Random thoughts thread

[Guff]

Originally Posted by atledreier

Yeah, but with three kids in the house, apathy is not much of an option.. :p

Taking them to a waterpark tomorrow. 2,5 hour drive, and I get to oogle young perky girls for a few hours. :p

Don't get arrested or anything...

[atledreier]

Lol, at my age 'young girls' are 30-something. And I'll be driving our VW minivan, since Toyota Norway is taking their sweet time getting me my car....

[serialk11r]

Made my second trip home in my MR-S...
Listening to >3000rpm for an hour in a shitty uncomfortable seat really wears a person out...and I'm not even 20 yet! It's been 10 hours and I still feel worn out for some reason. Why the fuck did they not use 0.725 gears...0.815 4.3 F/D is horrendous for the highway. Doesn't help that my speedometer lies to me, "70 mph" is actually around 64, so everyone on the road gets pissed at me.

Now I feel like a wimp, because there are warriors who drive their Lotuses (Lotii?) that spin their engines 5% faster than mine, and have no interior at all.

[S2kphile]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

Made my second trip home in my MR-S...
Listening to >3000rpm for an hour in a shitty uncomfortable seat really wears a person out...and I'm not even 20 yet! It's been 10 hours and I still feel worn out for some reason. Why the fuck did they not use 0.725 gears...0.815 4.3 F/D is horrendous for the highway. Doesn't help that my speedometer lies to me, "70 mph" is actually around 64, so everyone on the road gets pissed at me.

Now I feel like a wimp, because there are warriors who drive their Lotuses (Lotii?) that spin their engines 5% faster than mine, and have no interior at all.

The thing about the mr2 spyder is that it wasn't meant for everyday commuter status. I think they engineered as a second or third car. I think it takes getting some use to.

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by S2kphile

The thing about the mr2 spyder is that it wasn't meant for everyday commuter status. I think they engineered as a second or third car. I think it takes getting some use to.

lol. I use it like 2 times a week, so it's not an everyday car. Still, uncomfortable as fuck for a modest 1 hour trip.

Okay I just checked some stats on the Elise, they have bigger tires (225/45/17 vs 205/50/15) than the MR-S so their highway rpms are actually a tiny bit lower...

Fuck me now. Next set of tires are going to be 1 inch greater in diameter so at least the speedo only lies by 6% instead of 10%.

Honestly it would be great if I could just cruise at my reasonable 55mph (3000rpm lol) with low wind noise and all but no, everyone else feels the need to blast by at 70mph since this is California and you have to be out of your mind to be going less than 5 mph over the speed limit.

[S2kphile]

All I can say right now is I'm tipsy as hell. YEee! What a great feeling! FRIDAY! LOVE IT!

[serialk11r]

Bleh...this swap business is too hard. Maybe a lighter flywheel and 5th gear swap when the transmission needs work. I should just wait until the next reasonably affordable ultralight sports car comes out (FRS seems like too much of a porker now that I've seen them on the road from my car :P). If that never happens then I'll do something with this car... As it is, it's plenty fast, 30+ mpg after the engine warms up even with the retarded gearing, so no incentive to change anything. Hardtop would be too much of an investment, I don't mind travelling 60mph instead of 70 like everyone else.

[Calum]

@serialk11r Engine mounting, mounts, and internal geometry can have a LARGE impact on NVH to. You can't do much about two of those, but replacing the mounts might help.

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by Calum

@serialk11r Engine mounting, mounts, and internal geometry can have a LARGE impact on NVH to. You can't do much about two of those, but replacing the mounts might help.

Well, it's complicated actually.
At some point below 3000rpm, the thing that bothers me the most is that the engine is spinning way too fast for the amount of power it requires to push this little bugger down the road. It doesn't sound half bad though

From about 3000 to 3500, the engine noise pisses me off. The wind noise starts getting louder, but the engine noise is the main problem. It starts to scream, but it's not a pleasing S65 or 1LR-GUE scream, it sounds like an overworked lawn mower.

