Nope no Free Tidbits this past saturday. Fabio’s “cultural exchange” items of pepper seeds from Bhutan had come to fruition and we had a few of these pods of mystery this Saturday at Wayland’s. From Fabio’s tales, it seems those Bhutanese eat hot peppers like a salad. I was actually surprised at how large these were. Generally speaking, smaller peppers tend to be hotter. So maybe these aren’t that hot? In appearance they seem pretty similar to jalapeno. 
So the thought is we’ll cook something tonight utilizing the peppers, a thai curry and the chana masala from the magic powder pack we bought in BC. Gotta QC the goods, make sure it’s not too sweet, not to rancid, you know? So one of the peppers is cut open and slivered. We each take a tiny piece and taste test them. Hoo baby! These guys are hot! 
Not habanero hot, but they’ve got more than a decent punch to them! It’s gonna be a good one tonight! Continue reading ‘ANger of Bhutan’
Author Archive for taro
Page 79 of 88
To catch up on the FX, Scat and Chucky came over Thursday evening after work to help me out with the tranny reinstall. After spending the morning in Maui for work, my boss told me to take off work early, so I got home early and started on trying to get the tranny in.
Here’s pics of the stuff that was going in. The Exedy clutch came with bonus stickers that aren’t quite as weak as the Magnaflow ones.
And here’s the flywheels:
No, this doesn’t have anything to do with BTK. Two Sunday’s ago, the 16th, we decided to do an afternoon ride at Maunawili. We meet at the usual parking in Waimanalo, and then this strange pale guy shows up and wants to ride. Fortunately he’s a cool guy, not some annoying freaky guy, and he can ride pretty good too. He’s been cooped up for too long and in need of some release. Weather’s cooperating and we have a nice overcast and windy day for riding. As opposed to last week, the bikes are decked out with some fair amount of tech. I’m riding the most retro bike as a hardtail with V brakes and an annoyingly clunky Marzocchi fork. Continue reading ‘CKH Ride’
For people who wrench on their bike & car equipment, there’s certain parts that for some reason are just plain stinky. SPD pedal bearing grease is a famous one for us. On your car, differential oil is another one. Transmission oil is somewhere around there too. I just discovered another one today, removing the flywheel/crank bolts released some stinky funk. I wasn’t expecting that!
Anyway, to sum up progress on the FX, I finally got the crazy idle to stop for now. It turns out one of the new silicone vacuum hoses wasn’t tight enough and was “leaking” vacuum. What a pain. I took the “blacktop” 4AGE flywheel I bought of the net a few months back in to shop to have it resurfaced and it’s ready & waiting. Today I dropped the tranny on the 20 valve so I could get the bellhousing plate so i can relocate the starter when I change the flywheel and clutch. After that, I can change the header over. Whew, lots of stuff, being held up waiting for the new Exedy clutch to come. Sorry no, it’s only a “stage 1”, one step up from OEM clutch. It’s constructed like a normal OEM clutch. Their aluminum pressure plate one was nice and pretty, but at $1000+, yikes! Might as well go for the multi-plate clutch as long as your breaking the bank already!
Finally made it to a Honolulu Festival, having missed quite a few past cultural events. I like going to the Convention Center venue, hate to admit it, because it’s air conditioned. And something different this year was the inclusion of a performance by Haruko Momoi, a popular anime voice actress. She had along a good sized group of her fanclub too. It was entertaining, and I mean that in a good way, not a cynical way. A tiny peek into otaku-dom, got a taste of the energy and enthusiasm without being swamped by massive crowds of a true hardcore event. 
And her performance was good, I honestly have to say she sang better than a lot of other big name J-Pop acts I’ve seen televised live. I do wonder what kind of toll this takes on her voice, unless it really is how she talks.
Having arrived late on Sunday and not seeing any of Saturday, I missed a lot of the performers, but still got to see a lot of vibrant performances. Go to see an aboriginal Taiwan group, interestingly it had a very native american Indian feel. And I hoofed it on over to Waikiki to catch the Grand Parade. It seems I kind of choose my position poorly. If I were being hardcore photog I would have roamed the street, but I wasn’t feeling that. I just parked in one spot and dealt with it. Didn’t even move when the finale Daijayama dragon rained sparks chasing everyone around me away. Anyway, I’ll get pics processed and posted sometime, I’m pretty pooped.
