Some of my dates have come through today. I will be effectively out of Montana by the 30th of this month. That is two weeks from now. The three weeks after that, 31 Jan through 22 Feb. I'll be in Albuquerque, NM. Anyone that will be in that area, let me know because my plans are pretty much flying and sitting in my hotel room by myself studying Farsi, and I will be up for trips to Maloney's and Billy's Long Bar... not to mention the white sands ranges. After that... Lots of unknowns. Possibly a month or so in El Paso, TX... or Ukraine, yes the country. I'll be trying to make a trip to michigan some where in there also. I'll let you cats know and if we well be within a state or two from each other, let me know.
Now to shed some cars.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Saturday, January 12, 2008
What is the only thing more aphrodisiac than an italian sports car?
An Italian sports car with a functioning hood scoop!
Everyone knows that as a gas gets hotter, its density will decrease. Horsepower is made by more air, so more dense air makes more horsepower... so one wants as cold of air as possible entering the engine for max horsepower. Well, this thought was right at the front of my brain where it ususally is and it ocurred to me that the air going into my engine is coming from right next to the hot engine and behind the radiator. Not the ideal place to get cold air.
So I ran some tests using an out door/in door thermometer. The top number is the temp on top of the hood the number in the middle is the air that is right in front of the engine air intake. These numbers are in Celsius of course. I found that depending on where I put the temperature probe and what speed I was driving I was getting between 20 and 30 deg C hotter intake temp than ambient air temp. The lowest temperature difference I found was on the highway at around 70 mph, but even that was 18 deg C.
An example of one of the places I placed the temperature probe.
So what did I do with all this data?
Apply some math... and a little science...
Realize that my partial differentiation skills are super rusty... so consult some trusty buddies from my scientist days. I know you can't judge a book by its cover, but in these cases you can. Especially the one on the right.
What all that shit said was that I will probably gain about 7% -10% horsepower just by useing the ambient air instead of the hot air from inside the engine compartment.
Step one: Isolate the air intake from the engine compartment. I did this by building a styrofoam and galvanized steel box around the intake air cleaners.
I forgot to take a picture of step two...
Step three: Profits!
I don't have any hard numbers for increased horsepower... but I do know that the butt dynometer says "Holy Fuck!" This actually made a huge difference. I am actually really interested in my 0 - 60 times now. The improvement is very noticeable.
Not to mention the looks you get from the hotties on the corner at the light when they realize that you have a functioning hood scoop and cold air intake!
Everyone knows that as a gas gets hotter, its density will decrease. Horsepower is made by more air, so more dense air makes more horsepower... so one wants as cold of air as possible entering the engine for max horsepower. Well, this thought was right at the front of my brain where it ususally is and it ocurred to me that the air going into my engine is coming from right next to the hot engine and behind the radiator. Not the ideal place to get cold air.
So I ran some tests using an out door/in door thermometer. The top number is the temp on top of the hood the number in the middle is the air that is right in front of the engine air intake. These numbers are in Celsius of course. I found that depending on where I put the temperature probe and what speed I was driving I was getting between 20 and 30 deg C hotter intake temp than ambient air temp. The lowest temperature difference I found was on the highway at around 70 mph, but even that was 18 deg C.
An example of one of the places I placed the temperature probe.
So what did I do with all this data?
Apply some math... and a little science...
Realize that my partial differentiation skills are super rusty... so consult some trusty buddies from my scientist days. I know you can't judge a book by its cover, but in these cases you can. Especially the one on the right.
What all that shit said was that I will probably gain about 7% -10% horsepower just by useing the ambient air instead of the hot air from inside the engine compartment.
Step one: Isolate the air intake from the engine compartment. I did this by building a styrofoam and galvanized steel box around the intake air cleaners.
I forgot to take a picture of step two...
Step three: Profits!
I don't have any hard numbers for increased horsepower... but I do know that the butt dynometer says "Holy Fuck!" This actually made a huge difference. I am actually really interested in my 0 - 60 times now. The improvement is very noticeable.
