Pay no attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

In a discussion involving Internet Presence, I realized I had more than one identity. I have never cared much whether people could find me, know who I was, or for that matter what they thought of me. So now you all know, here's my picture, whether you know me as "onebadbug", Steve Ward, E. Normus Johnson, or just the author of The Gearheads Cookbook.

Devil Dog

This stuff is hard core. It is to normal beer what Salma Hayek is to Roseanne Barr.
I don't now how to describe it, major hop flavor, there are 4 different kinds! It's only flaw might be that it needs to saved for special occasions, it's just too much ... everything. I love it, I give it a 9.

Then I got some Rocket Dog, also from Laughing Dog Brewery. It's made out of Rye. What the hell is Rye anyway? In old time westerns they say "give me a shot of Rye." I love Rye bread, but I am sorry to say I don't like Rye beer. I can only give this a 5, but I feel bad about it. Not for me, but give it a try. I want L.D. to stay in business for a long time.

 for a

Buggy Progress

Not much to show for all the time I've spent. There's a lot of little parts to make, like these turbo water supply lines. Now they need to be beadblasted and painted.











These turbo drain fittings took a while, I spot faced a recess into the center to prevent oil from pooling up in there. Those kind of details won't really be noticed but anyone but me, but it's part of my mental health therapy.

It's been very time consuming collecting parts since parts people no longer know anything about cars. If you can't tell them make, model, year you are screwed. Big shout to my buddy Randy, who is about my only resource smart enough to understand why I would want a turbo Camaro MAP sensor for a Subaru.







Here's an example. I got so tired of trying to find the turbo outlet gaskets, I just made my own out of solid copper sheet.

Back to the Future Buggy

The lack of recent posts is because all my effort lately has been going into my dune buggy project. Here's a pic from the old days.

 I've had this car some 20 years, and it's why I got started autocrossing. I just wanted a place to drive it, and it was not yet street legal. However, once I started racing it, my priorities changed, and all I did was make it faster on course. At one point, I was the fastest car of the day, but then it was time to build the A-Mod. That's another story. About 5 years ago, some dumbass backed into the buggy and that put it into the back of the shop. I started to rebuild it a year or so later, but then got busy with other things. It has taken me quite a while to even remember where I left off.

By the way, that spoiler looking thing on the front was only partially for aerodynamic purposes, mostly it hid a 40 pound chunk of steel cantilevered as far forward as possible. The buggy had enough power that turning and accelerating could not be done at the same time!

I aquired a Subaru EJ22 from a friend, and decided that's what would power the buggy. But then, after I ran Bonneville, I had this little turbo left over, so I figured I would just buy another one, and make it twin turbo.

Isn't it cute?

This little turbo can only make 90 to 100 HP, but there's 2. The engine stock is 140. Obviously, I am not trying for max power, I just think it's cool. That philosophy is being applied to the whole project, and I am fabricating things just because I can, or just for the hell of it. Here's a little mount I made to support the front fenders, it uses a Rabbit radiator mount for flexibility.

The engine has so few miles that this paper label never came off the cylinder head.











Everything is solid mounted, so I made engine mounts that attach to the rear bumper. A double bolted connection is not the best way to do it, but was neccesary to allow the bumper to go on and off. The oil filter just touches the cage, so I will have to find something smaller.

Here's the bracket to mount the Geo Metro alternator.

I wanted a ball joint front end and the chassis is a 58, so I welded the entire fram head from a later car on. I was missing one of the brake hose brackets after that, so Here's one from square tube. That stuff is easy to make things from. The aluminum thing you see behind it is a square box with a cover plate where I ran SS fuel lines, and the main battery cable through the tunnel.

Here's the last picture for this post. You are wondering how there can be any way that huge radiator can go into that little car? You will have to wait and see!

Cool Race Fab Ideas

This should have been posted way back in July when it happened, but I was busy. When I worked the scales at the ICSCC races, I looked around the cars and found 2 genius ideas.
The first one: If your car is on fire and you are able to stop and get out, and then you feel like using the mandatory on board fire extinguisher, where would you like that to be? Bolted to the floor of the passenger side (where everyone puts it) so that you have to reach back into the burning car you just jumped out of? No, that's stupid. How about just inside the door where all you have to do is pull a quick pin.

The second great idea: You know how everybody installs the window net into a hole on one end, and a seat belt latch on the other? That pretty much is impossible to do by the driver once he's strapped in isn't it? What if one end was attached by a heim joint? Then the net can still drop out of the way, but it's always attached, and all you have to do is swing it up.

Research

I got together a distinguished panel of judges so that we could rate several interesting beers all at once. Because one of the group didn't care for very hoppy beers, and one of us (me), only likes hoppy beers,we figured those 2 votes would cancel each other out. Also, since not everyone in the group thinks Nelson IPA is the best beer ever, for this test a 10 is whatever each person considered to be a 10. There were 6 judges and a dog. Here's what we decided:

Eel River Organic - 5.2, had a sort of lavender taste to it.
Diamond IPA - 5.8, really hoppy.
Total Domination - 6.3, forgot to write down notes.
Third Voyage - 6, unless you add in the dog's vote. She didn't finish her bowl, so we called that a 3.That brought the average down to 5.4. Really, Really Hoppy.
Loser - 5.4, this test was unfair because we had been drinking IPA's all this time and this was the only pale ale, a retest will be done.
Tricerahops - 6.7, forgot to write down my notes, and somebody forgot to vote, so this might be a hollow victory. Maybe this calls for a retest, also. In fact, perhaps the entire procedure may be an ineffective way to judge beer. But it was fun, so what the hell.

Real IPA

I bought this IPA from jolly old England the other day. For those of you don't know, India Pale Ale was an English invention. A way to keep beer from going bad on the long, hot voyage to India. In the back of my mind, I was thinking I wasn't gonna like it, but couldn't remember why.
Now I know. It's boring. It was modern craft brewers, particularly those here in the Northwest who cranked up the hops to the level I now expect from beer. God Bless America!

Oops, forgot to give it a rating. It's a perfectly good beer, just not when you're a hop fiend like me. I'll say 7.