Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Easter Weekend

A long time has passed with little activity here! What's been doin the last few weeks? Well....

In an attempt to downsize my stereo i recently sold my old DCM's and bought some even older Bose speakers. The Bose had blown woofer's so i got them for a steal but they were in otherwise good shape. Rather then paying someone to recone them (or buying new ones) i thought I'd try to do it myself. For 30 bucks..what the hell!

As you can see from the pics (below) the foam is destroyed. On one of the two speakers the speaker had been used like this so much that the voice coil had even become separated from the mount. Not good!

The refoam kit costs about 30 bucks and comes with new foam, the proper glue and instructions on how to clean and reglue things correctly. Cleaning is the key as 100% of the old foam and adhesive must be removed to ensure proper adhesion and sound. Before gluing, the next important thing is making sure things are centered (in the x-y) such that the speaker has it's full range of motion available and centered in the a-b such that there's no rubbing in the coil itself. After a few hrs things turned out well and my new 80 dollar Bose speakers sound like a million bucks!

2009 03 Speaker Rebuild


Onto other things..

About a month ago i started losing my vision. Rather, i started seeing spots (or maybe stars..from that girl). It turned out to be interferon retinapothy...a rare but not unheard of side effect to the interferon I've been taking for almost 8 months. As a result of my vision problems i had to stop taking the interferon immediately or risk vision loss! Not a fun prospect, risking cancer over vision..but a required choice nonetheless. However if and once my vision returns to normal i will go back on the interferon at a lower dosage and monitor things more closely. The silver lining? I've been staying up past 8 on Mon. Wed and Friday! It's a whole new world.

Onto even more things.....

The last few weeks have been very busy here in Royal Oak. To start it off, Mel and i had visitors from her family two weeks in a row immediately following her week "vacation" in Colorado. Here are some pics! Ridemakerz was probably the highlight!

http://theworldofallthingsmel.blogspot.com/2009/03/three-boys-four-adults-and-dawg.html

http://theworldofallthingsmel.blogspot.com/2009/04/miss-rebecca.html



Then to top it off my family came bearing early Christmas gifts, i.e. my newly painted Camaro! Thankfully they brought a helper to unload things, my cousin Delaney.

Never one to miss an opportunity, having access to a proper car trailer also allowed me to pick up my latest project, a 1973 Alfa Romeo GTV. It'll take me a year or so to get this together as most of it came in boxes. Despite looking for hrs, i didn't find any directions either. Here are some pics from the weekend
2009 04 Easeter, Camaro and Alfa Delivery!