If I had the money and a truck with a trailer…

This would be the powertrain for the T-Bucket . Seriously, I would love to have a battery-powered bucket, but the up-front outlay would break me if I made the range work for cross-country trips between races. And it wouldn’t be a very practical car if I only put in enough battery for running Goodguys or SCCA Solo racing to keep the weight down. Most of the issues are due to budget constraints caused by not actually having enough money to call it a “budget”.

I’m going to be honest in that I have wanted to make an EV for a while, particularly for the T-Bucket project. What always stopped me was the low performance or the weight and range issues caused by the battery chemistry available at the time.

And I’m face-planting into the keyboard again, so time to put the post and the writer to bed.

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I’m bad at managing devices

I have been having issues with devices running out of battery power. I need to conserve the laptop for doing things that need a physical keyboard, and use my other two devices for reading Twitter and webcomics. I have my phone that only connects to the Internet via WiFi to use for web browsing and also playing Klondike solitaire, my actual phone I can call people on for that and Twitter, and this laptop for actual things involving many words with actual letters and not emojis. If I work it like that I have enough battery life to do everything, otherwise I end up missing posting to the blog because the only device I have with charge is the phone I play solitaire on, with the really crappy on-screen keyboard.

I’m still thinking about the Subaru engine installation in the Sprint-T. One thing I have been thinking about is intake packaging with the turbo not behind the engine, and setting the car to run on 87 octane regular for transit and 100 octane E85 for racing. Now if I get a junkyard 2.5 engine and rebuild it to run on 87 octane as a NA engine with a huge waste gate that basically only allows ~ 1 pound of boost when open and set it to be always open, then install a water to air intercooler with an ice reservoir for running boost then I can tune for best mileage with the regular gas. I just need to have a way to switch between the two tunes at the track so I can tune for best power at all RPM points for the E85 tune for the Goodguys autocross, then switch back to the 87 octane for the trip home after running out the E85 to prevent it from going stale in the tank. Basically I’m looking at a storage tank in the tire trailer that holds the transit gas after it gets pumped out while changing from street tires to autocross tires, then pumps the transit gas back into the transit tank to use after the race gas is burned from the race tank on the way home. Yes, this system will have two gas tanks, a big one that weighs lots when full and gives me the range to get to races even when I have to drive through I-80 in Wyoming or western Utah and eastern Nevada where there can be hundreds of miles between gas stations. Not that I expect there to be any events that require such range, but it’s good to be prepared for that and not need it rather than need it and not have it. As I was explaining this the thought came that I could use the storage tank in the trailer as a range extender if the situation arose that I was crossing vast gasless wastes. When the transit tank gets low enough pump the extra fuel stored in the trailer into the transit tank.

I just realized I never mentioned why I would use the water to air intercooler rather than the stock Subaru air to air intercooler. Well there is the ducting issue, a water to air intercooler can be installed in the manifold plenum and get fed directly from the turbo, and as I can use icewater as a coolant the possibility of having an intake charge colder than the outside air inside the manifold can be used to enhance performance, combined with the fact that water to air intercoolers flow air almost like they weren’t there to maintain unboosted airflow for better transit gas mileage. In a new installation without previous parts all of these advantages really add up. To summarize, lower weight, less restriction and colder charge temperature compared to air to air at a similar cost even including the pump and ice tank. That’s if I get a junkyard engine without all the intake stuff.

And as I was composing this post we had another mass shooting with a confirmed 4 injured and unknown number of dead, in an industrial park in MD the third mass shooting in three days. As per usual the GOP response is “Too early to talk about new laws, we are sending thoughts and prayers to the victims.” That is great guys, how about sending paid in full for their medical bills since you have been doing fuck all about preventing these events? At least that would be accomplishing something!

I just got a news item that really bothered me, and the Feed

I read several on-line newspapers as part of looking for bike articles to post here, and in one there was a report of a 21 YO white dude shooting up a black church in Charleston SC while berating the victims for raping white women and other such nonsense. This is much worse than what we get as cyclists. At least as a cyclist you know that once you get off the road and put the bike away you are no longer in any more danger than anyone else of your demographic age, but being a Person of Color is not something that you can put away and be done with at the end of the day. My heart goes out to all the people of Charleston who were affected by this tragedy.

