me to give it away than sell it and this way it doesn't end up following me forever even though I can't ride it. I also really liked knowing it would be going to someone who needed and would enjoy it. It was nice to be able to help right a wrong.

Sunday Morning Corolla Shoot

I took some shots this morning and played around with my camera's settings to try to learn how to get more out of it. These are my favorites from the shoot.

Ford employee car show

Today, I had the opportunity to go to a Ford car show for families of employees. The following are my favorites from the show. 

2016 Ford GT350R

Known for its 5.2 Liter flat plane crank V8 and its 526 horsepower, the GT350R impresses on both a visual and performance scale.

Note the cover where the entertainment system would normally go.
In the R it is removed for weight savings, all in the pursuit of speed. 

The red Cobra badge is exclusive to the R.

2016 Ford Focus RS 

The Focus RS differs from a regular focus in a number of ways. It goes from front-wheel drive to all wheel drive, it comes only with a manual transmission and it comes with an exclusive 2.3 liter turbocharged 4 cylinder engine which puts out a whopping 350 horsepower. Developed with the help of rally driver Ken Block it also comes with a "drift mode" that helps the driver to slide the back end around in a track setting. 

2017 Ford F Series Lineup 

For 2017 Ford is releasing a new Super Duty Model (center) as well as a new Raptor Model (Right).

2017 Lincoln Continental 

I'll be honest I was disappointed when the new Continental was announced. It was a huge opportunity for Lincoln to step up to the plate and they disappointed a large percentage of the enthusiast community myself included when they made it front wheel drive and had it share a platform with the Ford Taurus. It's hard to compete when the car isn't on the same level as the competition. 

A Changing of the Guard

I bought a new car. It's a 2005 Toyota Corolla Le. It's a 1.8 liter 4 cylinder automatic. It was a really long process to buy it.

I started shopping. One of the main issues were headroom, in most vehicles and I learned that sunroofs were bad because you lose a couple inches of valuable headroom. Next once I found something I fit in most were eliminated due to issues I found through research.

This eliminated most used vehicles. At this point I was couple months into my search and I wanted to give up and just keep the Vic and I figured it would be about $2000 in parts to fix everything and buy and install a new seat. So I asked my dad what he would want for it and he said $3000. Which would mean that to do the Vic I would be buying it and getting the needed parts for $5000 plus a LOT of hours of labor on it. At this point I decided it wasn't an option.

So I found a little black corolla on craigslist without a lot of information in the post. I knew it was black, I couldn’t tell what interior color it had, I knew that it had 120,000 miles and that it was listed for $4000. Which meant that I could buy it without a loan and instead use only the money I had saved. So I contacted the owner and set up a time to look at it on Friday. No one was willing to go with me but eventually I got my dad to go. I wasn’t wild about this because he didn’t think it was a good idea to buy a car but it was better than nothing. I looked at the car at 7 at night so it was dark. It was about 20 minutes from my house and my initial impression was concern as the car looked a little rough, it hadn’t been washed in a while and it was pretty dirty. Then I met the woman and her husband. It was her car and with used cars who you're buying from is often more important than the actual make and model because reliability often depends on the owner. They were a young married couple I’m guessing mid to late twenties and she was a nurse in good shape and probably about 5’5”. Which was stellar for me because it meant two things; as a smaller woman the seat would probably be in excellent shape and as a nurse it would most likely be clean and probably have regular maintenance done.

I learned that she was the original owner and that it was given to her in high school and that she had used it through nursing school and had recently been rotated to Michigan. She and the car were from Montana. So I took it for a test drive and it felt pretty good but they only wanted me to go around the block. I stopped at a gas station to look at it under the light and found a few dents and scratches and a panel that wasn’t fitting into place properly. Finally I got on the ground to look at it from the bottom and was surprised to find almost no rust underneath the car. We took it back and agreed to have me look at it again on Sunday when they got back into town so that I could see it in the daylight and take it on the freeway.

I returned on Sunday with $4000 in my pocket and liked the test drive and learned about an accident it had been in. It was minor and was in a parking lot and was the reason the passenger front fender didn’t fit perfectly anymore. I looked at the frame and components in that area and was satisfied that there wasn’t major structural damage and negotiated down to $3700 including a set of winter tires and wheels. I had bought my first car.