Trip to Lab Rat Keeper was fruitful

I’m going to live, and there is a study coming up where they need older people because geriatric reactions to meds are sometimes different from younger people. I’m not geriatric, or at least I don’t think I’m geriatric, because I have felt this old pretty much ever since the wreck. The doctor that treated me at the time said one of the consequences of major trauma like I got from the wreck is premature aging, the wreck accelerated my age by about 20 years. He didn’t tell me that, he told Mrs. the Poet, who told me about it years later.

In other news, I bet “I nicked my nostril shaving my eyebrow” is not a phrase you expect to read every day, or any day, but it happened. I was shaving the part of my eyebrow that runs down my nose and nicked my nostril while shaving the tip of my nose. And yes that is a singular eyebrow, because unless I use some kind of intervention it runs from one side of my face, down my nose, and across to the other side of my face. I tried electrolysis, which worked for a few years, but it regenerated, and now plucking keeps it thinned out but still can’t remove it. So I have to shave it every few days to keep my nose bald. And since Mrs. the Poet prefers my nose to be Not Hairy, and I prefer Mrs. the Poet to be happy, except for when I’m yanking her chain about something, and also because it appears that my eyebrow and moustache are trying to join forces and gang up on my face, I shave my nose every couple of days. Well one day last week I nicked my nostril while shaving that side of my nose. I was too embarrassed about it to write about it in my blog at the time but having a week of time to relax about it makes it easier to write about it.

Now on the off chance this is the first time you have read this blog, I have a unibrow that approaches werewolf proportions if I don’t keep it groomed, and runs all the way down my nose except for the small part where my glasses gouged out a chunk of my nose during the wreck and the scar didn’t have any roots for hairs to grow from. When they stitched my face back on there was a hole there and no hair. And as for that there are numerous posts about the wreck and what it did to my body scattered throughout the blog, read a few of them. That’s one of the things the Search function is good for. Although TBH I have zero clue what would get you articles about my wreck as opposed to all the other wrecks, you might look for “truck” which would narrow it down to a few thousand, or you could try reading some of the Extra Pages listed at the top of the current page.

Advertisement

I need to think out loud some more

And you get to read it, lucky you! This is one of the ways I solve problems, but I usually don’t keep the process after I’m done, but I’m thinking since this isn’t how to make a man-portable nuke, or how to shut down the stock market, or any other destructive thing that could cause chaos and destruction if I let it out in the wild, this one I will let people see the process.

The problem needing solution tonight is the question of will using a Powerglide transmission and a quick-change rear axle be better for the autocross and still usable for just driving? From known data the QC has about 10 pounds less mass than the 9″ Ford rear end or is way cheaper than an equal weight fabricated aluminum housing 9″ Ford, going back to the Eternal Triangle: Light, Cheap, Strong, pick any two.

The other thing is you can’t street drive with the PG without changing the final drive ratio from the race setup, the ratio is Too Low for any highway driving. The final drive for the autocross setup is top of the RPM band in first gear at 40 MPH. For an LS engine that would be 6500 RPM. Now because the PG comes in two low gear ratios, 1.78 and 1.82 you can see the problem. Even going from the 23″ tall race tires to the 27″ tall street tires that would make the freeway RPM an unbearable 3110 or 3042 depending on which ratio transmission I get. Either one would result in horrible mileage, horrible engine noise and added wear and tear on the engine. What I’m looking for is a highway cruise of 1900 RPM or less, so you can see what the problem is.

