cars – A Jaunty Little Blog

May 14, 2024May 14, 2024

Dad’s Purse

Friends,

When we were kids, we used to call Dad’s work truck his purse. Mom’s purse was usually an enormous handbag with every conceivable item to address every conceivable contingency. Band-Aids, breath mints, toothpicks, tiny sewing kits, and safety pins were all there. Mom’s purse is much more modest these days, but Dad’s purse, long after he’d retired, contained everything you’d need to build a house. Once the pickup truck was retired, a subset of all of the tools made its way into his Jeep. Power tools yielded to a corded drill and an extension cord, but the utility was retained.

I have continued this tradition. The tools in my Jeep could help you find faulty circuits, drill holes, attach things to other things, and fix a lot of plumbing problems. It’s, essentially, my purse. Last weekend, I hitched a ride to the desert with my sister to see Mom for her birthday. The purse stayed here for the first time, which was really weird.

What if something breaks!

I guess we would’ve tried to figure it out. But nothing broke. If you listen to Mom’s concerns our childhood home is falling down, but it’s actually highly unusual that things break over there. She was fine. I was fine. We had a great time.

There’s a lesson to be learned here.

Your pal,

– bob

September 9, 2023September 9, 2023

Where to begin…

Friends,

I had an idea, which is dangerous on its surface, but it turns out that this idea has been kind of expensive. The idea revolves around the idea of distraction-free writing. Which is in itself a misnomer. Who isn’t distracted by things? Dogs, coyotes breaking into the backyard trying to eat dogs, Nine Inch Nails suddenly popping up in the playlist, a smell, the garbage trucks playing catch-up from the holiday weekend speeding down the street. You get the idea. Life is hectic.

I thought that if I were to spend more time posting to this here endeavor, I could dig through the rubble of history to find a nice technological solution to get away from the social media and email notifications constantly ding-ding-dinging just in my periphery.

I thought that I might take advantage of one of the best compact keyboards from the mid-90s. None other than the Newton External Keyboard with a USB adapter.

It works great, but there’s that distraction again with the iPad happy to share notifications about EVERYTHING. Geez Karen, cool it.

Then I thought that I’d spend a little time resurrecting the trusty Palm Pilot. I already had the folding keyboard, so how hard could it be?

Hard enough. Palm desktop won’t install on Intel Macs. Palm Pilots of a certain vintage don’t have drivers for the keyboard built in, and Memo stinks as a writing tool. Also, getting files out is just as challenging as it is with the Apple Newton eMate. In either scenario, there needs to be an old computer sitting around as an intermediary. It doesn’t help that the more recent versions of macOS don’t play nice with Appletalk and the Apple Filing Protocol. Because, you know, progress.

Also, did the Palm Pilot screen get smaller? Just me? okay.

The answer for distraction-free writing, staring down all of us tech nerds, is the manual typewriter. Slamming slugs against an ink-drenched ribbon to leave some meaning behind. You’ve heard of it.

I got very silly and bought a couple machines through eBay. Machines that looked cool, but machines that I don’t like very much.

The key effort is too high for me and my now-noodly copywriter arms. Also, I wasn’t ready for the stadium layout of the keys. It turns out that I just don’t want to reach that high for the number row, since I’ve spent all this time on flat keyboards. I stopped by the Idyllwild Help Center today and found the machine everyone has been telling me I’d love—a mid-60s Olivetti Lettera 32. The key layout is nearly flat and the effort is so light that I could type on this thing all day.

It’s an absolute joy to type on, and once I put in a new ribbon, it should be a nice addition to the typing horde.

The plan is pretty simple(-ish). I have a sheet-feed scanner that I can connect to a computer that’s on most of the time. I’ll type a page, plop it into the scanner, and through some scripting I can recognize the text and save the image of the page, so everything just posts to the blog.

Like magic.

I guess we’ll see if that works when I post my first typed blog post.

The 20-something marketing experts offering advice on how to build audiences suggest not making promises in your blog that you can’t deliver. I can’t let them down, can I?

Actually, I don’t mind letting them down, but not you, dear reader. Let’s make this happen!

Your pal,

– bob

April 4, 2023

Are You Not Entertained?

Friends,

The workload over the past several days has been sparse, so I have offered my time to assist my colleagues in the UK with their projects. Knowing that they probably don’t have anything ready to go, I’ve been adding some other service in Microsoft Teams, like picking paint colors or offering dinner suggestions. Today, I offered a bedtime story, which they enthusiastically requested.

