Gnubbs Blog

There is a good chance that in the coming months I am going to have a bit more disposable income than I have had. That has led me to start thinking about what I would like to do to my WRX. If I am going to write this down anyplace, I figure I will put it out in the open where my friends can heckle my logic.

Overall Plan:

1. Fix cooling system
2. Monitoring
3. Up-pipe, downpipe, maybe headers
4. Engine Management
5. Suspension
6. Serious Engine Improvements

Fix cooling system

Basically since I have bought my car I have been having some problems with my cooling system. I am pretty sure that the last owner was not very nice to it. I have had to replace one coolant line, and I currently have a slow leak in another line. My plan is to replace most of my accessory coolant lines with Samco silicone lines ($140) and my radiator hoses with Samco silicone lines ($130). That should get rid of pretty much any line that is not in good condition.

I also have a new STI radiator cap that raises my coolant pressures from 0.9psi to 1.3psi. I have not put this on yet because of the slow leak. Finally, I will add a radiator shroud ($50). This work will mean my cooling system should be reliable, and more effective than stock. Gotta keep this sucka cool.

Monitoring

Before I get crazy with my engine, I need to get the tools to ensure that everything is running within reasonable specs. First up is compression testing my cylinders (~$30) when I replace my spark plugs. Man do I pray all is well when I do that (~150psi with little variance cylinder to cylinder).

After that, I am thinking EGT, oil temp, and oil pressure mounted where my clock currently is (~$400 for gauges, senders, housing). A knock light would probably be a good idea ($130, doubles as shift light).

Up pipe, down pipe, maybe headers

Up pipe with flex and without a cat (~$150). Man I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to put a cat 3″ from the intake side of my compressor turbines. Downpipe with a cat ($400-600). My existing cat back exhaust is the Bosal STI exhaust (3″), so hopefully that will be high enough flow to keep me going for a while.

Headers are a harder question. You can get them for ~$400, but there is a lot of argument in the WRX world of how valuable they are. It depends a lot on how much power you hope to get out, and whether you are looking at top end or low end power. The stock manifold is cast iron and nasty. This is low priority until I see some dyno numbers that are convincing.

Engine Management

Here we go. Throw this into the mix and I can start making some serious power. I am thinking probably a Cobb Access Port ($595) and at this point I will be able to pop in the stage 2 map and get something on the order of 220 lb-ft of torque at the wheels, up from 175 lb-ft stock. That move requires all of the above upgrades, but 50lb-ft for $2000 sounds good to me.

Engine management is key on my car. Getting a 2.0L engine to put out big numbers requires balance that hacking together a fuel controller and a boost controller just can’t safely give you.

There is a chance that I will spring the extra couple hundred bucks for the TurboXS Utec, but I am not seeing a huge need for that.

Suspension

Why is suspension way down here? I am not sure really. Maybe it should be up right under monitoring. All the suspension parts I am looking at (except coil overs) are pretty cheap, so I will probably start piecing this together along the way.

New swaybars front and rear ($150-300), new sway bar end links ($250), front and rear strut tower braces ($250). Those would be good starts and are cheap enough to throw in one at a time. Probably something like Prodrive coil overs ($1300). I could do new springs and struts and save a couple of hundred bucks.

Wheels and tires will need to be replaced as well. I would replace my current wheels because they are ugly and don’t clear any of the brakes I would buy. Maybe some high clearance 17″s, or a set of the stock BBS 18″s used off an STI. Tires? Who knows, but something better than flimsy stock tires.

That is it. Keep in mind this has been my dream car since before they started selling them in the US. I have no intention of getting rid of my ‘03 anytime soon, so that means I can spend some bread playing.

(I wonder where I should put driver skills?)

gnubbs

This week I am buying new wheels and tires for Stephanie’s Jeep Cherokee Sport (XJ if you will). I figured that if I am spending all that money on wheels, tires, and an alignment this would be a good time to deal with it’s ancient suspension. The XJ was rocking and rolling down the streets like James Brown, so it was easy to determine it needed new shocks.

