I managed to think last night

Nothing to panic about, I’m still trying to come up with a way to make that manifold with the materials and processes I have at hand. Now I don’t have access to any 3D printers, much less anything that would allow making compression molds for intake manifold runners. But what I DO have is sheet metal, and hammers and dollies for shaping that sheet metal, and a torch that I can use to heat metal so it can be formed without wrinkles or tears.

So what I thought about was making a sheet metal mold that would mimic the actual part, then making molds from that sheet metal positive, with lots of reinforcement so they don’t collapse under the forces of compression molding. By using sheet metal to make the positive I wouldn’t have any problem with making the positive mold absolutely smooth, that’s a process I mastered decades ago. But yeah, sheet metal positive for the inside and outside molds, I can do this. It would also work for the plenum molds, especially since to swap left to right all I would need would be to turn the plenum over so the throttle arm of the throttle bodies would be closer to the center than the outside on both plenums.

The plenum will have 3 sides and 2 ends for its mold, the bell mouths for the runners will meet to form the 4th wall of the plenums. The inner finish for the plenums is not critical at all except for the entrances to the runners, which will be molded into the runners.

And I need to eat and it’s almost 2200 so I’ll have to find something I can throw into the microwave, then go to bed.

Advertisement

Weather is here, wish you were beautiful

And yes, that is both the punch line to a joke that is older than I am and a description of the current weather. Seriously the back yard is a swamp again, but at least it’s not hot. You can drink the air through a straw, but it’s a cool damp. The condensation drain from the AC looks like an open faucet it’s pulling so much moisture from the air inside the house, and the indoor weather station says our humidity is roughly 60%. It’s still pouring rain but not like the usual summer deluge we get in TX.

I went to do the banking and get a massage yesterday, but it wasn’t easy. But then again when is anything easy lately? Anywho I got to the bank no problem after summoning a Lyft. Oh jeeze I just read that and it totally sounds like some arcane spell from D&D or Shadowrun. Back to the subject, I got to the bank and deposited a check for Mrs. the Poet, and checked to make sure the payment I sent to the brain doctor went through, and also checked my checking balance. The tricky part on that is did the transfers to my other accounts go through before or after I pulled the balance? If it was after then I have less than $100 in my account for the rest of the month. If it was before then I’m fat, dumb and happy, balance-wise. I had enough to go get a massage either way, so I summoned another Lyft (woo-wee-hoo /spooky music) and went to my usual massage place that has the good techs that get all my sore places better, but they’re closed until Monday so their techs can enjoy the holiday according to the person who answered the phone when I called standing outside the locked door to the establishment. Then I walked across Beltline to another establishment that was rated the same as my usual place only to find that they were booked solid until an hour before their 2200 closing time. I did a quick search and found one about 2 miles closer to home and on the way home, but it wasn’t rated as good as my usual and there was some question about what kind of massages they gave. But with my everything hurting and needing rubbed I decided to take a chance on the place and techs working there.

Well it wasn’t the best massage I ever got but it was far from the worst. The biggest problem was I requested a 90 minute massage to get all my achy places rubbed, and instead I got the same places that usually get rubbed and don’t need much rubbing getting rubbed over and over again until they were really overdone. Like almost injured over rubbed. But given the situation I can’t complain too much, I just didn’t give much tip, and I probably won’t go back there. But my massage budget for the month is gone and I still have aches and pains.

As the tags noted I’m daywalking again because of the interaction between the meds and how I sleep has shifted me to waking in the pre-dawn darkness instead of the middle of the afternoon. Actually I’m waking up about the time I used to go to bed before, and going to bed about when I used to have lunch before. So, literally daywalking again. And for those confused, daywalking is a vampire term for vampires who can survive exposure to the sun. I’m not a vampire, but when I was doing the cleaning up ad copy gig I went to bed about 0500 and woke up whenever, usually when I had to pee. So I was on the vampire sleep schedule even though I wasn’t one, actually. Some people call it the graveyard schedule because the work shift most of the people on it are working is called a graveyard shift. But with the sparkle-pires and other vampire related literature including the movie Blade, which is where I first heard the term daywalker, vampire schedule has had a literal life outside of fantasy literature. It’s just a different way to describe those of us working in the dark. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be awake during the day and sleeping at night, but I intend to take advantage of the situation as long as I can.