Up first because it’s in TX, Houston cyclists are getting killed faster than they can put up Ghost Bikes to mark their passing. THREE HOUSTON AREA CYCLISTS KILLED IN THREE WEEKS Seriously, all those cyclists getting hit and nobody is even getting a ticket for failure to pass 3 feet or more away? TANJ!

Another double dose of Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: Bike rider shot to death in LA’s Mid City; LADOT GM Seleta Reynold is new interim VP of NACTO Another senseless shooting death.

Part 2 is a guest post. Guest Post: Testing to Destruction I don’t like this post, it places too much blame on the victim for being there to get hit.

Some good news from NYC. Report: City Will Partially Ban Cars From Central, Prospect Parks and New Maps Reveal Expanded Car Ban In Prospect And Central Parks

A VT wreck is suspected to have been caused by a drunk driver. Police: Suspected DUI in crash that killed cyclist Really a 0.123% BAC and DUI is “suspected”? Oh, the perp is a cop’s wife…

This kind of wreck is very rare, but unfortunately it does happen. UPDATE: Cyclist dies from bicycle crash The juvenile mis-judged the clearance when he(?) made his turn. This might have been a case where a helmet would have helped.

This was a wreck where the helmet made absolutely no difference, in spite of what the LEO posited. Brooks cyclist escaped serious injury thanks to helmet When a big truck hits a cyclist they either have a head injury, or they don’t. Presence or absence of a helmet is not going to make any difference one way or they other. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.

Trigger warning: the video in this clip shows a cyclist being assaulted from a moving vehicle with intent to cause harm. Disturbing footage captures laughing yobs shoving cyclist off bike from moving car The people inside the car thought it was hilarious as the cyclist face-planted in the grassy verge. I did that a few years back and even wearing a full-face BMX helmet it wasn’t fun. I got momentarily stunned but the helmet prevented skin to ground contact. This guy didn’t even have that level of protection. There is a special circle in Hades for animals like this.

One reason the aforementioned animals might have done their assault is articles like this. Dorrington cyclist fatal hit-and-run: Suspended sentence for lorry driver Cyclist wearing HiViz and equipped with flashing lights still gets hit and killed, and the driver gets 200 hours of community service and a 2 year ban on getting caught driving.

Still in Jolly Olde is this report on a wounded veterans support ride. North East cyclists support wounded soldiers on gruelling bike ride

Ozzie cyclists strike back at crap infrastructure. Bike activists take guerilla action by painting ‘unsafe cycle lane’ on Sydney roads A cyclist was killed a couple of months ago riding in just such a lane as he was thrown in front of a truck after bouncing off a door opened in his path without warning.

If building your own is too much trouble, or you lack the skills, then Pedego has your assisted cargo carrier needs in mind. Pedego Introduces a Superhero Bike — the Stretch Cargo! I wonder if it uses the industry-standard Xtra-bike seats and cargo bags?

In other e-assist news scientists are studying how battery materials act under overcharging conditions to design next-generation batteries with higher capacities. X-Ray Imaging Reveals Secrets in Battery Materials

And on a sad closing note, WoaB lost one of the founding employees today when Brian the Security Cat died on the job. Brian has been “working” for WoaB since before we started writing a blog. He had lost a lot of weight in the last few months and we were getting worried about his health, then his breathing got raspy this morning and he couldn’t find a comfortable place to rest anywhere in the house. He went to take his afternoon nap under the bed and never woke back up.

