Quick Update.

Just a quick update regarding the progress of the bluebird. Surprisingly, not many places to weld unlike the cortina which consumed copious amounts of sheet metal.



looking good here. neat welds, but then again, nothing too major except to mould the piece of sheet metal to fit. notice the welder plug welded the centre section of the two mounting points rather than doing spastic spot welds along the edge of the sheet metal. good stuff.


as you can see, most of the areas were in need of some putty. the windscreens are due to come out by this friday. a quick check beneath the chrome bits around the windscreen reveal a slight surface rust which will be easily cured. what a relief that is, really.

the welder says that the car is '7-7, 8-8 complete' which directly translated from cantonese means that welding will be completed really soon so i will need to decide on a paint colour and whether to spend RM1300 for solid coloured paint or RM2000 for metallic/2k paints. i think the latter is a better investment don't you think?

will have the colour chart up by this weekend hopefully. need to decide fast because apparently the panel beater will have to call in a 'sifu' or master if you will should i choose the latter.

...

on another note, was mucking about the putra and was wondering if i should remove the rear spoiler as it weighs 2.8-3.0 kg.

with


without

thoughts and comments welcome as always. :)

"Bulu-bird"

That's how my welder/painter guy calls the datsun bluebird i sent like a month or so ago.

Welding and painting should finish in about a months time. very impatient because i've got two cars that are waiting for me to drive/drift/whatever in, if most of you remember, the other one is the mk3 cortina.

yes, the cortina is still alive and well and i've not junked it. head on to the cortina blog for updates and pics.

i digress.

it's always a dilemma when it comes to choosing a colour for a car since it's a specification that could make or break a car's character. in short, the current "Green de Grandma" has to go in favour of solid white all over the car except the under carriage.

why white? first of all, it's cheap(er) than going with some other colours and also because the interior can retain it's original colours (somewhat beige) therefore saving some extra bits of Ringgit here and there.

here's some pics to whet your appetite, you picture whores. :)


notice the new steel rib that will be welded into place. looks similar to the original so, it's good enough for me.

rib location

very nice bit of detailing by my welder. notice the folds that were done to give a neater almost factory look to it.

i'm on the fence with this bit of welding. why don't they seam weld the plates instead? could it be because of possible distortion of the original steel beneath it?

good patch work over here.

had to remove at least 1/2 the sheet metal in this area as it was quite rusted. good work here too.

layer of primer i believe just to keep it from developing surface rust while other parts are being welded.

until the next update, feel free to leave your comments on anything and everything regarding the car. maybe even help me pick a colour!

Streamyx Throttling.

is it just me or is streamyx throttling http?

i'm sure most of you streamyx user have noticed downloads speeding up after 12am and slows down to an unbelievable 20-ish kB/s.

reasons you should be pissed off:
1. most of us pay RM 88 a month for the 1 Mbps line which should give at download speeds of at least 90 kB/s.
2. hence, your money is being ripped off.
3. blocking P2P is fine, but blocking http is just crazy as i don't think any one ISP in other countries block ALL http connections (local or international)
4. what's the point of waiting till after 12am to utilize the internet? most of us need to work the following day anyway.

if you think about it, streamyx charges should be reduced and its changes reflected in the coming phone bill. but obviously, TM is never going to allow that to happen but i'll try to give a breakdown of what I should be paying for the current service i'm provided.

i get about 240 kbps for the first 12 hours of the day and then about 1320 kbps for the remainder of the day. so, let's take the average bandwidth i'm given by streamyx or "Nazis" as we shall refer to them from now on, is about 780 kbps. so, all we need to do is take this number, divide it by 1536 kbps (which is what i'm getting) and then multiply it by RM 88 (or whatever amount you are paying). Hence, i should be paying only RM 44.69 which is almost half of what i'm current paying!

if this goes on for the next 12 months, imagine the amount of money TM would make. assuming that everyone has the same connection as i do and with streamyx subscribers of about 500000 nationwide, that's RM 268,125,000 worth of service denied to the customer!

as fred durst of limp bizkit said in his song, "just think about it".

