Auto AC Blog

I’m happy to report that it felt like the start of a new season yesterday.  Not that it’s warm or anything.  It’s not.  Temps barely touched fifty degrees.   Still, I received my first A/C service request of the year.  Whoo-hoo!

Time to shift gears and start planning for the summer.  Maybe visit my old friends at the Automotive A/C bulletin board.  I’ve been away too long.

I’m in the market for one and was actually interested in buying the UVIEW. Can you please send me the info on what you bought?

I just picked up a new video scope from my local Snap-on Dealer.  Unlike the rigid bore scopes that most technicians are familiar with or the flexible fiber scopes (which are less than stellar in the clarity catagory) this one uses a small CCD video chip in the tip of the lead wich displays to a small video screen. 

I’ll have some pictures and/or video coming soon.  You guys will like this tool.  Stay tuned…

I’ve just joined and I hope to see a lot of friends here….of course, learn a lot ant pitch in whenever  I can

I mentioned in an earlier post that Anchorage was on track for the coldest summer in recorded history.  Now summer heat in Chicago has become scarce.  The Chicago Tribune reports that the city’s highest temperature to date this year has only been 91 degrees.  In fact over the last ten years there have only been 162 days of 90 degree or higher temperature as measured at Midway Airport.  That’s the coldest decade since 1930.

Indiana feels the same way right now.  It should be hot.  It’s not.  In terms of A/C service and the amount of phone calls from family and friends begging for favors, I’m not seeing it.

Hey, anyone have any good beans, rice, and ramen noodle recipes.

Looking at web site statistics, I noticed traffic to Aircondition.Com dropped off sharply two months ahead of schedule. Still down from earlier years, traffic to the site looked like it was on track to make some gains on the one year chart.

I cobbled together a graph that represents traffic estimates from a third party analytics company just to get a better idea of what was going on. The actual visitor numbers are much higher than what is shown on the chart, but estimates are consistent and are probably more accurate (err… relative) than my own numbers (especially since I can’t sort bots and the like from my logs). This chart shows traffic in a one year span. The red line on the bottom of the chart represents a twelve month gas price trend based on U.S. averages for regular unleaded.

Gas prices compared to web traffic

On the next chart I plotted gas price averages the best that I could. The two charts compared shows a sharp decrease in web traffic just as gas prices hit their peak levels. If you put X and Y together they look like they travel together from November on, but, that’s simply coincidence, as raising gas prices don’t increase web queries for a/c repair. I do however, think the opposite is true. High fuel prices are bad for A/C business.

One Year Gas Price Chart

If fuel prices really caused the traffic decrease, I should easily find more data that supports that theory.

It’s possible that weather, rebate checks, bad luck, or any number of things could have caused this. It’s a good mystery that I’ll enjoy spending more time with.

Here’s a nice DIY portable cooler article I recently ran across.

Yes… I know it’s just ice in a cooler with fans attached! Technically you still have to consider this automotive air conditioning. I would call this a “remote loop system.” The loop that created the ice is definitely at a remote location. And I wonder… could this unit also be foil lined for use with hot stones during winter months?
 
Anyway, it looks fairly easy and cheap to make, which gives me a great little offshoot idea. We always use a big cooler of ice in our demolition derby cars for keeping the trans cooler cool. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a bigger version for the derby car to also keep the driver cool and refreshed.

Portable Cooler

With some minor modifications, this could also be used to stash Canucklehead’s Scavenger Hunt URL.

Here’s a video of what it might look like in use.

There’s a two acre patch of land in California where ground temperatures have reached 812 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ventura County firefighters and geologists are puzzled as to why the fricken ground suddenly turned 800 degrees.  It’s currently being called a thermal anomaly.

Here’s the full story from the Los Angeles Times.

Looking for A/C work? Scratch Anchorage off your list. It seems Anchorage is on track for their coldest summer in recorded history. Anchorage Daily News reported today that with summer already half over, only seven days have managed to hit the 65 degree mark. The average is forty-four days per year with temps 65 degrees or higher. Residents of Anchorage consider 65 degrees very nice, and 70 degrees is an outright heatwave. The current forecast predicts more below-normal weather for Alaska. It looks like the CFC ban is working it’s magic.

When I read articles like that I understand why the term “global warming” has been replaced by the phrase “climate change.”

Right now, I’m not sure if it’s high gas prices - or - climate change, but so far it’s been less than stellar here in Indiana. It usually takes three straight days of outright miserable heat for our residents to seek professional help with A/C problems. With days of balmy relief in between the three consecutive days needed, most people are getting by with cranking the windows down .

How have you fared so far this year? We’d all like to know.

So here it is… An Automotive A/C Blog. Crazy, I know!

A blog (for those that do not know (and don’t worry, there’s quite a few of us)) is just a short way of saying web log. Some blogs are very professional and resemble traditional online media like magazines and news sites, while others are a few random thoughts published whenever the urge strikes. Chances are you’ve already visited a blog or two. In fact, as of two years ago, Technorati had already counted it’s 50 millionth blog on the net. It’s estimated that 200,000 new blogs are created each day. That’s hard to imagine.  Millions are one thing, but Last week, Google announced (on their blog) that they had hit a milestone by finding one trillion unique URL’s.   Heck, even John Battelle’s wife has a blog now.  I figured I better get on board.

Blogs tend to look just like any other web site on the Internet. The real difference is how the blogs are published. With old fashioned web sites, the author opens up the html file and edits his work. He then has to use an FTP (short for file transfer protocol) program and upload the file back to the server. Not difficult, but after you do that a few thousand times, you start to look for something better. CMS solves that, but many are either expensive or hard to set-up or both. That’s where a blog comes in. It’s still a web site, it’s just easier to update and add content. Most blogs also have commenting systems in place, which means you have the ability as a blog owner/author to accept comments on the work you publish.

( I just learned all of that in the last five minutes by looking it up in Wikipedia.)

So, why start an A/C blog anyway?

It’s a long answer. This should sum it up.