My father in-law loved lighters, flashlights, and pens. A lot of the lighters weren't really worth much but I brought two of them home. One is an old Ronson that has to be from the early 1900's. It belonged to his dad. The other one was a Zippo that belonged to him. Both didn't work. There isn't much to a Zippo so it was really easy to get going. The Ronson is an old Whirlwind model and it has some moving parts in it that needed cleaning. I took it all apart, cleaned it, installed new flint, packing, wick and fluid. It took a few tries to get everything back together the right way but this thing works like it was brand new and it looks gangster. It even has the original box and paper work. I don't smoke (except for a cigar once in a while) so I don't know what I'll do with them but they are nice. 

This is classy too.

My Impreza has been acting up a bit lately so I tinkered with it last night and again tonight. Last night I was dealing with some issues that I believe were related to the throttle position sensor. The one on the Impreza is adjustable so after a few trials with different positions and taking readings with the voltmeter, I think I figured it out but I need to drive it longer than the mile to work to really tell.

Today it was pretty frigid up here and it was 11 degrees when I went to start it up after work. It wasn't happy. It died and it's done this a few times on the cold mornings. I wondered if the coolant temp sensor was to blame. This sensor is usually mounted near a coolant line and it's job is to tell the computer how cold the motor is. The colder the motor, the more fuel is required to start the car. The fuel ratio gradually tapers off as the car warms up to normal operating temperature. If this thing is faulty it can make cold starts really difficult and you'll have to step on the throttle to provide that extra fuel. This little booger was buried under the intake and a ton of wires but it wasn't bad at all and the job was probably 30 minutes. We'll see how things are in the morning. It is amazing to me how much communication happens in a car between all of the systems and the main computer. The thought of working on our 2011 simply terrifies me.