Capt, like the rest, I am amazed at all of your work, and high quality of work the you do.

I wanted a pit for my little one car scissor lift. As a guy with ample grey hair, I decided from the start to hire it done. 6 guys showed up in two pickups. The sawed the hole, used a pneumatic jack hammer, and broke it up and hauled it all out to the trucks. The went down to the sand from the initial construction. Put in the rebar, and poured the new pit, the walls, and a trench for my hydraulic line, cleaned up and and were gone that day. I did not have to go to the Dr. with a injured back, I did not have to haul away the old concrete, and I would never have figured out how to form the pit walls and floor like they did. It was money well spent for me.

You are a lot tougher than I. I do know my limits, and that was way over my limit. I do love my lift, and when not in use, it is sunk into the floor, and covered with a piece of plywood and there is nothing in my way of parking there in my daily driver.

I can't store multiple cars, but I figure three cars for two people is enough for me.

Keep up the amazing work.

More amazing work, Capt.
Try Line is getting closer....

Had my drone out for a flight tonight.........picture of my wee little shed. :D

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1663554390.JPG

This pic reminds me of the pole barn a buddy a mine built for himself to live in at an unknown location in the woods. One wall of the living quarters was actually the pretty side of an insulated garage door that opened up to his shop. Very kool and in violation of many codes:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploads26/5421664197921.jpg

Rusty, my house would fit in your shed!

No building progress to report, been hunched over a desk in a cosy, warm office, creating fast shapes on a CAD screen

This build and the below kit car I built in my 20's are the only 2 projects I've ever built for myself. Been too busy creating 50 odd race cars for other people

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1671232803.jpg

Took 5yrs to build, made from 21 different cars ranging from a Mini to a McLaren F1 and even wing mirrors from a F1 inshore world championship powerboat

Drove it wearing ski goggles and black balaclava. Ski googles aren't designed for 135mph, had to blink as fast as I could to stop my eyeballs drying out or couldn't see a thing, even the dash mounted monster 5" rev counter. Speedo was from a bicycle for uber-lightweight-ness

Set off car alarms everywhere, spat flames out the side exhaust and so loud Mrs Ahab could hear me coming home from well over a mile away.

One night I pulled over thinking the cops we're trying to stop me. Was only the flames being reflected off the hedgen rows

In the wet it would spin the wheels in most gears, Only car I've ever owned which got my adrenaline going before I'd even sat in it, way more so than my 930

Only crashed it once, went off in the wet at a relatively slow speed, luckily missed a clump of trees and came to a stop in the shrubbery with a barb wire fence across the hood within arms length

Repaired it with new flip front, sold it quickly to a German who took it back to Germany. I had to, before the beast I'd created had a 2nd go at trying to kill me. Never ever heard from him again, RIP Franz

Used the money for the deposit of our house in this thread

^What a visceral machine! Love the power to weight ratio.

Wow, that kind of project car is exactly what you need to get the adrenaline flowing, but at some point, as you discovered, you just have to let the beast go. Glad you had fun building and driving it.

Yep - same with me. Sold my early Series 1 E Type Jag to bulk up the deposit on our family house.

Jag was so good & fast it would have killed me. E Types have soared in value, but our home did too (plus we raised our small family there). I sometimes miss the Jag but family came first.

My Christmas present arrived, a Flir One Pro, it clips onto my smart phone, has its own battery, very easy to set up, only used it once and 1st impression is, wow very impressive!

This picture is from outside, the hot area under the lower right window is the heat from a central heating radiator mounted to the inside of a 2ft thick stone wallhttp://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1674692395.jpg

Heat from my fire place after a fire the previous evening
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1674692529.jpg

Exterior picture of a window from outside showing heat loss between the wooden window frame and stone wall
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1674692645.jpg

My dog has a cold nose
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1674692703.jpg

I could even see the hot spots on tyres of cars as each tyre rolled off the tarmac as they drove past past me when I was outside

That’s very cool and it looks like you already have 1000 uses planned. Regarding the third picture of the window, are you going to go through the entire house to see if there are any leaks?

I chuckled too at the doggie eyeball bullseye.

Nice, that camera is pretty good at showing where the heat is escaping! Love the tools we have today.

Steve, in the first image there seems to be a "hot spot " in the east gable. Has that upstairs area been finished yet?

Best
Les

Les, you're right, that part of the house has been finished a longtime ago. I made Mrs Ahab cry with that work :(

She went away for a weekend and came back to find no stairs, stripped back bare stone internal walls and me caught red handed shovelling rubble into a wheel barrow stood in the middle of what looked like a bombed out house

The top right hot spot on the gable end near the roof I think is from a warm chimney

The lower left is I think a combination of fire place and a thinner 1-1.5ft thick external wall where the spiral staircase is

The images are fascinating, but the real information comes from knowing the temperature range represented by the spectral representation. Ie: does the shift from red to yellow represent 2 degrees or 20?
Thanks for sharing. The availability of that level of technology is great.
43 years ago when Canada got our Aurora anti submarine aircraft, I got to tour one. One station aboard the aircraft was for the crew person monitoring the infrared camera mounted under the nose. Using a tracking ball, I could scan the crowd at the airshow and noted that a fellow walking away carried his wallet in his right hip pocket. I asked the crewman about the temperature gradient and his response was,"I don't know and if I did it would probably be classified. "

Cool stuff!

Best
Les

Just checking in to make sure this thread hasn't disapperared like the original 2023 F1 thread :confused:

Disappointingly I've got nothing new to post as I'm still busy with my desk job :(

End of April I'll be back to building again, can't wait and I'll be back to posting updates :)

You are forgiven. For now. ;)

Best
Les

I was inspired by your FLIR... I did the home thing - it worked great but revealed no great surprise, nor do I have a clue what I can do to solve the issue. So my windows surrounds are cold.. Fireplace yeah... The door I knew about... I need to try from outside now ;-)

Then I did the car thing, I can see where that will be useful detecting a bad cylinder

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1678316128.jpg

Old bimmer, apparently on 4 cylinders !

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1682884737.jpg

For the last 8 months I've no 'waiting' time spare to spend on my man cave build :(

This quote explains in more meaningful words than I can think of, for the reason why there has been zero progress :cool:

Getting my priorities in the order this week so I'll be back to being a 5 days a week builder, 2 days a week F1 design engineer until the end of Aug.

Let the updates begin :D again ;)

Nice! Still, until you win the lottery, unfortunately, the other stuff is a necessary evil. And I assume in your case, not really all that evil. I have to think that designing for race cars or sports cars, is pretty cool in the grand scheme of things.

Yep, a necessary evil but not a bad evil to spend a life doing

Another boring race at Miami but it's race results like today's that remind me it can occasionally be a good use of my time :rolleyes:

Can add another pole position, fastest lap, 1-2 finish, another 4 finishes in the points and my 385th race to my F1 score card :cool:

Big milestone though is I've broken through the 1000th time over the finish line for a car I've helped design :eek:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683500856.jpg

Join the club. :D

Very cool, indeed! And I suspect you're a member of a fairly small group in the grand scheme of things.

Thats incredible Captain, many congratulations!

You forgot to put “boring” in green font per informal forum, just-kidding guidelines.

You guys are unstoppable this year, reliability, tirewear, drs effectiveness, etc, etc. I can’t imagine how scary RB would be without a budget cap. Are you working on the road car too?

Very cool Captain ! I wish my daughter had gotten aken the job with the F1 team. An exciting lifestyle !!

Thanks Steve, hadn't considered it being a small club, thought of it more as, geez, I've been doing it for too long :rolleyes:

Thanks Paul, I'm not working for Redbull but helped Honda F1 for over 3yrs, they're mostly to blame for my slow man cave progress, my best ever work is helping to power both Redbull and Alpha Tauri cars, will continue to be used until the end of 2025

Thanks Matt, please tell your daughter from me, keep trying, don't give up, F1 might be difficult to get into but its harder to leave, like Hotel California, you can check out anytime but you can never leave ;)

Hey Captain, do you ever get to keep any of the widgets that you design? You know, after the newest revision has made the last iteration redundant?

Got very few widgets, the odd broken bit, a few wheel nuts, a couple of real car part leaving presents like a signed rear wing end plate and a small centre rear wing, that's all

I was offered a full-scale 3D printed gearbox casing as a leaving present. It was huge, Mrs Ahab would never have let me keep it in the house

Also the car was crap and the team run by a bunch of amateurs so I didn't want any reminders of my time there.

I politely declined the kind offer, turned it into a plant pot and left it in the race teams engineering office :D

Update time....

Today was recycling day and start of my big spring clear out

Two car loads of stuff, love my dump run route, a very scenic drive on quiet roads through typical English countryside

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683756165.jpg

Green rolling hills are nowhere near as scenic as the view from the dump near my mountain house

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683756238.jpg

In the past I have disposed of an old washing machine by chopping it up and putting it in my trash can over a couple of collections

But my spare Toyota truck was just a bit too big to leave out for the trash men

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683756482.jpg

So a local car wrecking yard and metal recycling place collected it

Loading up was easy but one of my elderly neighbours must have been so excited to see this yard eye sore leaving our neighborhood she fell off her door step so we had to pause loading to stand her back up and dust her off

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683756762.jpg

Needed my wheels back for my other truck so grabbed them and said my last goodbyes, buying this as a spare was a good idea at the time but glad to see it go

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683756899.jpg

One truck down, another truck to go (soon to be the star in my road trip thread), that'll bring my fleet down to a more manageable 6 cars

Nearly threw out this mangled, twisted left over steel concrete steel mesh from the hole I'd cut out in the garage concrete slab for my hydraulic lift table

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683757114.jpg

I'll need mesh for the new lowered concrete slab for the recessed hydraulic lift table. Planned to buy new but decided to try and reuse. Broke out the hammers and went all medieval on it. Won't win any a concurs awards but it will do the job

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683757519.jpg

And the award for reusing and recycling goes to: (the envelope, please), Steve,aka Captain Ahab!

;)
Les

Thank you Les, award graciously accepted :D you guys are going to pee your pants when I reveal how my white truck is going to be recycled ;)

This morning I dropped off the rest of the truck to the recycling place ie doors, tailgate and the rear quarter panel

Think this twisted mess might have been the Japanese Sumo Ninja steel I rolled off my driveway yesterday

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1683832165.jpg

Felt a tinged of sadness watching a mechanical monster ripping engines out of soon to be dead ICE cars

Technology progress never stops but I can't be alone as a driving enthusiast thinking even though EV's will eventually do most things better than an ICE car, it doesn't mean the driving experience will be better or anymore fun :(

This has been post. Thank you for the updates Cap.

The big spring clean continues but my feeble winter office phisque took a real beating today :(

Mrs Ahab and I shovelled and bucketed over 3 tons in just over 3hrs

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684007466.jpg

Hard to imagine, this pile was left overs from just knocking a door way, turning a window into a door through the ordinal 2ft thick house walls and the small hole I cut through the garage concrete slab :eek:

Much better now, almost a clear view of our boundary wall we built years ago and then extended downwards during this project :cool:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1684008248.jpg

Good stuff! Great updates and glad you were able to get out and do a bit of physical labor instead of desk jobbing it.

Captain. You can probably appreciate this story.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/02/realestate/scotland-villa-home-renovation.html

Thanks for that Bob, my build has stalled this summer all for good reasons

Have to confess I squandered my free time this summer by enjoying too many enjoyable man cave building distractions

Humanitarian trip to Ukraine, Mrs Ahab and I drove our faithful old Toyota 4Runner filled with medical supplies to Ukraine, donated it to be used on the frontline as a snatch ambulance

Enjoyed a week holidaying in Cornwall with my whole family celebrating my mum's 80th birthday

Another weeks holiday enjoying our other home in Slovenia including a day trip in Italy

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1696686975.jpg

Another humanitarian trip delivering my other family 4x4 SUV to Ukraine, even found time spent for a day driving around the countryside sightseeing there too

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1696684538.jpg

Then back home for a day of work

Needed a rest from work so jetted off the next day for some long over due Mrs Ahab and me time, visiting the Seychelles, it rained a lot but the islands have the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1696687992.jpg

As we couldn't agree between ourselves on would we rather see the Seychelles or Mauritius Mrs Ahab came up with the best example of woman's math, we should do both in one trip as it would be cheaper on flights

Seychelles made the beaches in Mauritius look average but the food in Mauritius was better than the Seychelles

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1696685182.jpg

Then back home for a day, last day of work at Alpine F1on this, special edition Alpine A110, spent the little work time I did trying to bring F1 carbon fibre quality up to road car aesthetic quality which is a lot more difficult than it sounds

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1696687652.jpg

Following day I was on a plane to Japan for a business trip which will have a quick Germany business trip in the middle of my Japan business trip

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1696687738.jpg

So when I should have been making progress on my man cave build, I've been driving and flying around the world, seeing 12 countries, some more than once, 4 of them new too

I did however find a spare few days to assemble my triple stacker car lift which I'll share in my next man cave progress update

Slacker. That is some good looking barely dead fish.
Is your Slovenian place near the beach? The Dalmatian coast was on of our favorite rides.

I'll eat most things that come out of the sea raw but one sushi had sea urchins on top, yuck!

My Slovenia house is in the mountains but have driven down the Croatian coast which is a beautiful drive, if you liked that part of the coast in Croatia, I can recommend Montenegro is worth a visit

Montenegro was where we ran out of time. That was where I ordered mussels for lunch. Asked the waiter how fresh they were. He pointed to a guy retrieving them from the bay as we spoke.
Albania wasn't doable at the time for various reasons but it's sounding like that has changed. Have you been there?
Sea urchins. Yum

Albania is on my list, still slightly undiscovered compared to Croatia, need to do some research on how lawless it is down there as we'll visit driving our own car

What’s happening, Captain?

Happy New Year Captain,
Looking forward to the triple stacker car lift installation story !
Cheers