And I think I’m out of things to say, so time to put this post to bed.

Allergies still kicking my butt

And something is making my joints hurt also. My hypothesis is I’m getting some kind of inflammation from the allergies and that is having a negative effect on the joints that are bothering me. If so, this is another fine mess, to quote Oliver Hardy.

If you clicked the link to the parts catalog I posted day before yesterday you might have noticed something missing, prices. This is a common thing for auto parts sold through multiple channels. Depending on volume and how close to the customer the vendor works there were color-coded price sheets issued that had wildly different prices on them. When I was selling auto parts there were sheets for to the warehouse, from the warehouse, to the mechanic, and to the public. Most of what we sold used the to the public sheet, but we did get a steady mechanics business so we had to have that sheet as well. There used to be an industry standard for the color code, and 40 years ago to the public was lemon or goldenrod, to the mechanic was mint or green. I think, like I said this was 40 years ago, and at least one TBI, so I might be hallucinating all this. I also might have the colors mixed up, but anyway, this is why there are no prices in the GM Performance Parts catalog either in print or on the web.

And as an example of my random access mind, when I posted the quote from Oliver Hardy I remembered watching Laurel and Hardy shorts in the mid-60s from a station in Tacoma that was showing the pre-code L&H shorts that had gone into public domain. They were a little racy, but didn’t actually show anything that you couldn’t show on TV of the period, particularly after they had been cut for “commercials”. One scene in particular I remember was the boys sitting in their underwear after having to get cleaned up after something made their outer clothes too dirty to be seen in public, and they were waiting in a woman’s apartment. Their wives showed up with guns and yelled about the boys being “cheating scoundrels” and firing off a shot. Cut to an external shot of men jumping out the windows of the apartment building, by the dozens. Stuff like that from more than 50 years ago I can remember clearly, but more recent things I need to remember?

I was considering changing that massive front axle to drillium, but I’m having trouble figuring out the safest places to apply the tramsmogrifier to change it from steel to drillium so it doesn’t fail in use. Or in this case where do I use the drill and how big a drill do I use? I want enough strength to not bend from severe bumps but weigh as little as possible.

And from just a few minutes ago, I have an appointment for my second Moderna shot on the 12th, at the Dallas Fair Park FEMA vaccination site. I’m 16 days away from 99% immunity!

Weather related slowdowns at mi Casa

And it’s not the kind of weather you might think. I woke up feeling like I just went 12 rounds with Mike Tyson because of the change in the weather since yesterday, which has included massive changes in the pressure and a frontal passage. This in turn has messed with my sinuses which in turn causes me to experience headaches that range from “mildly uncomfortable” to “somebody please shoot me”. It was so bad I couldn’t even get out of bed until after 1600 because it hurt to open my eyes, not the usual “my eyelids are glued shut” I experience later in the spring, but “the exertion of opening my eyes is more than I can handle” situation. Or in terms that fit the modern vernacular, I didn’t have the spoons to open my eyes. Using the muscles to open my eyelids was just too much pain.

