Waxed my car, it becomes shinning now :)

Saturday, a good weather we have been waiting for a long time. Since it's dry, I decided to wax my car. A couple of days ago, I have bought a polisher machine, and maguires 3 step wax/cleaning set  from Canadian Tire. The reason that I chose its 3 steps set is my car hasn't been waxed for a year, and there's a lot micro dust on the paints. I need a deep pre-wax cleaning product to remove those micro dust. Although, I have the puffer, it still took me almost 5 hours to go through all the 3 steps: pre-wax cleaning, polishing, wax. Futurnately, the results is conviencing. Nice product and good work out for me.

Replaced Drum Brakes at Canada Day

It's Canada Day today, and it's a great chance to see free shows out doors. However, I am tired of being in the crowds and decided to finish the brake work for my car's rear wheels.

The work itself is much easier than I thought, even it's my first time to replace drum brakes. But the mechanism itself is more complex than disc brakes. The material we need are brand new pair of brake drums and pads, the new springs, high temp brake grease, ....., and some tools. There are may articles out there explaining how to do it by yourself, so I decided to save my words here and just post some photos for fun. (click the picture for enlarged version)

  The Old Brake Pads On the Wheel

Brakes Drum and PadsUnmounted

Old Brake Drums and Pads ( totally worn off :(  )

  The New Brake Pads

New Brake Pads Mounted

The Brand New Shinning Brake Drum

New Brake Drum Mounted. JOB DONE !!!!!!

Replaced Brake Pads and Rotors today.

About 2 months ago, I was warned that my front break pads and rotors were 99% worn out and the rear brake shoes were 95% worn out, when I got my engine oil changed at Canadian Tire. I then asked the price for the replacement, and the answer was 600 ~ 700 bucks. Harsh! I don't have that much money and I went there for oil change only because I got a free oil change voucher. Actually the pads and rotors cost way less than the full service. Then I decided to do it by myself. Fortunately, the old brake stuffs still did their job until they got replace.

Last week I went to Canadian Tire and bought 2 pair brake pads, 2 front rotors, 2 pair brake shoes, and brake spring set for about $170 after taxes. Of course I need some tools as well.

This weekend I finally got sometime to replaced the brake pads and rotors of my ride's front wheels. I'd say it's not technically difficult by physically hard. This makes me think I'd better work out every day. It might take a professional mechanic 1 hour to finish the job but I spent 5 hours on it. What a shame :(

Anyway, I am still happy to see the old, dirty, heavily worn out pads and rotors were replaced by the shinning brand new ones :) Here are some photos to keep the nice memory.

Prepare work to protect the environment.

Prepare work to protect myself :P

Jack my ride up and ready to go!!!


Wheels are removed and "My God" the old pad and rotor were totally worn out.

I removed the rear wheel as well because I will exchange the front and rear tire later.

Hehe, Shining brand new Rotor and Pads

The retired old pads and rotors.

Actually I planned to replace the rear brake shoes as well this time. However, when I take the brake drum off, I found the the drum was also heavily worn out and I didn't buy the new drum for the replacement. Normally the drum last much longer than the rotors, and it seems I just ran out of my luck this time. So I've to replace the rear brake next time. Give me a break~~~

FIFAStreet 3

A cool commercial ads video found at Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/v/z8c4otFXqTM

Official Website: www.fifastreet3.com

"Die Nibelungen - Der Fluch des Drachen"

It's a fine movie to my opinion. The story line was based on the Germanic myth "Das Nibelungenlied" and the Nordic "Volsunga Saga" which also inspired the four-opera cycle by Richard Wagner and J.R.R. Tolkien's epic "The Lord of the Rings".

Reading the story and history behind the movie brought even more fun to me. For example, the word "Nibelung" is the German title was borrowed by it's English title, which is called "Ring of the Nibelungs". However, that might confuse the English speakers. Actually the Nibelung of the title is the dwarf Alberich, and the Ring in question is the one he fashions from the Rhinegold. The title therefore means "Alberich's Ring". About the word Nibelung (Nibelunge, Niflunger) is derived from the German/old Norse word "Nebel" (mist), and means darkness. In some case, people think Nibelung also refers to the Son of Mist (Nebel).

Windows: IDE ATA and ATAPI disks use PIO mode after multiple time-out or CRC errors occur

This problem occurs since my new SATA HD installed. I noticed after several days my Windows XP became extremely slow and the HD access uses a lot CPU time. However everything seems to be fine under Linux. Odd!

Then I checked the settings under Device Manager and found that windows automatically re-set my new SATA driver to run in PIO mode. That was in sin.  My first guess was my new driver has problem and windows couldn't let it work under UDMA. But it's just hard to believe. After several hours research. It turns out that my new SATA has NCQ (Native Command Queuing) while my Intel mainboard chip 845PE dosen't support it. That incompatible issue causes a lot error interruption to windows, which then consider the bad of my new driver :(

OK, our M$ indeed has a solution to that, although it can't be called a solution at all. I will list the step in below:

1) Make sure we got SP2 installed.
2) use "regedit" open the key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0002]
3) add a new DWORD Value by name ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess and set the value to be 1
4) repeat the above step if you have more IDE controllors. They must be named in a number sequence, like \003, \004 ....
5) If necessary, uninstall the IDE driver through device manager, which will manually reset the error count to be zero.

OK, enjoy, it's done.