I’d like to present it to you as it was presented to them, so I’m going to supply screen shots with the story in ALT text. That way, if you have a screen reader, you can follow along.

I flavor the story early in the chat with the post image you see at the top. Okay, here we go…

(Since I was also in a video call, it took a little while to finish up. My colleagues were not amused.)

And that, dear friends, is a fun way to entertain a group of jaded copywriters in the middle of a meeting.

Your pal,

– bob

April 3, 2023April 3, 2023

Tuning The Carbs

Friends,

I just got off the phone with a nutritionist named Jeanine who shared some things, like if one has diabetes, one must be very conscious of carbohydrates. I learned this from my Dad, who offered this advice, “Stay away from white food.” Before you imagine that he was referring to potato salad with raisins (ew. – ed), he meant rice, potatoes, and bread. 60 grams of carbohydrates a day. That’s my “budget.” Not a lot for me, since I love a good potato chip every now and again.

Jeanine also noted that I’m barely getting half of the exercise I should be putting in every week. If I have any desire to lose weight, it’s 300 minutes of exercise each week, at minimum. I’m thinking of starting here and building up to a more serious regimen. The problem is that I can’t seem to get started.

You know, maybe I should treat it as a nice way to mix up the routine.

Now that I think about it, another way to mix up the routine would be to fix a certain sad and broken Jeep languishing in my garage. (isn’t there also a sad and broken jeep in your driveway as well? – ed Yes. I’m reminded of that fairly regularly, but this is a different story.)

My fine Jeep Commando is a lot of fun to drive, but it’s sort of a pain to keep running. Slowly, I’m working on that problem. Now that electric cars are slated to take over from hydrocarbon-burning transportation, replacement carburetors are remarkably cheap. If you don’t believe me, look for regular, non-performance carburetors at Amazon, or Summit Racing, or Rock Auto. Those remanufactured carbs are pretty cheap, because the bet is that they’ll soon be obsolete. That calculus may be a little premature, but I’ll take it.

I also took the opportunity to replace the points in the distributor with a Pertronix unit. It’s a Hall-effect pickup that replaces the points and fits inside the distributor cap. That should take care of the “go” but I still need to address to the “whoa.” (seriously? -ed It was too good to pass up.)

Also, there might be some large holes in the floor…

Nothing that can’t be fixed, right?

Right?

Your pal,

– bob

September 27, 2021September 27, 2021

Sometimes Life Is Like Owning A Pink AMX

Friends,

It’s been a very long time since I’ve posted up an update here and a lot has happened since the last post. Some very grim things and some lightly happy things that don’t seem to balance out the very grim things. I want to think that this is just a function of getting older, but we’re still (!!!) in a pandemic and there are studies that prove that politics is still to blame for a lot of deaths. Americans should be furious. I know I am.

When I was a tot, my best friend Jim and I were inseperable. We ran around and played and got into trouble and ate wheat paste and made each other laugh during catechism classes. We grew apart as we got older, but kept in touch infrequently. The last time I saw him was during his last month on this earth as he succumbed to the cancer that destroyed his burly frame, but never diminished his kindness and sweet demeanor. The party was for his parents’ wedding anniversary, but it really was for him. We hugged and he winced as I hugged his pain medication packs into his aching back. He was tired. He knew why we were there and seemed happy to see us.

I would like to take this moment to mention: Fuck cancer.

Jim’s sister is not a medical doctor, but she’s “done her research” on Facebook and convinced her parents that they shouldn’t be vaccinated against COVID-19. She told my Mom that she’s “very happy” that her parents hadn’t fallen for the constant barrage of media insisting they get the vaccine. They’re in their 80s, but worried about the vaccine’s long term effects. Jim’s father, one of the kindest men I’ve ever met, just died of COVID. I wonder if Jim’s sister is still so happy. At least we know he won’t have to deal with the long term effects of the vaccine.

I know a fellow who has a medical condition that prevented him from getting vaccinated. Too risky. He’s a sherrif’s deputy, one of our first responders who has risked his life saving others. He’s now a COVID long-hauler. Part of the reason we were supposed to get vaccinated early was to protect people like him. Folks whose immune systems put them most in harm’s way, like they weren’t already in harm’s way from the other stuff like bullets and blood and explosions.

