The random chat thread for throwing out things that don't matter

My grandson and I entered a car show hosted by a local elementary school this last weekend and took first place in the import category.  It felt good to get out and represent the Spyder again.  Since my grandson was about 4-years-old we have tried to do a couple of car shows a year, but now that he is older (13) and very busy with travel baseball (he's really very talented/skilled) we are lucky if we get one show in a year.  When he was 4 or 5 we were driving to a car show and he asked me, "He Pa, when you die can I have the Spyder?"  I had to tell him that it has always been the plan that when I no longer am in need of the Spyder, it would be his.  He just smiled and said, "Thank you, Pa."  We had a great time.  He is a great kid and I am grateful.  Here are a few photos we took when we got back home with the trophy.

Congratulations UM. I remember when you sent a picture of your Grandson for the advertisement we did years ago. 

That's great!

Thanks for posting pics, Uncle Mush! Really nice.

I went for a drive with local friend yesterday as its the last good day before a week of rain as the storms hit the east coast.  I did not push it, just drove it and it still amazes me how good this car is to drive after all of the modifications I have done to it to make it perfect for driving feel. The last bit of the puzzle was the shifter feel after adding the Frankenstein motor works spherical bearings brought it together nicely the way it has more definable gates with the short shifter that still has resistance which I like. I never understood those taller shifters that everyone is getting because there is next to no resistance because the leverage and longer throws that feels like manual Honda Accord with that loose feel. 

Went to autocross and practiced my handbrake turns. It was SO much fun. People loved it too. Ignore my awful driving, I was really unwell and left halfway through the day. I just put the car in 30:70 split and had some fun instead of driving for time.

Nice!  The timing guy at the finish line liked the handbrake turn.  That course was narrow AF!  Also... holy CONES, Bat-Man!  That club must have a massive equipment trailer to store all of those.  hahaha.

 I had to buy a new garage door opener. The one I had lasted for over 23 years and it was a Chamberlain Screw drive. I was curious of what new technology is out there and it appears its mostly chain, belt drive and the new direct drive. They say they perfected the belts by way of technology to last a long time but the chain is the cheaper option. The newest tech is the direct drive where the unit is connected to the rotating main pulley by the garage door.  No more chains or belts and overhang of the unit with a rail, it's just a motor by the garage and can be retrofitted to the oldest garage doors. This is kind of cool because you can now use the upper part of the garage to hang stuff like a hardtop or just to make the garage look moor roomy. The only problem is, it's double the cost but I imagine this will come down and there will be no more traditional rail type units in the future, just a motor box with zero maintenance. 

 The other big change is DC motors which are quiet and energy efficient. The doors accelerate and decelerate with variable speed which is suppose to go easy on the doors from violent shakes so they last and to make them ultra quiet. Most come with a battery back up.  

 I bought the ultra quiet Chamberlain DC motor with belt drive just to try something different otherwise it was not a priority. I don't even care about the wifi features but this one has it and I suppose I will use it.  

 Anyway I decided to do a before and after test and shot a video.  I also used my new measurement microphone to see if there was a reduction in sound.  It turns out that it is approximately 10db less than the screw drive and it is around 1.5 seconds quicker to open.  I was impressed because its so quiet that I cant hear the garage door opening on the inside of the house as with the other one you can hear the loud AC motor hum though the walls and the crashing and banging when it comes to a stop. It also sounds entirely different with a servo whine that changes in pitch. The slow acceleration and deceleration feature is pretty cool to see. Im impressed but it's just a garage door opener at the end of the day that is tasked with doing two things. 

I've been really happy with my chamberlain opener as well.  The wifi piece is more useful than you might think.  One of the main uses I have for it is "Did I remember to close the door?".  You can quickly check and 99% of the time see "Door closed for 1 minute" (or whatever amount of time has passed).  haha.  But getting dropped off via Uber or someone and I want to enter through the garage, I just launch the MyQ app and open the door.  You *can* connect it to Amazon / Alexa, but I have purposely not done that as the convenience isn't worth the security risk on that one.

That's good to know about the direct drive units.  However, I don't know if I have enough space near the sides of the upper main shaft to mount an opener.  Then, there's running power to it, etc.  I do like the concept though.

I am warming up to the wifi feature but not enough to fully trust it. I did read about the safety that is put into it even though they say it has its own vulnerabilities. I then think to myself my old opener which uses the older rolling code technology has always been hackable but most of the time home invasion or thefts are crimes of opportunity that are not so sophisticated and I don't have a Picasso in my living room. 

So I decided to buy a Lift Master wall control panel that has some interesting features that mine did not come with. It has a timer feature that you can set for 1,5 and 10 minutes to where the garage door closes on its own and it has a hold button to suspend the timer. I like this better just incase the garage door is open accidentally for any reason.  My other garage door has the older screw type Chamberlin which has a key pad so I think this will work out well so I am not locked out. 

I got done with lubricating the springs and all the hinges on the door and now the opening and closing is very smooth and quiet. They say you can get more life out of the door hardware with the DC motor. 

I took a big leap of faith after I did a lot of research.  Apparently MyQ is very stable and better security than my other garage door opener.  I was curious about the Amazon Key since it was introduced five years ago to prevent porch pirates. It turns out that Amazon has worked very hard to gain the trust of customers so they put in all kinds of safeguards and they have reinforced it further to be fool proof because all it takes is one bad incident to lose the public trust. It appears from the time they have been operating they have not had one incident of theft. The only problem they had was a few incidences of the driver not closing the garage door which they solved. 

Apparently only select vetted and trained drivers are used with yearly background checks. Amazon takes responsibility for any theft and you can purchase a MyQ camera that is connected to the app to record the delivery. Drivers get a one time access that comes from their cloud server network so there is nothing that can be intercepted and they are only allowed to go 3 feet into the garage.  Once the delivery is made you get an alert on your phone and you can see the delivery live or after it has been made.  

 Now on my Amazon delivery options I can choose this option or not.  I do not have a problem with theft but I have had packaged that were rained on or delivered when I was out of town so I think this might be kind of cool. I hope UPS and Fedx does something similar. 

Posted by: @lordtakuban

↑

Nice!  The timing guy at the finish line liked the handbrake turn.  That course was narrow AF!  Also... holy CONES, Bat-Man!  That club must have a massive equipment trailer to store all of those.  hahaha.

That's why I love this organization. More like a mix of autocross and track day. Mini track day. Tight, technical courses with varied turns for all sorts of driving styles and car layouts. Not just gate targets. These are my favorite events.

@haloruler64 Looks like you were having a lot of fun and I bet it felt great to receive the unsolicited feedback at the end of the run where he admired your handbrake turn.  Congratulations!

I heard you can't (or maybe you don't need to) do that handbrake turn with our Spyders, is that correct ??

Wait, Spyders have a handbrake?!