Just a little mini after work jump session at the Koko Head dirt jumps. Got stuck at work for a bit so a little late by the time I got there. Beautiful weather, a bit more wind, dirt seemed more dry and taking a bit of a beating. 
Jay was feeling a bit worn out from the day at work and wasn’t hitting it the same as last week. Didn’t help that he creamed the boys just before I got there. 
Some annoying munchkins came running through the jumps and couldn’t get the subtle hints of “Hey, come over here!” and kept running around the trails. Kinda interesting how some mild anger seems to make the jumping better. I hit the jumps the best I have so far. Also feeling a little more familiar with the jumps. Not a bad after work quickie. 
Sheesh. Taking a dinner break here. Getting case of vibro arms.
So here’s a tip for all you car monkeys, when you sit around grinding and cutting metal bits, try to keep away from your car, or rather your car paint. I have just spent all day buffing and picking out rusty metal filings from the paint of my car. I’m pretty sure it’s from when I was cutting those vacuum pipes a few weeks ago and I didn’t realize it was getting all over the car. After getting the nice pretty wheels on yesterday and waking up early on a Sunday (how’d that happen? Let’s just say wine has an effect of putting me to sleep & had some with dinner last night), I decided to wash the car. That’s when I discovered the tiny little rusty specks sticking all over. Ugh. Thank budha that I have the power buffer, there is absolutely no way I could have done as much in this one day without it, and I would seriously have had jelly arms. Sorry Miyagi-san, I fail, turn-on, turn-off.
Okay, time to go back outside for the final buff on the hood, then sealant the finish.
So Saturday I start on installing the rest of the wheel studs. Having gotten da theorems down, the other rear wheel is done quickly. Scat called as I was starting to work on the front. I guess he was inspired by our midweek jump session and he asked about the weather at my house. There isn’t a cloud in the sky and it’s brutally sunny. I’m sure it would be a great day to hang at the beach and watch all the beach bunnies out on this March Hawaiian day, but it’ll be roasting out at the dirt jumps. 
So instead he shows up in the Sled with Chuck. They went by the body shop to start up Chucky’s Camaro, which is finally almost done with body & paint. Long story, best you ask Chuck about it if you want to know the whole story. By this time I was already done with one of the fronts, so there was only one wheel left to do, not much they could help with there. Continue reading ‘Paint Pounders’
Parts order came promptly from Summit Racing. In the order was exhaust parts, and the ARP extended length wheel studs. After much digging around & asking at local parts shop to look up the measurements, I figured the ARP stud set listed for Celica was a good match. The key thing is to find a good size for the knurl since these are press fit. The Celica ones here were just slightly bigger in diameter. The whole reason for this is with alloy rims, the stock studs are just barely long enough, as seen here with my old rims. 
Looks a little iffy, but it just makes the general rule of thumb that there should be as much thread engaged as the stud is thick. Now the deal is the new FX came with some nice Rays rims, but it’s sizing required the use of spacers on the back. I think I mentioned before that we discovered that the rear wheels were being held on by only two threads. This was no exageration, two revolutions and the lug nuts were off. 
Pretty lucky there wasn’t a disaster. Yikes! Continue reading ‘Studly’
Update on car work. I spent last weekend working on the intake of the FX. If you remember, I’d complained about the gutless low end during the SCCA Test&Tune, so I figured I’d check out the intake system. My guess was something was wrong with the TVIS system. TVIS stand for Toyota Variable Induction System. Each cylinder has a pair of intake runners and the TVIS is a set of butterflies that close off one set at low rpms. What this is doing is tuning the intake size. At low rpms, since the pistons are moving slower and sucking slower, closing half the runners you get a narrower intake tube, increasing the air velocity getting better mixing and charging of the cylinder. Once the rpms get high, the piston speeds are high and sucking in faster, the narrow intake becomes a restriction so opening up the second set lets in more air. When you’ve got it floored and the throttle wide open, you can actually hear when this happens. Toyota put this into the GE performance engine cars during the 80’s, and then it went away in the 90’s. It’s come back in a different form in Lexus’ with ACIS, kind of similar concept, but it varies the length of the intake. Continue reading ‘Sucky Sucky’