If you’re like me (and may your omnipotent invisible friend help you if you are), you have a certain affinity for Roy Chapin Jr.’s AMC. It was scrappy, brash, and in big trouble. They were punching above their weight and taking shots at GM and Ford, who could do no wrong in the late 1960s. This was the era of the Matador coupe, Javelin, and the mighty AMX.

Now let’s pretend that it’s a half century later and you own a pink AMX. Maybe not that pink AMX, but it still garners the same attention and you still have to explain it. Why are you driving a pink AMX? Where did you get that pink AMX? Is it that pink AMX? And more recently, what’s an AMX?

Sometimes life is like that. Frustrating. Not simple. Not obvious.

Opportunities

Friends,

As you know, I’m still looking for a full time gig after the contract information technology “engagements” fell flat. I had a nice interview this afternoon with the copy manager at a software house in New York, so that looks promising. In the meanwhile, I thought it would be nice to get some work published elsewhere that I can add to the portfolio.

I threw my hat into the ring at a nascent auto industry analysis site and they asked for a writing sample. The brief was in “500 or fewer words about something you don’t see getting any coverage, but you think the auto enthusiast press should be reporting on.” Oh boy, I can write that all day. So I did!

Media Should Talk About The U.S. Auto Industry

I’m old enough to remember Chrysler’s bankruptcy in 1979. The evening news led with breathless coverage about the ensuing loss of jobs, the political ramifications, the victims and who to blame. Foreign manufacturers were demonized. It was a very important American crisis.
I’m also old enough to remember the triumphant stories heralding Lee Iacocca’s repayment of emergency government loans ahead of schedule to save Chrysler. This made him a very important American business leader.
Renault’s takeover of AMC? I remember the gasps of horror. How can the French own American Motors? Then somebody said, “Jeep” and everybody nodded. Chrysler’s takeover of AMC? “There’s Lee, flexing his muscles,” the media shrugged and moved on.
It wasn’t until the Daimler take over of Chrysler and the media’s stenographic coverage of the “Merger of Equals” that the auto industry merited some sort of analysis again. Not the right sort, of course. Not the kind that would have identified the OE’s exposure to collapse at the hands of the credit markets.
Now, post-Carpocalypse, post-UAW bashing, post-bailout coverage is mostly a Tesla blooper reel.
I think I’m old enough to handle the truth about each car maker’s plans for American mobility. Are they planning on continuing to make cars at all? What’s driving their decision making?
Nobody has said a peep about why the Stellantis merger happened in the first place except that the late Sergio Marchionne though any merger would be a good idea. It can’t just be to sell Challengers in Brazil, can it?
I’d like to find out about these things. Wouldn’t you?

I hope that little rant lands me a sweet, low-paying gig. Maybe it’ll even lead to something else that’s could be a lot of fun.

Fingers crossed.

Your pal,

– bob

January 19, 2020

What Are You Doing? Playoff Weekend Edition

Friends,

It’s a lovely January weekend here in Northern San Diego County. Even though the anticipated rain storm never really materialized, we still did inside stuff, like making ravioli. We’re going to wait a bit to try the ravioli (and tortellini made from the same ingredients), but the filling is going to top a pizza in about twenty minutes, so we’ll see how it tastes after the pie is baked.

Speaking of food, we both suffered from brunch at the in-laws’ in-house dining facility. Imagine getting punched in the gut for a few hours and you’ve got something of an idea. Note to self: Next time, skip the omelette bar. No, really.

That wasn’t really the point, though. Being the family tech support, I got to fix music streaming problems (get rid of the web browser and stream from iTunes to Airplay receiver instead), and palm rejection on the laptop (it doesn’t work, hit fn+F3 to turn off the trackpad on the Dell laptop thing).

We also spent some time watching football. So. Boring.

That’s mostly it. Maybe we’ll have a chat about the Hiroshima Carp baseball club and why you should care.

Of course you should care.

Your pal,

– bob

August 12, 2019August 14, 2019

What Are You Doing? Irwin Allen Edition

Friends,

It’s been a while since I checked in, and the universe has dealt one punch in the face after another after another. Rather than work in chronological order, it might be better to work in order of impact and import.

