Air-CON job.

after a few days of driving the bluebird around, i'm starting to discover its quirks.

before i explain, lemme just say, my putra is damaged again. some fucker tried to break into my car...probably to steal the OMP suede steering wheel and one recaro seat. fuckhead. for nothing my driver side door handle was damaged and the key barrel was removed probably for him to make a set to open it the next time he came back. so it has been agreed upon that the putra will not be seeing much seat time except for track days. :( (i'll post the number plate of that sohai later. maybe you guys can keep an eye out for it).

back to the story. so Chong, the previous owner, told me that the air-conditioner blower was not working but everything else does, which was fine to me because i expected to service the thing anyway. in the midst of a traffic jam, i decided to fiddle with the aircond fan switches and thermostat and other buttons on that particular panel, suddenly, there was wind. cool wind i tell you along with some dried leaves came out from the vents. i was happy and glad i wouldn't need to spend money fixing it.

however, the moment i switched it off and back on, the blower would not function. i was annoyed and started flipping the lever that selected recirculated or fresh air. one violent switch later and the aircond blower started working again, along with some dried sponge, glass and random crap that fell into Beat's not-so-new Hush Puppies.

anyway, i think i'll need to fix the damn thing anyway and check the gas levels. and the locks need tweaking too.

Prince of Burungbiru.

did you all guess what car it was? well, this pic will give you a better idea.

i bought my own car. ahh, a 27 year old datsun bluebird 1.8 sss. seems to be a japan recond vehicle cause there's a japanese shell service sticker under the bonnet. oh well. car is in good working condition and comes with twin carbs! the sound is awesome.

thanks to Chong for a smooth transaction. at about 2pm today will be the JPJ inspection which is required when transferring ownership of the car.

on the way back, last night, managed to kick the tail out and went sideways a couple of meters, all under 3k rpm. i was surprised how easy it was to kick the rear out. done 120 kph, no problems so far.

car has some rust spots which aren't anywhere as bad as the cortina or beemer. i would say for the price, one cannot have extremely high expectations. i think it's about the same condition as when i first got my putra, which comes with rust spots and bad panel beating FREE

ta-da!



looks in good shape dunnit? anyway, there's things to be done over the next year (i hope) which include but not limited to:

1. fix air-cond blower (could be a fuse too)
2. fix engine oil filter, gearbox, rear axle leak (probable a gasket issue)
3. fix sticky locks and power windows
4. refurbish interior
5. rust removal, panel beating and painting
6. balancing propeller shaft
7. come up with some ingenious aluminium bits to provide cooler air (a post dedicated to poor design some time in the future)

some interesting engine facts:

L18T

The L18T was basically the same as the L18 but had Twin SU carbs, a high lift cam, 2 mm bigger inlet valves and 1 mm bigger exhaust valves. Fitted to 910-U Bluebird 1.8GL "Hardtop" coupé for UK market. It produces 110 hp (82 kW).

Wikipedia 2008

the reason is clear now as to where the power comes from. higher lift cams, bigger inlet valves. this is starting to sound really good! but due to the age factor of the engine, i'd estimate the WHP to be in the high 80s region.

i'm currently looking for information on obtaining some parts for this car. preferably new ones as i was told that tan chong motors in segambut still stocks quite a range of old bluebird parts. hmmm.

btw, the putra's back but it's shabby. the panel beaters messed up the locking mechanism. fuck.

I'm Back!

it's been 7 months since my last post.

i've been busy. with work and uni, among other things.

after spending a long summer vacation working under dr. H. T. Eik for 3 months, i mustered up some cash...though not equivalent to that stipulated in my contract...i still had some cash to spare.

i worked on my thesis, getting suppliers, getting the design right, and getting monash to fork out some cash for me to get my sensors up and running, which took quite a while...took even longer for me to get my money back since i had to fork it out on my own due to blardy fucking redtape.

march came, and it was back to uni. no difference to me, still felt as hectic as my so called summer vacation was.

i fixed up my drum room. it now has profile-cut acoustic foam to prevent horrible echo that is synonymous with small and square-shaped rooms. i've picked up my double pedals again. currently fabricating a sound barrier to prevent transmission through the crappy wooden door. ingredients include, wood, rockwool, fabric and time.