However, as I'm nearing 3500 (which is not even 65mph :/) the wind noise starts getting really crazy. I hit 3800rpm today (fastest I've gone on the highway actually lol), and I think the softtop canvas started flapping around and making a massive racket. Torque app indicated mpg going down to 25ish, which is horrendous considering how I was barely hitting 70mph (I'm wondering if there's some maintenance that needs to be done because my driving is pretty much max fuel economy oriented and my average mpg doesn't show it). At 3500rpm I start worrying less about how the dumb gearing is wasting so much fuel and unnecessarily wearing the engine, and noticing how the wind noise is really damn loud.

Traveling at a modest 55mph is pretty comfortable but everyone else blasting by at 70 makes it too scary. It's nice when there's a truck driving along at 55mph in the right lane that I can follow.

Oh the other problem is, the short 5th gear makes it really hard to control your speed. Move foot a little, no response. Move foot a bit more, oops going too fast. Let off a little, feels like you just hit the brakes. When a hill comes you have to really dig your foot into the accelerator since the rpms are so high, but then you start speeding up too much.

[Calum]

@serialk11r, wow man, sounds like you have more maintaince to do then I thought at least. Even with 12-14 year old engine technology you should be doing better then that. Damn, I wish you were closer I'd have a lot more fun helping you fix the driveability and fuelling issues then fixing the brake leak on my beater... Boo

Are you still running that downstream O2 sensor that isn't giving any reading? If I remember correctly that engine runs 11.5:1 compression and your on 91 octane, I wonder if your PVC system has your combustion chambers coked with oil causing the PCM to pull timing. This might be easiest to feel under part throttle modulations. A cheap can of combustion chamber cleaner, the next time you need to change the oil, might be helpful.

[Nevermore]

Anyone see the new Cadillac ATS commercial and think they should put an FR-S on that road?

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by Calum

@serialk11r, wow man, sounds like you have more maintaince to do then I thought at least. Even with 12-14 year old engine technology you should be doing better then that. Damn, I wish you were closer I'd have a lot more fun helping you fix the driveability and fuelling issues then fixing the brake leak on my beater... Boo

Are you still running that downstream O2 sensor that isn't giving any reading? If I remember correctly that engine runs 11.5:1 compression and your on 91 octane, I wonder if your PVC system has your combustion chambers coked with oil causing the PCM to pull timing. This might be easiest to feel under part throttle modulations. A cheap can of combustion chamber cleaner, the next time you need to change the oil, might be helpful.

Hahaha thanks for the thoughts man.

My car isn't nearly that great, it's 10.0:1 compression ratio and runs 87. MPG is only bad above 60mph, at 55 I'm cruising along just fine and OBD is indicating mid 40s (although instantaneous mpg is never reliable for calculating, short term average is most useful). Plummets to 30 at "70mph" and at a true 70mph it's down to 25ish. That actually seems about right, as at 3500+ rpm the engine friction and parasitic drag starts to increase at nearly the same rate that load increases due to higher aerodynamic drag. When I was driving behind a truck going 65mph (3500rpm) my mpg went up to about 40.

My mpg concerns come from stop and go city driving, where I seem to be getting 22mpg ish with a cold start. I know cold starts hurt a lot but 22 is in 3L engine territory. By the time it warms up I'm not really doing much better, 25mpg ish, and I kill the engine at any stoplight where the cross street's pedestrian walk signals are still going, coast to stops with deceleration fuel cutout in the highest gear that will allow that, and accelerate pretty close to ideally. My car is under 1 metric ton, in theory it should be pulling 30mpg+ like this...

I don't know if it's the O2 sensor, because if it were really not working it would probably throw a CEL... Heavy deposits could be doing it, my car seems to have an abnormally high amount of knocking sounds pulling away from a start even with light throttle. I've sat in old VW taxis (coincidentally 1.8L as well haha) that shake and groan at low rpm but they don't have pinging sounds. That would explain the shit city mpg. What do people use to clean combustion chambers out without taking things apart? I'm skeptical about stuff like Seafoam.

I should probably log timing advance.

[ichitaka05]

WTF... I've slept til now & I feel I've wasted today sleeping...

[S2kphile]

Originally Posted by ichitaka05

WTF... I've slept til now & I feel I've wasted today sleeping...

Lucky man. Sadly, my internal clock always wakes me around 4am no matter what time I go to bed.


Side thought,

Would you rather be happy or be told the harsh truth?