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roast_t_chicken's LiveJournal:
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| Sunday, August 20th, 2006 | | 8:22 pm |
Ugh. And Ugh some more.
Ok, a whole 6 months is apparently too long to not post any updates? I stopped caring for a little while, big deal. Actually, I never cared to begin with. But you knew that. Here's the condensed version of my oh-so-exciting life. Things I have done in the last 6 months: -completed the lase classes needed for my associates degree -built two engines, one of them making 453rwhp/484rwtq with 20PSI on 93 octane fuel (complements of my own tuning expertise thank you very much). For the laymen among you that means "Yes, it would spank a Ferrari". -blew some stuff up -built a new computer, which is only slightly less outdated than the old one -massive updates to car my website www.redz31.com also selling some new products -started what has already become one of the best Z car web forums on the internet: Z31Performance.com -revamped a few other websites for people -played and beat half life 2 (two times actually), the second time on 'hard' which was... hard. -managed to piss off my girlfriend no less than 50 times, 3 of them knowlingly. -changed my major back to mechanical engineering, again. -wasted a lot of time doing useless crap like this So there you go. | | Monday, February 13th, 2006 | | 2:58 pm |
| | 12:56 pm |
Engines are us
In my spare time I have been assembling a "new" engine for my 300ZX. The "old" engine has over 260,000 miles on it and is still running strong, but has leaky valve seals, low compression and a fair amount of blowby. Nonetheless it made just shy of 400HP to the wheels when I put it on the dyno last fall. At any rate, I did more than a few upgrades for this engine, but it still has an entirely stock bottom end. I've heard of people running the stock (cast) pistons to ~480 wheel horsepower before they have issues... I think I'll be happy with somewhere around 450 and good reliability. Keep in mind I drive this car every day in the summer as my only form of transportation, and I want to keep the awesome reliability I have had with it so far. Picture of what I have assembled so far: http://www.redz31.com/images/newengine/enginesm.JPGI should have it completely assembled by the end of next week. Then I'll be putting it in the car sometime in early April. The new setup includes: Stock 86 Turbo VG30ET short-block Ported heads Schneider cams JWT valve springs Ferrea forged stainless super-flo valves 3 angle performvalve seat cut and backcut on the valve. Russ' multi-adjustable cam gears Unorthodox Racing underdrive pulley Fidanza aluminum flywheel Garrett GT35 Turbocharger Tial 40MM external wastegate 88 ECU tuned by me with ROMulator RX-7 550cc injectors Ford Mustang Cobra MAF LP performance modified intake plenum Ported lower intake A bunch of other new OE parts I expect it to be capable of 500+ rear-wheel horsepower, but keeping stock pistons means I will do my best to tune it on the conservative side. | | Wednesday, February 8th, 2006 | | 11:44 am |
Welcome to hell; the never-ending parking ramp.
As you drive to class, you take a look at the clock and realize you are actually running several minutes EARLY for a change. "Well" you think "Won't it be nice to actually not get to class late for a change?" You swipe your card to enter a seemingly average parking ramp at school. The system automatically keeps track of the number of cars in the ramp and thus can turn on signs at the entrances saying "full" when the ramps are full. "What an ingenious system", is something you might think. Even the billing is automatic; $2 is deducted from your account every time you swipe a card to get into the ramp. Now you begin to drive forward after the gate lifts. You round a few corners and proceed down into the ramp, winding through the paths slowly. You notice other cars driving around taking similar routes and thing nothing of it. Over the span of the next five or seven minutes you proceed to patrol the parking ramp for a spot, growing slowly more annoyed at the complete lack of the space supposedly allotted to you by the magic gate that opened with you slid your card several minutes before. You continue to drive the route of the ramp. You patrol what you believe is every single spot in the ramp, at this point there are even more cars driving around with you. This is rather confusing, as they have supposedly been allotted spots by the magic gate device as well. At this point you witness what some people would call an accident, but it can't really be called one as I believe it was on purpose. A large truck (the kind just outside of the "reasonable" size of truck that can be driven around town) is attempting to park in a space reserved for a COMPACT CAR. What a site as he brushed his TIRE against the SIDE OF THE CAR NEXT TO HIM as he entered the space. There can't have been enough room to open his door even an inch. I can only conclude he had to have climbed out the back window. Next, I see a Jeep parking on the END OF A ROW, at the CORNER of the ramp where there is two-way traffic. Great, now we have a major obstruction of traffic because some selfish student has taken it upon themselves to MAKE THEIR OWN parking space. You look at the time and realize you have been inside of the magic gate of happiness for about 25 minutes. You decide that by now your class will be more than half over, even if you did find a parking space RIGHT NOW. You leave and drive home, feeling frustrated that you were cheated out of going to a class that you paid for by the malfunction of a simple system designed to regulate parking traffic. | | Wednesday, February 1st, 2006 | | 5:23 pm |
That thing got a HEMI!?!?!?