Now the reason I want to run the PG is weight, both absolute and rotating mass. My other options are the 4l60 and variants, or the 4l80, the first weighing in at almost 200 pounds with fluids, the second is 240± with fluids. A fully race prepped PG is [drum roll] 96 pounds with fluids so 100 to 140 pounds less weight on a car that would weigh 1800± pounds with the 4l80. And do I really need to show how much 140 pounds off an 1800 pound car is as a percentage? Plus I don’t have the actual rotating mass for all 3 transmissions but I know the 4l80 is the highest and the PG is way lower and the 4l60 is somewhere in the middle but closer to the 4l80. And going back to Commonly Held Beliefs About Rotating Mass For Hot Rodders every pound of mass rotating at engine speed is equivalent to 5 HP, so going from the 4l80 to a PG not only takes 140 pounds off the static mass and sprung weight, but it takes a Large Amount off the rotating weight. As an added bonus the PG is one of the strongest automatic transmissions you can buy for normal car engines. Of my two choices the 4l80 has the best power handling but slightly worse ratios which is why I was looking so hard at the 4l60 based transmission. But neither of them can hold a candle to the PG in torque capacity. The PG is pretty much the standard transmission for a Monster Truck with 1800-2000 HP alcohol-fueled big-block engines, so strong, and light, and low rotating mass.

But to use it with the Sprint-T I need a way to easily change the final drive, or invest in a truck and a trailer to haul it between races and pretty much resign myself to only driving to my local grocery which is close enough to not drive me crazy with the RPM and noise from the engine. That’s where the QC axle comes in, it takes about 15 minutes and about $70 for a different set of spur gears to set the highway cruise to 1900 RPM. Now the QC cost is about $1k over the Ford 9″ unless you try to get the Ford as light as the QC and carry two center sections to have the race and highway ratios because part most of the higher cost of the QC over the 9″ is magnesium and aluminum EVERYTHING. Also changing the final drive on the 9″ requires hours of work setting the lash and engagement depth on the gears, or carrying around a spare centersection to swap from one to the other, and also about an hour of laying on my back at the race track going from one to the other. The QC requires an extra set of spur gears at $70/set and about 15 minutes unbolting the rear cover, swapping the spur gears, and bolting the cover back on and putting the gear oil back in the housing. That last bit is very important if I want to keep driving more than a few miles from the track.

Now I have been thinking about it and I can live with a PG and highway gears without much problem beyond the one they made fun of back when the PG was a production transmission installed on common road cars, driving 70-80 MPH still in 1st gear, as there are only two plus reverse. Actually if I have my sums right the shift from 1st to high under full throttle would be at 131.5 MPH. Which is even funnier than the vaunted 70 MPH shift from 1st to high ridiculed in the magazines of the times. The engine would remain below 3500 RPM all the time and would rely on low RPM torque and the torque converter to run without stalling. Which is almost the same as the speed the engine would be forced to spin at 60 MPH with the race gear all the time, so from one extreme to another in engine speed. Engine speed in 1st gear at 40 MPH with the highway gear would be 1976. That is a swap I can live with. Especially with the benefit of 100 pounds less empty weight and a similar but lower reduction in rotating weight for racing the autocross. But if I decided I needed a higher engine speed for around town but not making long trips on a freeway, all it takes is consulting a chart, picking a gear set, plonking down another $70, and spending another 15 minutes under the back of the car changing the spur gears. Or maybe just swapping the gears top for bottom on the race gears, because that would be a thing that was possible because the spur gears for the race gear would be a reduction set to get the RPM that high for that slow is WOW! The race gear needs to be 6.11:1, and the highway gear needs to be 2.54:1 and there is no way to get from one to the other without using different spur gears. If I get the low-inertia (rotating mass) 4.12 ring and pinion I can get close at 6.08 and 2.79 with only one set, giving me 2083 RPM at 60 MPH, but if I get the more common and slightly cheaper 4.86 the 6.12 spur gears give me 3.85 swapped top for bottom, which would be a decent setup for around town but loud and drony 2875 RPM for highway use. The bad thing about the 4.86 is the tallest final drive I can get is 2.58 which is Really Close resulting in 1926 RPM at 60 instead of 1900.

