Biting my nails watching the last race in the Chase on a Wreck-Free Sunday

I have a few minutes to watch TV before I have to go back to church for evening services. They had a rain delay while I was at church celebrating one of our younger member’s 14th birthday with way too much chocolate cake.

Now I just got home to see Kyle Busch on stage as the Sprint Cup champion, his first and Toyota’s first. There are a bunch of people wearing shirts that say “ChaMps” with the “M” being a red M&M candy. That he was even in the chase was amazing after the races he missed due to that Xfinity series race crash in Daytona where he broke both legs (OK one leg and the foot on the other leg, that’s still both legs out of commission), and was out for the first 11 races of the season. I’m really happy for both Kyle and Toyota, but a bit sad for Martin Truex Jr. running with the Furniture Row team out of Denver CO, instead of the normal Charlotte NC area, and a single-car team against other teams running 3 or 4 cars.

As they are expounding upon on TV this makes two championships for Busch this weekend as he won the truck series owner’s championship on Friday night. And now the “hat dance” has been replaced with the “t-shirt tease” as team members shimmy in and out of sponsor t-shirts instead of just swapping out ball caps. It’s a little slower than the hat dance, but the pictures look a lot better for the sponsor as the logos on the shirts are much more readable than they would be on ball caps and there are no other sponsors’ logos competing for eyeballs in your publicity pictures.

On other fronts I’m still trying to get the Sprint-T built for as little money possible and still get close to or meet my performance goals. Of the available engines the one with the lowest rated power and cost is the 4.6 liter Ford out of the Crown Vic police car at a rated 250 HP, and also the 2nd heaviest at just under 630 pounds equipped. The smallest V8 weighs almost as much as the largest engine on the list, the 502 in³ Chevy big block, by less than 20 pounds. This will result in a car that weighs in at roughly 1750 pounds with enough fuel on board to make a day’s runs on a Goodguys or SCCA autocross. But the good thing is that motor can be replaced by the 5.0 liter Aluminator without changing the frame in any way, reducing the all-up weight to just over 1600 pounds and 430+ HP.

Going next up the cost chain is a crate Chevy small-block 350 at roughly 330 HP and 575 pounds equipped. The 350/350 engine/transmission combination will make the Sprint-T weigh in at 1700 pounds +/-. The streetable combinations that can be upgraded from this are almost unlimited, as there are dozens of head, cam, and intake combinations that will both reduce weight and increase power with a possible power output of 500 HP at 490 pounds equipped. This will result in a car weight of 1600 to 1650 pounds depending on the head, block, and intake combination. This is potentially the fastest car of the pack, but also potentially the most expensive as the aluminum blocks and stroker cranks are “not cheap”.

Moving higher on the cost chain comes the LS series GM crate engines, with the LS3 based engines coming in at 415 pounds delivered, or 465 equipped (and a slightly heavier transmission), and up to 525 HP with a warranty, as much as 600 HP without a warranty. This also is potentially the fastest combination of the bunch, with also the potential of getting the best highway gas mileage because of the sophisticated engine management system developed by GM factory engineers to beat tight CAFE standards while also meeting strict EPA emissions standards.

Still higher on the cost ladder is the GM big-block crate engine series, with more than 640 pounds equipped, and potential power outputs of more than 1000 HP that are less streetable as power increases because of the difficulty of preventing tires from breaking traction. With the iron block and heads and the transmission that can handle the power, we are looking at almost 1800 pounds of Sprint-T, meaning the lowest amount of overall grip of any of the potential engine/transmission combinations. Also these are the highest cost base engines (before power upgrades) of the list. So the only way I’m putting a big block in the car is if I get a screaming deal on the engine and transmission, like free or “I’ll pay you to take this away”. Since the chances of that happening are only slightly better than I had of surviving my wreck I don’t think there will be a big-block in the car.

And now I have run out of words to share. I mean sure I could type some more but I would just be running on at the fingers. So rather than do that, I’m just going to sign off and hit publish.

PSA, Opus

Advertisement

Mrs. the Poet is home at last, on a Wreck-Free Sunday

Mrs. the Poet has returned from her long trip to help our niece and her kids get relocated and settled in after the place she was renting got sold out from under her. It must not have been too stressful because she still has as much hair as I recall her leaving with. The daily ice cream seems to have had an effect as her pants only fall off a few times at random instead of every time she exhales like before. Everyone there takes a car for everything, including going 2 blocks for an ice cream or soda, so that had an effect as well.

Her trip back on the Dawgbus had an AC that would not shut down, leading to a mild case of hypothermia for Mrs. the Poet. She still hadn’t really recovered by this morning, and we keep the house a cozy 78°F instead of the chilly 65° morning low outdoor temps she had been experiencing while in Upstate NY. The other problem on the bus was someone died in the bathroom, or at least that was the way it smelled, and there was nothing that could be done about the stink until they got to a station where they could pump the holding tank.

