a steve chuck update

back in may i posted about a photo studio in Asbury Park that asked some friends and i to pose for some free portraits so they could practice on us and help get some shutter time under their belt since they were a newly opened business.

yesterday Tamara and i were wondering around the Asbury boardwalk and happened in to a store selling picture frames among other things.


we found one frame with a particularly interesting demo photo.

I'm that random, anonymous guy in a new picture frame!!!

Always remember, nothing in this world is free.
The portrait actually cost us our souls as we have now become unwitting tools of the capitalist machine... OK maybe we are just TOOLS.

Rendezvous 2011

This past weekend was the annual Citroen Rendezvous in Saratoga Springs, NY. An amazing event organized by amazing people.

In preparation for the event Tamara and I made some Citroen soaps and shipped them up to the Springs Motel and asked the owner to sneak the bars in to rooms before the guests arrived. We also made a couple hundred extras to sell at the event, we sold out in no time and donated the proceeds to Drive She Said.

the molds

the soaps

some close ups



the labels

the sales table


Tam and i brought along our parents it was a great weekend with both friends and family. We borrowed Kim's Ami8 so the Ami6 would have company on the drive up. The 8 was piloted by a first time citroen driver (my mother) and the two are now best friends.


I'm going to go ahead and say it... these are the two greatest cars that were in attendance.
I'd say third place was a tie between Greg Long's Red DS cabriolet and Carter's 1955 truckette, i saw Greg's car last year and although i recognized it's beauty i didn't quite  appreciate it as much as i did this year SINCE GREG LET ME DRIVE IT!!!


The Longs are apparently  a family that appreciates esoteric automobilia, Greg's brother John brought an amazing Bowlus trailer. Here's a link to John's site about Bowlus trailers.

My favorite detail on the trailer is the handle on the back, someone would stand on the rear bumper and hang on to the handle to help move the weight (a massive 1100lbs.)around as you were trying to mount the hitch.

I guess the rest of these cars didn't suck too much.








look at all these amis


the rest of my photos can be seen here

one thing that i can depend on

SOUND SYSTEM!!!

Since the original door cards in the Ami had already been cut for speakers and i like music...
i decided i needed to install an absurd system.







I custom built the "head unit" to run and charge an ipod, there is a standard ipod cable wired to the car battery with rca line outs. the line outs are split to 3 line level control knobs to control my front and rear channels along with a subwoofer. all five speakers are coming from a single 5 channel kenwood amp with crossover control. My front speakers are a set of 5.5" kenwood components with an in-line high pass filter. In the rear is a pair of kenwood 3 way 4x10" speakers and in the trunk is a pioneer 10" subwoofer in an enclosed box with the amp and a capacitor mounted on it. By using this speaker configuration and amp along with three separate line level controls i can simulate having basic audio controls. I can adjust the crossovers to send more highs to the front and all the lows to the sub so i can manipulate the  bass and treble controls by adjusting the relative volume of those speakers i get the same fader control to the front and rear channels but what i do not have is a balance adjustment. That's not all that important since the cabin is so narrow. Between these basic controls and the built in eq settings on the ipod i think i am getting very decent audio quality.

I enclosed the line level controls in  a plastic box that i designed and built in solidworks and then printed the part on a dimension 3-d printer in black ABS. I adapted the controls to run correct ami6 knobs along with a proper on/off switch and a later model oil pressure warning light to indicate power on.


driver's door

passenger door

view of the rear speaker box and subwoofer

chevron details on the ports.

under the back seat

in the trunk

I am very happy with the project it looks and sounds very clean...it's also very loud.




the new emblem installed