I shall have to let this one percolate through the grey matter for a while, comparing the costs of the 4l60 variant that will support the engine I get with a 9″ rear housing to fit the Sprint-T, and the costs of a PG and QC to fit the Sprint-T including 2 sets of spur gears, or a 9″ to fit and another center section. And looking at the assembled and ready to go 9″ center sections the cheap ones with a spool are $620 plus tax, for a race-only application. The ones with the highway gearing higher than 3.00:1 are scarce and expensive because most vehicles are equipped with overdrive transmissions to bypass the need for such tall gears. They used to be very common in the ’70s before overdrive transmissions were common, but I’m only finding used gears above 3.0 and even those are way expensive, so I might have to run the QC if I choose to run a PG. Or it just might not be economical to run a PG because of how expensive the support equipment required to run it on the street especially when a 4l60 can get 6500 RPM at 40 MPH with a 3.62 rear end ratio on the 23″ race tires, and get 1900 RPM at 60 MPH with the same rear end ratio and the 27″ tall street tires. Now that’s not a standard ratio but the common 3.50 is super cheap (for a 9″ rear end ring and pinion) and gets the race ratio close (41 MPH) and is just a tiny bit tall for the highway ratio resulting in 1830 RPM instead of 1900. Even closer is the Ford 8.8″ rear axle which (some of them) came with a 3.55 and a limited slip. Much more thinking is required, and as you can see there was already much thinking and consulting of texts and web pages done to get this far.

We finally got a game in

Well we finally got a game in with my character as the focus because I have the Tough and Targeted thing. Somebody unnamed took a contract out on me because of who I am and all the drug shit I have disrupted and other possible reasons. So I was walking down to the creek to shoot some feral hogs with my AK-97 and smartgun interface jacked in because there are crazies even in my neighborhood, when someone tried to do a driveby on my character. I got initiative because of how jacked my enhancements are and managed to get a shot on target for the heaviest armed mook in the car for enough damage to hinder his ability to aim. Then the mooks in the car got a couple of shots against me and managed to get a little damage in, then the driver decides to use the better part of valor and vacate the area before I can get another shot off. The guy I shot then tries to get a grenade on me, but I manage to catch it and throw it back into the car just as the delay goes off. Everyone in the car dies, and there is a big hole in both the roof and floor from the explosion. Basically the inside of the car looks like chunky salsa, none of their equipment can be salvaged.

I can get some usable parts off the remains of the car, but not enough to make another car yet. I didn’t get down to the creek because I had to go get fixed up from getting shot, so no feral hogs for the freezer today. And there’s another 6th World equivalent of YouTube video showing how badass my character is, adding to my reputation: “Driveby shooting, target catches grenade and throws it back in car”.

I had to use 2 points of Edge (basically Luck you can bank on), but I managed to only get a few scratches out of the encounter as far as Damage is concerned, a night’s sleep and my character will be 100%.

And this was where we had to call it a night as the GM had a Jewish holiday to observe at 1800

Still thinking, but more specifically

Relax, I’m thinking about the steering on the Sprint-T, not doomsday devices. Besides doomsday devices are a one and done thing, and unlike most mad scientists (we actually prefer the term aggravated engineers, thank’ewverra’much) I actually thought ahead and know if I blow up the world I lose my place to sleep at night, lacking a means of space travel. Besides have you checked the price of plutonium lately? No, thanks, I’m out of the doomsday device business.

So, back to the main topic, I’m pricing the specialty metal to make the steering arm that makes the steering quicker, and it’s super expensive for what I need. I mean in absolute terms it’s not much, it’s just I have to buy 4 linear feet of stock to make a part that will be just over 6″ long finished. And that 4 feet of stock costs $33, so most of the stock is wasted unless I find something else that needs to be that strong.

Cutting the stock to the length I need for the steering arm, henceforth to be named “the part” in this doc, I need to cut about 8″ to make the part. The part needs to have an arm that is 3³/₁₆” from the spindle axis to center of the hole for the drag link, but there is the attachment hole to the spindle on the other side of the axis from the drag link hole to also account for, plus the gussets needed to prevent flex in the part because the load will be off-axis no matter how I bolt up the drag link to the part. And dropping the drag link down to clear the suspension links will make the leverage off-axis greater causing more flex in the system. Therefore the part needs to be made from heavy stock, and gusseted, to keep the flex as low as possible.