my putra was involved in an accident. i was turning into a parking lot in sunway at 8.55 am when a taxi t-boned me. apparently it was my fault, hence the fine. which was waived thanks to some magician. however, insurance would still destroy my NCB thus raising my premium for next year. fuck. you can go to runningmuchdeeper for pics of the damage. if i had no roll-cage, the damage would have been much more severe. i'm getting back the putra today after 1 week at the panel beater. hope they did a good job.

the cortina is still a work in progress. apparently the paint was supposed to go on yesterday but after i sms-ed a certain person regarding it, no reply was received so one can assume that it still hasn't been completed yet. however, after the undercoat went on, the car looks good. all starting to take shape. here's a teaser:


i'm still working on my thesis like a mad person since i've 3 more weeks before my presentation. my fabricator is KAMCO. good people. they are everything and anything aluminium. i never knew 6061 flat bars were affordable. supposed to be checking the prototype this week though. hope it checks out without much dimension changes.

came in 2nd place in the Monash Engineering Club Go-Karting weekend race. thanks to Jaryd for letting me race in the finals due to me coming in 8th in the pre-finals thanks to some thwat smacking the chain loose seconds after the rolling start. at least apologize la cunt-faced-motherfucker. still waiting for the trophy though.


later that day, a mr. wong came to view the beemer. its up for sale by the way. going for RM3k, negotiable. make that VERY negotiable as i need to make way for my latest addition to my car collection.

for the first time i can actually say, i bought this car with my own money. even though it didn't cost much, it's still money earned during the summer. let's just say it's a japanese rear-wheel drive sedan that costs less than the price of a decent laptop. and the condition is good for a car that age. you all slowly guess la.

ok. i guess that's enough for the next 6-7 months. :)

Are Lighter Rims Worth The Money?

been seeing posts in forums pop up where people are asking if lightweight rims are worth it.

well, i myself have been toying with the idea of lighter rims. not only would they look better on the putra but they'll be lighter! by alot.

now, i'll try to make the calculations here explained as clearly as i can. however, if you don't understand or if i have made a mistake with my theory, then please correct me! i don't like to give wrong info so help me work towards providing the right answer if you can ok?

now back to the topic.

let's look at the wheels i've chosen for this comparison. wheel weights were taken from WheelWeights which is THE best collection of wheel weights. really.

i currently have the 15x6.5" Enkei RSF-2 which are these:

quite ugly to me as the spoke design is quite 'ugggggh' to me.
these rsf-2 weight according to wheelweights, a hefty 7.4 kg each without the tyre.

the rims i'm interested in are these white Desmond EVO Regamaster. i've no idea WTF 'regamaster' means but it's a really lightweight wheel that looks the business.

these wheels weigh only 3.88 kg each without the tyre. check out this jap guy's page regarding the wheel: Kotori's Homepage.

ok so if you do some basic math, the rsf-2s weigh in total 29.6 kg compared to the evos which are only 15.6 kg! you'd save 14 kg in unsprung mass. it seems a lot right? but how do we quantify something quite abstract like this? i propose that we look at the price-performance ratio to see if spending about RM2500 for a set of SECOND HAND condition evos are worth it or not. because sadly, the company, Desmond, does not make them anymore. neither can i find the company on the internet. so, oh well.

first, take a look at some formulas i'll be using. we have the rotational inertia of a hoop about a central axis, I=MR^2. where M is the weight of the rim (assumed as a hoop for simplicity) and R is the radius of the rim in meters(m), which is 0.1905 m (taking it as a 15" rim). then there's the kinetic energy equation for a rolling body and since a rolling object has two types of energy: a rotational kinetic energy due to it's rotation about its center of mass (COM) and a translational kinetic energy due to translation of its COM, we use:

K = 0.5*(I,com)*w^2 + 0.5*M*(V,com)^2

I is the rotational inertia as mentioned in the paragraph before, w (actually greek for omega) is the angular velocity of the wheel, M again is the mass of the wheel and V,com is the velocity of the wheel's center of mass.

now we proceed to obtain the rotational inertias of each wheel. I1 is for the RSF-2 and I2 is for the evos.

