What's new at the Donovan Dodge Garage?

 



 Decided on a what's new page to help out people who visit my site time to time, make it easier to keep track of updates and such.  Be warned though I'll be pulling out the soapbox from time to time.  Bizarre stuff indeed.

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"I sang in my chains like the sea"

Welcome to the Dodge Garage news.

The original site back in the IDT.NET days. (1997)

The original site in the 50 megs.net days (1998)

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007-2014 

2015 2016 2017

(Some links maybe broken due to site changes or external links going bad)

 


January 2023

1) He lives! Been another crazy year, I'll try and give you a run down. 

2) The biggest news was in June surgery was finally done on my back to restore normal function. One of the vertebra was crushing the spinal cord so they had to go in, remove the bone and then stabilize the area with some titanium pins. The good news is I'm fully recovered and no longer in years of pain. I get some odd tweaks and pinches but in comparison no contest. 

3) Since then been working around the house trying to get things settled, no secret the economy is doing poorly and were in for a rough patch no doubt. Best to get all the repairs and long term projects done now if possible. 

4) Picked up another turbo-mini, these things just follow me home! No plans for it yet. 

5) Still working in healthcare but not sure for how much longer. The state has made it clear they are hostile towards nursing homes and post-acute facilities and one grows tired of dealing with them.

6) The Mrs. and I both got COVID a week or two ago.. and were both fine.  

 


 

It certainly has been an interesting year.

People have lost their damn minds.

1/2022

Been trying to do some deck clearing work here but it's hard, there are so many projects kicking about and work has been insanely busy.

 


9-23-2020

An impressive stretch of time has passed, I have been very busy the last several months. 

Kudos to those that actually check in to see if I'm still kicking.

 

Welcome to 2020!

 

 


 

WuHan Flu/COVID-19:  Its all bullshit, period. The government has been cooking the books on the COVID deaths which I'll point out that they have quietly revised down on the CDC website. Normal Flu and Pneumonia deaths have moved from one column over to another.. China trying to drag down the economy, pharmaceuticals trying to cash in on billions or trillions in vaccines, deep state trying to drag down Trump.. take your pick. I'm in the medical field still and were not seeing the death rates the media breathlessly goes on about (notice they stopped talking about deaths and now talk about cases) nor how virulent it is. Hell we have people who were positive sharing a room with a non-positive individual 24/7 and they never caught it. How virulent can it be?

The reality is if you are below the age of 70 and have no major complications like severe obesity or compromised immune system.. You will be just fine, the CDC even says so.

Notice; this is my personal opinion but in the course of my employment we follow all protocols as dictated by the Department of Health and my employer. As I have stated "this is the frame we have to operate in" so do what we have to do.

 

Spit masks do virtually nothing to block a virus sized particle.

 

Big Pharma is not interested in curing you, keep that in mind. 

I went through this with a back problem with a certain clinic years ago. The head of Physical Therapy at my work at the time indicated to watch out for what they call shaking the money tree. They don't really want to cure you, just have you in orbit around their facility so they can drain your insurance on a regular basis. Sure enough that is exactly what happened and I fired the doctor on the spot as the months rolled by and I pressed them to step up to the next level, which they refused. Not all places are like that of course but enough you should be aware of the issue. 


Find a good church that teaches what the Bible says is what it says. 
Any that indulge in social justice, LGBT or feminist causes is to be shunned.

No one comes to the father but through Christ.


She was wicked and now she is gone, rejoice! 

Yes she believed that and more.


House Work: I'd say that 2020 is the year I did a bunch of work around the house to try and clear the decks. Felled and cut up 9-10 trees that were killed by the ash beetles, built my wife a raised garden, moved a wall mounted a/c unit to another location, did some basement patching, sold off 10 pinball machines (if not more, they come and go) and refurbished the boy's room now that they have become adults and moved out.  Now the room is my wife's hobby spot. 

After the carpet was ripped out, chunks of carpet underpad stapled to floor still. 

Had hundreds of staples to pull.

Most of the shelving stripped off the walls.

After a few weeks of work: lots of dents and dings repaired, windows re-trimmed and ceiling fan installed.

The floor sanding starts..

Staining with red oak. Little darker than I'd like but the Mrs. likes it.

The second coat of polyurethane drying...

Shelving on the right duplicated on the left, fresh wood stained and polyurethaned. 

Even the door got the treatment being stripped and sanded and the door hardware polished.

Letting it sit for a week to let the floor cure fully. During this time I painted the hallway and closet too.

And how it looks today minus the puzzle table which went in the next day. 

Radiator was pressure washed and repainted.