I don’t think there will be any detectable flex in normal driving, but autocross and SCCA Solo Racing are not “normal” and put the steering under about as high a stress as you can get without going off-pavement or banging curbs. And now that I think of it there is a slight possibility of banging an actual concrete vertical-faced curb doing that, so I guess that means another gusset. The plan is now to have a gusset on either side of the bolts holding the part to the spindle, because curbs. Anyway, this stock is right at the limits of my welding equipment and cutting tools, so if I need to use heavier stock to make this part I will have to farm the part out to a professional with better equipment.

Just a passing note, I made the suggestion on Twitter that if @realDonaldTrump refuses to vacate the White House as he claims he will, then he should be treated like he says protestors against police brutality should be treated, but obviously in fewer characters because: Twitter. I’m now locked out of reading Twitter until I apologize by taking the tweet down, which obviously I will do as soon as Agent Orange apologizes for saying the same thing about protestors or when pigs fly. I don’t care, either one is equally likely. I don’t really need Twitter, it was just something to kill time with.

And with that act of defiance I’ma put this thing to bed.

More thinking about the Sprint-T

Just because I’m not working any more doesn’t mean I can’t stay awake at night and think about things on the Sprint-T. On the contrary, now that I don’t have to think about working, I can think even more about the Sprint-T. And because I don’t have any budget to build things I can think about how to do things as cheaply as possible.

I was thinking about how many turns lock-to-lock the steering will have with the shorter steering arm on the spindle compare that to other methods of changing the ratio. OK with just changing the steering arm on the spindle the turns lock-to-lock won’t actually change unless something in the steering hits something before the steering box hits its internal stops, but the front wheels will turn twice as far for each turn of the steering wheel. But since the front tires can’t turn anywhere near as far as the box can try to turn them, assume a stop in the system limits the travel, so how many turns lock-to-lock can we get from the system instead of the box?

The 20:1 box has 5 turns lock-to-lock by itself, moving the pitman arm 90° of arc. That’s 45° left and right of center, which is pretty decent angle but not great. But 5 turns lock-to-lock is terrible. So the problem then becomes how much angle to allow vs. steering wheel turn. Doing the steering arm half as long as the pitman arm gets 180° of movement which has already been categorized as “too much”, but the total ratio is “not quick enough”. Seriously this will be a huge improvement, but still not quick enough for the autocross racing the car is intended for. But at the double throw, the overall ratio is 10:1 at the tires, with 2½ turns to get the stock 45° of steering movement. Now if I restrict the angle at the front wheel to 120° of lock which is way more than what I get with the steering arms from Speedway (which are designed for freeway driving and cruising around a fairground car show, not racing autocross so nothing bad about that) I still get 3¹/₃ turns lock-to-lock, which gives the equivalence of a 13¹/₃:1 box with everything set to “out of the box” in the steering linkage. The really annoying thing about making this post is I have one word “wheel” that refers to two completely different things, and trying to disambiguate the difference between the steering wheel and the wheels the car drives on. I had to go back and change a few words back and forth.

Anywho, I can rapidly change the overall ratio at the front wheels by making a new arm with the distance from the steering axis of the spindle to the pivot point of the arm closer or further away. I should probably make at least one arm with several pivot points to see how the turn-in of the car changes, then build one arm to not have a bunch of holes in it and be neater for appearance. And I should also be looking at what’s available in angle iron to see what I will be working with to build the final arm. But this seems a good place to put this to bed, and maybe myself as well.