Saturday morning I get up bright an early and head to the auto parts store. I pick up new front and rear shocks and a new steering stabilizer. Nothing fancy just Monroe Gasmatic — equal to or just a bit nicer than OEM. Remember, this car only gets driven about 50 miles a week so it doesn’t need anything super nice.

Back at home I jack up the car, pull the front wheels and go to work on the front struts. All goes relatively well except the top bolt on the drivers side is damaged so I have to cut it off. No big deal though. JT shows up around this time and starts helping out on the other side of the car. In pretty short order we have the new front struts in. This is going well. Next up the steering stabilizer.

This gets a bit more difficult. One side pops right off, but the other side is attached to a stud that goes through the steering linkage and is bolted down on the other side. We try and get that stud out but don’t have any luck. We decide it is time for lunch so we grab some food and then stop by JTs to get his propane torch. Heating up the linkage doesn’t help loosen the bolt at all. After looking at it a bit, it hits JT. This looks just like the end of a tie rod, maybe a tie rod puller will work. Back to his place to get his tie rod puller, and two minutes later the front stabilizer is removed and the new one is in place. Right tool…

JT heads off to work about now, and I start work on the rears. I get the lower connection on the passenger side rear shock off, and attempt to remove the two bolts holding the top to the frame. SNAP! The bolt shears off in the frame. Shit. The shock has to come off for me to deal with that, so I try the second bolt. SNAP! Shit. I figure I should go all in at this point and try the other shock. Now I have four bolts sheared off in the frame of the jeep. My night just got really long.

I head to the hardware store and buy new bolts, and the tools to either extract these bolts or drill them out and retap. After I give my penetrating oil a couple of hours to soak, I try the extractor. I drill through the bolt, turn in the extractor, and it bites beautifully. I turn on it, and the bolt doesn’t budge. Try again. SNAP! Shit. Now I am done for. I try and drill out the broken extractor but my drill bits barely scratch it. I head upstairs thinking I am going to have to take this to a mechanic to get those bolts out.

After reading online a bit, I discover that this happens to a very large number of XJ owners when attempting to work on the rear suspension. Then I run across this page

Accessing the rear bolts from above

Basically it details how to cut access panels from the body above to get at the bolts. This is exactly what I need. I head back down to the garage, get out my trusty dremel and start cutting into the jeep. In short order I am looking down at the nuts welded to the frame. A while longer cutting off the welds and I break the bolt loose and am looking at a clean whole that I can attach my suspension to. Awesome. It is now 11pm, and with my proof of concept I call it a night.

The next morning I head to the hardware store to get some new nuts and bolts for mounting the rear shocks, and more cutting discs for my dremel. An hour later the new suspension is installed. I paint the body on the edges where I cut, throw down a couple layers of dynamat to seal it, and roll the carpeting back in place.

I take it for a spin and everything feels much better. The jeep is much more stable, doesn’t roll as much when turning, and doesn’t bounce and jostle so much after hitting a bump. The suspension feedback through the steering column also feels more damped. That might just be psychological though.

This job that I expected to take a couple of hours in the end took about 12.  Why does that always seem to be the case when I am working on cars….  Oh well.  Everything is installed and works and it only cost me about $200 in parts and tools.

gnubbs

I have been screwing around trying to get rails up and running on my production web server.  In the end it turned out that a very simple sysadmin oversight was preventing me from making progress.

When access the project pages I would get 404 or 403 errors.  Trying to directly access dispatch.cgi left me with an error in my logs saying ExecCGI was not enabled for my rails directory.  Hmmm.  I spend some time looking through my .htaccess file in public, but can’t seem to find anything wrong.

I double check and make sure that mod_rewrite is loaded.  It is.  I look at my .htaccess file again.  Everything really does look correct.  Some google searching leads me to this helpful page about getting Wordpress permalinks working. Not exactly my problem but I see some hints in there for when your .htaccess isn’t being read.  It hits me.

I don’t have AllowOverrides set for my rails directory.  Change my apache2.conf and restart the server.  RAILS!  Pefect.  Two changes to my .htaccess and I have FastCGI running.  So, it is only 1:30pm and I have had a productive day.

gnubbs

Check out Mike Davidson’s post on SEO and page validation. It is pretty interesting. I appreciate his warnings that this was very unscientific, but the results were at the very least interesting. So, I decided to see how The Sheet Music Company would fare. Ouch. 104 errors can’t be good.

