blueovalz

AND, he posted it himself . My mama raised me to not brag on the stupid-ass stuff I do as I journey through life, but allow them to go unnoticed if possible.

Great epitaph!! Thanks for sharing it. After reading it, I feel like I knew him, and miss him as well. Obviously he was well loved.

Just finished my AW (it was late, but...) and it appears the weekly AW program on Speedvision can't compete with shows like this type of "reality TV for gear-heads," and will thus have its last episode at the end of the year. I never got into AW on TV, but it was at least as good as this program was.

Aren't there more Americans alive than ever before as well? Stats can inflect any meaning. The phrase "median income actually grew during this period" sounds encouraging. But closer scrutiny reveals that the very large gains by the very upper income bracket, combined with modest losses by a vastly larger majority, show how a statement like this can skew the uninitiated. Last comment: I was very glad to here W "welcome" those that opposed him in the polls and how he wants to work with these same people. I pray he does. I pray he narrows the divide he helped widen, and I pray the precedent he set in the 1st term ("my way or else") will be forgotten in the next 4 years.

Is this what is refered to as being at the "top of the food chain"?

I think it's generally agreed by those that do, as well as those that don't, understand economics, that this administration had little to do with our individual economic situations, for better or worse. Where I feel we are worse off is our standing in the eyes of the rest of the world, our environment, sciences, national budget, and corporate ethics, all of which has taken a nose-dive in the last 4 years. The war on terrorism is tunnel vision, which is what W wants.

Once again, the talent at HybridZ has enlightened me.ºº

War has been about power all through history, not legalities. It's just that we (he) felt big enough to pick on tiny Iraq to wage it. Stalin was doing the same thing or worse when he was in power, but we didn't feel quite as big back then because he had the same size bat we did. And later we had MIRVs pointed at us for over 20 years we didn't feel so big and mighty then either. You can go all over the world (and history) and look at examples of the same treatment of peoples by their so-called "leaders", but we didn't interfere (maybe we were wrong, but I don't think so). I would go so far as to say that most of OUR problems in and around the world are caused by our own meddling in other's business instead of taking care of our own problems here at home.

How, pray tell, will you ever finalize perhaps Hybridz's longest running string(s)....the infamous Mikelly garage (with French accent). We could start with: http://hybridz.org/nuke/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=18376&highlight=garage This would bring a tear to a glass eye. Congrats

Don't worry, age will take care of that. If not, a six pack will for sure.

Looks great (on top as well as underneath)! Take another shot higher up (or with the car lower down ). The oval exhaust worked out real well, but I'm partial to the OVAL Must be a cat lover . Who else would put an exhaust tip next to his photogenic cat for a shot.

Gad!! But I'd rather be fixing the glass instead of metal. The older I get, the more time I spend making sure I'm doing everything right. Don't know if this is because I'm more careful because I'm less competent, or because I'm more experienced

Exactly, and even though I can laugh at the story after-the-fact, I must concede that working on a car, or with power tools, is foolish if clarity of mind is lacking. Nope, but I'd like to visit some tracks I've never been to in the next couple of years.

I always try to avoid working in the garage when I've had little sleep (which happens when I work nights, like today for example) due to stupid ass things I end up doing to myself as a result. Anyway I decided I wanted to mark a car part with some red paint this morning when I got home. So I grabbed a can of red spray paint out of the paint cabinet, and promptly dropped it on the floor, popping the spray head out of the can when it hit the floor. Naturally, the spray head rolled off somewhere that I couldn't find or see. Being it was one of many cans of Krylon spray paint I have, and being the spray head was not broken (but simply popped out of the can), I came across the brilliant idea to pull the head off another Krylon can and insert it into the red Krylon can. Well, the replacement head was not going back into the red can very well, and (yes, I'm being stupid here) I decide to try and force it into the hole, unbeknownst to me the head is pointed straight at my eyeball. You see, at age 48, I must look over my glasses to see up close, so with no glass between my eyeball and this hermaphrodite spray head, and only 6" between the two, I'm suddenly blasted in the eye with red paint. Well, all this is happening in a cramped space between the 8' high hydraulic press and the paint cabinet, and I instinctively jump backward and put a knot on my head that Tarzan couldn't swing over when my head hits the frame of the press. At this time, expletives that my dog, my wife, and the neighbors never heard off come reeling off my tongue as I'm stumbling around all the equipment in my garage, knocking over anything that's not bolted down, wondering if I'm ever going to see again. About this time (after hearing all the commotion on the other side of the garage door) my spouse comes running into the garage, stops momentarily wondering what is going on, and then goes absolutely ape-shit when she sees red all over my left eye (and yes, I've got some blood on my hand as a result of busting my head on the press). Many (very many) moments later, I was able to finally calm her down, even in the midst of a burning eye, and aching head, at which point she decided it was time to give me a chewing out I've not had in a while, all the while reminding me why I should be in bed instead of screwing around in the garage, scaring her to death. "Dang woman, I'm half dead here and you're worried about yourself?" Anyway, I cleaned myself up (the eye is fine, but the frame of my glasses will forever bear the scars of this incident) and went to bed.