Proofread, Anyone?

i happened to come across THIS article in today's edition of the Star, which is one of the major newspaper publishers in Malaysia and if you read the article and look at the picture given, something is not very right at all.

you guessed it, the article says that a Play Station 3 (which is actually spelled as PlayStation 3) was given to a kid as part of some collaboration between Sunway Pyramid Sdn. Bhd. and the Children's Wish Society of Malaysia when in fact, they gave him a slim PlayStation 2!

take a look at the orange box that i placed in the picture from the article to highlight this for you, and now for comparison as well as for those of you who've never seen what a PS2 or PS3 console look like:

a freaking huge pic of what a PS3 console and its box look like courtesy of Wikipedia Commons, 2008.


and this is what a PS2 console courtesy of philregalo.com, 2008.


and there you have it, undeniable proof that the person in charge of this article did not proofread or s/he did not know the meaning of the word proofread as Wikipedia defines as,

Proofreading traditionally means reading a proof copy of a text in order to detect and correct any errors.

so, who do you think is to blame for this? did the people sponsoring the alleged PS3 know that a PS2 instead was purchased, you could literary get 3 PS2 consoles for the price of 1 PS3 which leads to questions of corruption. finally, have the people responsible taken actions to errata the article or to exchange the PS2 given in the article for a PS3?

anyone working for these organizations and happen to read my blog, please drop me a comment or email.

seriously, do you really want to cheat a kid from owning a PS3?

New Priorities, New Responsibilities.

I've finally graduated and can finally use the word 'Engineer' under the occupation section in forms that people fill.

like the title says, new priorities and new responsibilities. i must now work like the rest of the world, contributing my knowledge in minute ways. i am starting work beginning august 2008 with Boustead International Heaters (BIH) which is an oil and gas company dealing primarily with furnaces/heaters and similar thermo-applications related to oil and gas. you can google the company if you want.

time to pay back the government for the loan that they gave me. also to lighten my dad's financial burden by contributing to the putra's loan (yes, it's still on loan) and whatever outstanding bills. all in all, a monumental goal has been playing around in my mind, which is to be debt-free by age 30. i use the term 'debt-free' quite loosely here because i think i will still owe the bank for the house loan.

anyway on to more interesting things. i've been contemplating if polyurethane bushings would have a longer service life than the regular rubber bushings sold by proton and other oem parts manufacturers. i was very interested in getting a similar set of bushings like those done over by Backyard Special, however i didn't commit just yet because i was considering getting a replacement for all four mountings. a couple of days ago, i found a solution.


from top to bottom you can see that we have the original front and rear engine mountings by a local oem manufacturer and then below that a set i bought from the breakers yard which i was told came from the first generation of mitsubishi evolutions and then finally at the bottom, the ones that are in the putra as i type. below you will see a picture of the replacement bushings that need to be hydraulically pressed into the older bushings steel housing which is also shown below (in colour) that shows the reason why engine torque and oscillations from having stiffer suspension can cause premature failure of these bushes.



now i won't be putting up lengthy calculations as that would be quite boring for most of you. so instead, let's imagine the cross-sectional areas between these three mountings and as you can imagine, there's ample room for deflection of the rubber bushes. therefore, the best way to reduce rocking of the engine when accelerating/braking/etc., is to limit the amount of space for this deflection to occur. there is a negative impact on the comfort level because of this since more vibration is transferred into the cockpit. i can assure you however that acceleration is achieved quicker because the engine doesn't waste energy rocking back and forth upon sudden accelerations.

in short, acceleration seems quicker because there is less rocking of the engine due to the absence of space for this deflection to occur compared to the original mountings.

so now, it all boils down to the life span of the bushes because the oem ones last about 6 months before they fail. the Backyard Special guy's polyurethane mountings have lasted him 2 years according to one his recent posts so i'll report back when the thing fails.

finally, here's a picture that i wanted to share.

Week 9...

busy lately with thesis work. running back and forth to the fabricator.

almost final thesis presentation week so i've gotta work extra hard. 24 hrs just isn't enough lately.

here's half of what i've been busy with.



have to test the LCA at the designated spot. hope it doesn't fail.

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.