So I can’t open my eyes or get out of bed for a while, what do I do when I’m not sleeping? Same thing we do every night Pinky, try to take over the world build things in my mind. And of course what I build in my mind is also what I build in real life as I have the energy and funds for it, the Sprint-T. I had a bit of a dalliance with an air-cushion vehicle for a while, but that was merely a palate cleanser to keep my mental gears churning at full thinking power. Along those lines, the best shape for an ACV that doesn’t go at high speed over the surface is a circle because it has the highest ratio of enclosed area to support the weight of the vehicle to perimeter where the air can leak out and has to be replaced by the source of air used to create the cushion. Also it has the greatest stability for shifting loads like people getting on or off before settling down for the trip or moving around in the passenger compartment. One thing I also noticed was that when the speed forward exceeded a certain threshold the ram air pressure exceeded the pressure of the cushion needed to stay up the pump or fan could be shut down to save energy and reduce the costs for operation while the air is replaced by air coming in from the front. Obviously the speed of this transition was variable based on the size of the front of the air cushion and the size of the cushion. And I have already spent too much time relating my cogitation about the ACV and not enough about building the Sprint-T, IMHO.

One of the things I have been thinking about was getting the longest torque arm I can stuff in front of the rear axle, because longer arms have less-violent reactions to engine torque in both directions. This is also why I went to brake floaters to decouple brake forces from the torque arm and prevent wheel hop under braking. Well, if the torque arm is too short wheel hop can happen just from the engine resistance of compression which makes slowing down from speed dicey. So, I’m trying to figure out as long a torque arm as possible which is constrained by the front U-joint of the driveshaft and the end of the transmission tailshaft, which are determined by how far the engine is set back from the front axle. And this dimension is the major determinant of how much static load is on the rear axle, which is one of the things that sets the traction limits for the rear tires. See, changing one thing has a carry-on effect that changes dozens if not hundreds of other things. Or as Roseanne Roseannadanna’s father used to say “It’s always something.” And if you got that long-dead comedienne’s catch phrase you are officially old. But, yeah, a too-short torque arm can lift the back tires off the ground just from a too-rapid shutting of the throttle plate changing the torque from positive to negative, which can result in back tires that want to see what’s out in front as the wheels try to drive the engine instead of vice-versa. Now with the brake floaters a touch of brakes when slowing down generates forces that push the axle down against the torque reaction trying to lift the axle up, but I prefer to build a car that doesn’t always require pushing on one pedal or the other to keep the back end in the back. Which brings us back to fitting the longest torque arm that will fit in the car, or using a link between the torque arm and the chassis that doesn’t transfer forces when the driver is not pushing on either the go or stop pedals. The simple way to do this is with a chain instead of a solid link, and the most convenient place to anchor that chain is to the transmission mount crossmember.

Another thing is the mounting point for the forward end of the torque arm can’t be too far forward or back or the slip joint will either bottom out against the transmission or pull out of the transmission as the rear axle winds up or down against the torque arm. This is mainly due to the length of the torque arm as the axle’s fore and aft position is controlled by the swing arms that connect the axle to the springs and also the rest of the chassis.

And I had to take a break from the computer because a front literally came through as I was typing and my eyes started hurting so bad I had to quit and close the laptop and lie down on the recliner with Mrs. the Poet while she watched TeeVee. And while I was not writing I had a forced BIOS update take over the laptop. I’m hoping this does something useful to the computer like fix the microphone issue with the headphone jack. And we are continuing to get wave after wave of thunderstorms passing through that alternatively reduce and aggravate my headache, as the ambient pressure goes up and down. Right now the storms are past, but a few minutes ago the storm was raging on top of us and my face felt like cold crap. Seriously bad pain there. But now I’m much better with almost no discomfort, not even approaching the level of “pain” yet.

And this seems like a decent place to stop, there was a lot of information in the post, and a lot of words to convey that meaning..

Take cover again, I’m still thinking

Well it’s not as dangerous as some other times I was thinking, but ideas hazardous to the status quo might be promulgated. I’m still thinking about the Sprint-T, since about 52 years of cogitation hasn’t been enough to make it a reality. But I also think about other things than the Sprint-T, like getting Mrs. the Poet to come to bed with fewer clothes, making safer infrastructure for everyone, not just for cyclists, and making police less likely to kill unarmed people who are not criminals but just happen to be near where crimes happen.