Brian 2000-2015, RIP

Missing Pagan Fellowship Night tonight, and the Feed

The tight financial situation of the last couple of months has had a negative impact on my social life tonight. We have a tax preparer appointment on Monday that both of us have to be present for which means that both of us will need a bus pass, which means that I can’t spend $5 for a pass to get to the gathering at church tonight. I will be so glad when I get the money to repair Blue so I don’t need to keep dropping $ on bus fare for a slightly over 3 mile trip each way, plus when I take the bus I have to leave early, which won’t happen when I have Blue back on the road. Speaking of Blue, I’m currently putting some charge cycles on the cells in the headlight to try to save the one cell that was drawn down to 0.2V during the time the bike was stolen. The first test I had 3 cells at over 1.3V with that bad cell at 0.2V when I stopped the test and recharged. I’m working my 6th cycle now and I have 2 cells at 1.22 and 2 at 1.20 and I stop the test when the first cell reaches 1.1V or less. The 6th cycle has already gone twice as long as the first test, so things are looking better on that front.

Up first, just down the road from WoaB World HQ in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell the folks in Austin say you can’t depend on drivers actually driving at a safe speed around people unless the infrastructure forces them to slow down. Neighbors want safety improvements after cyclist’s death And the first comment was asking if the cyclist cut off by the truck was wearing a helmet… TANJ!

Our Daily Ted came late today, and was not pleasant. 44-year old bike rider killed near LAX I still feel sorry for Ted whenever he posts these, because he rides those streets

One thing that has been consistent ever since I started this blog was admonishment to “Don’t hit the pedestrians”. Northampton marathon runner has cut the ‘size of tennis ball’ after being knocked over by cyclist at Pitsford At this point I can’t say for sure if this was a collision or a close pass, but either way, stop and render aid.

The recent action to exclude MTB from an area that had been one of the few places in Portland where a person could ride MTB inside the city before the city bought it has raised many questions about what happened to the process. Closed-door Parks bureau committee was set to recommend bike trails at River View So, up to the last meeting of the advisory committee MTB were good to go, then Amanda Fritz declared in March that MTB would not be allowed anywhere in the park that MTBers had invested hundreds of thousands of man hours in maintaining up until the city bought it and after. Something is rotten in the state of Portland.

Other people are wondering what’s going on with their infrastructure. Tucson and the Case of the Missing Bus Lanes Bus lanes in the plan right up until concrete and asphalt are poured then all of a sudden Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot?! no bus lanes. Just like the parks that Dallas voters voted for back in the ’90s where the Trinity Tollway is being planned for right now.

Some good news from the US DOT. DOT Rule Change Lets Transportation Dollars Stay in Local Communities Instead of outsourcing the labor this will keep the money circulating in the community longer. That’s a good thing for the local economy.

Some infrastructure issues from the Great White North. Egan: High time the NCC looked at Canal’s low cycling curbs I love that people are demanding licenses and registration were first in line to comment about this hunk of bike/ped infra.

This just makes me think of criminal charges that should be filed. Cyclist killed at roundabout where Westminster Council rejected safety overhaul When money is offered to rebuild an intersection that gets refused, and then a very predictable death occurs at that intersection, are the politicians involved culpable for the death?

Other UK infrastructure news, proposed changes in the legal infrastructure. Lorry and cyclist accidents: HGV drivers must prove innocence, says Green Party leader Natalie Bennett The HGV industry has fought changes to their vehicles tooth and nail for the last several years, so payback should be expected.

Still more legal infrastructure from Jolly Olde. PedalSure offer cyclist insurance policy focused on you, the rider

Moving on we have a bit of real lifestyle. 13TH ANNUAL FILMED BY BIKE TRAILER PRESENTED BY ORP See what I mean? This is Bicycle Lifestyle, the essence of riding a bike as part of your life. Lots of beer in that film 🙂

Another Wounded Warrior event. Inspirational Cycling Event Helps Injured Service Members Heal

More on the response to a Canadian cyclist’s death. Bowmanville’s Roman Manko’s death ‘a huge loss’ to cycling community

The Canadian version of the Wounded Warrior project. Tribute to British invasion of a musical variety

A Philippine lifestyle story. Police chaplain on nationwide solo bike ride to honor SAF 44

One of the limitations on e-assist bikes is the rate at which the batteries can accept charge. New aluminum battery for smartphones can be charged in a minute This shows the cell can accept a C60 charge rate (60 times the ah rating of the cell), which is a good indication of how it would work as an e-assist battery. At this point the chemistry is only being developed as a power source for mobile devices, but then again so was all the Lithium chemistry at first, except the LiFePO4 and a couple of other chemistries.

