I have been mostly sitting and reading manga and technical books on building engines. And most of the manga was yuri, because I like the relationships, and ditto about the mahou shoujo (magical girl). I mean the relationships with boys in most of those manga are ridiculous by Western standards, but knowing as many lesbians as I do I can vouch for the “girl love” manga as being realistic for the most part aside from the magically transforming and fighting monsters. I mean sure they are over the top a lot of the time, but I have seen very similar scenarios take place in front of me, so “over the top non-sexual relationship” seems to be a lesbian trope.
The other books have been about building LS engines for various uses. One of the things about the LS series of engines is how versatile they are, literally with just a manifold and cam swap and recalibrating the ECU to match them you can go from a low-RPM torque monster to a high-RPM horsepower machine. And both can be made with factory parts from a junkyard for less than $1k if you have a good relationship with the junkyard manager. The other thing is the all-aluminum versions weigh in about 425 pounds dressed with everything needed for a T-bucket to run. The Motor Trend web series Engine Masters did a show that explicitly pointed out how cheap it was to make a monster street engine starting with a junkyard 5.3 truck engine and bolting on a turbo kit, then swapping parts to get almost the same power NA, then putting the turbo kit back on to make over 800 HP with a stock (but with new bearings) bottom end. But this book was about using factory parts, no turbo kits. By mixing and matching stock GM parts it’s possible to get loads of low RPM torque from about 2000 RPM that stays flat until about 5000 RPM so you have a steadily climbing power curve from off-idle to almost 6000 RPM which would be frabjous for the mission of the Sprint-T. The big thing for that build is you need to start with the biggest LS you can find outside of a Corvette and go from there because even with all the computerized engine control physics still dictates “there’s no replacement for displacement”. Basically that build recipe uses displacement and acoustic intake tuning to get around cam timing and lift problems for low RPM power and displacement and the cam to get around the upper RPM power restriction caused by the acoustic manifold tuning. Yay, physics still works! The real magic trick was using the ECU to keep everything working together in the middle when nothing was in its RPM range, except displacement, between the upper end of the manifold tuning and the lower end of the cam tuning, partially by using the cam timing control available on some later LS series engines to extend the cam’s operating range, and partially by making sure the fuel and ignition delivery were exactly what was needed to make the most power at that speed. And this has the serendipitous effect of getting the best possible fuel economy away from full throttle.
So full of win, and all I need to do is find the money to get the parts from the friendly junkyard a few miles down the street and figure out how to get those parts to Casa de El Poeta. Without owning a car or pickup truck to transport me and the parts. I’ll figure that out somehow.
Now I need to have a lie-down because my neck feels like people are poking at it with sharp sticks. I’ll probably move my laptop over so I can continue to read.
Witch on a Bicycle 