There was a whole lot of tree work going on with lots of safety straps and come-alongs to make sure none of the trees fell on the house or garage during operations. The three largest were well over 100 foot tall! Emerald ash beetles just laid waste to them all and they were dead, drying out and shedding branches. 


GTX

Hey look! Finally stripped the bay of stuff this week and started sanding. 


 

Pinball Stuff: Still playing with the games, enjoying the restoration and repair aspects the most. As you can see, really moved into the solid state era pretty firmly.

Picked up a machine with a spare playfield and decided to turn it into wall art, came out pretty good.


Shelby Dodge stuff.

Rest my brother, rest. One day may we meet in Heaven and swap stories.


 

Ask yourself: The media claims "Q-ANON" is a danger but the media never tell you whom Q is a danger too.

The reality is Q-Anon is a danger to the media as "the Q movement" encourages people to think and research the news for themselves.. 

Which often times indicates the media is nothing but brought and paid for propaganda.

Same as it ever was. Think I'm making that up? See below.


I'll give you just one, easy example: This is how most of the world knows Franklin Delano Roosevelt today. 

 

 

This is how the world knew FDR from 1930-1945

The reality is FDR was paralyzed from the waist down at the age of 39 with no control of his legs or even bowels for that matter and the media was complicit in the coverup. Almost without exception every single picture of FDR taken in this timeframe was carefully stage managed. He is either standing with the aid of braces and props or pictured sitting down at his desk or in a car. If you study the picture of FDR at the pool above you can clearly see his legs are atrophied and his arms built up to compensate. 

Business Insider even covers it here

"He developed a series of tricks to mask his condition. At public appearances, Roosevelt developed a method of appearing that he was walking, by holding on to an adviser or his son, carrying a cane in the other hand, and swinging his legs forward. Another method involved wearing leg braces and tightly grasping a lectern to stay upright. This posture helped develop the head gestures that marked his powerful oratorical style. "Roosevelt was able to stabilize himself in a standing position at a podium only by firmly gripping the podium and thrusting his pelvis forward so that his hip joints were hyperextended. Except in this position, he ran the risk of buckling at the hips and falling," wrote historian Hugh Gregory Gallagher."

Roosevelt died in office in 1945, his disability still unknown to much of the world. 

 


 

1-20-19

A friend sent me a text the other night with "national popcorn day? Is that the best you can come up with?" which drew a hearty belly laugh. There is some hidden context to that comment but I'll leave that for another day.

I have plenty to come up with but the question is always where do you start? It is something I have been thinking about for some time and as always will take my time rolling it about in my head to try and get a handle on it.

If you asked me to sum up where I'm at the simplest description would be I'm contemplating the next stage of my life and where I'm going next.

Looking back my life has been somewhat defined in stages; you have your youth, teen years, 20's etc. I struggled in school due to ADHD but found my footing finally, worked in the auto industry for years, raced cars and chased women, ran a business or two, had several interesting hobbies, married a good woman, have a good job helping a friend, have kids who are all over 18 now and going their own way.. so now what?

What started me on this train of thought was I was working on the GTX again. I was going to pull the engine out, reseal it, new oil pan, new larger headers, 8" converter for the trans and then head to the track again, pop off a mid to high 10, get thrown out, go back home, pull the automatic out and put the 4 speed back in along with the power steering and just enjoy the car on the street.

And then it struck me; why not skip the track part and just put the 4-speed and power steering back in and call it a day? I really don't like going to the track that much with a street car and don't need a timeslip to prove anything to anyone at this point in my life. So a change in direction was called for; I pulled the motor out and got all that done, dropped the k-frame and pressure washed it so I can paint it proper and I'm going to repaint the engine bay while I'm at it.

(Used a paint gun, no more rattle cans for me.)

 

Well I got as far as getting the engine done and the k-frame clean and that is about it. My heart just really isn't into it so I'm waiting for my mood to change and get going again. Part of the problem is the thing I really liked doing in my youth was street racing and that just doesn't exist around here no more. No one got hurt and everyone had a great time and the track is just a poor substitute. A necessary one I'll grant you these days, too many yahoos in expensive cars with poor driving skills and too many cops who think they are a mobile swat team if you break the law. Just not worth the hassle. Hell IN MY DAY (Insert eye roll here) for what it was worth the cops were pretty cool in retrospect. We went about our business and they didn't hassle us unless someone was doing something grievously stupid.

How times have changed.