I got laid off again

I got laid off from a job that I couldn’t tell anyone about because of the NDA. This was the job that didn’t pay much, but didn’t require much, and I get to keep all the equipment and office supplies they sent. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the scales and barcode scanner, but they’re mine now. But I’m released from the NDA so I can tell people I was doing QC on the USPS delivery system. I mean the worst they could do if I broke the NDA is fire me, and now they can’t even do that as my last payment was sent out on my birthday. The e-mail telling me I’m laid off went out 0920 this morning, telling me my work was appreciated and that I was one of 3900 remaining people working on this project out of more than half a million over the course of the project. I’m supposed to continue reporting test mails until 9/30 when the reporting website gets shut down. Which I’m going to do because what else am I going to do with the stuff?

I’m not going to deny it, this feels like hell. And I’m trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do with the small amount of money I have left in my account because there’s not a lot of it and there aren’t many places to spend it in the app. And even though I can get a debit card to spend it outside of the app, because of the limitations in the tax code when this was established there are only a few places that I can use the card. If I could spend it just anywhere it would be income and I would have to pay taxes on it, but since it’s restricted it’s not “income” and I don’t have to report it or pay taxes on it. The way it was explained when I signed up, this way they could pay me more and I wouldn’t have to deal with the 1099 at the end of the year.

So, now I’m completely unemployed as all my side gigs are gone, and I can’t even look forward to getting stuff in the mail any more. ☹️ Well stuff will still come in the mail, it just won’t be work-related stuff any more. ☹️ This makes two jobs of fairly long term part-time employment that have died while I was in the saddle, quit before I did, are no longer there, in this cursed year.

Thinking about the Sprint-T again

Not a big think, because it’s a small but important thing. What I was thinking about was what to do about the top of the frame?

Just in case you missed it, there will be a structural bellypan welded to everything on the bottom of the frame for aero and structural purposes. The problem is that leaves an open space to catch water and debris that will lead to rust spots as the frame ages. Possible solutions include moving the pan to the top of the bottom frame members which has the advantage of making the body mount easier, but which requires mounting the engine 1.5″(38.1mm) higher and also leaves a nasty lower area as far as aero is concerned. Plus that just moves the rust out area someplace harder to inspect.

Anywho, what I was thinking about was using some of the HDPE plastic I have for the fenders and hood to cover the exposed gaps in the frame. Then as I was thinking about the bellypan on top of the frame it occurred to me that it would be much easier to make access panels from HDPE than from steel or aluminum, and I wouldn’t need to paint it. And if I did the HDPE on the bottom I could just hotknife the hatches from the HDPE and be able to reuse the cut piece as the hatch because a hotknife has a very small kerf. For the Mini Sprint-T it wouldn’t make any difference because I would do the same thing for either one, glue a piece of 0.01″ styrene to the frame between the tubes. Visually it wouldn’t be any different on the model, a flat surface outside the body is a flat surface outside the body. Flat is flat, model or 1:1 scale. The main difference is if I put the solid bellypan above the rails I would paint it to match the body color of Omaha Orange aka Schoolbus Yellow, and the HDPE is a different kind of yellow. On the bottom the difference would be the steel pan would be black and the HDPE would be the same yellow as the top, because it’s cheaper that way. Or I could go with the black HDPE because it ain’t that much more expensive, and I’m really not quite that big a tightwad. Or getting back to cheaper, the flanges and bits to mount the HDPE plastic might be enough to make the part of the frame that goes under the body smooth might be enough to not need to weld the pan to the frame for stiffness, and I could just go with HDPE top and bottom and save a few ounces. Not to mention HDPE is cheaper than steel for the moment because of the tariffs. We make HDPE here in the US so no tariffs.

Well, this is the second post today, and there was a lot of stuff in the first post what with all the pictures, so I’m going to bliss out to my trance mix and get some meditation in.

I survived my birthday celebration

Yesterday we went to the local Red Robin to celebrate my surviving 62 years, and the quantity of food was almost unsurvivable. Since pictures speak louder than words time for the two pictures I took of the meal.

Mrs. the Poet had a bacon cheeseburger with “only” a quarter pound patty, and an iced tea with a side of sweet potato fries. She wasn’t able to finish her fries or burger. We also got the large stack of onion rings, and brought a third back.

