Go Go Go-Kart Sunday!

it's 9.30am, the spirit of competition was high. when suddenly, BANG!


yup, that's me crashing into john sabah the moment the race started. one lucky cameraman was there to capture it digitally. so how did all this start?

well, Monash Engineering Club decided to hold a 'non-competitive' go-karting event. but how can you NOT be competitive when it comes to racing where fast lap times and 1st, 2nd and 3rd placing count!?!?

yup, which was why i crashed into john sabah. both of us were late-braking into the first hairpin and our brakes didn't bite thus me crashing into john, but things got worse when one of my wheels was up on his, his brakes bit. so i practically smacked john sabah's head with the nose of my kart. oh well. sorry ar john.

but we all had fun. finishing 2nd despite that crash was the most thrilling part for me as after the crash i was down in 10th placing (out of 10 drivers).

preparation. no 'X' pit-stop strategy here.


walking the course to get a feel for it. never been on this track myself so thought it might be a good idea.


shortly after that, we were called back for briefing.


now fast forward to the grand final (fastest 10 drivers compete).


and shortly after that pit-lane bickering, this happened (refer to the beginning if you forgot).


me trying to catch up.


after the race, john sabah describing how the crash affected him mentally and physically.


but at the end of the day, competition or not, we all had fun. :) great day guys! round 2 after the finals yeah.


results for those curious.

Practice and Qualifying
Finals
Grand Finals (Top 10)

Bad Practice.

i was at MPH earlier today flipping through a local car magazine which i won't mention here, and i was going like 'hey, nice car...' when suddenly i saw this:



can someone tell me what is fundamentally wrong with the rollcage of the car?


well, for starters, the front 'A' pillar bars are useless in a frontal crash because:

1. tubes were crush-bent.
2. even my cage by safety21 is BUT the difference is my bend angle isn't as much (about 20 deg. max at some points) as this guy's one which from the pic is like more than 100 degrees!
3. due to the stupidly bent tubes, in a roll, the bend region has already in a sense (crumpled) due to the inherent flaw of crush-bending method.
4. if he really wanted to avoid cutting his dashboard to fit the cage, he should have fixed a diagonal at the biggest bulge of the faux-cage to in lay mans term 'push' that portion AWAY from the driver.

well, i wish the guy best of luck and if anyone reading this blog/post knows the owner of the baby blue dc5-prelude, pls inform him to properly design his rollcage for his occupants and his own personal safety.

people nowadays.

Weight Savings 2.

mum fixed the seat good. all in all cost like RM50 if i include the 10 hrs of labour my mum put into the seat.

tada! i know it isn't the best pic but it was late and all i had was my k750i.


considering the amount spent, i'd say it's a well worth investment, having your mum to stitch these minor damages. nuff said. i mean, RM50 vs RM450, which are you gonna choose considering when you look from the outside of my car, you won't notice the difference until you go up close to it.

well, here's what it feels like to drive a car that is about 100kg lighter than factory. i notice that acceleration is quicker but the key handling characteristic i'd like to point out is that due to a decrease in weight to the passenger side of the car, cornering is not so much linear but more like exponential as in when you start slipping the tires up front they loose traction and then bite the road...the word transient comes to mind. it's funny but i can only assume at this point that it's due to the bulk of the weight up front and biased towards the driver side (the side where i put my ass at).

after putting back the refurbished seat, tools and spare wheel, i decided to whack the same corners again (i'm not telling where but it's a very nice short stretch of downhill road where you can easily hit 100 kph through the corners :D) and found that although the acceleration was not as quick as it was before, BUT weight shifts (left to right) felt more linear than before. maybe i should try without the passenger seat and whack those corners again. or lower the moment created by the backrest of the passenger seat by reclining it till it is almost parallel to the floor pan...hmmmmmm.

oh, and here's rajiv's 4th wife.