I was getting a temporary parking pass at GVSU a couple days ago and I had to give the nice girl my license plate number. I spelled it out to her P-S-I-4-P-W-R... she typed it in. She looked puzzled and asked "is that a vanity plate?" to which I responded "Yes". Now, I must admit that I had honestly expected something along the lines of "That's neat" or "Cool". I was not prepared for her to ask me "What does that mean?". I explained that the car was supercharged and PSI 4 POWER is what the plate meant. SHe was still rather confused. I started to try to explain how a supercharger pressurizes the intake of an engine to make more power; hence the PSI part. (The next part is something I was completely unprepared for. The words resounded in my ears as if a massive gong had just fallen off the top of the Empire State Building and landed immidiately to my right.) Her: "Is that like a Hemi". Me: *momentary dumb stare* ... um... I could not help it. I put my head down on the counter and laughed. I felt bad, as if I was actually laughing at her or something. Now I should say that if you have ever tried to stop laughing at something that was mildly humerous and other people start laughing, its rather hard to not continue laughing. I bit my lip, took my parking permit and promptly left the building in an attempt to save this poor, poor girl from my further 'laughing ridicule'. | | Sunday, January 15th, 2006 | | 1:24 pm |
No updates for you
I know I'm super bad about posting updates on here for you all to read. I guess I'm just not the attention slut I pretend to be. So many things have happened since the last update that I'm just going to skip right over everything and come to the most recent events. 1. I have decided to fix up the 1987 300ZX Turbo I bought and enter it in the 2007 challenge. With a great looking car to start with, lots of parts to sell to recoup costs and a whole year to do it, I'm sure I can make it go, stop and handle as good as it looks. If you don't have any idea what the challenge is, go here for more information: http://www.grmotorsports.com/news/category/2006-challenge/2. School sucks. Actually, just lab time sucks. For the 13 credit hours I have, I'll actually spend more like 17-18 hours in class each week. Combine this with 25ish hours of work each week, my car stuff and trying to balance a personal life and you can see my situation. 3. My GTP is making strange noises. The short story is I tapped a curb when it was slippery out. The long story is that I barely bumped it and still managed to bend the control arm and tie rod to hell. I replaced both and aligned the car, yet it still shakes a little, drives funny and makes a strange noise from the front end while turning. Odd, because I inspected everything and it seems fine... Anyway the wheels are tires are fine, so I'll just drive it until whatever it is actually becomes a serious problem (I'm thinking wheel bearings now). 4. Some people suck, some people rock. To those of you reading this, you should know somewhere deep down inside if you suck or rock already. If you know me and are unsure of your suck/rock status, feel free to give me a call so I can tell you how awful you really are. Final Score: Jason 1; Readers 0 | | Sunday, December 11th, 2005 | | 4:51 pm |
Pandora's MUSICAL Box.
