Boy, this could end up taking a few minutes. You may want to stand up and
stretch, shake out the wrists, maybe grab a fresh cup of buzzbean juice, or
fermented barley beverage, or whatever is appropriate for the time you are
reading this. I think I have a reasonably cool bottle of Sierra Nevada stout
close by, the homebrew is all at Pugs' place, drat.
First off, I'll grab my list admin hat off the rack and slip that on. A fair
number of messages recently have been sent by folks to both the triumphs list
and the spitfires list. If you reply to such a message, and your mailer puts
both lists in the header, but you are only subscribed to one or the other, then
the message sent to the list to which you do not subscribe is basicaly tossed in
the digital dumpster. Person A sends message 1 to both lists. Person B replies
to both lists with message 2, but only subscribes to spitfires. Person C who
is on both lists responds with message 3. Person D replies with message 4, but
has not figured out how to run the mail program, and sends the message in HTML
format rather than plain text.
What happens is this:
spitfires triumnphs
message 1: yes yes
message 2: yes dumpster
message 3: yes yes
message 4: dumpster dumpster
So a subscriber to the spit list sees messages 1,2,3. A subscriber to the
triumphs list sees messages 1 and 3, and has this feeling something is missing.
Person D keeps cluelessly clicking away, hoping something happens. So it goes.
And given that I've been checking into activity on the Spit list lately, it
seems that it might be worthwhile to offer a digest option, there is a fair
bit of traffic. Stay tuned.
Now, on to Spitfires. Someone brought up the old chestnut about 1 bhp per
cubic inch of displacement equates to a sporting motor. That is a tad dated.
These days, 100 bhp per liter is a better yard, er, meterstick. Of course,
it wasn't that long ago that with the 1.5 liter forced induction rules of
Formula 1, teams were approaching 1,000 bhp per liter. I'd guess not too
many folks reading this have that kind of budget.
Here's a basic question to help define your priorities. Which do you think
is more fun to drive:
A. A concours quality Shelby 427 Cobra that you keep under the posted limit
at all times so that all the cops watching you don't throw your, uh, ears
in jail.
B. A clapped out Herald 1200 that you can drive at 10/10ths all over
town and no one even notices, let alone cares.
Notice I did not ask which would you rather own. If I had Car A, I would sell
it in a heartbeat, and acquire a large supply of Car B to keep me smiling well
into retirement. So when talking about your preferences for performance, keep
in mind style versus substance. Actually, when talking about *anything* in your
life keep in mind style versus substance. The definitions of 'style' and of
'substance' are left as an exercise for the reader.
For some, the striking lines of their favorite Spitfire are in no way going to
win out over the ability of a honkin' big V8 musclecar to convert paychecks
into tire smoke. For those people, this may be the wrong place. Then again,
I may do a V8 Spit somewhere down the line.
A number of you folks have heard about my Killer Spitfire, some of you have
seen it, there may even be a handful of folks who have ridden in the car, or
driven it. Killer is not modified that much. The motor is basically a 1976 9
to 1 compression motor, stock cam, no head porting, but a free flowing exhaust
and a pair of Weber DCOE carbs. And a few years of tweaking. RealSoonNow
I'll update my "Anatomy of an Autocrosser" to reflect the current state of
Killer. Well, maybe not exactly current. This past Sunday was the final
event of the Utah SCCA region's autocross series, it was a fun day. But I
somehow managed to be awarded a pumpkin for the ugliest car at the event.
Good grief! Those of yu who have seen Killer with the red bonnet were lucky
to see it in such fine condition. Over the last few weeks I stripped off all
the red, red, yellow, blue and then white paint from that bonnet, as well as
about 68.42 pounds of body filler. I haven't put any new filler on, or done
any pick and file work, so the bonnet as it sits this moment is indeed quite
ratty looking.
But are we talking about show, or are we talking about go? If you'd been at
the event on Sunday, and had complained about anemic Spitfire performance, I
might have taken you for a quick lap of the course. Yes, a fair number of
cars had a better final time than I did. I can explain it with a list of
excuses that will reach from here to Topeka. Killer isn't that fast, in some
respects. I tried to use my Veicom accelerometer this evening, but the state
of the drive in front of the shop, wet and sandy, made getting decent numbers
a pain. Stil, I'd say that the car could do 0 to 60 in about 7.5 to 8 seconds.
Roughly in the same range as the new Chrylser 300M or an early 90's Miata.
Ooops, need to cut this short. Perhaps more useless ramblings in a few
hours.
mjb.
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