I like the contrast between the polished and unpolished parts of the spokes. Looks great!

On another subject relating to site support. I've got dial-up at home, so if I'm downloading my e-mail from my ISP, it slows down my ability to open the HybridZ pages during this time. Unfortunately, during this time, the HybridZ pages only load up the far left hand side (light blue on my screen) only (and omits any text, forums, or topics). The only way to open up the page is to then go "back", wait until my I'm finished opening any other sites or downloading my e-mail, and re-try to open the next Hybridz page. Unfortunately once I've clicked on the "view all posts since last visit" again (being it didn't open up fully the first time), I've shot my wad so to speak, and the next window says "no new posts" and is blank. No other forum page from any other site does this at any time, so is this something I need to investigate on my end?

This has been discussed a while back, and several times I believe. But to answer your question as to which would be quicker in acceleration, the engine with the peak torque at the higher rpm would (for the most part). Place these two engines side by side in identical cars and let them drag race. The car with the higher horsepower (same torque, but at a higher rpm) will wait on the 1-2 shift and stay in 1st gear for an additional amount of time (verses the lower HP car) to get through the extra 1000 rpm the torque curve is set at. Meanwhile the lowHP car is already in 2nd gear, and as we all know, 2nd gear is higher than 1st gear, which means his "at the wheels" torque is lower than the guy that is still in 1st gear. Now, as we continue on down the track, the LowHP car will do the 2-3 shift, but the hiHP car still has an additional 1000 rpm to go, PLUS an additional 1000 rpm before he does the 2-3 shift thing. So now he stays in 2nd gear even longer while the LowHP car has been in 3rd gear, which is again a higher gear (and slower to accelerate than if still in 2nd gear). In essence, you take advantage of staying in the lower gears longer because you stay in each gear longer before a shift than the low rpm car. Now suppose you place a lower final drive gear ratio in the HighHP car so that it now shifts at the same time as the LowHP car. Well, in essence, nothing has changed because now the lower gear ratio will again provide more "at the wheels" torque than the lowHP car has, which again helps it accelerate faster than the lowHP car. Hope you understand my blabbering. This could not be as 200ft/lbs @ 8000 = 304 HP and 300ft/lbs @ 8000 rpm = 457 hp. Torque X RPM/5252 = HP. Greatest torque is great, but in close matches, the car that has the higher torque curve, even if the total amount of torque is a bit lower, will have an advantage. You'll never see a full racing engine developing it's peak torque at a low range. Look at F1 with it's 18,000 rpm shift points.

Well, it's not just the car mags. My Scientific American, which I've subscribed to for over 25 years has progressively become more bloated with advertising, while at the same time, the articles provide less technical detail with an apparent orientation toward the Popular Mechanics crowd (not that there is anything wrong with that). Vague explanations and a lot of emotionally derived adjectives seem to be more important than specific information. It seems all periodicals are going this route.

570 lb/in Anyway, you may want to expand your searches to the Datsun 810. I had one of these and they were basically a 4 door ZX (mine was a '79) that was later to become the Maxima. Other than that, I've nothing else to offer.

A tool showing his tool! I guess the day that I can say I've seen and heard everything will be the day they pat me in the face with a shovel.

Things have improved since my boy's Nintendo (Mario never had a car like this).

This is one fast link proliferating the IT department. They love it.

Pretty slick!!!

Bravo Michael, Bravo.