This is quite probably the coolest thing I have seen in a very long time. This musical search and comparison engine takes any song or artist you like and compares it to others of similar style, and streams the entire song directly to your PC for free. The library is simply massive, quite possibly the largest in existence. You have to experience it for yourself. It's free and worth checking out at the very least: http://www.pandora.com/ | | Friday, December 2nd, 2005 | | 10:01 pm |
The Hair Dilemma
"You need to update your livejournal" - person Yeah, whatever. I Know. Anyway, I'm posting this entry because of an event, not because I was BUGGED into doing it. Let me just remind you that you are reading MY page and therefore I can say YOU suck. Ha. This morning I stopped in at my local Meijer Gas station to get some gas and coffee before work. I got my coffee and waited in line patiently (there were three or four people in front of me). The short BLOND girl in front of me turns around and says (in a perfectly stereotypical "valley girl" dialect I might add) "You know, like, fur is murder". I stared at her for a second and then realized she was talking about my winter hat, which was made out of rabbit fur. I replied: "That's, like, nice" The attendant obviously overheard the exchange and he broke out in laughter. I really couldn't not help myself and also started laughing. This went on for a good 15 seconds before the girl paid the attendant (with an extremely cross look on her face I might add) and left. Ah yes, opininons are like @$$holes. | | Monday, November 7th, 2005 | | 9:12 pm |
No posts for you
I've been busy and very lazy lately. Far too lazy to do things I should be doing, let alone waste my time on this. Anyway, I completed the coilover installation a while back. The car drives pretty well, the ride is really not much worse than the previous setup: http://www.redz31.com/pages/coilovers.htmlOn a side note, I am sick of homeless people asking me for money. I've decided the next time I see one hanging outside the beer store I'm going to ask him if he has any money before he has the chance to ask me. | | Monday, October 31st, 2005 | | 10:48 pm |
Multi-tasking to the nth degree
Today I witnessed a man doing something amazing. He was skateboarding downtown, while being pulled by his dog on a leash, while talking on his CELL PHONE. Watching this guy in the process was simply amazing, he must have been a pretty good skater, because he seemed to be paying a lot of attention to his call. Very strange. I completed the coilover project a few days ago. I have been enjoying driving a lot more lately, the car feels great through turns and it still rides fairly nicely. I made a write-up page on it for my website. | | Thursday, October 20th, 2005 | | 9:31 pm |
Automatic oil changes
I've got it: the solution to people not changing their oil frequently enough, or at all. You create a car that has a "feature" that discards all of its oil automatically, preferably when the person is leaving school and on the way to work. This person will be forced to stop in a questionable neighborhood to inspect his automobile. The oil will cover a good portion of the engine bay and underside of his car. He will be angry for a short while, but in the end he will remember that everything is a consequence of one's own actions. I'm buying some new hoses now. | | Wednesday, October 19th, 2005 | | 12:47 pm |
| | Thursday, October 13th, 2005 | | 10:44 pm |
Corn chips for men of stone
What's better than making some awesome nachos and sitting down to eat them? Finding out the chips you used were stale beyond belief. I finally completed my rear S13 240SX coilover installation on the Z, only a little bit of fabrication was needed. I still need to replace the drivers side control arm, as it was bent when I put it on a long time ago and is now causing some serious camber issues. The down side is the car is pretty low (as expected), about 1-1.5" lower than stock. Going to have to watch out for driveways and speed bumps now. The car handles a little funny with the stiffer rear coil springs and the Suspension Techniques/Illumina spring and shock combination in the front, it should be light years better once I figure out how to install the fronts. On a side note, the engine loves this colder weather. Traction is becoming an issue however, as second gear turns the rear tires into smoking dollars. I thought I ran over a cat last week. Well, I still think I actually did run over the cat, but it actually went under the car between the wheels. It was dark out and the little thing darted out right in front of me, almost like it was asking for a quick death by Yokohama rubber. | | Saturday, October 8th, 2005 | | 10:38 am |
The Wookie brand security system.