Not to mention the looks you get from the hotties on the corner at the light when they realize that you have a functioning hood scoop and cold air intake!
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Problems solved
Hollywood and I were sitting around in his living room discussing the world. We came up with a plan... though a little bit harsh and quite drastic, would solve quite a few of Americas current major problems; War in Iraq, the disappearance of the middle class, energy shortage, some forms of pollution. There are several steps, and if done completely and fully should work.
Step one:
Immediate and complete withdrawal from Iraq.
This is not because I want to abandon the mission of defeating terrorism or any such thing. I just think that the real battle isn't there. That is just a major league out of hand side skirmish. We should be advancing, no charging in fact, in an entirely other direction. Withdrawal does two things:
First of all, it frees up huge amounts of national finacial resorces. It is obvious with only a vague notion of what the national budget is spent on that there is insane amounts of money hemoraging out of the US into Iraq, with some but very slow progress. Granted it takes time, but I don't think we have it right now and we need the resources for other things. (to be explained in a moment)
Second, and more more harshly... It seems to me that real freedom can't be given as a gift. The U.S. TOOK ours from England, the French took theirs from their monarchy, women in the U.S. the right to vote, etc... To establish your self as a real true sovern country, you have to take your indepentance from your oppressors by force, be that an occupying army or an oppressive totalitarian government. If you are, "liberated," then in reality you are just indebted to a new master. Though sometimes this may be a much nicer more benevolent master... you still are a debtor, and can never appreciate what you have anyways because you didn't earn it the way it must be in order to understand it fully. So, We leave Iraq, they kill each other for a while, end up with a new biggest asshole at the top, or they deside to work together to get their shit stableized and develope their own country in a fair way for everyone there... Either way it is their fate and their desision. Having the US there as a protector and occupying force just hinders the eventual outcome. Might as well leave them to get on with it.
Some of you might be thinking right now, 'but Notorious, I understand all that, but realistically we will need vast amounts of cheep energy to maintain the american way of life. That cheep energy is oil, eventually we need to control that oil to continue. People don't want to abandon their American dream just so that the annoying new story about war in the middle east goes away."
I agree that we do need shit loads of cheep energy... This brings me to my next step.
Step two:
We, America at least, needs to get the fuck off oil!
The first advantage is it takes away the power that the oil producing countries have over us. Lets just be honest, we wouldn't care politically what was happening in nieghborhoods in iraq if they had no oil, we wouldn't be overlooking the Saudi Arabian protection and development of world terrorist organizations, and we wouldn't care what the veneswalan president thinks of US at all. Personally I don't like the idea that the shit that happens in these other countries effects us so significantly. They have us by the short and curllies... and I don't like it. Not needing their oil take away their power over us.
To do that, we need a massive change in infustructure! We would have to build many many nuclear power plants, we have to put up wind turbines all over the place, we have to develop technology that nobody has even thought of yet. Where would we get the resorses to do all that. Well, remember that huge budget we had for fighting the war, we still need it to fight the war, but the new front is home energy production! Depending on how you do the math, there are different numbers as to how much the war is currently costing us... but even conservitive estimates are in the hundreds of billions. Now imagine we spent hundreds of billion on changing our infastructure to home energy production. We would have shitloads of cheep energy. Building a nuclear power plant costs between 3 and 10 billion dollars... and a large wind turbine beween 1.5 to 3 million. The point being we are already spending the money on this fight... we should be spending it in a different place!
There are also many other advantages to not using oil as a primary energy sorce. A short list includes less air pollution, more more oil available for fertilizer and other petrolium products, possible reduction in greenhouse gasses. Each of those could be developed into a full argument in it's own right.
Step 1.5
That being the plan: leave Iraq, then spend all those resorces on changing the energy infastructure within the US thus taking away the power of the oil producing nations have over the US as well as making us energy independant. There are also many aditional advantages to this stratagy. Think of a moment what kind of work force it would take to design, build, this huge new energy infastructure... You could put all of detroit back to work building wind turbines, electrical grid components, and new electric cars. There are so many things that need to be produced, not to mention constructed. The US might even have to increase its production capacity! Those are jobs you're smelling kids... and not low paying service industry jobs either!