We went on something of a summer holiday to Southern Oregon towards the beginning of July. At first, when the trip was planned, we were going to go see the in-laws and stay at a little fly fishing resort on the Umpqua River to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary. This sounded great and presented a wonderful opportunity to try out the new camera. The updated plan had us spend a couple days at the in-laws’ house first, divvying up their possessions to prepare for their move to a retirement community near our house. More on the retirement community in a bit, but this haggling led to a talons-extended wariness that would filter into the time spent in the forest.

So we ate the meals and slept in the cabin and hiked around a bit, but it felt like the last half of the third sequel. Going through motions. That was until we started hiking out of the trail leading to the largest falls we would visit. I spun my ankle on a trail-colored rock, and spent the next week hopping around and complaining to whoever would listen.

Did my complaining matter? Not one wit.

Once we arrived back home, where complaining continued to not matter, I noticed that the leak under the Wrangler hadn’t got any worse in our absence. I put in a new serpentine belt to replace the one that was starting to go before we left, and headed off to bed. My first day back to work would be in Temecula, so I wanted to make sure I was good to go.

The drive was uneventful the next day. The arrival in the parking lot was not. I knew that thrip-thwap-thwip noise was another belt flying apart. Time to consult experts…

Well, it should have been time to consult experts, but I consulted gifted psychics instead. How do psychics become gifted? They cheat, of course. In this case, the mechanics at the nearby service center had seen this before and knew what to look for. Excessive runout of the thrust bearing causing the crankshaft to move in and out too much. The pulleys go out of alignment and cut the new belt to pieces. Plus, the crankshaft seal is damaged in the process, thus the oil leak I couldn’t identify. The motor was cooked save for the seizing, the smoke and the fires. I still had time to find this old dog a new home and the local Jeep dealer gave me a reasonable price. An auction price, but that’s okay. I’d rather not see it driving around town.

I cast around for a replacement while driving around a rental from Avis and was reminded that a) Avis sells their cars after a while at pretty decent prices, and b) I still have a Grand Cherokee that isn’t running, and c) I miss the interior room and utility of a midsize SUV like the Grand Cherokee. So I bought one that’s a year and a couple months old from them in the weirdest sales transaction I’ve ever conducted (and I once bought a Volkswagen Beetle in the dark).

So much for not having a car payment, eh?

All this time, something’s been wrong with the dogs since we brought them home from the kennel/spa/cages. Food’s not staying down, or not getting consumed at all. Lots of pacing. Lots of trips outside overnight. The puppy pad bill is going to break the bank and after coming home after work to a couple mortifying shitstorms, it was time for the little one to go to the vet.

She hadn’t eaten in a few days, even though we tried to coax her with the most expensive ground up things in tins we could find. The veterinarian drew some blood and took an exceedingly lengthy time to call us with the results. Extraordinary because her health continued to deteriorate over the long weekend. Finally, we took her in to maybe get a feeding tube or something, but the prognosis was grim and final: pancreatic cancer. Looking back, I should’ve kept her head in my hand as the drugs were administered that would end her life. As she stopped controlling her neck, her head flopped over, giving Teresa a start, “Oh god! That’s horrible,” she gasped through the tears.

Mocha was the littlest one, the bravest one, the one who had been through the most. She was a one-doggy puppy mill and had been put through the ringer. She had the scars from being tied up all day and the nervous demeanor of a dog who’d never been socialized. I had an affinity for her that I can’t really describe. She’d been through a lot and deserved to have a nice safe life. I’d like to think that she enjoyed her last three years with us. And just like that, she was gone.

So, how’ve you been?

Your pal,

– bob

UPDATE: Here’s a better picture of the little dog. She’s pictured here on her preferred tower, where a girl can get away from it all, like another dog seven times her size who’s constantly menacing her.

Mocha and her tower of throw pillows

December 16, 2015

Ahoy Thar!

Friends,

The good folks at Mahindra may be getting some press for their purchase of Italian styling house Pininfarina, but what you’re missing is that they’ve revamped the Thar.

What’s a Thar? It should look very familiar to you. Think Jeep CJ-7 with a CJ-3A windshield and a diesel engine and you’re most of the way there.

Or, Thar.

You’re welcome,

– bob

P.S. FCA, the parent of Chrysler and Jeep should hire Mahindra’s agency and fire whoever it is they hired to make this. The video above actually spends time showing what the Thar can do in a pretty straightforward way. I know, it’s weird.