I was sleeping on the couch at my friend's house in downtown Kalamazoo. Around 5:30 AM I heard a knocking on the front door (about 15 feet from me) and wondered whom would be coming around at 5:30 AM. Nobody I knew, for sure, as everyone else whom lived in the house was currently IN the house. I carefully tip-toed to the side window and took a peek out; I saw a black person I did not recognize dressed entirely in black. I didn't know this person, so I quietly returned to the couch and laid down to go back to sleep. He knocked a couple more times, obviously nobody sleeping upstairs was awoken by him. I questioned my motivations for not letting this person in. After all, he might be an unknown friend of one of my friends living here. Had he been Asian, I probably would have let him in; people have been known to order take out at strange hours. I guess that makes me racist, at the very least it was a racist act... right? Maybe if he was Mexican and wearing a poncho I would have let him in? No, this person was Black (AIKA* "African American") and wearing black; he was the stereotypical cryminal and I decided to succum to my inhibitions. About the time I was figuring he had left, I heard a strange noise somewhat like an animal scratching at the front window. I sat up and astonished as I was, I could see the window next to the door started to slide open. At this point I was a little confused, a little annoyed (at having been woken up) and severely irritated that someone had chosen to let themselves in the window instead of being admitted through the front door. I stood up and positioned myself just outside of the entryway. I observed the black figure climb inside, close the window and turn on the light. I said "hey". He was obviously quite startled. He started to talk and then stammered. At this point I felt pretty secure in the fact that he didn't have a weapon of any kind, but I had a baseball bat sitting a few feet behind me. Before I had opportunity to get off another word, this assailant started into talking again. "I thought this was muh cousins place" he said "13... vine... sorry, muh mistake... bye." and he unlocked the door and ran out into the night. This experience hits a 9 on my weird-shit-o-meter. *= Also Incorrectly Known As "Black" describes someones skin color and features (although they are technically brown) whereas "African American" describes someone's country of origin. Most "Blacks" in the United States have never been to Africa, nor have most of their relatives. It is completely incorrect to call someone by an incorrect country of origin. These people are Americans, the fact that they are black has nothing to do with that! In addition, white (although we are technically shades of tan and off-white) people live in africa as well, millions upon millions of them. If they were to come to the United States, they would be just as "African American" as a Black person coming from the same origin. Furthermore, my ancestors were German and English; so that makes me just as much a German American as these supposed "African Americans" regardless of the fact that I have never been to germany, don't speak any German, and don't really care for most sausages. We need to get over out societies hangups over race and realize that we all live HERE and NOW. It is my opinion that these useless and incorrect labels are only furthering the cause of segregation among races in the United States. | | Friday, October 7th, 2005 | | 4:43 pm |
Your alarm sucks
I pulled into a parking space in the lot (not the ramp) at school today, next to a great big waste of metal with nasty looking chrome spinner wheels. I don't know what irritated me more; this 8mpg hunk of GM garbage or the fact that it was wearing $8000 24-inch wheels with high-performance tires. Why a 3 ton hunk of iron needs high performance tires or 24 inch chrome spinners is beyond me. Anyway, this thing starts beeping as I pull in. Apparently it had one of those annoying car alarms that has the vibration sensors, and set WAY too sensitive. With my car simply idling next to it, this thing started making all kinds of racket. Not just the regular siren, no, like 20 kinds of noises. I sat there thinking for a little while and then turned my car off. Grabbed my books from the back seat and opened my door; by this time the alarm had died. With the simple act of opening the door this repugnant vehicular monstrosity decided to issue additional "warning beeps". When I closed my door the damn thing went into full siren mode again. I decided to issue it the stare of doom. AA what point does an alarm become so effective that it's no longer effective at all? Come on people! How many times can your car cry wolf before nobody even cares to look anymore? Get a clue, if I saw someone breaking into that thing I would LET THEM just for spite! Really; at what point does an alarm cease to protect, and serve only to randomly draw attention to your expensive hunk of polluting American garbage? | | Thursday, October 6th, 2005 | | 10:29 pm |
