I don’t know how closely you follow Twitter or the news but there were two garbage fires in DC today, the one that was “elected” by negative 2.8 million votes, and a Parks Service garbage can that was set on fire in front of the working press.
What does this have to do with this blog about bicycle safety and a guy turning junk and discount parts into a hot rod? Damnifiknow. And my spell checker says I spelled that portmanteau correctly. Excuse me a moment while I check to see if either of the cats is hugging a dog… Clint is sleeping in a chair and Clyde is somewhere outside, so … maaayyyyybee? And that was a media ref from the OG Ghostbusters in case you didn’t catch that.
Firmly taking my mind off that subject, I’m still debating trunk space in the mid-Bucket, as a compromise between usefulness as a daily driver and handling/acceleration as a race car. I have a trailer kit in the garage that I can use for trips to the grocery and hauling luggage on trips to longer than overnight stays, but do I want to go to those kinds of lengths just to get a few thousandths of a second quicker lap times on Solo and AutoX races? Especially when I will probably need the trailer for carrying support equipment and supplies for Solo events anyway as I will be using race-only tires and wheels for the SCCA events and very probably swapping springs and shocks at the track for both Goodguys AutoX and SCCA Solo events. On the other side I have to install a pickup bed to meet the rules for Goodguys anyway, it is not that big a deal to make it functional as a luggage or grocery carrier. The problem is I have to decide pretty early in the design phase for the rear clip if I make the pickup bed functional because many structural members will have to be moved to make room for the trunk and make the rear clip structurally sound. Mrs. the Poet says she doesn’t care because she’s not ever going to ride in a car that doesn’t have doors or a roof. So I could carry my stuff in the passenger side of the car except for the wheels and tires.
On the other thing, the retuning of the ECU to run E85, research has drawn a blank on how to increase fuel to compensate for the much higher amount of fuel needed to reach stoichiometric ratios while still being able to run 93 octane premium without doing a complete rebuild of the fueling system. If I want to just run E85 all the time I can change to a much bigger fuel pump and run more volume at a higher pressure and stay within the metering limits of the stock injectors, but switching back and forth requires knowing beforehand the exact ratio of ethanol to regular gas…
And I need to put this to bed and be thinking about the car some more.
PSA, Opus the Unkillable
Witch on a Bicycle 