afternoon notes
1. If there’s any doubt Clive Owen has the chops to be the next Bond, view any of these. “Star” is especially good. The car’s not half-shabby either. Heh.
2. There is a one-pound box of almond chocolates sitting on my desk next to me. Christmas present from one of the print reps. I’ll have a few in just a minute. I really don’t want them, though. I think I’ll take them home and let Donald and Stephen plow through them in half an hour.
3. It’s the time of year to start thinking about the big trip for next year. Last year it was Boston for a long weekend. This year we got ambitious and went to Europe for two weeks. I’m not saying we have to up the ante every year, but we’re taking nominations. A ski trip to Colorado is the only serious contender so far.
4. Has anybody seen The Rapture? I rented it a few nights ago after hearing Tricky sample a clip from it in one of his songs and wondering where the sound bite came from (I love Google). Looked up the film and it intrigued me.
5. Still haven’t done any Christmas shopping. Not a bit worried.
4. No, but I want to because I love David Duchovny. And I’m not beyond renting movies for the sole purpose of ogling an actor.
3. Where in Colorado? I went to CO last summer with my grandparents, but of course, not to ski, as it was July.
5. Every time I start feeling like I’m close to being done, I remember someone else I want to get gifts for. Blah.
6. What chapter are you on? I keep wanting to call you and ask you, because I’m never at my computer, but you’re never online and I don’t have your number! :þ
4. Touché :)
3. I’m not sure. Aaron has friends out there we’d stay with near one of the big resorts like Vail, but I don’t really know. We’re not that far along yet :)
5. At least you’re there. I haven’t yet set foot in a mall with intent to purchase.
6. You have e-mail.
That’s ok…neither is Matt, evidently. ;-P
BMW films rock. I saw them all a long while ago…Clive Owen is the man. See any of his movies and you’ll agree. Well, actually *he* has very few movies, but any movie that he’s in he tends to steal the spotlight with his complete and utter coolness. Example: Gone in 60 Seconds (the new one). So many great movies he’s in. If my internet were working i’d pull em up for you…
5. Shopping? Presents? Oh yeah, it’s about that time isn’t it… Just finished with exams and haven’t taken the time to notice. But i did drive my ’69 around quite a bit tonight…
Don’t you have, like, a *journal* to update or something? :)
He wasn’t in the new version of GI60S. I think you’re thinking of Vinnie Jones (The Sphinx), who is also the man. Clive Owen was in The Bourne Identity, though, where his cameo made a strong impression.
Did you get the exhaust all buttoned up? If so, how’s it sound? And we’re still on at the dyno shop 1 p.m. Saturday, right?
Hahaha… poor Matt. :)
Nah…i’d much rather make smart comments in other peoples’ journals than take the time to write in my own. ;-P Besides, i firmly believe that you dont have enough people who give you a hard time. You have it way too easy, Matt. Mebbe you sort of intimidate people or they have too much respect for you to poke a little fun every now and then…i dunno, but as your former roommate, looking back, i see that now and am merely attempting to bring balance to the force.
Wow. You can abbreviate anything, cant you? GI60S? Hm. And it actually makes sense. That, my friend, is a sign of true genius. Anyone can abbreviate stuff, but not everyone can do it well. You have the gift.
Anyways, yeah…you’re right…not the same person. (Bet you had to look that up, didnt you? Ah, the joys of a functional internet.) But i do know Clive was in “Snatch” and “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels”. If you havent heard his monologue on the ‘desert eagle, point five oah’ you have merely scratched the surface of his sub-zero coolness.
Yes, the exhaust is completed and the dyno shop is a go for Saturday. Reminds me…i need to call and get directions to it.
How does it sound? Hm. Hard to explain. It’s actually pretty quiet…very quiet, actually. Perhaps i’m just used to the whole ‘open headers’ thing, but now most of what you hear comes from the surge valve on the intake plumbing. At idle you can hear some nice, deep rumbling, but at normal cruising or part throttle all you hear is ‘the super’ as Joel calls it. It’s really nice for just cruising because there’s no real resonant frequency but rather a bit of engine noise and a slight rumble. You can actually hear the stereo now and talk without having to yell.
But if you stomp on it all the sounds seem to come into proper alignment. The surge valve closes, the engine, now being force fed the entire output of the blower, hesitates only slightly then roars to life, pulling the car sharply forward until it reaches that certain rpm when the tires give up and just start spinning. The exhaust is a secondary noise scarcely noticed, forced into the background by the howling on the other side of the firewall. It’s almost too quiet for my taste, but i’ll give it some time. I can always replace the mufflers with louder ones if i want to, but the way it is now is very conducive to highway driving. I also think that some of the change has to do with the use of an x-pipe vs. h-pipe. The sound is smoother, more continuous than it was before. Like it takes a certain note and varies only in volume. But i haven’t broken the mufflers in yet, either. Fiberglass takes a while to loosen up and gets deeper over time.
You’ll just have to hear it on Saturday to see what i mean. I havent had a chance to hear it outside the car though (which is substantially louder than the inside). I bet that sounds pretty good…
Am looking forward to Saturday. I’d like to meet at my place by 11 so we can leave no later than 11:15 or so. I’m going to need to pick up my dad at the farm on the way. Think you can do that? I know it’s pretty early for you on a Saturday… ;-P
I don’t think my personality is idiosyncratic enough for people to be able to latch onto one prominent attribute in order to give me a hard time about it. In other words, I’m too innocuous/non-controversial. Although if the moon is right…
Yep, you can abbrev. anything :) See here for further examples.