A good waste of bad time
Last night felt like an eternity. I drove to MWR's shop after leaving work early. They already had a new Lotus Elise on the dyno, after installing the MWR turbo kit (By the way, MWR is the premier US tuner of the Toyota 1ZZ and 2ZZ 1.8L engines, their shop is very nice, and the owner (Matt) is extremely cool. www.monkeywrenchracing.com). Pics of the hot little Elise (LARGE): http://www.redz31.com/images/dyno/lotus1.jpghttp://www.redz31.com/images/dyno/lotus2.jpghttp://www.redz31.com/images/dyno/lotus3.jpghttp://www.redz31.com/images/dyno/lotus4.jpgPic of the shop (LARGE): http://www.redz31.com/images/dyno/mwrshop.jpgIn case you did not know I am running on a bone stock 260K mile 88T engine, I have not touched anything internally. Compression is a little on the low side, but nothing substantial and no outliers... it burns almost no oil. We got my car on the dyno and I started my first pull at ~10.5PSI. Came out to a little over 300WHP, doing good! So I start to inch up the boost 12.5PSI... ~330rwhp. With power peak at 6000 RPM! still pulling strong all the way to 6700 at the cutoff. Now here comes the interesting part. I put some timing in and on the next run It started breaking up. We did another slow run looking at fuel pressure, it was bobbing all over the place. After a little while I realized it was not because of the timing or fuel pump, but because my alternator had outright died! Looked at the voltmeter, and it was at about 11 volts... CRAP! Matt (the owner) was nice enough to drive me to the local parts store where I bought ANOTHER new lifetime warranty maxima alternator, by the time we got back it was around 8PM. As I replaced the alternator he worked on assembling an engine (2ZZ stroker with built everything, ported heads, GT30R, the works, all going in a 2500lb car... very cool). With the car up and running it was getting late, and I was really pushing it as far as "an hour" of dyno time is concerned. Then for some random reason the car refused to start. after another half an hour of fudging around with it I realized the binary I was working with somehow got corrupted, so I had to go back to an earlier tune from like a week ago *grrrrrrrr*. I got a few more pulls and with fairly conservative timing managed to obtain 383RWHP and 373RWTQ at 18PSI boost pressure. Not quite the 400RWHP I had hoped for, but not bad. The one major issue I ran into seems to be valvetrain. As I increased boost pressure past about 15PSI, the power curve started getting "truncated" (for lack of a better word) lower and lower in RPM. That is, peak power kept occurring lower and lower because of the higher boost, but the power was dying off sooner and sooner. Ended up going with 18PSI because it only cut off about 5700RPM (as you can see on the sheet). I really should have asked him for the 10PSI run so you could see how power pulled in the top end, the curve extended out from where it was almost another 1000RPM, it's really something! The only thing we could think of was valve springs, perhaps soft (after 260K miles I should have expected this) or maybe one has a broken coil, who knows. Any other ideas on this issue? Also, I have an exhaust port leaking because the studs are broken... causing boost response to be somewhat reduced. I'll probably be repairing my ported heads this winter and installing them (with the JWT valve springs and reground cams that are already in them), but I think I'll look for another low milage NA engine to put them on. I left after a long night, thanked Matt for his generousity and headed home to pass out. I should have asked him for more printouts of the earlier/lower boost settings for comparison... I'll call him later this week and ask if I can get those. Dyno graph: http://www.redz31.com/images/dyno/jason84na2tdynosm.JPG | | Monday, October 3rd, 2005 | | 2:09 pm |
Nach-yo mushroom cheez burger
