Dr. Jeff Bangkok

My good friend Jeff Milligan and his wife Sharon joined me for a 1800 kilometres road trip around the small roads of Northern Thailand.  A wonderful experience.  Here are the first photos I have processed.  Many more to come. And captions to come as well.

Near the Lao boarder.

Friendly temple monkeys near Loei, Thailand.

Thailand!

So many wonderful flowers to photograph in Thailand.

Sunflower, near the Lao boarder

Near Laos.

Magic light.

I am really enjoying my new Sigma 70mm Macro lens.

I love these small towns in Northern Thailand. This is Loei.

Loei is a very special little town.  They do not allow any international franchise businesses in the city.  The result is a wonderful old world feeling. You see something gone almost everywhere else: the local department store. The downtown is not dead.

A reclining Buddha in a cave.  There are always things to discover in Thailand.

The banks of the Mae Kong River, looking across to Laos.

No news: my 1UZ would not start and run properly - so no tuning map yet. We chased what we believed to be a coil wiring flaw, but ended the evening suspecting the fuel injectors (more than one) were hanging open causing the starting and idling problems: we were drowning the plugs.  Oh well. There was a large crowd on hand to see the first NITRO funny car in Thailand (it smacked the wall right off the starting line), and this crowd eventually filtered around to my shop to stop in and admire my race car and the new V8.  Oh well . . . "if you can't go fast, at least look good." I hope that is not going to be the theme of this race car.  I am sure it will not be . . . I may have pop for NEW, and expensive injectors.  Oh well.

My car drew a large crowd, most of whom walked up, saw the Vortech supercharger, assumed it was a turbocharger (mine is the only supercarger in Thailand), looked around, saw the headers, and realized the "turbo" did not have exhaust feeding it . . . "Oh, it's a supercharger!"

Listen To This!

Last Saturday night we cranked up the little blown 1UZ HEMI for the first time.  WOW, what a sweet sound!  We had a couple of small sorting-out issues: a little oil weeping from here and there requiring tightening, burping the radiator of air, and an oil pressure gauge not working (we pulled the oil line to confirm oil flow and pressure).  Using the super-duper GT Unleaded Racing Gas (115+ octane rating), we didn't get a final tune in the ECU because the header collectors are so short we could not get a stable O2 reading, and there appeared to be a vacuum leak which yielded novel tuning outputs.  Some collector extension pipes are being made this week (for tuning purposes only), and new rubber grommets for the injector bottoms are being fitted (the source of the vacuum leaks, we believe).  We will go at it again this Saturday at noon . . .  and hope we can run in that night's big program. Follow the complete blown 1UZ project in my Racing Projects Blog.

The completed supercharged 1UZ.  What a beautiful engine this is!

I woke up at 5:00am to go and meet the wiring  guy, George, and then to tow my race car the 200km to  Pattaya before traffic snarled the streets of Bangkok.  George was almost done when I arrived . . . he finished in an hour and I headed down to Pattaya. It was a good day of planning all the final details of the race car . . . "how it should be done," and "the right way to do it" conversations went on all day.  The drive back was beautiful in the setting sun. I stopped at one of the roadside markets and bought a bag of freshly baked cashews. Nice.  Go to my Racing Projects Blog for more on the day's mechanical progress.

A nice place to find the perfect snack for a long drive!

Max Snacks! I opted for a few grams of the cashews from a giant, 100 pound sack. What counts as a snack varies widely across this big wonderful planet of ours.

This is what the day was about.

The 1UZ V-8 transplant is nearing completion. Hard as I could try, I could only come up with a list of 27, mostly small, things that still needed completion. The day I hear those new headers crackle with the sound of this Bad Boy is getting closer.

I am just back from the Thai Island of Phuket.  It is a beautiful place of mostly sand, palm trees, and crystal clear water.  Once a year they have their Vegetarian Festival which includes a big parade down "Main Street." Lots of fun . . . . if your idea of fun is chasing ghosts off of the corners by stabbing whatever is handy in the kitchen drawers, or around the house or garage,  through your cheeks while under a trance and then parading yourself in front of your friends and neighbors.  Oh, and then having the crowd set off thousands of very large (and illegal everywhere on earth) firecrackers right over your head while you are bearing a litter of your local temple's favorite deities for all to see. It is a very photogenic experience, in a perverse kind of way. By the way, do not even try to order lamb brochettes during this time of year . . . . . I tried and was told, "Sorry, we're out of skewers."  "Why?" I asked.  There are more photos here.   This is what you missed:

The kids love to try and see how close they can come to blowing their toes off. I didn't stick around.

There were lots of kids having fun, but somehow they seemed a little consumed with thoughts of their future participation in the parade . . . . .

Oh, that's where the skewers have gone.

I guess lamb-ka-bobs are out of the question too.

Let's see, what else does Mom have in the kitchen drawer . . . . .

Not Mother's lamp too!  I'm gonna tell . . . . .

Ouch.

The end of the parade is where all the fun, and missing fingers and eyes-put-out . . . . yes, you guessed right . . . The Rain Of Firecrackers!

Phuket Firecrackers Duckers (PFD).

Loitering on parade while the ambulance tended the newly blind (no kidding).

O.K., now that the ambulances have gone . . . . . PAR-TAY!