The problem with that last one is some LEO think everyone in an area is a criminal because there are a lot of crimes there, when in truth only a few people are committing the crimes and most of the population is either uninvolved or a victim. And yes there are documented instances of crime victims assaulted and killed by the LEO summoned to take the report of the crime. That happens and police wonder why they can’t get cooperation from witnesses. Also there is the problem with racist cops who think every person of a certain shade or darker is a criminal just by existing. Cyclists sometimes get this treatment, because we are not in cars when we are on the street, but nowhere near as bad as POC get it around racist cops.

This problem actually has a solution, a simple one to implement in theory, but very hard to do in reality. Test every cop for racism and fire the ones who test positive. Like I said, hard to do in reality, unless we start at the top and work our way down to incoming recruits, because unless racists in the chain of command and the ones who decide on promotions are gone the bad apples who remain are going to once again ruin the whole barrel. So we have to get out the ones who ruin the whole bunch, then replace them with non-racists. And as we have seen, the racists are unlikely to go without a fight. The only way is to treat racism as a communicable disease, which in some ways it is.

Like cancer, the only way to stop this disease is to remove all traces of it from the body, which again brings us back to testing every officer and removing the ones who are racist or potentially racist. That one is going to be the sticking point, “Well, you aren’t displaying signs of overt racism, but you are showing signs of incipient racism.” In a way this is like those Sci-Fi movies where people are arrested for being capable of a particular crime, or thinking about a crime. This is a very slippery slope, so maybe put the ones who show signs of potential racism on some kind of permanent probation, or just put everybody on the same footing, a zero tolerance against racism policy. That would be the best thing, get rid of the overt racists immediately, then everyone else is on a one-strike racism policy.

OK, let’s spell it out and see where it takes us.
1. Test everyone from the commissioner on down for racism and fire everyone who tests positive for racism. All the overt racists are fired immediately, no recourse.
2. Everyone else is on a one strike probation, any displays of racist mentality and you’re on the street permanently barred from LEO in every jurisdiction.
3. This extends to all public interactions including social media. Belonging to racist Facebook groups, logging on to racist web sites, or making racist statements on Twitter will be enough to get fired and banned, unless such activity is needed to find people involved in crimes that might involve racism. I can see how some criminals might try to use this to plan crimes on platforms where LEO would otherwise be banned. This could be done by using people who are not allowed to otherwise interact with the public as LEO.

Yes, I have been thinking about this a lot.

Still thinking, and an update on my Fauci Ouchy

I’ll start with my reaction to my first dose of Moderna vaccine. I still have the stiff fingers that won’t fold into a fist, and the injection site is starting to itch. From what I read on the internets both reactions are not uncommon, but not generally shared. As near as I can tell the itching is a strong indicator that I’m getting at least partial immunity from the first shot.

We’re having corned beef and cabbage for dinner because March 17th. There are multiple holidays celebrated today including the feast of St. Gertrude, patron of cats and the people who love them, and also Irish. So if celebrating the guy who oversaw the murders of Celtic priests because Jebus gets under your skin, celebrate the Lady of the Cats. And for you fellow cyclists, save July 15 on your calendars for Madonna del Ghisallo’s feast. Can’t forget her, she’s the one looking out for us.

One of the things I’m thinking about is putting the driveshaft loop on the torque arm for the Sprint-T. It runs right beside the driveshaft and I need the loop to run this car in SCCA events, and the raw stock size is the same for both, well the required diameters and thicknesses for the loop is the same as I’m going to use for the torque arm, so po-TAY-toe, po-TAH-toe. I have to have it to run, and I have to have the torque arm to keep the engine torque from winding the axle around the swing arms so let’s make them both the same thing. And because the transmission is so close to the rear axle the reaction from the torque arm is going to be pretty radical, just because of the physics of the situation. So to keep the car under control during braking it will be necessary to uncouple braking forces from drive forces to prevent wheel hop under braking. This is another reason why I need to have floating hubs, because these brake floaters will not work with standard drive axles, they just won’t fit over the end of the housing. And because of the physics of torque arms I can’t run the car in competition without using the floaters. There just isn’t enough room in the back of the car to make the torque arm long enough to not need to use brake floaters. The braking reaction torque will lift the tires off the ground.

