DCAWD.com

Hello everyone. I wanted to say hey since I know it has been a while. Things are going great out here. Anna's and my life has completely changed. We are far more relaxed than I could ever image. We feel like we just have so much more free time and able to do things on a whim. We are renting a 2 bed 2 bath place with a garage. We just have a handful of pictures left to put up and we are all done getting everything setup here. Our place faces south and almost every morning we get some amazing sunrises. Anna's been posting a ton of them on FB and her blog. Work is great too. The environment is so relaxed. We get our tasks and then we are left alone to work on them in peace. There isn't really a deadline on anything, but we still work really hard to keep it that way. I'm primarily doing network administration now, which is good because that was a bit of a hole in my knowledge. The rest is Linux administration. It is frowned upon here to use Windows . The culture is great too. We back up to a mountain and several of the guys will take off in the middle of the day and go for a ride or they will go rock climbing and then come back and finish their day. I'm going to be going rock climbing with them in about two weeks. It has been several years, but I'm looking forward to it. Anna has been working really hard on her blog and posting some amazing content from food to our activities. Shameless link to her blog with amazing pictures, but I really just don't do a ton of social media. We went snowboarding at Loveland a few weeks ago. It was pretty awesome. The mountain was empty. They had fresh powder at the top, but the bottom had hard pack. It made it interesting at times. We'll probably go again in a few weeks.

Car-wise, has been interesting for me. My car was delivered in mid Dec and I immediately made an apt to get my car retuned. It was about a month out. A week beforehand, I noticed I was loosing a lot of oil. I dropped it off at the shop and my cam seal and valve gaskets were leaking pretty bad. They also did the timing belt and water pump. A couple of days later I got my car tuned and I was happy again. It was so hard not driving around with boost. I'm kind of so so on the results. I knew I would lose power, but it just feels so slow now. I know he is trying his hardest, but it is disappointing. I'm done though, outside of maintenance stuff. I just ordered a stock DP to 3" CBE adapter and am going to tackle emissions in a few weeks. Darin and I were talking about ways to get my car to pass, but turns out they do a visual inspection for cats too. So even if I pass the sniffer, I'll fail the visual. I'm going to swap the stock DP back on. Anna did her's yesterday and past easily. I have a friend who didn't have the OEM stamp on his cat, and they failed him, even though he had all the cats and passed the sniffer. We are going to go ice racing next Friday at Georgetown Lake. I'm planning on taking the GoPro and hopefully I'll have something fun to share. Twice a season they do fun days where you get as many laps as you want. I think I remember Colin posting a thread about it many moons ago. Anyway, we are looking forward to it . Before I left Darin recommended the General Arctic tires and they have been fabulous in the snow. I'm so happy with them. I don't think I'll go to another tire. Anna has Dunlop D3's on her's and they don't do nearly as well. We are going to replace them after this season.
Previous Dyno Results

Anyway, that's kind of the short version of what's been going on. I hope everyone is doing really well!

Everyone says they do a visual inspection, no one does a visual inspection.

But I understand.

I'm still looking for a job in the area!

I'm so happy to hear that you both are doing well. Sounds like everything is working out as well, if not better than planned.

Don't get too hung-up on dyno numbers. Different dynos, different octane, different altitude, I would expect lower numbers.

As for the down pipe, you could try getting a one of the two "gutted." I have gutted two up-pipes and they aren't that tough. If you could find an 08' down pipe and mid-cat pipe that would be ideal. The down-pipes on those are very easy to gut. You might even find some folks selling them on NASIOC.

Also glad to hear the Generals are working out for you. I have been very pleased with mine.

Thank you!!! We are thoroughly enjoying it out here. It will be hard to get us out of the state.

Mr Kleen wrote:I'm still looking for a job in the area!

.

I'd be happy to submit your resume to my company. I'm not sure if they would relo you though.

drwrx wrote:Don't get too hung-up on dyno numbers. Different dynos, different octane, different altitude, I would expect lower numbers.

As for the down pipe, you could try getting a one of the two "gutted." I have gutted two up-pipes and they aren't that tough. If you could find an 08' down pipe and mid-cat pipe that would be ideal. The down-pipes on those are very easy to gut. You might even find some folks selling them on NASIOC.

Also glad to hear the Generals are working out for you. I have been very pleased with mine.

It is more of the butt dyno that is sad. I'll get over it lol. I'm happy with the car otherwise. If I just have to swap DPs once every two years, then it really is no big deal. Plus we have a garage, which makes things much nicer.

Relocation isn't a problem from Germany, I get a free trip back. The problem is that I need to stay GS. Too much time invested now to go back to private sector.

Ah yes. I can understand that.

Any plans on installing a lift kit yet?

Haha, not yet. I've scrapped on a few things though. There will be a skid plate in my nearer future. Over the weekend I swapped my stock DP back on. I hated every minute of it and rex was revolting the entire time. It was a pretty rough install. I'm going on Wed. for emissions, then I can register my car.

I wound up not going ice racing. They canceled the entire weekend because of weather conditions. It had been pretty warm for a week or so beforehand. I'm guessing the ice wasn't quite thick enough. Oh well. There will be next year . We went snowboarding again on Saturday at Loveland so it all worked out.

Sucks they canceled the ice racing, but ya, that's definitely a safety first type thing!

Yeah agreed. I was pretty sad about it, but oh well. There will be next year .

I went through emissions last week and passed. My car if officially a resident of the state . The ironic thing was they didn't even do the visual inspection. They just did emissions and gas cap pressure test. I'm glad though, just in case. They just changed the rules and cars 10 years and newer, they just plug into the ODB II for testing.

In CO. they have owner's tax which is the equivalent of VA's property tax, except for cars over 10 years old, it is only $3. I was like excuse me, run that by me again, how often is that? Anna's was around $200.

HappyIdiot wrote:They just changed the rules and cars 10 years and newer, they just plug into the ODB II for testing.

In CO. they have owner's tax which is the equivalent of VA's property tax, except for cars over 10 years old, it is only $3. I was like excuse me, run that by me again, how often is that? Anna's was around $200.

Well, that should make it easier

$3? Why even bother, lol

Sabre wrote:$3? Why even bother, lol

Agreed. Plus everyone has cars (*cough Subaru *cough) that are over ten years old, so I can't imagine they are taking in much.

It covers the paperwork I guess.