January 9, 2015

Things I Learned While Staring At Trees

Friends,

I was really looking forward to having a respite in 2015 from the nightmare that was 2014. Make no mistake, 2014 was no picnic. I had to quit the job I relied on to get away from an evil boss. Racial turmoil and mass shootings roiled these United States. War, disease and privation made above the fold headlines every single day. Soft media concerned themselves with glossy asses and selfie sticks. Surely, the jackals could take a moment to reflect and step away for a while. This was not to be.

The Paris offices of French magazine Charlie Hedbo were shot up yesterday by Muslim extremists, killing 12 and shocking a nation. This was one of the few publications that republished the cartoons depicting Mohammed published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005, earning the magazine a fatwa.

The day before, a chapter of the NAACP in Colorado Springs was bombed, leading to hardly a peep of news coverage. Apparently, this wasn’t fireworks or a gas leak as some have suggested. Rather, this domestic terror attack was intentional, but the outrage machine has been mostly dormant.

The 2016 Chevy Volt was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show the day before that. One of its key features is the ability of the car to extend to you GM’s “commerce and engagement offering” by showing you ads and offering you coupons when you drive by participating businesses. You can also receive a discount on your insurance via the car’s built-in connection to Progressive Insurance by opting into allowing the car to tell them if you’ve been speeding or doing other naughty things. Hashtag: snitch.

We have also been bombarded in this nascent year with the news that our New Year’s snow storm did not put a dent in California’s drought. which is the worst that has ever happened in the history of forever. We will need, it is supposed, 11 trillion gallons of water to cure this deficit, which is an unimaginable and unattainable number. Therefore, we are doomed.

Or are we?

Okay, yes, maybe we are doomed. What has changed is that we’re being constantly beat over the head with our own failures and our own suffering. The bludgeoning by the media with the cudgel of despair must drive ratings or SEO or clicks or something, but I can see a way to manage the gloom…

Require the media to offer solutions.

None of this “spark a dialog” or “encourage a conversation” nonsense. I’m talking about real solutions. If the drought is caused by too many of those little silica desiccant packs in our packages drying out the air, let’s get rid of them. If the bombers in Colorado mistook the NAACP building for an Arby’s, let’s find a way to get them better maps. If French Islamist extremists don’t understand that cartoons aren’t actually photographs of the prophet, let’s give provide them with a better arts education.

Okay, I couldn’t think of real solutions for any of those problems except for this: Never buy a GM product with OnStar. Ever.

Your pal,

– bob

August 20, 2013

Vengeance Of The Dandies

Friends,

Sometimes people can come as close to missing the forest for the trees as one possibly might without being mauled by a bear. We have new neighbors up here in Fern Valley Corners, a grand new addition to the lodging inventory of available beds in town, and I attended their open house last weekend.

Nice folks, and justifiably proud of their vision and the craftsmanship they’ve put in to realize that dream. Last weekend also featured a concert that was attended by the monied class to benefit a local private high school. Once the concert was over, the wine and cheese crew headed over to the open house for free wine and no cheese.

I just walked around the corner and up the grand driveway to the grand entry, but noted that nobody was looking at the building. All cameras were trained on deer grazing on manzanita berries just past the parking circle. A magnificent bit of nature nearly close enough to touch. Breathtaking.

But one polo shirted, tennis shorted, sexagenarian in the group decided that this reasonably rare collision between the wild and the wide-eyed was boring. He walked up to the deer, then turned on his heels to check out the blue Jaguar.

Jaded? Maybe a little!

Your pal,

– bob

November 5, 2012

The Jeep Election

Friends,

This may be the second election in United States history decided by Jeeps. Let that sink in for a second.

If America’s foremost mink hubcap salesman hadn’t flubbed a news story about Jeep expanding back into China rather than saying at a rally in OHIO that Jeep was moving production to China, the state of the race would be very different. Partisans can talk about all of the other ways external forces have sabotaged his campaign, but this was an unforced error. In fact, it was the result of a lack of basic reading comprehension.

Shouldn’t that disqualify you from the presidency all by itself?

I’ll be up all night tomorrow hoping to find out…

Your best pal in the whole wide world,

– bob

October 19, 2012

Smile.

Friends,

The way the day started was perfectly fine, save the alarm going off at 4:00. Cozy flannel sheets, breakfast with Mme. Puppy Dog, getting on the road a little late but making up the deficit and getting to work on time. I wasn’t even too concerned when my first press release went out with bizarre characters mucking up the formatting. At least I was ticking off boxes on my bloated end of the year task list.