In other car-building news I need to figure out the orientation for the header flange. The bolt holes are not symmetrical so I have to find out which way is up, literally. Now if I had even a set of heads handy to work with it would be no problem to figure out which way the header flange went, just slap one on the head and see which way matched the head, but I don’t even have the heads to work with. Yet. But I need to figure it out because if I get it wrong the headers won’t fit the car. They’ll fit the engine, but they’ll be upside down and backwards on the car. So, gotta find some reference that shows which side is up. It might be in the box with the kit, but I haven’t opened it yet so I don’t lose any parts while building the kit. And the reason I bought the kit is I couldn’t find a set already built up in the style that fits the car, just this kit. As you can see, the flange is not symmetrical, and the pipes are bent for the sprint car pattern that so many T-buckets use for best powerband. I picked those headers because I don’t want to spend the money for turbocharging, so I need some way of getting the used gas outside the car instead of the factory manifolds. The engine is going to be set so far back that the stock manifolds are going the be exiting through the body so I can’t just use what comes on the engine from the junkyard.

And as you can see from every paragraph beyond the description of what the vaccine is doing to my body, I have been thinking way too much and too hard about this damned car. Don’t get me wrong, this is exactly what I wanted to do, but there are limits I have been pushing as hard as I could because, story and everything. I have been obsessing about this car in various permutations since 1968. There was even one that had the bucket body and seats sitting on top of a monocoque tub with the radiators in sidepods on either side of the body. I think that was the version with independent suspension on both ends of the car, shortly before the turn of the century. That version was about as light and as stiff in torsion as the current version, but would have been much more difficult to build. At least there was room for a clutch pedal in that version as the footbox was actually in the monocoque below the body, and not constrained by the limits of the body. But in every other way the 1997-98 version was inferior to the 2018-21 version. In the earlier version I didn’t have access to a cheap all-aluminum block and heads like the LS architecture engines of today, and the available power was curtailed by a lack of easily available EFI and especially controllers. Also the state of the art was the Small Block Chevy with aftermarket aluminum heads that didn’t flow as good as what can be found in the junkyard on top of the engine in a pickup truck. Between that and the lack of EFI, about 400 HP on pump gas was the limits. The best you could hope for with iron heads was about 375 after a cam upgrade. But with a cam and tuning I can get that easily with a junkyard 5.3 with a truck manifold and way better off the corner response. I wanna throw up another Holdener video, but I think we have enough links in the post today and it’s not like you guys don’t know how to find videos on Youtube.

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.

The plants have given me a bloody nose

Well for a little while, and my nose still hurts more than 8 hours later. Basically what happened is my nose was itchy and irritated and I kept rubbing it absent-mindedly until it bled, and now my nose is still itchy and irritated, but also sore and bleeds if I touch it wrong. I don’t know what I did to the plants, but I’m sorry so could they please leave me alone? I missed game, and all the races on TV because of my nose and the rest of my face being tender, itchy, and slightly bruised.

And that’s it, nothing new to report here aside from the allergy report.

Ow, just fracking ow!

Oh, one more thing. If someone actually made it my preferred tire for the Sprint-T is 255/25-r15, in both a sticky slick and a 200 treadwear rating treaded street tire. That would cover just about all the series I want to run. In old money that would be a 20-10x15r on a 15″X10″ wheel.

Foot problems are keeping me off the computer

Can’t take too long this time. In a nutshell I have been spending too much time sitting down, which makes my feet swell, which then makes my feet hurt, and so far the only relief I have found is lying down and elevating my feet.

And while I’m lying down, I think. It’s almost a reflex by now, the feet come up and the brain goes into gear. Since I’m lying down during the day I have light to read by and I bring a Speedway catalog with me. This at least keeps my mind from wandering off on tangents instead of solving problems that need solving for the least amount of money possible.