So, today. Today was moderately good as we had a visit from the grandkid. He spent most of the day playing with the coasters on the coffee table in the living room while the adults talked. The bad part was the grandkid came over because Mrs. the Poet left her purse in our daughter’s car after daughter picked her up from the Dawgbus station yesterday. All the money Mrs. the Poet had except for a couple of bills in her pocket was in that purse, so getting it back was kinda important. The rest of the day was spent going to services at church and the board meeting and life support. As part of life support I caught the tail end of the Pocono Sprint Cup race, watching Kyle Busch lose the race when he ran out of gas while leading at the white flag, and seeing the guy who was in 4th place the lap before win the race after the first three cars ran out of gas during the last 2 laps. Kyle still gained a bunch of points on the magic 30th place in points that will allow him to be a part of the chase in spite of missing the first third of the races after breaking his leg in that Xfinity Series race at Daytona. He’s something like 12 or 13 points out of the Chase at this point with 5 races left until the first Chase race. This was while I was taking a lie-down on the bed to let my leg recover a bit from all the “fun” I was having doing the other stuff.

And that’s basically all I have today. I’m going to revisit that dream I had last week and flesh it out some as a world-building exercise. I see it not as a Utopia, neither a dystopia, but something between the two and an improvement on what we have now. I’m going to work on the ramifications of the changes I made in the dream on other people’s lives. IOW I’ma go write some fiction, or at least outline some. But not now, now I’m going to relax a bit.

PSA, Opus

Home maintenance and hot rod engineering on a Wreck-Free Sunday

I just got done replacing the doorknobs on every entry door in the house as we had 2 out of 3 fail and become unlockable this week. So I had a gift card to Lowe’s from one of my non-writing gigs sitting around, that I used to buy 3 mid-level security locks on Friday, then spend about 40 minutes on the first lock and another 40 total on the next two swapping out the locks. That means Mrs. the Poet won’t be able to get in the house when she gets home unless I leave the door unlocked except for the deadbolt. As for what caused the lock failure, I’m thinking it might be that they are the original locks installed when the house was built back in 1985, and they are worn out. I mean seriously the individual parts work just fine separately but put them together in the door and you get a latch that jams and doesn’t latch. Well I spent $55 of my gift card to buy new locks and just over an hour installing them in the doors.

I’m currently working on the design for the brake bracket for the front because the rear bracket is a buy and bolt on but this is a unique application for the front brakes. The Wide 5 hub and the four-piston caliper on the early Ford spindle axle are very uncommon, and always done with custom parts. I can think of only 3 cars running this combination since I started reading hot rod and custom car magazines back in the late 1960s, and none with the size disc I will be running on the Sprint T. I will be putting a 12.19″ disc inside a 15″ wheel which will just fit with the caliper I chose, the AFCO F88 for a .810″ thick rotor. So I have been using a rear axle bracket for the caliper with a known center distance (for welding the bracket to a 3″ diameter rear axle tube with a 11.75″ disc) and extrapolating from there for the 12.19″ disc and the larger (5.5″) flange on the early Ford spindle. And this is what I do to relax from writing about bicycles.

Yesterday’s D&D session was held in my living room, and was the “kinky” game, the one where sex is a weapon for social interaction and we have pages of special rules for sex. Basically this is what you would get if you crossed D&D with a porn movie. Since I try to keep sexual things out of the blog I can’t report much about what I did except that my character leveled up again because of the CR of the enemies we went up against this session. I mean seriously this could have been another TPK and reset to the previous save point that’s how dangerous and numerous the monsters were in this session.

And I have managed to feed myself again this week, not that I’m any kind of chef or anything. I just managed to not give myself food poisoning so far. 😛 Today was easy because we had potluck for lunch and dinner at the church, to which I brought my famous-at-the-church beans and rice. I have been keeping a sink with soapy water sitting waiting for dirty dishes and so far I have been keeping ahead of the dishes without running water every time I had a dish that needed cleaning. Even with everybody from the D&D game having a clean glass for their beverage of choice I still managed to keep ahead of the dirty dishes.

Just as I was finishing the post the Sprint Cup race in Sonoma finished, with “gimpy” Kyle Busch winning the race. I used quotes because Kyle had that horrific wreck in Daytona at the beginning of the season where he broke his leg and the ankle on the other leg and had to spend weeks in the hospital and more time getting rehab to restore strength and range of motion in his legs and here he is at the end of the first half of the season winning a road course race, the kind of race that is the hardest on a driver’s legs on the Sprint Cup circuit.

And it’s almost time for evening services, so I’m cutting this off.

PSA, Opus the Poet