This morning I parked on a city street on my way to my daily physics class. I was reasonably close to a fire hydrant, but there was what I considered plenty of room between my car and the hydrant; at least 8 or 10 feet from my rear bumper. I come back to find a little orangeenvelope on my windshield instructing me to give the city $20 of my hard-earned money because I had parked "within 15 feet" of a fire hydrant. Actually, written on the ticket was "11 feet from hydrant". Eleven feet! This means that a whole four feet of violating car was parked too close to the hydrant. *grrrrr* Parking in front of the hydrant I can understand, but 15 feet? Who on earth thought of this crap? So I look at the car behind me, no ticket sitting under his dilapidated windshield wiper. Strange, this same car was here when I parked, and is obviously slightly closer to the hydrant than my car is. What makes him so special? His run-down, beat-up stinkin Lincoln! I'll tell you what I think; the ticket writing officer (apparently 334 was his name by the way) figured me, with my nice shiny 21 year old car, could afford to pay the ticket while bozo the junk lincoln driver got off the hook! *sigh* Today I went to Wendy's for lunch. I never order regular items there, because I'm hooked on the value menu; specifically the 99 cent Jr. Cheeseburger Deluxe. As I took the bag containing my supposed 2 burgers, It seemed heavy. Hmm, there's three burgers in the bag. BONUS! Or is it? The other burger was some kind of strange creation. It was like a classic single, but lacking in vegetative toppings. Instead of regular cheese it had nacho cheese sauce... and mushrooms. Nothing else. Who could have thought of this vile creation? The nacho cheese sauce was never intended to go on a hamburger! The mushrooms I'm alright with, but nacho "cheese" sauce is perhaps the worse creation of mankind, and its presence on a hamburger is an utter disgrace to the beef patty it contaminates. Current Mood:  aggravated | | Sunday, October 2nd, 2005 | | 11:20 pm |
Geek squad, what losers.
I have never, in my entire life, wanted to run a truck off the road. Until now, that is. Do you know of the "Geek Squad"; a bunch of dorks from best buy who drive around in VW Beetles and terrorize innocent computer users? A truck, holding no less than eight of those annoying little black and white hunks of metal and plastic. Twas a sight to behold. A horrific sight, to instill fear in the hearts of small children and ignorant computer users alike. Later on tonight I decided to attempt some burnout pictures. I would not call it a complete failure, but I did not get anything worthwhile. Thanks to Justin and Jeff for coming along and helping out, but I think I'll give it another shot tomorrow. Dry, rough pavement not only eats up tires fast, but you get too much traction for clean, good, long burnouts. Also, the timing of the picture is crucial, as you want to be able to see the car before it becomes engulfed in smoke, yet not have so little smoke as to poorly represent the cars tire-smoking capability. We managed to get both extremes, and a bunch of out-of-focus pictures, but nothing good. Examples: http://www.redz31.com/images/misc/burnout1.JPG (too little smoke) http://www.redz31.com/images/misc/burnout2.JPG (too much smoke) | | Saturday, October 1st, 2005 | | 10:46 pm |
Serenity now!
Serenity, the new Joss Whedon film pulled from his short-lived TV series FireFly, is perhaps the best Sci-Fi movie I have seen since Star Trek VI. It's original, comical, action-packed and fast paced. Overall, it is a masterpiece that's worth seeing. The only thing that irked me was the overwhelming feeling that every aspect of the movie was being rushed. I'd imagine with all the complexities of Joss' characters, we can't really blame him for having to cram his idea for a movie into a mere 121 minutes. Heck, the series barely scratched the surface of the complexities of his characters, and it had about 7 times that much time to attempt to do so. After waiting over a year to see this film (as it was delayed for marketing reasons), I can say beyond a doubt that it was worth the wait. Current Mood:  satisfied | | 3:51 pm |
And the table moves with the house
Something about old houses in the city... there's an animal in the walls, pretty annoying. The morning leads to the table on the other side of the room doing a little dance. Cold Chinese food, sounds good. A friend of mine had apparently been taking the bus and hitching rides with friends to work because his car was "broken". "Something wrong with the front right wheel, I think. Maybe wheel bearings?" is what he said. Not kidding, his exact words as I remember them. I went outside and looked at the car; this miserable existence of any automobile should have been in the junkyard years ago. 1.5L Isuzu I-Mark Hatchback. *groan* I pried the (long ago cracked) wheel cover off to discover a missing lug nut, and the rest of them were loose! *sigh*.... Hahahahahahaah! +400 idiot points. |
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