Weight Savings.

the car above has gone through a lot. however, let's just focus on the diet program its been on since i got the car nearly 3 years ago. i shall introduce you, the reader to my thesis/final year project which is currently underway where i am designing a lightweight lower control arm replacement for the proton putra.


since i started autocrossing, i've been a fanatic at keeping the weight down as much as i can. and what i've done thus far is remove most of the sound deadening material although there's still some left on the cabin-side of the firewall, most of the insulation material, carpets, plastic trimmings, roof liner, back seats, radio, speakers and antenna, stock air filter box and replaced the driver-side recaro njoy to a sscus non-fia bucket seat and finally replaced the stock muffler with a 2.1" ID pipe. believe it or not, removal of these items has reduced the weight by approximately 40kg. so, from the kerb weight of the car which is ~1050kg, it has now dropped to 1010kg.

on race day, the weight drops by another 35kg with the removal of the passenger-side recaro njoy (notice the torn parts? mum's trying to stitch them back to save me RM450 so results will be posted when she's done with it.);

and the spare wheel plus the tools required to jack the car and change it.

the items mentioned weighed in at 16kg for both the njoy and the spare wheel and about 3kg for the tools. this brings the weight of the car further down to 975kg.

now, why should we reduce the weight of a vehicle? take a look at the proton wira which had a kerb weight of 1050kg 12 years ago when it was first introduced and look at its replacement the proton persona which weighs 1170kg. bare in mind, both wira and persona compared are the baseline 1.6 models with automatic transmission and no ABS. where does this weight come from? it can't be from the slight increase in length (~10cm longer than the wira) but it could be from the added safety and luxury items due to customer demands and advancement in automotive safety.

now if we can reduce the weight, what can we benefit?

1. improved car handling characteristics (Puhn, 1976)
2. fuel savings (Borns & Whitacre, 2007)
3. decrease environmental impacts from reduced CO2 emissions
4. increase in engine performance

just to brush the surface of my points, Fred Puhn states in his book that reducing the sprung and unsprung mass of a car would result in better handling. handling consists of not only cornering or maneuverability of the car but also breaking performance of the car.

fuel savings as mentioned by these two Alcoa Industries reps, have been proven by companies like BMW who have reduced the weight of a test car by 10% and thus experience better fuel consumption by providing 2.5 extra miles per gallon. due to this reduction in fuel usage, impact on the environment from vehicles can be reduced from the reduction in CO2 or NOx gases due to internal combustion engines. since fossil fuel is not a renewable source of power, this reduced fuel consumption would enable our fossil fuel reserves to last just a little bit longer.

on a more personal note, i have experienced quicker engine response due to this reduction in weight due to the fact that the lighter the car (ie. less mass) the less load there is on the engine to propel the car to a predetermined speed like the 0-100 kph time for example.

tune in next time when i discuss the topics of interest regarding my thesis.


ps. all SSG batch mates, there'll be a Alumni dinner in SSG hall

this hall, on the 29th of September, 2007 and all the teachers and current principal would appreciate if we, the pioneer batch of SSG would attend this dinner. have to buy tickets though at RM50 i think. to purchase these tickets, just head to SSG's Principals office and look for his secretary.

Catch Dry?

was at bangsar village doing my weekly grocery and while waiting in line at the checkout counter, i noticed amongst the cigarette racks there was a mini fridge/cooler that had a sign which said,

Dear Smokers,
No chewing, no smoking, enjoy.

or something like that, but yeah, it caught my attention because it was an alternative to tobacco. before i begin, NO, i have not started smoking again...that phase has been long behind me now. just wanted to give this product a shot, because it wasn't your regular nicotine patch or gum that smokers use to get their fix.

so i picked up the 'Cassis Menthol' pack and paid my RM6.90.

this is what you get,



inside, there's about 16-20 little packets with material if not similar to your little tea bags to allow your saliva to wet the 'baccy and you get the 'baccy juice. not too sure how the the older generation used to chew baccy and beetle nuts to get high (were they?). anyway,


so what you do is you take a little packet and stuff it behind your upper/lower lip and 'ENJOY' as the container says...but i was far from enjoyment/ecstasy or what-not.

firstly, you look like you've got serious buck-teeth problem or someone punched your lip to make it look swollen.

secondly, it smells good (like various fruity shesha scents) but tastes BITTER and SALTY!!! wtf man.

so to my parents amusement at the weird facial expressions that i made while the thing was in my mouth i left the thing behind my upper lip while sufferingly swallowing the baccy juice bit by bit.

i tell you, this product would make you rather have a damn ciggy because of the stupid way you look and also because of the taste. to me, it just puts me off.

high? well, i did feel light headed for like 10 minutes but after that, nada.

so was it worth RM6.90? to me, hell NO!

say, TAK NAK to CATCH DRY! :P

however, if you wanna know more, go to GothiaTek the creators of this smokeless tobacco product.