I1 = 7.4kg*(0.1905m^2) = 0.2685 kgm^2

I2 = 3.9kg*(0.1905m^2) = 0.1415 kgm^2

already, you can see that the lighter wheel has a lower rotational inertia which is obvious. but we still can't quantify it in terms of performance gains. so we must press on to the next set of calculations.

we need to find the kinetic energy of the rolling body (ie. the wheel) at a fixed speed. let's make it 100 km/h which is represented by V,com. converting from km/h to m/s we get

V,com = 27.7778 m/s

this is done to make sure we are working in the right units. next up, is to find the angular velocity of the wheel.

w = V,com/R = 27.7778/0.1905 = 145.82 rad/s

now that we have the necessary information needed, we can plug these values into the equation for obtaining the kinetic energy of a rolling body which for the RSF-2 is:

K,RSF-2 = 0.5*(0.2685kgm^2)*(145.82rad/s)^2 + 0.5*(7.4kg)*(27.7778m/s)^2 = 5709.564 J

and the Desmond Regamaster EVO:

K,RSF-2 = 0.5*(0.1415kgm^2)*(145.82rad/s)^2 + 0.5*(3.9kg)*(27.7778m/s)^2 = 3009.023 J

J stands for Joule which is the unit for energy however, we you guys wanna see it in terms of horsepower (hp) right? so, let's convert these values to hp. i'll convert Joule to Watts first, but in order to do that, we need to divide 1 Joule with 1 second (i assume 1 second for ease of calculation) in order to get it in Watts (W) which is the unit for power. now from watt to hp, we use this conversion factor

1 watt = 0.00134102209 hp

now do some basic maths again, and we can get the required horsepower to keep rotating and translating this wheel at 100 km/h (on the horizontal plane ok, cars don't defy gravity :P)

Power required, RSF-2 = 7.65 hp

Power required, Desmond Regamaster EVO = 4.04 hp

now, how to interpret these values? the difference between these two wheels would give you the amount of hp that you could 'gain' which would be

Nett power gain = 7.65hp - 4.04hp = 3.61hp

this is for only one wheel. so by right, for both driving wheels since the putra is a front-wheel driven vehicle, the total hp gained would be an optimistic 7.22hp! just from using lighter wheels.

let's not get ahead of ourselves here. i should include a 'confidence' factor to that value to bring it down to about 6 hp gained. so, spending RM2500 for this rims to gain 6 hp would give mean 0.0024 hp/ringgit malaysia(RM). let's compare with a camshaft upgrade from powerzone (assuming their cam prices for the 4G93P is RM1500 from their catalogue), based on their claim of up to 20% increase in hp, gives you 0.0154 hp/RM. hmm, so it's up to you actually whether you'd wanna spend that amount of money for the little gain in hp. but don't forget, lighter unsprung mass gives you better handling characteristics and because the overall mass of the vehicle is reduced, you get faster acceleration as well.

man, it's insane if you wanna play NA...so many things to tweak to get the same result if i'd be less stubborn and put a turbo kit.

any monetary sponsors are always welcome regardless of whether individuals or companies wishing to advertise their products (space for sponsor's company logo available and for individuals wishing to sponsor, your name will be placed around the boot/rear wing location of the putra).

This Is Malaysia.

in malaysia, you get to see buses like these run around town unnoticed by the local authorities.



i mean, for fucks sake man, think of the hazard of leaving a metal object scrapping the road producing sparks near the fuel tank. need more hints? then let the bus blow up and send bodies flying onto the street and walls then ONLY will SOMEBODY take action.

some people in certain bodies aren't doing their jobs well if not at all.

there's the number plate, so if you have contacts or power with people in high(er) places, do the general malaysian public a favour and make sure things get done.

Sheet Metal Brackets.

ah, it's holiday time so i decided to fabricate some brackets to keep my banged up apexi power intake which has actually been held by some cable ties over the past few months. so, after much procrastination, i finally went and did it.

took some stainless steel sheets i had lying around my garage and cut it to size then the end product is a very shiny, sturdy and functional piece of fabrication. :)







while i was working, my dog decided to pose. so here she is, ms. brandy.



and a little something i made for deardear with the spare stainless steel bits. shabby i know.

Guess Where This Is.

rate this pic guys. and if you can guess where this is, i'll give you bragging rights. ok?