Tinkering with my bike and long-distance cycling.

I've got a rather budget model, GT Aggressor 1.0 2011. This year I adapted it further for long-distance: replaced default flat bar with a butterfly bar, moved to contact pedals, reversed stem and bought an additional set of tyres. Now I have 2.1" half-slicks for weekend trips and 1.3" slicks for brevets.

What makes me sad is that I can't tinker as much with computers anymore...

Racing obscure old plastic toy cars with friends from all over Germany/the Netherlands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4vaJ0irCqE (skip to 6:40)

Playing bass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB-Lx2uKR0o

HAM radio operator and long distance rifle marksmanship.

As a stay-at-home dad I thought I'd have heaps of time for hobbies - turns out not to be the case!

Have always wanted to play the guitar properly, so bought an electric, but find myself playing around with a toy ukelele more often 😁

My dad has recently rekindled my interest in model trains, and we're planning a dedicated room to it at his place. He's spent time recently working out computer controlled signalling, etc. and I have offered to work more on the scenery side of things - with some HO scale slot cars running about too.

Other (presently stalled) hobbies include a MK1 Ford Escort, stamp collecting and D&D. Would also like to get back into running and playing soccer ... will have to wait until the little one is grown up!!

I like this place. Proper nerds all around =)

I suppose my only hobby outside of retro computing is mathematics (hence my avatar of flying around in a hyperbolic manifold). It's a great world to just think in.

I also play piano pretty well, and guitar poorly.

Doodling! 🤣

http://iris030380.deviantart.com/gallery/

Iris030380 wrote:

Doodling! 🤣

http://iris030380.deviantart.com/gallery/

Love your work!

Iris030380 wrote:

Doodling! 🤣

http://iris030380.deviantart.com/gallery/

Awesome!.. 😲

My other hobby is my 1989 3-series. I'm rebuilding the thing from the ground up with my own hands - every aspect of it. I'm hoping to one day make it my daily driver.

Right now I'm in the middle of an engine swap - the car's original engine is quirky because it's electrical components (idle regulator, throttle position sensor, air flow meter etc) are showing their age and are way to expensive to replace with new ones - that's why I'm swapping it with a more modern (and cheaper to maintain) engine from a newer car.

I sold the old engine to a collector with a better financial situation who can afford to restore it completely.

Awesome!

Looks like some beast out of GTLegends 🤣

Nice ride! Is it a 325i? What new engine are you replacing the original one with?

Seems like I'm fairly normal, well for the people that hang round here 😉

-Traveling, which was the whole reason for leaving the ass end of the world. Still miss Oz but its so far from anything!

-Model trains, Started collecting Hornby Dublo which is easier to find in the UK then Oz when I thought I would eventually head back. Don't think I'm going now so hording it all away till I get a place big enough to set it up. Mrs enjoys that one as well so don't get nagged at when I buy more

-Lego, A recent addition to make up for not being able to "play trans" Collecting the few (and most expensive) Pirate sets I didn't get as a kid.

And have a '74 VW beetle in the pipe line. Mums car since new. and still a daily driver! Mostly original only panels replaced are the engine bay door from a shunt in the 70's and 3/4 of the floor pan have been replaced over the years. Original engine (few rebuilds) paint (under some very rough touch up jobs) even the spare tyre is original! I intend to import it from oz and do a ground up restore in 10 years or so when parents no longer have a need for it. That things part of the family, I mean mum had this before she met my father!

Nice E30 kanecvr! Is that an M50 or M52? I had two E30's before my E39, a 1988 325iS and a 1991 318i. The 325iS was my easily my favorite, alas road salt did it in. 😢

Had a lot of hobbies, so i had to scale down
Just to montainbike a lot. But the bike hasn't been of it's place for over 12 years i think. A shame since i invested a lot in the bike up to around 3000 euro's back then.
I also collected coins and stamps. Still have them but i think i'm going to sell them. Also collected laserdisc movies for a short while. They are to expensive and hard to come by since they wheren't populiar over here.
Loved to collect lego but i stopped collecting years ago. But having two sons that are big into lego is a big plus. So i can "help" them building.
My two/three biggest hobbies i been into the last 10 years or so are boardgames, collecting retro consoles and computers.
My current boardgame collection expands over 60 boardgames, most of the of the dutch publisher 999games.
My retro console collection expands around 45 different systems with over 1000 games.
Retro computers: apple lcIII, commodore vic20, 64, amiga 500, cdtv, ti 99/4a, sinclair zx81, atari 130xe, msx1, msx2 and a few pc's.

mrferg wrote:

Nice E30 kanecvr! Is that an M50 or M52? I had two E30's before my E39, a 1988 325iS and a 1991 318i. The 325iS was my easily my favorite, alas road salt did it in. 😢

The car's original engine was a meager 1.6L M40B16. My dad got the car second hand from germany in 1994 - no AC, no power windows, no power steering, cloth seats. I've inherited the car about 8-9 years ago. For 4-5 years I had just worked on it to keep it on the road, but a few year ago the old girl really started to show her age, plus I wanted some creature comforts like air conditioning, and power steering so I got me an E46 323cic to use as a daily driver (first car I ever bought yey!). Since then, the E30 has been thought many upgrades. Power steering, air conditioning, sports leather interior, cruise control and other creature comforts were fitted along the way.

