A Leslie Wong Blog

Hank Jones is 89 years old today.

The Hank Jones Store at Amazon.com.

I finally started taking apart the transmission. The main shaft has over 50 parts rotating around it – 1st – 5th gears, synchro hubs, synchro sleeves, bearings, etc.

This is where doubt started whether this would actually work again.

Common Alfa transmission wisdom indicates gear lightening for better shifting response and as a cure for a crunching 1-2 shift. It makes, sense, having less rotating mass and the accompanying reduced intertia would wear the syncros less. Better acceleration too, but me losing 20 lbs. would increase the car’s performance more.

This is a close-up of 1st gear and the worn syncronizer ring.

That wear is the cause of the crunching gears in 1-2 upshifts in the Alfa. You can see the wear in the triangle shaped shiny areas on the synchro ring. A new synchro ring has a rough surface. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what a synchro ring looked liked before I took this apart.
More pitures.

Yellowfin Tuna, Monterey Bay Aquarium. Nikon D70, 18-70 f3.5-f4.5, 27mm, f3.8, 1/10 sec, ISO 400. 7-23-07, 4:48:23 PM PDT.

In the process of replacing my Alfetta clutch, I also removed the transmission and final drive – it’s all one unit.

My idea was to just to reseal the case with Hylomar between the final drive, spacer and transmission. But I guess I have to clean up my bench and take a good look at the synchros and dogs.

We started after an accident, here. Thanks to Mitch Conard and Jim Stansfield and Spence at Mesa Performance Parts, we got a lot big and little parts to put it back together.

The paint was done six weeks ago. The Alfa was failing, so we took the BMW out of the body shop, missing some trim and some details, because we needed a drivable car. Now it’s almost finished.

I went out to take these pictures and noticed that the driver side rocker panel molding was hanging from the t-bolts at both ends.

I spent an 2 hours trying to get 35-year-old molding over new clips. I couldn’t do it. Now I am drinking big martinis.

If anyone has any ideas on how to put on the rocker panel molding, please leave your suggestion in a comment. I tried hammering it, using a heat gun to soften the rubber and swearing a lot.

We are probably in for US$ 9,000 for parts, body work and paint + US$ 3,500 insurance coverage. Plus my labor, swearing and drinking. I hate working on cars.

Homer: Oh, so they have Internet on computers now!

read more | digg story

scaryideas.com has a new tool that everyone should have.

via Engadget

I had the Xbox 360 and Forza Motorsport 2 part.

But in Forza Motorsport 2, I was unable to drive with an Xbox 360 Wireless Controller. For some reason, steering with my left thumb (maybe the kids can do it), caused me to always over-correct. I thought the solution would be the more natural car interface, the Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel.

Now I find that if your Xbox is connected to a large screen TV, having the steering wheel on your lap or clamped to a table doesn’t work very well. This guy’s Ulitmate Xbox 360 Racing Setup looks like it’d be OK.

Now I have to find a racing seat.

read more | digg story

I have been experiencing the slow file copy problem on the Vista installation on my Shuttle SB51G, which is my “media center” PC – it is connected to our Sony KV-36FV1 television.

My network topology looks like this: I have a Linksys WRT54G ver.2 running DD-WRT v23 SP2 (09/15/06) vpn and a Linksys EZXS55W 5 port switch. Connected to the router and switch are the Shuttle, a Sony laptop running Windows 2003 Server SP2 (the domain controller), a Toshiba Portege connected via WiFi, a Dell Inspiron 700m connected by Ethernet, an Apple Powerbook G4 12″ (rev. A) connected via WiFi, a Bootcamp (really, rEFIt) Apple Macbook (Late 2006 – MA701LL/A) connected by Ethernet and WiFi and an Xbox 360 connected by Ethernet.

The main symptom for me was the Calculating remaining time dialog box that would not indicate the remaining time for a file copy. I tried the solutions I found by searching for “Vista slow file copy”. Microsoft has a Support Knowledge Base article, KB931770 that describes their solution and offers a Hotfix, which did not work for me.

I ticked the setting (in the Folder Options/View/Advanced Settings) Always show icons, never thumbnails. As Monty Hall and Keith Linford always said, “No Deal!”

I tried turning off Remote Differential Compression, in Control Panel/Programs and Features/Turn Windows Features On and Off/clear check on Remote Differential Compression. No deal.

It did not seem like a PATA controller problem, where a second device (such as DVD drive) was on the same channel as a hard disk. My second hard disk was on its own channel and I still had the slow file copy problem to that disk.

Since I was sometimes getting an error -36, copying files from OSX to Vista booted on the Shuttle, I tried changing the Vista Security Settings/Local Policies/Security Options/ to:

Domain member: Digitally encrypt secure channel data (always) – Enable
Domain member: Digitally sign secure channel data (when possible) – Enable
Microsoft network client: Digitally sign communications (always) – Disable
Microsoft network client: Digitally sign communications (if server agrees) – Enable
Microsoft network server: Digitally sign communications (always) – Disable
Microsoft network server: Digitally sign communications (if client agrees) – Enable

All these settings did not resolve the problem.

What solved the problem? Updating the Realtek (RTL8139/810x) Ethernet Driver from Realtek to version 6.104 for Vista.

You may be thinking, “Why didn’t he try that first?” – I did. But in early June, the Realtek driver was only up to version 6.103, which did not solve the slow file copy problem.