Now I don’t recommend this as a steady diet, but for a celebration, it rocked.

Addendum to hearing aids

I mentioned in the post about the hearing aids that while I have a hard time understanding certain consonants, my actual hearing was almost as good as my young grandson’s, to the effect that I recognize some of the neighborhood dogs’ barks to the point of knowing if a bark is from a local or “just visiting” dog.

Sadly, one of the neighborhood dogs is not going to be part of the late night tapestry for a while, if ever. While waiting for sleep I heard a particularly long and loud effort that was cut short by 3 or 4 gunshots from a medium caliber pistol, followed a few seconds later by 4 more shots. If the dog was shot it was deadly, because I didn’t hear the high-pitched yelps of your typical wounded dog. What I’m worried about is the last 4 shots sounded like they may have been from a different gun, a larger caliber than the first gun but still not a large caliber weapon. On a slightly happier note those were the first gunshots I heard in the area for many weeks.

There were a lot of gunshots during the first couple of months of the pandemic. There were many weeks where I heard gunfire nearly every night. I’m not going to say there was a link, but some of my neighbors are not very bright and may have thought they could shoot the virus, or more likely instead of exercising their limited social skills to handle conflicts they just shot things or other people. But in recent weeks until the other night there were very few gunshots close enough to hear. Now I don’t know if that means the people shooting were “detained” or just out of ammo, or got anger management, or what, I just know that there wasn’t any shooting going on within my earshot, pardon the pun.

And on a Monty Python note (now for something completely different) we took delivery on a new couch this morning. It’s a collaborative effort between us and my son, which we are paying him back for when we get the mess with the inheritance trust straightened out. But, it is a really nice couch with 2 reclining sections that are each big enough to snuggle together on, not that Mrs. the Poet and I can do much snuggling in our conditions between her back and my hips and knee.

I’m pretty sure I mentioned this in an earlier post, but the costs of keeping the trust are now outweighing the benefits of keeping it. The last 2 years the costs of filing the complex tax return have exceeded the tax benefits of having the trust since there wasn’t much paper loss we could claim for taxes. The biggest issue is the trust is getting depleted to the point where we are mostly in bonds now instead of more liquid stocks, and those do not have the swings and drops that were giving us tax refunds on paper losses. But now we are just getting ready to transfer what’s left to what is laughingly referred to as a “high yield savings” account at my credit union. “High yield” in this case means almost 1% APR return. Yay 🏳️🏳️‍🌈🚩 In other financial news, the IRA account that pays my “allowance” will be able to pay that for another 20-30 years depending on how they do the COLA on my allowance, I’m getting $200/mo at the moment, which is subject to increase as needed. That $200 is the benefit used to predict the 30 year time span for the account, and obviously with getting SS my needs for an allowance are going to be radically diminished, so this is probably going to get passed on to my kids should it turn out that I am actually mortal. Also it turns out that $200/month is the new minimum amount I need to take out to avoid getting a huge tax penalty.

OK I’m back, I just took a TV break to see how the couch in the new spot does for watching TV during the day, which is the situation for most of the TV watching I do during the racing season. Daytime TV during the week is still as dismal as I remembered, but the watching experience outside of the program was much improved. We used to get a big glare from the dining room windows that washed out the picture on the flat screen. When we were watching on the CRT it wasn’t as big an issue because the curved screen didn’t have the reflection problems we have now with the flat screen, but with the new couch facing the TV instead of off to the side the only thing reflecting in the screen is us watching TV. And since I don’t glow or otherwise emit light (yet) there isn’t anything distracting from what’s actually on TV. And the new couch is very comfy even snuggling next to Mrs. the Poet.

And maybe there won’t be a post on my birthday tomorrow because I will be having breakfast at Denny’s and dinner at Red Robin and doing transit and Lyft all day, transit to Denny’s and Lyft to Red Robin because Mrs. the Poet is coming with me for dinner, where we will both get alcohol with our meals and maybe I’ll get lucky.