Now what we will have is a huge energy production industry. Nuclear, Wind, Solar.... all that shit
Step one:
Immediate and complete withdrawal from Iraq.
This is not because I want to abandon the mission of defeating terrorism or any such thing. I just think that the real battle isn't there. That is just a major league out of hand side skirmish. We should be advancing, no charging in fact, in an entirely other direction. Withdrawal does two things:
First of all, it frees up huge amounts of national finacial resorces. It is obvious with only a vague notion of what the national budget is spent on that there is insane amounts of money hemoraging out of the US into Iraq, with some but very slow progress. Granted it takes time, but I don't think we have it right now and we need the resources for other things. (to be explained in a moment)
Second, and more more harshly... It seems to me that real freedom can't be given as a gift. The U.S. TOOK ours from England, the French took theirs from their monarchy, women in the U.S. the right to vote, etc... To establish your self as a real true sovern country, you have to take your indepentance from your oppressors by force, be that an occupying army or an oppressive totalitarian government. If you are, "liberated," then in reality you are just indebted to a new master. Though sometimes this may be a much nicer more benevolent master... you still are a debtor, and can never appreciate what you have anyways because you didn't earn it the way it must be in order to understand it fully. So, We leave Iraq, they kill each other for a while, end up with a new biggest asshole at the top, or they deside to work together to get their shit stableized and develope their own country in a fair way for everyone there... Either way it is their fate and their desision. Having the US there as a protector and occupying force just hinders the eventual outcome. Might as well leave them to get on with it.
Some of you might be thinking right now, 'but Notorious, I understand all that, but realistically we will need vast amounts of cheep energy to maintain the american way of life. That cheep energy is oil, eventually we need to control that oil to continue. People don't want to abandon their American dream just so that the annoying new story about war in the middle east goes away."
I agree that we do need shit loads of cheep energy... This brings me to my next step.
Step two:
We, America at least, needs to get the fuck off oil!
The first advantage is it takes away the power that the oil producing countries have over us. Lets just be honest, we wouldn't care politically what was happening in nieghborhoods in iraq if they had no oil, we wouldn't be overlooking the Saudi Arabian protection and development of world terrorist organizations, and we wouldn't care what the veneswalan president thinks of US at all. Personally I don't like the idea that the shit that happens in these other countries effects us so significantly. They have us by the short and curllies... and I don't like it. Not needing their oil take away their power over us.
To do that, we need a massive change in infustructure! We would have to build many many nuclear power plants, we have to put up wind turbines all over the place, we have to develop technology that nobody has even thought of yet. Where would we get the resorses to do all that. Well, remember that huge budget we had for fighting the war, we still need it to fight the war, but the new front is home energy production! Depending on how you do the math, there are different numbers as to how much the war is currently costing us... but even conservitive estimates are in the hundreds of billions. Now imagine we spent hundreds of billion on changing our infastructure to home energy production. We would have shitloads of cheep energy. Building a nuclear power plant costs between 3 and 10 billion dollars... and a large wind turbine beween 1.5 to 3 million. The point being we are already spending the money on this fight... we should be spending it in a different place!
There are also many other advantages to not using oil as a primary energy sorce. A short list includes less air pollution, more more oil available for fertilizer and other petrolium products, possible reduction in greenhouse gasses. Each of those could be developed into a full argument in it's own right.
Step 1.5
That being the plan: leave Iraq, then spend all those resorces on changing the energy infastructure within the US thus taking away the power of the oil producing nations have over the US as well as making us energy independant. There are also many aditional advantages to this stratagy. Think of a moment what kind of work force it would take to design, build, this huge new energy infastructure... You could put all of detroit back to work building wind turbines, electrical grid components, and new electric cars. There are so many things that need to be produced, not to mention constructed. The US might even have to increase its production capacity! Those are jobs you're smelling kids... and not low paying service industry jobs either!
Now what we will have is a huge energy production industry. Nuclear, Wind, Solar.... all that shit
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