Well first of all, I hope everyone had a great Christmas this year. Mine wasn't all that great but hey, it happens, anyway a little peek at what has been going on with this old hound. One week before Christmas, I suffered an engine failure in my plane, luckily it happened on the ground during taxi so I was able to shut it down and push it back to the hanger. Upon inspection, it appears to have suffered a center bearing failure on the crankshaft 'fun' so off came the engine and had to wait till a day after Christmas to take it down to Naples Florida for overhaul and what a trip that was. I had to go down to Miami with a friend anyway to go pick up some files and the trip to Naples was on the way no big deal right? well, read on.... Except for several wrecks going down I75, the trip down was decent, went to Naples to drop off my engine and sat around for a bit to let my tail rest then left Naples for Miami and got there around 7:00pm. Got a hotel room *169.00 a nite for a small room >.<* and layed over for the night. The next day we left to grab the files and head back and well, fate had different plans for us...Not only was the traffic crazy but our GPS managed to get us lost in Mid town and we spent the better part of 4 hours trying to find our way back out (I wasn't driving). We finally found the place we needed to go and we picked up the files and we left for Warner Robins Via the turn pike. Everything went ok until my friend started talking about how reliable his car has been, *word to the wise, Never pat something mechanical on the back unless you want it to fail* and Fail it did, when we reached Orlando, the car lost some power and began making some noise. Myself being a mechanic I pointed out that he best stop and check it out that a noise with a sudden loss of power is not a good sign. Well my friend who thinks he knows everything said it was ok that he's heard that sound before, I said not with a loss of power and this noise meant that something wasn't happy inside the motor that it was a sign that the engine was about to chuck it's guts out. He said once again that he knew what it was and it was no biggie. I wen't O..Kay and sure enough 5 minutes down the road it did what I said, it puked it's guts out. It began skipping then it suddenly lurched, made some other sounds that a dieing motor normally makes then boom parts began ejecting out the back along with an oil slick 1/2 mile long. We pulled off the road and i looked it over knowing what it was already, It blew the whole side of the block out and dropped the crank Yup mechanical DOA coming up. He ended up buying a new car so we could get home. The rest of the trip went ok and we got home at 2am sat morning whew luckly the my engine will be shipped back to me. Anyway I hope everyone has a great new year and be careful, Don't brag about your car or truck too much ya here!! (Axle)