And I’m all out of links.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Poet

The case of the missing boots on a Wreck-Free Sunday

Tonight’s evening service was in honor of the Veritan archetype Trickster, and the archetype was definitely in play. One of the female congregants took her boots off because her feet were hurting, and because this is a normal behaviour for my church. The person sitting behind her moved her boots to a hidden location, then another person moved them while the first person was looking away, somewhere along the way the house ghosts got in on the act and the location of the boots was lost to everyone for a while, then they were found (but not by the owner). Finally the boots were placed in the passenger seat of the owner’s ride home, which I was not able to witness… And which I will relate next week after I hear the results.

Something else I have been watching on the idiot box this weekend was the Long Beach round of Formula E. While I’m heavily biased towards liking this kind of contest, I’m conflicted. One thing was there were two drivers that had to switch to their second car way early and even though the race was very short neither was able to finish, even with substantially reducing speed and acceleration from the rest of the cars. The race was over a distance of only about 80 km which is only 50 miles +/-, and they did not use the full Long Beach street course with the long curving “straights” and two tight hairpin turns, which they said on the pre-race were judged to be too harsh a test of the battery system because of the high speed of the straight. That was what triggered me, race cars that couldn’t race at top speed are not race cars. I think the culprit is a combination of the controller and the battery that just sucks the energy out of the system.

And this has been a long day, so I’m packing up and going to bed.

PSA, Opus

I’m not hairy on a Wreck-Free Sunday

I just finished doing the annual Spring head-shaving in the back yard partially in preparation for a trip to my PCP tomorrow to have that lump on the back of my neck taken care of. The other part is I leave the hair removed so the local birds can use it as nesting material. This was one of the years I take the porn-stache off to make sure there is nothing growing on my upper lip that shouldn’t be there.

The trip to the PCP is because the lump is between tennis ball and baseball size, and severely restricting my range of movement moving my head back and left to right. Also, I can’t even get my helmet all the way over my head because it hits that lump. So, the lump has to go, and the first step in that is tomorrow’s doctor visit. This is one of the downsides of my insurance, having to go through the PCP before getting anything that he (they) can’t do. And I’m pretty sure this is going to take a surgeon to deal with because it was originally a lipoma about the size of a walnut and now well just go back and read that first sentence in the paragraph again.

My cheap gene has been kicking in on the powertrain for the Sprint-T. I got a link to a $7500 conversion from ICE to EV and as this conversion is less than the cost of the engine and transmission… And this does not violate Mrs. the Poet’s decree against donor vehicles. The down side is there will be a major performance and range hit unless I drop the SLA and go LiFePO4. But then we are looking at thousands of dollars more, or roughly the same cost as the ICE installation and still not anywhere near the daily range of the ICE. Actually I just finished checking on the cost to get the same range as a 10 gallon gas tank and I am looking at $32K just for the batteries, so green is not as fast as brown or grey. The batteries for the same range as the SLA are about 3 times as much money and less than ¹/₃ the weight, so a slightly greater range on the same amount of electrical power. And I would need a truck to trailer the car for transport to races, so there is nothing to gain there. So, unless I want to totally abandon the major reason I’m building a T bucket rather than buying something like a Kia Rio, I will stick to the ICE. But the intellectual exercise of packaging the EV components in a T bucket was a brief entertainment for me.

I’m currently watching the Sprint Cup race out in Fontana CA, and it has been all JGR and SHR up front. I would call this one a good race anyway, because those are both 4 car teams, and they both seem to have 2 or 3 cars that can run up front at some point in the race. The last segment seems to have degenerated into a fuel economy contest at 190 MPH, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a nail-biter. To the contrary, now it’s a question of who will still be running at the end. This has been a fairly wreck-free race with most of the cautions being for debris. And just now they had a debris caution with 15 laps to go, so that means back to charging for all they’re worth to the end of the race. Unfortunately Matt Kenseth broke an axle leaving his pit box, taking his car out of contention if not out of the race. 😦 And they just had another caution with two to go, which put Kenseth back on the lead lap. Kevin Harvick decided to only take two right side tires… It’s a Green, White, Checker finish. And now we have another caution for a second GWC attempt to finish (they get three tries) but at least Kenseth got the Lucky Dog to be on the lead lap. And Brad Keslowski won after starting back in the pack from getting 4 tires on the caution that brought out the first GWC. Harvick keeps his string of top-2 finishes alive at eight.

