Greg's Horrible Waste of Internet Bandwidth

Every once in a while someone picks the scab that is "Why did Road Atlanta get rid of The Dip?" And more hilarity ensues. Quick summary: built in 1969 with its first race in 1970, Road Atlanta is a racetrack just northeast of its eponymous city. It's a rockin' great race track, filled with excellent elevation changes, fast sweeping corners, and is a challenge both technically and emotionally. It's truly one of this country's jewels and is one of my "most favoritest" tracks in the USA (others being similarly-challenginmg tracks such as VIR, Watkins Glen, and Road America). Its signature portion Back When was "The Dip" or "The Gravity Cavity", a deep drop downhill run into a valley/cavity that suddenly changed to a steep rise, shooting the driver into an off-camber turn to under an infield-access bridge at its peak, then immediately down the hill's backside to another sweeping turn that shot you down the front straight. It was a...

July 2020 was the month that a lot of Connecticut residents noticed a significant increase in their electricity bills. The reason turns out to be that CT's Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) approved (and the governor signed) in September 2019 a requirement that Eversource and United Illuminating - CT's two major power providers - purchase electricity from the financially-torn Millstone Nuclear Power Plant. Governor Lamont Applauds PURA Approval of Millstone Contract Between Dominion, Eversource, and United Illuminating https://portal.ct.gov/Office-of-the-Governor/News/Press-Releases/2019/09-2019/Governor-Lamont-Applauds-PURA-Approval-of-Millstone-Contract Of course, as soon as everyone saw their monthly bills increase - about 7c/kWh or almost 50% - the screaming started and "investigations" were called for and as of this post it is rumored to get rolled back, at least temporarily: PURA to investigate Eversource Energy rate hikes https://www.wtnh.com...

On "Microsquirting" the Porsche 914 - Part 11, Addendums and Updates Start Here for Part 1!!! ...or... Back to Part 10 Lessons learned and subsequent changes made. Figured I'd create a separate blog for "what I'm learning" and minor stuff. These are updated in reverse  chromological order (latest ones first) so if you come back on occasion the newest ones will be on top. 10/04/23 Update Oh, this ain't fun. I never got to the TB project this year... Short version: the car has been running like crap all year. Took it out in May and it was fine, June it wasn't running right and I was busy so I parked it. July it wasn't running well at all and the CHT was going vertical; September it wasn't running, period. I tried timing (spot on), an ignition coil (nothing),  tested the CPS (no signal) so I then put it on the lift to visually inspect the CPS (you'll recall it's behind the fan housing). It was clear that the CPS was way too far from ...

Contact Tracing and Exposure Notifications on your phone. Hoo-boy. I'm far less concerned about the privacy aspects as I am about the potential abuse. For example, what stops someone from intentionally answering the app's questions with COVID-positive information and pretending to have the disease? Then they just saunter among large populations, now broadcasting those symptoms via Bluetooth? Say they go to Home Depot, or Walmart, or Shop-Rite, or walk into your local restaurant, or wherever. And now everybody's else's phone will get notitications that they've been exposed to someone who is positive for the disease and notified they need to stay home for 14 days. And then everybody that was exposed to them would get the same notificiation. The result would be a logarythmic increase in the number of people being notified to stay home for 14 days, along with employees of all these facitilities, and (assuming people followed the instructions) society would again be ...

Part 10: The Design Details Back to Part 9 So your first question will be, "can I do this?" Yes, you can. I did it and I'm not a professional mechanic, though I do have an engineering background and fairly solid mechanical and electrical skills from working on my own cars since high school. Your second question is, "how hard is it?" Well, that depends on that skill level. The majority of the components are bolt-on, such as the sensors - I tried as hard as I could to make it easy - but you'll need three basic abilities: Ability to remove and install the engine. The biggest issue here is access, with the hardest being getting to the back side of the fan housing to install the crank position sensor. I guess theoretically you could remove the front air cooling sheet metal and get to the front of the engine and remove it all while working from the underside. But having the engine sitting on your toolbox or on an engine stand makes the processes soooo ...

This situation will end in one of three ways: - Polical easing of the restrictions; - Civil disobediance; - Civil unrest. We are already starting to see the second one happening, currently in limited ways. However, absent the first option, its increase will result in increasing authoritarian response*. Which will invariably result in the third option. We only have a very limited window of opportunity to emerge out of this gracefully; that window is quickly closing. 5/29/20 update: Just as governors were finally relenting and beginning to "allow" society to emerge, the death of George Floyd happened. By then, the societal rage was too pent-up. The third wave has begun and the civil discourse and further societal splitting has begun. 11/10/2020: the election of Joe Biden has seemed to put a damper on continuing street violence, just as further COVID infections being to rise... *12/20/2020: as the next COVID wave washes over society, the governors are becoming even more a...

Tuning Back to Part 8  Wow. You've made it this far...? Good for you, you're no "TL;DR"! Or did you cheat and skip ahead...? Tuning. Another "oof, I have no idea what I'm doing." Gotta figure it out though. I began with a baseline tune from Mario at The Dub Shop (if you're gonna do this, buy from Mario)  and that's what I used to fire up the car. But Mario has not done a setup like mine; Mario has his individual throttle body setup for Type 4 engines . That's overkill for a dead stock engine like mine (and outside of my target budget). So I needed to improvise. But he knows these engines so I requested a base tune. I adjusted Mario's tune for a few things like injectors and fuel pressure. The stock FPR would only do 36psi; the injectors I used were rated at 3 bar (43.5psi). So I used the TunerStudio program and an online calculator to adjust the injector size and edited that into the tune. I reviewed all the other setting...

Ever watch Steven Spielberg's movie, "1941"? It's hilarious! Quick summary, it's 1941 and America is on edge because of the recent bombing of Pearl Harbor. The entire West Coast, and especially LA, is convinced that Japan is going to invade. Slapstick hilarity ensues as people panic, thinking there was a "Jap" soldier under every rock (which of course there wasn't). But wait! There actually was a Japanese submarine lurking offshore, with inept officers and an inept German officer on board, observing the coastline. They were there to "destroy something honorable" in Hollywood. The Japanese submarine did manage to torpedo...a Ferris Wheel.* But in the end, it was the societal panic that caused the real damage: LA downtown destroyed, Hollywood damaged, anti-aircraft fire lofted all over the city at a civilian airplane (and a pursuing P-40 Warhawk, both shot down, one crashing into La Brea tarpits; a home shot up by the homeowner ...