So, I have decided that this weekend I am going to go through and fix the errors that can be easily fixed. Since I won’t be being paid for doing this, I am only going after the easy errors. I will let you know how this goes. I am working to ensure that my next project uses both valid HTML and valid Stylesheets. Since I am building that one from the ground up, it should be easy for me to ensure that I do it right.

Am I jumping on the CSS only, valid code, semantic html bandwagon? Ya know, I think that I am. I think that it is the right thing to do. I hate using the wrong tool for a job when I am working on my car, I don’t know why I should view working on the web any differently.

gnubbs

Senators, senators, senators!

New rule — Hold all applause until the end. And stay sitting in your seats. Did someone just make some sort of cat call?

You — on the right standing up for every applause — sit back down. You — the one on the left talking to the old guy next to you — shut up, the president is speaking. Come on guys. Get it together.

Harry Reid, did you just pass a note? Bring that up here. You have to read it in front of the nation.

Micheal Chertoff — did you just make rabbit ears on Hilary Clinton. Cut it out. Don’t make me send Chief Justive Roberts back there to remind you of the rules. If everyone behaves for just one minute I can make some remarks on bipartianship. Who threw that? Was that you McCain?

Damnit! Can’t you just act like adults for 40 minutes a year? Is it really that hard? If you are not careful I am going to cancel the field trip to the national zoo.

Stephanie is currently in the process of looking for a new job.  Since she needs to be printing out resumes and doing other job hunt related things at home it was finally time to buy a new printer.  Our old printer was this crappy Epson that we got at target for like $60.  It barely worked when it was new, so after two years it wasn’t worth the money it would cost for a new ink cartridge.

On sunday Stephanie and I added best buy and office max to our normal list shopping, but didn’t find anything that we loved.  (Well, that I loved.  She would have accepted a monkey that could operate a mimeograph.  It turns out I am a bit more picky.)  Since I am planning on buying a digicam in the near future, I wanted something that could do a respectable job printing a picture.

After some thought I realize one of my big requirements is seperate ink cartridges for each color.  Preferably the fancy Epson 8 (9?) ink systems.  However, I was also looking for a printer that was reasonably priced.  Something lets say $150 or less.  It turns out that these two goals are very much at odds.

One thing I saw at office max was an HP Photosmart 8450 on sale for $125.  It only has 3 ink cartridges (photo color, color, photo grey) and I don’t know much about HP printers.  So, I pass on it at the time.

On Monday I am talking to my boss who has the printer one or two models down from the 8450 and loves it.  After discovering that the original price on that thing was $275, I decide to go get it.

When I get it home I immediately realize this thing is huge.  Twice the size of our old printer.  I move my desk some and find a way to shove it into a corner of my room.  I connect it to power and networking, load the drivers on my laptop, scan the network for the printer, and print a test page.  Very easy and works without a flaw.

I am going to print some photos tonight and will let you know what the image quality is like.

gnubbs

Hopefully I am going to be posting a bit more now that I have a major project out of the way.  You can check it out at:

The Sheet Music Company

Keep in mind I don’t pick the graphics when I do these things.  I like them but I think I would have strived for a simpler design.  The site is also pretty slow.  Hopefully this will pick up as the server caches more and more of the content, but the backend is very DB intensive and the DB my host provides is slow.

The important thing that I learned is that if osCommerce does not work for you in the default configuration, stay away.  I have never worked on code that was that jacked up and hard to customize.  I swear that every PHP file in the end links in about 50 other PHP files which makes it hard to work on.  If I were to describe the architeture, I think I would go with Big Ball of Mud.

Anyways, it is done now.  The customer is happy and I am happy to not have to work on it anymore.  To be fair, osCommerce does do a lot of really nice things.  It just makes some things way harder than they need be.

gnubbs

Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters

It is pretty neat that this shit works. There must be some very lonely people out there working on this type of shit.