I need to write something

Like seriously need to write. The only problem is I have no idea what I’m going to write about. It’s like that old science fiction story by Harlan Ellison, “I have no mouth and I must scream”, except I have to write something etc. etc. Which is where I started this piece about 20 minutes ago.

I guess I could mention what my son gave me for my birthday. The local grocery started carrying Shiner Sausage, a beef log kinda thing made near Shiner TX, where they make the beer. Yes, that Shiner. Anywho, they make the sausage near where the pagans have a campground for celebrating our Big Two holidays. You know how they have Easter and Christmas “Christians” that only show up in church then? Well our two big holidays are Beltain and Samhain. Beltain is pronounced pretty much like it’s spelled but Samhain is pronounced “SOW-wen”, not that that is important to this, but important enough to tell you about. I’m free-associating here, but there is a point I’m going to get to some time before I finish this. Yeah, where they make sausage is the landmark for turning off the main highway onto the little back road that takes you to the gravel road where the pagans’ campground is. I would tell you what the road is but telling you about the sausage factory already gets you too close to finding where us pagans dance naked in the moonlight. Because of my bad hips and knees I don’t actually dance naked anymore, I just kind of shuffle around in the dark and make passes at the lesbians, because they’re the cute ones. Anywho, sausage, birthday, my birthday is Tuesday, and Mrs. the Poet and I are going to go to the Red Robin because I get a free burger, and Mrs. the Poet gets the free one and I buy the one with the half-pound of beef, another half-pound of bacon, and a fried egg on top and endless fries. And a sundae, I also get a free sundae before I hit the meat coma. And that Sausage is a 12 oz. package and costs $7 which just goes to show that when you use local steers and local labor to make your all beef sausage it costs a bit more than commodity beef and overseas labor. I think it’s worth it.

Then I hope I recover consciousness in time to go to my doctor appointment next Tuesday. That part is a joke, because I never take more than a night to sleep off a meal like that. Now I might not be ready for much more than a cup of coffee the next morning, but I always wake up the next morning. Or if I don’t, nobody tells me I didn’t wake up the next day, and it seems like that would be something people would really like to tell me about: “Hey Opus, remember that time you ate so much you didn’t wake up for a whole day?” That kind of stuff, nobody has ever brought it up, so I’m assuming it never happened.

And the overwhelming urge to sit down and write has passed. Mostly. I still wanna write about the paper I found on designing intake manifolds, but mostly I found that if I did the math right I need to make a manifold with 2 plenums feeding 4 cylinders through 2 throttle bodies, and I need to make the runners 180° apart for the whole 720° cycle of the engine. That means I need to have 3 runners from one bank and one from the other bank of cylinders, or I could just have all the cylinders one each bank fed from one plenum and not worry about Helmholtz resonance because otherwise I’ll have an ungodly mess trying to get the runners and the plenum volumes tuned when I don’t have an engine with a 180° crank, which the LS engine doesn’t have. Some of the LT series are fitted with a 180° crank and I could use crossram and also use Helmholtz resonance to get tuned port charge effects, but those engines are like $50k and way out of my price range (free). Well free for the moment, when I start getting Social Security I hope to raise that to $500 for the engine. But yeah, crossram and the injector at the top of the runner to get that charge cooling effect from the fuel getting introduced at the top of the runner especially when I’m using E85. Now I had been considering doing a single plenum like the old TPI system, but the paper reminded me that fuel doesn’t like to stay mixed with air if there are any turns to negotiate. There are a couple of major turns to negotiate if I try to use a single plenum to feed both banks with long runners, unless I make a very tall manifold that doesn’t make the runners cross under the plenum. Even so, there is at least one turn taking the runners from vertical through the ~45° turn to hit the intake ports on a 90° V8.

And now I’m completely out of urge to write, meaning this stream of consciousness has hit a dam.