And I would think, at least from your vantage point, that any monologue containing the words “five,” “point,” and “oah” would automatically be stripped of its coolness?
You really waxed poetic there. Nice description. See, this is the sort of thing, with pictures, that you should be posting on. Think about it: One positive response (from me) vs. literally dozens (from them). But I suppose you have to wait on your computer, don’t you…
Does the surge valve sound BOV-ish at all? Ever thought about running a diverter valve just aft of the headers for track days or just to have some fun around town? Summit sells ’em and they’re easy to plumb in. You can even get electrically-operated ones.
Ah, i see. So abbreviations are just another means by which corporate america can steal your soul and estrange you from the outside world?
Somehow that image of Strongbad sleeping on the couch, only being able to see the backside of his head is familiar to me. Hm. Mebbe it will come to me eventually… ;-P
Perhaps if you’re talking about cars. But we’re talking about another one of my topics of interest: firearms. Actually, i’d love to get Kristi an old ’65 Mustang fastback. It would be interesting, having worked and learned on a Chevy, to be able to really compare the two and learn the facts by experience as opposed to mere conjecture or relying on second-hand information to assert the superiority of all things ‘small block chevy’. (Dont try reading that sentence out loud. Can you say ‘out of breath’??)
You have seen that movie though, right???
“I’d like to meet at my place by 11 so we can leave no later than 11:15 or so. I’m going to need to pick up my dad at the farm on the way. Think you can do that? I know it’s pretty early for you on a Saturday…”
Badly constructed sentence. I meant do you think you can be here by 11…not can you pick up my dad. Kinda confusing there…
Ok, ok. I’ll post on gearheads (how do you do the link thingie again?) after we get the pics and (hopefully) vids from the event. How’s that? Happy now? ;-)
The surge valve does sounds very BOV-ish if you floor it, make it close all the way and use all the boost, then shift at about 4k rpm. Has a very nice, concise, proper BOV sound to it. But you must put enough load on the engine for it to fully close the surge valve, otherwise it will just kinda blow air around the engine bay. If you go above 4k rpm it seems to leak boost somewhere, so you dont get quite the sound effect you do sooner in the rpm range. I’m hoping to remedy that by tightening down the carb hat and band clamps on the plumbing. The manifold pressure peaks at 8psi. Well, either that or since the tires just start spinning you lose a lot of the load so the pressure is bled out of the system intentionally. If that’s the case, it shouldn’t do that on the dyno. Guess we’ll just have to find out.
I would love an electronically activated cut-out, but they’re hard to find any bigger than 2.5″ in diameter. But i really dont know if it would help the hp numbers much at all. One of the guys on the camaro list has pretty much the identical exhaust setup with the 3″ x-pipe and same mufflers (but it’s a n/a big block ~680 hp), and he says he gets identical 1/4 mi. ETs whether he opens the cutouts or uses the mufflers…although he did run a couple mph faster. If traction is an issue, another 15-20 hp wont do you a bit of good anyways.
Geeze, i’m posting like mad. Can you tell i’m out of school??? Usually takes me a week of just lying around the house to chill out, recover, and de-bunk from the semester. So lots of time for bothering people…much like yourself. Sorry. I’m keeping myself intentionally bored this week…
So would this Mustang replace or supplement the XTerra? Is she not a fan of convertibles? Cool idea–those can be had for pretty cheap since they were made in such massive numbers. Knowing you, though, you’d probably have to restrain yourself from dropping in a 427 with a roots blower. Hmm, maybe it’s not such a good idea after all…
I’ve seen LSA2SB, but not Snatch.
LJ link or HTML link? LJ has its own specific tags; a rundown of them is here.
I thought the manifold pressure in a supercharged system wasn’t load-dependent, but just a function of rpm. Although now that I think about it, having more load on the engine decreases the manifold vacuum, which would make it easier for the blower to push boost levels into the positive range. Do you know if you can create boost just sitting stationary, clutch in, revving the engine?
And the cut-out wouldn’t be so much for raw horsepower as it would be for just being able to enjoy the open-header experience. You said it yourself–the mufflers are almost too quiet. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to pull up “quietly” next to a ricer at a stoplight, flip the switch for the cut-out and stab the throttle? If I were some kid in a Civic with shopping cart wing and a coffee can muffler I’d crap my pants.
1. clive rocks my socks. seen croupier? odd little movie, but nice. you may have a problem with the homosexuality, but bent is beyond moving. had it had more exposure, it would have “made” him.
4. what song?
1. I really haven’t seen anything with him…beyond movies with cameos and the BMW mini-films. Maybe I should look up some.
4. “Abbaon Fat Track,” off one of your mix cds. Thanks again for those. I’ve been really digging the harder-edged remixes of “SATS” lately. As for the second cd, it seems to work intermittently, but the times when I’ve been able to access it I’ve really liked what’s on there. I’m definitely warming up to Modest Mouse.
i would have to strongly disagree with ” I don’t think my personality is idiosyncratic enough for people to be able to latch onto one prominent attribute in order to give me a hard time about it. In other words, I’m too innocuous/non-controversial.” i can find plenty of things to tease/give you a hard time about. just give me about 5 seconds with you. i can start now: wardrobe. there. ;)
:o)
is that mean? i do hope not.
have a great Christmas. i hope you’re doing well. :o)
Ah yes…the infamous wardrobe discussion. I just–okay. Point well made. I won’t start, haha :) You do know quite a few of my buttons.
And thank you :) Hope everything is well where you are too.