So in the meantime I'm busy de-cluttering the house and the garage. Too much stuff built up in the corners and nooks.. too much to keep track of. Been moving a bunch of turbo dodge stuff in lots on the local Craigslist, giving away other items at the town recycle area, excess computer hardware has been donated for the cost of shipping on the HardForum. Still has a bunch of 3Dfx and Quantum3D hardware and I have been moving the odd piece here and there to friends when it suits me.

Currently been picking at consolidating computer backups, what a project! I have well over 8 Terabytes of data to sift through. Luckily there is a few good programs that do file comparison and deletion but you still have to eyeball a lot of files before hitting the delete button. The good part is now I have most of my photos, videos, documents and other files in one organized location so I don't have to go through a dozen hard drives looking for something. I even have most of my e-mail going back 18 years! When done I think I'll be down to 5-6T total.

(Old automotive data program, but then again I work on old cars too)

Hardest part has been setting up one computer to run some of the old software needed to access some old programs for both automotive and e-mail data. I was taking one of my old computers and installing a hard drive dock so I could swap operating systems on solid state drives (with the corresponding programs on them) but the motherboard started getting fussy and now I'm back to square one. 

(Behold! Win95 on a 2.8 GHZ machine!)

You know how hard it is to get Windows 95 to run on a P4? Yikes, harder than you would think! Windows 95 was designed to run on as little as a 386! With 2.8 ghz it hauls ass but man was there issues getting it to run, driver compatibility and CD-Rom functioning. Once I'm done, I'll be able to get rid of 3 or 4 machines I have been keeping around for the archives. I finally get it to work and then the P4 motherboard starts acting up.

Damn Murphy.

Also contemplating redoing the website, streamlining it a bit to make it easier to navigate and editing some pages. Time has made some of the advice obsolete to some degree. I can show you how to install a 5th injector on a car but the reality is there are no more junkyards that have cars you can strip them off! This is just one example of parts being no longer available (or cheap) so a page by page review is called for. Look for it in the near future.

After I get the GTX up and going again where do I go from here? I have two projects left, the Dart and Reliant.

The Dart has changed direction once or twice as to what I was going to do with it. I think the current thought of starting to reassemble till it is short a motor and transmission is a good one. At that point I can either stuff a big block in it with the automatic from the GTX and make it a dedicated drag car or install a 5.2 Magnum with a supercharger and fuel injection and a 4 speed and have fun with it on the street. I'm leaning towards the small block and street use as I'd get more seat time and be less of a garage queen. I don't even think I'm going to bother wet sanding and buffing the paint. I'll get all focused on making it look mint and then not drive the damn thing because I'll worry about some idiot scratching it.

The Reliant would be a pure drag car with an 8V, on that I'm solid. Even if I don't go as far as I planned it would still be nice to get the tube chassis done, install a stout 2.2 and go racing. The Reliant is one vehicle I don't mind taking to the track, with the power levels it operates at street driving is useless.

So there you go. Trust the plan. After that? I have no idea.

 


1-19-19

Did you know today is national popcorn day? 

Cleared a bunch of stuff off the "for sale" page, been doing some house cleaning. 

 


6-24-18

Hey there! Yes I have been a busy guy and I'll start ticking stuff off point by point below.

Work wise... I've gone crazy and working back in healthcare. A friend of mine needed a hand getting his fathers nursing facility back up to snuff and I agreed to come on board and do what I do. Aside from being crazy busy there I have been working on the house, kids cars and trying to de-clutter the garage so I can get working on my own projects.

There is a new truck! Which means..

There is an old truck leaving!

The '98 Ram has been a good girl but was starting to nickel and dime me to death time wise and decided it was time to go with 178k on the clock. I traded in my 2012 Challenger for a 2014 Ram Express and sold 1500 and actually came out ahead. The Express is a modern version of my old Sport but has a 390 HP Hemi with an 8 speed trans. The Challenger was just sitting the majority of the time, I was driving it 3 times a month tops. So I have one less vehicle to insure and pay taxes on and hopefully not work on for some time.

My son wrecked his '87 TBI Shadow. He is fine the car is toast.

I'm very much aware that Dodge is using the domain name dodgegarage.com and it was suggested that I sue for infringement. I'm thinking it is a waste of time and money unless they are going to start posting hot rod tips for 2.2/2.5 engines. FCA has been making some fine vehicles of late and have not problem sharing a similar domain name with them, surprised they have not set one up sooner!


 

Dan Malloy? Still a retard.

Very Stable Genius Trump? Still kicking ass.

Who is QAnon? Best look into that. 

Where We Go 1, We Go All!

Yes I'm a true believer after looking into Q, he or they are on the side of the angels and bringing the pain to the cabal.

 


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