Something else I should mention is I won a $25 gift certificate to Speedwaymotors.com that had a limited lifespan, and I wanted a shift handle so I got the one in the link. The gift certificate covered all but $0.38 after the handle, shipping, and sales tax. So I have the style shift handle I always wanted for $0.38 out of my pocket.

And I just faceplanted in the keyboard again, so I’m calling an end to this post and time for bed. I guess I shoulda said I haven’t been sleeping well to go with the foot problems.

I’m awake during the day but still thinking

Ordinarily “Still thinking” would have the caveat “Take cover” but not so much today as what I’m thinking about is another A/MOD SCCA car. Basically what I’m thinking about is an LS style engine and a Powerglide transmission smack in the middle of a 72″ wheelbase and offset enough to the right to balance a driver to the left so the total polar moment is as low as possible for good transient handling. The chassis would be a semi-monocoque tub with a tube roll structure and subframes to tie everything together and if I did my sums right I’m looking at a 1000 pound as-raced weight, or about 100 pounds over the minimum. Combine this with the power and torque from the LS architecture V8 and forward progress would basically be limited by available traction, which would be limited by tire compound choice and footprint which would be limited by tire and wheel size, which would be limited by what’s available and unsprung weight considerations. So, basically a beastly quick car that was more limited by human reactions than the laws of physics.

The aluminum block LS engines all weigh within a few pounds of 415 minus the engine driven accessories. When those are stripped to the configuration for running in this car, which is basically water pump and alternator, I need to add those in and we’re looking at 450 for the engine. I have been watching enough videos to know that what I need for this car is a mild cam, a long runner intake manifold, and either tri-y or long tube 4 into 1 headers to get enough low end power that also doesn’t fall off as the RPM rises to redline, which are all included in the 450 pound engine weight. So add in the 76 pounds of Powerglide and you have 526 pounds of powertrain to moment out for left-right balance with the roughly 200 pound driver. Basic math tells us the driver has to be about 2½ times as far to the left as the engine is to the right, add in the widths of the engine and the driver’s legs which have to go to the left of the engine and a little algebra gets us the driver has to go 27.5″ to the left of the engine which is slightly to the left of the left side of the car. Going back and letting the top part of the engine hang a little over the driver’s legs and we get 24″ left offset if the engine sits with the bellhousing on the centerline. Again this places the driver outside of the car. Going to the minimum width of the driver the driver centerline has to be at least 7″ left of the engine minimum width which is 8″ to the left side of the engine so driver is -15 moment arm or -3000 moment to the engine. Solving for x gives us 3000/526 which is 5.7″ right going to the level of precision limit of the driver’s seat mount. The driver sits 9.3″ to the left of center, 15″ left of engine centerline. But doing the moments we get a moment of -1860 for the driver and a moment of 2998 for the engine and transmission which means the driver is not far enough to the left and the engine is too far to the right. But if the driver is 14.991″ to the left of center then the moments are equal which means I set the equation up wrong.

Going back to first principles (526*x)+(200*y) = 0 and also y = x-15 because the driver must be 15″ left of the engine, minimum. So substitution gives us (526*x)+(200*(x-15))=0 gives x=500/121 and y=15-(500/121) making x=4.13″ and y=10.87″, and dividing out gives the exact 2.63 ratio in moment arms. Which means I got the formula right this time. My butt would be just to the left of the bellhousing of the Powerglide, and my legs would be under the left cylinder bank with the exhaust manifold radiating heat over them. Bad for a street car, but for this it would be warm but tolerable. Combining my shoulder width with the offset the narrowest the car could be is 2*(10.87+11.25)=44.24 which means my right arm would be on the right side of the car… And the car would be 44¼” plus the width of the tires wide and 72″ plus the diameter of the tires long, aka tee-niney, aka a V8 powered gokart.