It’s a poorly kept secret that I applied for the newly relaunched automobile columnist position at the Orange County Register a few months ago. This is my dream job, the sort of gig you’d drop everything to do. I dreamed about it. I wrote stories in my head about taking an Aventador to Albertson’s. Stories about canyon carving in a Corolla. And stories like the distributor post from a few days ago to explain why these may be the best times so far for reliability and economy in our cars and trucks.

I found out today that I didn’t get the job over the internet.

Then the phones at work went down.

Then the live Verizon tech support lady told me in a chat window over the internet that I’d need to file a report over the internet.

Then my colleagues forgot how to work stuff. A global, universal tech stroke, if you will.

So what do you do with a plate of late-afternoon picnic potato salad like that? Do you smile in the host’s direction while choking it down? How much worse could the stomach ache get?

I took a different tack and wrote jokes about moon monsters instead.

It’s therapeutic.

– bob

October 3, 2012

A Hot Rodder’s Lament: Rebel Without An API Edition

A lovely centered picture of a coffee mug.

Friends,

I’ll cede the argument that modern cars are cleaner and more efficient than they’ve ever been. Sure, there have been many marques through our history that have been stingy with a gallon of gas, and some that have produced fewer emissions, but the entire fleet currently on sale beats those outliers by every measure. Why? We asked the robots to help out and they’ve agreed.

Is this a problem? Of course it is. And it isn’t, or at least wouldn’t be, if lawyers weren’t involved. Here’s a short example:

Back in the olden times of a decade or so ago, when you wanted electricity to light a spark plug to cause an explosion in an engine’s cylinder, you’d rely on a spinning top called a distributor.

Through a gear meshed with the camshaft, a shaft spins a piece of metal that makes contact with a post that sends electricity to a wire leading to a spark plug. It’s simple until you start thinking about how an engine in a car is used. As engines speed up and slow down, you want the spark to occur earlier or later, so maybe you add weights to the spinning top that move a plate forward a bit when the engine spins faster. This is lovely and elegant, you think. But you don’t want that advancement to go too far or else the spark comes too soon—even before the cylinder is full of the fuel mixture. Detonation, knocking and other badness ensues. How do you control the advance?

Specially tuned tiny springs.

Hold on, there’s more alchemy. When you mash the gas pedal to the floor (How quaint! More on that in a sec.) in your Curved Dash Oldsmobile, engine vacuum drops and if you send that signal to a vacuum motor attached to that plate, you can further advance the spark timing to catch up.

With me so far? Sucking and springs and centrifugal forces are changing when the spark is happening. Archaic with a capital arc. (I crack myself up sometimes.)

So what’s changed? Sure, computers, but what’s really changed has been the quality and number of sensors in a modern engine. An engine management computer cannot only know vacuum, and engine speed, but also atmospheric temperature and pressure, overall system voltage, throttle position at the throttle pedal, fuel quality, and a lot more.

What this means, simply, is that you can throw away distributors and let the computer tell individual plugs exactly (well, sort of exactly, hold on) when to fire. You put high-tension ignition coils directly on top of the plugs and the computer just turns them on and off. Easy, right? The computer can look at all the inputs, decide what’s going on and how much power is needed, and let ‘er burn.

But it’s not that easy.

For instance, you could theoretically make more power with more spark advance over a longer period of time, but the implications are many. For instance, if your, ahem, 285 horsepower engine could make 305 horsepower or more with a simple software change from the manufacturer, will your insurance rates go up? Is that too hot for the engine block over time, increasing warranty repair costs? When the home mechanic could change a couple springs and gain power, the manufacturers aren’t on the hook.

Here’s where this gets weird.

Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs, if you will) don’t release the code that drives engine management computers. Some don’t even release service manuals to the public. What this means is that backyard mechanics, hot rodders, and aftermarket equipment manufacturers are left to make educated guesses about how the engines in the vehicles they’ve purchased actually work. What signals come from where to make which thing work the way it does? After all, your gas pedal isn’t connected to the engine anymore. It’s just another sensor, but this one measures the angle of your ankle to represent how fast you think you want to go. If I want to make a widget that adjusts the power my engine produces and make an incorrect guess at how this affects all of the other systems, I guess this makes me that much more liable for my error, but wouldn’t it be much better if I got it right the first time? More later…

Your pal,

– bob