Impak Maksima.

yup, for those who are not familiar with the title, it basically translates to english as 'Maximum Impact' which is the a film produced locally by Ahmad Idham.

i knew i just had to go and watch it. but didn't want to go alone like when i watched 'gengster'. don't ask...but let's just say 'gengster' was a bloody waste of time and money.

moving on. (spoilers ahead)

here's my honest opinion on the movie and if anyone affiliated to the parties involved in the making of this film reads/stumbles upon this, well, just take it into consideration for any future movies you plan to film. i'll try my best to be as neutral as possible with this review.

now after a long string of advertisements, we finally see the intro, which is a 3d model of the internals of the engine working and they go through the turbines (from my POV, the turbine blades were not balanced at all, it was rotating of it's axis and in the real world would have caused it to fail prematurely, but anyway) then you get a visual of the 3d modeled engine bay finally at the very end of the intro you get a view of an exhaust particle escaping the exhaust tailpipe, which signals the start of the action. so thumbs up for a rather detailed model of the engine but there's room for improvements.

after the first race, we are introduced to most of the characters and the thing that bugs me the most is the slang and 'poser' type language used. it's as if they're trying to be hip-hop and at the same time speak in malay, for example when two characters meet each other they'll go 'wassup bro?! malam ni ada game tau? *weird hand gestures* takpe aku setting kereta engko untuk drag la! best punyer!'
hope you get an idea on the way the talk. it's hard to describe really. but anyway, after about 10 minutes of listening to that sort of dialog you become used to it.

nice selection of cars by the way, interesting to see a levin/trueno with a turbocharged F20C engine from the S2000 if i'm not mistaken and some other usual cars that compete/participate regularly in our malaysian drift scene. i'm guessing most of the drifting was done by either ah fai (ser ming hu), tengku djan or the owners of the respective cars themselves.

one awful aspect of the movie is the cliche-d boy-girl romance. firstly, i feel that it wasn't well developed and ended up looking like filler material. it should have been removed from the script to allow more time to elaborate on the cars or the path that 'aye' the main character (don't know how the hell you spell his name) would have taken. we know he was supposed to be a professional driver for proton's R3 but did his brother allow him to go for the tests that he was supposed to take? there was no continuity on that part of the story, which i think would have been more interesting.

on the subject of continuity, people who aren't familiar with KL or subang roads would not have realized but the drifts that were done at the ss15 banked U-turn that connects to the federal highway were linked straight away to merdeka square and then to klcc. i mean how is that even possible? BUT the choice of drifting locations were good despite this illogical progression between scenes.

computer graphics. now i understand that you wouldn't be able to trash someones precious D1 drift machine, but at least try to blend the car into it's surroundings. and also add some realistic physics to the movement of the cars modeled this way. people who have watched it would know what i'm talking about as the cars were too cartoon-like which made it very distinguishable, the real from the not.

all things aside, i went into the cinema expecting something slightly better than 'gengster' but i came out feeling a little better about spending RM9 for this movie and this movie deserves somewhere between 4.5~5 stars out of 10. it was good that they actually concentrated on what the movie was about which was drifting but better scene continuity, computer graphics and dialogs would have given it in my opinion a solid 7 out of 10 stars.

having said that, hopefully the malaysian film industry can only move forward when producing movies like these. we shall wait and see how the next 'big' local drift movie would be like which is - Evolusi KL Drift, which looks promising from the youtube footage of the stunt where they crash an rx7 HERE.

The 3 'T's Rule.

Time, Tutes, and Thesis.

these are the 3 'T's i live by coming into 4th and final year of engineering. ughhhhhh.

anyway, a typical monday morning, i see myself camping in the library from 9-ish am all the way to about 1pm.


trying to catch up on tutes due to lack of TIME!

also got my thesis and all the background reading i've gotta do. headache.

upgraded my workspace to accommodate for my CAD stuff, more desktop space = GOOD.


lemme just say that 20" LCDs are the way to go. it's actually damn friggin huge man. i can fit about two heads into the monitor albeit abit squished.

just a pic i found amusing. if you don't know what 'irony' is, well, THIS will give you a rough idea.

well, gotta go. got a test tmrw...study study study.

"Thesis + Tutes = Not Enough Time"