And I’m out of things to say, so I’ll stop writing now.

PSA, Opus

Blue is back in the garage somewhat the worse for wear, and the Feed

First the good news, Blue is sitting next to Francis/es in the garage and is in repairable condition. Now the bad news, he was not well cared for while he was away. He is missing the kitty litter bucket panniers I built, and also the taillight I added. Apparently whoever removed the panniers just ripped the brackets apart which had the side effect of also removing the taillight that was bolted to the back pannier bracket. The headlight still had the NiMH cells I had in it when Blue was stolen which means those cells haven’t been charged since 08/2013. I have them in the charger now and the charger indicates the cells are in at least halfway decent condition, so we will see what condition the light is in after the cells come up to charge. The tires are flat, so I will probably need to get new tubes. The worst things are the seat cover, shifters, and rear derailler. I’m pretty sure the rear derailler was ruined after the police got the bike because it was left without putting the wheels back on after the officer had to remove them for transporting Blue to the evidence locker. The rest of it is because I’m pretty sure Blue got left outside and uncovered most of the time after he was stolen. So, the repair list so far is two shifters and a rear derailler, seat cover, probably a new chain and rear cluster (they were on the verge when Blue was stolen), tubes and maybe tires, and a new taillight and NiMH batteries for it. I will also need to get a battery for the computer and repair the mounts for the speed and cadence sensors. Lots of work to do. Lots of parts to buy.

Up first, more on the doored cyclist in Oz. Cyclists ride in memory of Italian killed in Sydney Road dooring incident and Riders pay respect to Alberto Paulon, killed in Brunswick dooring I don’t get the reduction of the speed limit to 40 km/hr because the speed limit was already reduced to 40 kph for the time period the cyclist was killed (daylight). The speed of passing traffic had nothing to do with the wreck, what caused the wreck was allowing parked cars to place the advisory bike lane (the dashed line made the lane advisory i.e. be aware there might be bikes present) completely inside the door zone. What made the wreck fatal was the size of the vehicle which was traveling at between 20 and 25 MPH when it hit the cyclist. The cyclist barely hit the ground when he was hit by the truck, meaning the truck driver had no time to react to the cyclist falling in front of him, and unless the speed limit was reduced to 10 km/hr (6 MPH) there was no way for any driver to react to the cyclist. Remove the parking and the danger goes away. This is almost 100% an infrastructure problem caused by over-allowing for cars.

Also a semi-big story is a cyclist killed in Canuckistan. City will see its 16th ghost bike in 8 years and Family of Edmonton cyclist killed still waiting for answers

FL is starting to realize that they are killing cyclists, and their [$DEITY]-awful infrastructure has a lot to do with it, that and their really crappy driving. Florida bike crashes: 7 things that may shock you The handlebar camera and rear-facing camera video was very unnerving, particularly when you realize how much further away the wide angle lens makes close passes look.

East Canuckistan fines a driver a small amount for being at fault in a fatal bike wreck. Driver fined in death of cyclist I don’t know exactly how much the driver was fined because the article was behind a paywall. But from the first sentence I knew the driver was at fault in the wreck.

They caught another suspect in the knife murder of a teen cyclist in Jolly Olde. Fourth arrest over cyclist Alan Cartwright’s murder

And can you believe this? John Oliver Created a Summer Blockbuster to Make You Care About Our Infrastructure “If anything exciting happens, we’ve done it wrong.” This is critical to cyclists as they even mentioned in the video, where a cyclist dies because of a pothole that tossed him off the bike.

This just in, the old batteries in the headlight took a charge and the headlight works, Yay! XD

And I’m outta links again, see you on Sunday.