Hulu.com page for Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

For Japanese audio – with or without English subtitles – jump to:

Vexille: 2077 Isolation of Japan on Hulu.com

2009 Dodge Challenger R/T

Do you want muscular V8 performance on the highway and dragstrip, yet still produce zero emissions around town? If so, this article’s for YOU!

Most of today’s compact hybrids use a small electric motor to supplement the power of an equally small gasoline engine, sacrificing performance and driving fun for maximum fuel economy and minimal emissions.

But what if we use two parallel powertrains, gas and electric, either of which is powerful enough to drive a full-size car?

Full story:  Eco + Muscle: 2009 Your Drive Makeover on Popular Mechanics site.

To help YOU get pumped, Standard Snowboards has a pile of new vids streaming straight into your bedroom/office/locker room/hotel room/etc..

Start with this one:

Snow Park Technologies & Tahoe Backcountry

After the 1st break, stand in front of your computer screen and get ready for an exhilarating ride via helmet cam. If you bend your knees and really role-play it, it gets a bit scary! =)

I’ve always been a tomboy, always will be. In high school, while most gals my age were obsessing over Seventeen Mag and picking out prom dresses, I was drooling over my neighbor’s GTO Judge and pulling parts out of my boyfriend’s Trans Am for rebuilding. My environmental awareness took root in college and I switched to diesels that I could modify to run on veggie oil and became a DIY tour bus mechanic. A decade later, I’m finally living out my teen fantasies of owning and restoring my very own muscle car – a 1973 Mercury Comet with Ford’s 5.0L 302 c.i. V8 engine. Everyone has different opinions on what makes one muscle car better than the other and everyone has their 1st loves as well as their daily drivers. I don’t think many people would place the Comet in their top 3 fave muscle cars, but I’m not most people. All I know is I LOVE this car!!! For me, personally, it’s perfect. Small enough for just me, big enough for double dating. Fast enough to get me in trouble, fast enough to get me out of trouble. And it may not look like a pageant queen right now, but someday it will be CANDY! With that in mind, I intend to enjoy/punish the body and engine until it dies. Then rebuild it from the frame up.

My friend Twelver came over on the 1st day I had the car at home and snapped some sweet “Before” pix:

From Title To Tune Up In 6 Days

When I bought my 1st 4Runner (already 20+ years old and poorly maintained by previous owners), it was leaking coolant and overheating. Within a week I removed the entire cooling system, all the belts and everything else in front of the block. Now, I’m a mechanical person by nature – I love to take things apart and see how they work. But I had never worked on a Toyota engine before in my life. Everything I needed to learn was available online, for free. The #1 resources beyond a doubt has been the YotaTech Forums and the Factory Service Manual (FSM). The #2 resource is the local flea market – a treasure trove of quality tools at bargain prices. Every time I got stuck on a part I couldn’t budge, I went to the flea market in search of tools I didn’t know existed until I saw them. This is how I finally loosened the 181 ft/lb of torque holding the crankshaft pulley bolt on and how I pulled all kinds of nuts in bolts in hard-to-reach spaces.

Here’s pix from before and after my 1st Toyota Tune Up:

(BIG) High Quality Photos Of 3VZE Engine

Legend has it that the navy has been irresponsibly dumping all kinds of nasty into the ground there, including sandblast run-off and a few ships that were accidentally exposed to extreme amounts of radioactive material during a failed nuclear experiment. Not exactly an ideal place to raise kids, but definitely a great place to get mutated. And I’m ALL about mutation!

Sure, I say that tongue-in-cheek. Yet, I’m irresistibly drawn to this strange place. I love urban waterfront areas, so that’s def part of it. But there must be more to it, coz a whole community of artists live and work in the area. Something about this place is so inspiring that people consciously move there and go on to create some of the most incredible and unusual forms of art I’ve seen in the whole Bay Area. Sure, it’s not the birthplace of anything as well known as hyphy or house music. But it’s a great birthplace for mutating modern art. The Hunter’s Point artist community is having Open Studios this weekend, so I’ll see what’s new and report back next week with pix. In the meantime, enjoy these lovely photos I took of the waterfront wildlife yesterday.

Also, if you’re interested in the toxic history of the land, the SF Bay Guardian newspaper just published a great article about what our politicians are doing about it and whether the Navy is going to return the land as is or if they’re going to clean it up first. As it stands now, there’s plans to turn the naval base into a park, toxic turf and all…

Navy Nukes and War Waste – Hunter’s Point Makes Headlines in SF Guardian

This particular 4Runner was locked up in a Reno, Nevada impound yard; I just had to liberate it. So, I bought it off the former owner sight-unseen for almost nothing over the impound fees and pretty much got what I paid for. The vehicle was trashed inside and out in mysterious ways.

As soon as the title was in my name and keys in my hand for the 1st time, I compiled the list of known issues it had, one of which was a “minor” overheating problem. Just a few days later, I discovered that the problem was being treated with plain tap water (which messed up the cooling system parts) and a coolant leak had caused the timing belt to shred, weaving individual rubber strings into the crankshaft and cam pulleys. This explained the severe timing problem we found after failing the first smog test.

Stay tuned for the continuation of 88 Hilux & the Robot Whisperer…

For more info on 1984-89 Hilux and 4Runner trucks – including funny commercials, 4×4 home videos and simply awe-inspiring experiments – tap over to the mut8 Hilux/4Runner page:

http://www.mut8.org/auto/hilux/

If you have a ride/need a ride to the slopes, check out the rideshare list in our sidebar on the SNOW page:

Snow Page on Mut8.org

MT. BAKER & ALASKA:

Standard Films' epic Snowboard Show

SQUAW VALLEY, CA:

LE GRAVE, FRANCE: