Uncle Jason and the 4th of July

My friend Jason came up from Phoenix to behold the spectacle of Fatherhood that I am.  I hope he was a little disappointed.  Jason drove 12 hours to get here, and on his first night helped me work on my wife's car until late into the night.  The volvo is either vapor-locking or I have a bad MAF sensor, or maybe fuel injectors, and certainly a host of other problems.  We looked into the engine cooling system and found some problems.  The volvo has a pre-heater system that draws hot air from the exhaust manifold so the car heats up quickly.  Once hot, a valve is supposed to switch over to cool outside air.  This valve was stuck on "hot" which is not good.

The intake plenum with hot/cold valve

The culprit - a thermally activated pushrod - nearly impossible to find and replace.

Nothin' a little chunk of wood won't fix.  We jammed it into the "cold" position so it works like any other car now.

We also replaced the thermostat for good-measure.  The car seems to be working better in some ways, but still managed to strand us for 20 minutes this weekend.  I may have an airflow sensor problem or something.

Jason & I headed to the mountains for a nice drive.

We ended the day by building a pneumatic cannon with home-made piston valve.  It shoots all sorts of stuff, but potato sections go at least twice as far as the original potato gun.

After some mods it shot a home-made nerf style rocket about 100 yards - cool!

The fam came over for BBQ and fireworks.  Big-brother Patrick with Henry.

A proud Daddy!

Grandpa with grandson #1 (chronologically).

Cousin Henry.

Big brother/cousin Patrick with Tommy and Henry.