A litle over 4 years ago, I bought another wrecked E30 from a guy in my home town - a very special car - a C2 2.7 alpina witch he had bought from bulgaria an a few months later wrapped around a tree. The chassis was completely compromised (the car looked like a bagel) but my interest lay under the hood. The 2.7L 210hp engine was still intact, so I swapped it into my black E30, along with the rear axle witch had large disk brakes (my car had drum brakes on the back), the power steering rack + pump, the brake pump and brake booster, and other miscellaneous parts. The alpina's interior was black with a wooden trim and a wooden finish (yuk) so I only kept the center console, front seats and carpets. The rest of the car was parted out and the bagel-shaped chassis scrapped. I found the alpina gearbox (1st and 2nd gears reversed) a pain in the ass to use, so I later swapped it for a 325i getrag 260.

I sold the alpina engine, gearbox and identification tags to an alpina enthusiast from Sweden. He came to inspect them and pick them up personally. Here's a little video I made to demo the engine for him before he came to pick it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAFOxPnhqMo

The new engine is an M50B25 off a 1994 E34 525i. I've rebuilt it, and replaced the stock crank, rods and pistons with the ones used in the M54B30, stroking it to 2979cc (engines have same bore). The donor car only had 162.000 km on it. Right now I'm looking to source a smaller brake booster (new engine is kind of snug) after witch I'll have to get a new tranny brace machined and have the exhaust done. I also have to redo the AC compressor piping since the E30 pipes don't mate with the E34's AC compressor.

MMaximus wrote:

Nice ride! Is it a 325i? What new engine are you replacing the original one with?

Thanks 😀 Initially it was a 316i, that had been previously swapped out for an M20, now I'm using a M50B25 stroked to 2979cc. I guess that would make it a 330?

If anyone is interested, here's a link to some photos of the car being cleared of what little rust it had, lowered, repainted, and the engine swap. https://www.facebook.com/ryan.cooper.391420/m … 79375151&type=3

I like to watch as many old films and television shows as I can. Many years ago I found out that due to poor film preservation techniques and other factors, that much of the content produced from before 1950 and some from after are now permanently lost due to there being no surviving copies. I branched out into foreign films and television not long after. There's still a lot I haven't seen, but I'm still trying.

I also love the idea of cooking, i wish i was better at it but, practice makes perfect i guess. Glad to hear I'm not the only one with such interests. Also I hear Tom Hanks is quite the avid Type Writer collector. OH and I to love LEGO i plan on getting some of the Ghostbuster sets.

EDIT: I currently drive a 5th gen Nissan Maxima. Not very Classic and but, it can get up and go to an extent. I also have a rare Dodge Coronet R/T i'd like to put together but, it will be extremely expensive for what I want.

EDIT: maybe would could make thread for bikes and cars we are working on with pictures and stuff??? Also the Facebook links says i can't view/see those right now. Also I love straight sixes!!! Also on yet another note they had some pretty good TV programming in the 50s various shows uploaded to YouTube wind up on the front page of reddit from time to time, good stuff.

cdoublejj wrote:

I also have a rare Dodge Coronet R/T i'd like to put together but, it will be extremely expensive for what I want.

I love the Coronet and most Mopars for that matter - too bad over here they tax big engines to death so I could never really afford to maintain one. I had the opportunity to buy a 2006 mustang V6 convertible (really cheap) back when I bought my E46, but tax on it alone was ~750$ / year (that's more then I make in a month as a medical resident) vs the 200$ / year I have to pay for my 2.5L e46. Also gas is like double what you guys in the states pay.

cdoublejj wrote:

Also the facebook links says i can't view/see those right now. Also I love straight sixes!!!

Fixed! The album was set to friends only, I made it public. Added a couple of pictures too, since I just replaced the brake booster with a smaller diameter one.

chinny22 wrote:

And have a '74 VW beetle in the pipe line. Mums car since new. and still a daily driver! Mostly original only panels replaced are the engine bay door from a shunt in the 70's and 3/4 of the floor pan have been replaced over the years. Original engine (few rebuilds) paint (under some very rough touch up jobs) even the spare tyre is original! I intend to import it from oz and do a ground up restore in 10 years or so when parents no longer have a need for it. That things part of the family, I mean mum had this before she met my father!

I had the opportunity to buy a 78 beetle last year, but decided against it because of other unfinished projects. I'd love to own a classic beetle with a screaming subaru engine in the back (or porsche 911 engine if I can source one cheap). I know a guy with such a car - all-around stock looking, but with big fat rear wheels and fenders (911 drive-train, engine, gearbox and suspension). Really quiet too, a certified sleeper. You'd never expect it to blow by you on the freeway, but it can and it will. That thing does 0-100km/k in less than 6 seconds because it weighs next to nothing and is packed with that 3.2L engine 😁