I’ve put a page up for "Six Word Stories" - Ernest Hemingway is reputed to have said that the best story he ever wrote was just six words long, so we’re following in Papa’s footsteps (to a point, since nobody is all that excited to learn what bluing tastes like) by coming up with some of our own. Some are poignant, some are hilarious, but every single one is just six words long. Check them out, and bookmark the page since I’ll be updating it periodically.
Here’s a peek at part of what I do as editor of Race Pages magazine. I’m the guy on the ladder…
Last night, we had our first crash in San Diego to be blamed on drifting. Per the Union-Tribune:
"One young man was seriously hurt and another was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving in Carmel Valley early Friday morning after a crash that resulted from trick driving called drifting, San Diego police said."
"The young men were in a 1996 Honda, headed eastbound at a high speed and sideways in the lanes, when a westbound Lexus broadsided it, said San Diego police Sgt. Leonard Flake.
Flake said the driver, a man in his 20s, was performing the street-racing maneuver called drifting.
Drifting involves turning the steering wheel sharply and accelerating while on a curve, so that traction is lost and the car continues sliding forward sideways, Flake said."
From the photos, it’s apparent that the Honda is FWD, which means that technically, this is an "ass dragging" crash, not a "drifting" crash. Semantics aside, since street racing has been more or less eradicated here in San Diego, this might be the Next Big Thing for the city leaders to get all worked up about, five years late…
Here’s a short video that demonstrates the Suctapus, a suction-cup camera mount I designed and built…
Want one? Let’s call it $50 plus shipping. That gets you a 2-pad Suctapus like the one in the pictures, complete with a Bogen 3025 tripod head (which is worth $30 by itself, and can be used separately on any quality tripod with 1/4-20 threads).
I also can make a 4-pad version for $60, or if you want the extra-heavy-duty aluminum-frame 2-pad Sucktapus (which looks just like the one in the pictures, but the orange composite frame is replaced with cast aluminum) would also be $60.
A complete kit with 1 two-pad base, 1 four-pad base, and 1 Bogen 3025 head will be $85. If you already have a tripod head that accepts a 1/4-20 thread, I’ll also sell the bases separately. $25 for the 2-pad composite, $35 for a 4-pad or the 2-pad aluminum.
How’s that for options! Email me at techweasel@hotmail.com if you’d like to order.
Editor’s Note - I wrote this in response to the many requests for information about the repair and replacement of the front propshaft on Syclones and Typhoons that were coming up on the SyTy mailing list. I was sending this e-mail to the list about once every three weeks as new people came on and asked about broken propshafts. Rather than continue to post it every time, I decided to put it on my website and simply send the link instead. Here’s the Unofficial Guide to Propshaft Repair, which I use to burn excess bandwith which would otherwise be used for pyramid schemes and the theft of copyrighted music. Please hold your applause until the end.
When discussing the handling characteristics of a vehicle, the words "oversteer" and "understeer" come up all the time. Here’s a basic description of what those terms mean, and a little bit of theory about why particular cars exhibit either oversteer or understeer.
Definitions:
"Understeer", also known as "push", and "dammit, why won’t the car turn?", happens when a vehicle doesn’t turn as quickly as the angle of the front wheels would suggest. Turning the steering wheel further just makes the tires slip more. An understeering vehicle wants to point to the outside of a turn, plowing ahead instead of where the wheels are aimed.
"Oversteer", AKA "loose", or "OH S*&T!", is when the vehicle wants to turn too far, with the back end sliding around and, in extreme cases, trying to pass the front. An oversteering vehicle feels like it’s about to spin, and frequently does if the driver isn’t skilled enough to "catch" it.
An easy way to remember the difference is that Understeer is when you see what you’re about to hit through the windshield, but Oversteer means you see it in the mirrors…
(more…)Editor’s Note - In my two year tenure at NOS Automotive Chemicals, I was the de-facto head of customer service, and I took almost all of the calls that came in from people with questions about octane boosters and our other chemicals. In that time, it became clear to me that there is a lot of misinformation about exactly what octane is, and how it relates to performance. Here’s a short primer that will debunk a few myths.
There is a lot of confusion about what the "octane number" on the gas pump means, what higher octane numbers really mean, and why some engines need or can take advantage of a higher octane fuel.
In a nutshell, the octane rating of a fuel is a measure of its ability to resist detonation, ping, pre-ignition, or knock. Although purists will quibble, all of these terms can be described as an incorrectly-timed burning of the fuel/air mixture in the combustion chamber. Any motor fuel will spontaneously ignite under the right conditions - too much compression, hot spots from leftover carbon deposits, excessive boost, too much ignition advance, or a number of other causes can provide the source of ignition. When the flame front from this ignition event meets the one created by the spark plug, the result is sky-high cylinder pressures and a destructive shock wave that can shatter spark plug insulators, hammer rod bearings, break rings, or even put a hole in the piston. The octane number is a way to express the resistance of a fuel to this type of unwanted ignition.
Octane Myth #1 - Higher octane fuel is "more powerful" and "burns hotter"
Well, after a five(?) year layoff, there’s actually going to be CONTENT on TechWeasel once again! The long story made short is that after I got a job in the brick & mortar magazine world, it was hard for me to keep my site updated, and when the crappy, crappy webhost I was using went under, that was the final straw. Unmotivated to find a new host and restore the site, I just sort of let it die.
Just recently, though, I found that I was able to recover my old web files from the ancient Zip discs they were archived on, and since they all fit on a 128mb thumb drive, it was pretty easy to migrate everything to a new computer and look through it all. A wave of nostalgia hit, and I decided that a blog was the best way to get some of the good content (among the ton of crap) from the old TechWeasel back online.
Anyway, I hope to gradually make the old content available once more, and maybe add some new stuff as my schedule allows. Let’s hope for the best…
My goal is to provide clear information on technical subjects related to cars, both import and domestic. The cheapest, best way to improve your vehicle's performance is to understand how it works in the first place. The organic control module has a wide range of adjustment, so before you start spending a lot of money to go faster, it pays to make sure that the problem isn't somewhere between the steering wheel and the seat. TechWeasel, in addition to being a shrine to my growing Cult of Personality, is a place where enthusiasts can learn the basics that everyone else assumes you already know, and to ask the questions that you fear will earn you sneers at the tuner's shop or at the races. Remember: There are no stupid questions, but there are people who think an intake and coffee-can sized exhaust will make a Civic run 13's. - Paul Huizenga
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