Musings of an Internet Junkie

I am appealing to the Internet community at large to help provide me with information to track down one Paul Calabrese, located in Connecticut. Mr. Calabrese took payment for automotive parts orders from several people on Club Lexus and never delivered the parts, instead opting to take the money and disappear. All of us involved have filed disputes through PayPal who has been less than helpful in recovering our money from Mr. Calabrese. I have also personally filed complaints with the Internet Crime Complaint Center and filed a fraud affidavit with my own bank. I do not expect much help from these entities either.

My ultimate goal would be to locate Mr. Calabrese so I may bring charges against him for fraud and other laws which may have been broken in this failed interstate commerce transaction. I would also like to show that people are not as anonymous on the Internet as they would like to believe seeing as how fraud on the Internet is on the rise which I posit is because people believe they have some sort of anonymity on the Internet so they will not be held accountable for their actions. Club Lexus will not release the last logged IP address of Mr. Calabrese without a subpoena. PayPal will not release Mr. Calabrese’s address without a subpoena.

Here is the information I have collected on Paul Calabrese thus far:

Name: Paul Calabrese
Location: Connecticut (possibly around the Waterbury area, although this has not be verified)
Birth Date: January 14, 1986
Car: 1993 Lexus SC400, silver spruce color
Screen Name: Cal9126
Email: meth8600@hotmail.com

I finally obtained the motor needed for my swap project with my 1987 Toyota Supra. I will be installing the famed Lexus 1UZ-FE quad-cam, 32valve V8 into the Supra. I am hoping to finish it up across the Winter here in Michigan and be running by mid-April in 2008. A project diary will be kept at http://1uzsupra.com.

What is the deal with SUV and pickup truck drivers these days? I drive a a grand touring sports car, and it is not a small car seeing as how it weighs in at ~3500lbs without me in it, yet these drivers must be blind since they are either pulling out in front of me, or pulling so far ahead of me when I am attempting to make a left hand turn that I can no longer see if there is any oncoming traffic from the right hand side forcing me to wait for their sorry excuse of a life to get out of the way so I can safely enter traffic.

A short bit of history is in order before getting into the meat of this story. I purchased a 1987 Toyota Supra in February, 2006. While sorting it out I found numerous items on the engine that were loose including, but not limited to, both valve covers; the turbo to exhaust manifold connection; the exhaust manifold to head connection; and some of the intercooling piping. It seemed like every time I worked on the car, I was finding something loose and became the big joke during days I put in wrenching on it.

This leads my readers into the current story. I had finally gotten time to adjust the emergency brakes. They had never worked since owning the car, and following the Toyota factory manual procedure, I remove the rear wheels and began adjusting the “star” adjuster inside the rear disc hats. Come to find out they were not seized, but in fact extremely loose and could be rotated with ease. I was able to adjust them to the proper tension and the emergency brakes were working as if new.

Next, while I still had some time, I started jacking up the front of the car to change the oil filter. While jacking up the car I noticed the passenger side front wheel moved a significant amount inward as soon as it left the ground. Now, the previous owner told me the bottom ball joint had been replaced on this particular side so it was immediately suspect. Upon inspection of the wheel bearing play and upper and lower ball joints, I found that the nut had not been tightened to the proper torque on the bottom ball joint. In fact the nut was nearly flush with the top of the ball joint stud and the wheel assembly could be moved what seemed like nearly 12.7mm to 25.4mm! Once the ball joint hardware was tightened to the proper torque, all tolerances checked out. Luckily there had been no accidents or damage caused by this loose hardware.

I have owned a 1987 Toyota Supra for a little over a year now. During that time I have replaced the turbocharger, the exhaust manifold, helicoiled the head and inserted new exhaust manifold studs, replaced a bunch of gaskets and did some general engine cleaning.

It has been my intention, as I have been sorting out my car, to eventually build up another engine for it. The opportunity finally presented itself during the beginning of April. My friend’s father has been putting together a Supra of his own and has been slowly getting rid of the extra parts. I just happened to notice at the beginning of the month that his next batch of parts were an engine block and head. My wife and I picked up the parts yesterday.

Watch here for pictures of the project, and the trials and tribulations I encounter while building a Toyota 7M-GTE engine up from scratch with the goal of reach a minimum of 500 rwhp. I fully expect this project to take at least 2-3 years to complete and possibly even longer.