Some of you may have noticed an abrupt disappearance, others may not care as much, but for those who did, firstly, thank you, and secondly, I was busy, both with work, and my recently acquired toy.
It all started with a sudden surge of interest in cars, I mean, there always had been but for some reason I would end up getting car magazines and at the end of the month I'd end up with a bundle and my room would look like a Speedworks waiting room. But anyway, so many things caught my attention, and there were so many things to get, to change and one of them was actually the RSM meter.
What it does is it basically displays your vehicle rev and speed, hence rev/speed meter, plus you can do a lot of other things like calculate 0-100/200/300 or even a 100m sprint, among other things, all displayed in a nice VFD(vacuum fluorescent display) that adjusts its brightness according to its surroundings, which is quite cool especially when you drive into a dark carpark and you can see it glowing back at you.
Well anyway, one fine day I got an SMS from a friend asking me if I was interested in a second hand RSM and SAFC. I looked at it for a while, then thought...what a coincidence! hehe, I was getting very anxious and excitable, only because I had initially intended to get it in the first place. Anyway I got the goods, and that was late at night. Tomorrow was another day, and perhaps the most important of all, because I'll be fitting both the meters in my car.
The next morning brought me to Speedworks. Well, let's just say that they were too expensive, so I got referred to another place in Sunway to do the installation. It was done in a jiffy, but I sincerely hoped that he wired the ground properly because the manual was very specific about how the device should be grounded. I wouldn't want to damage my engine or anything because of accessories. But anyway nothing seemed to happen out of the ordinary, and the car was running, the meters were running beautifully, its luminous fluorescent blue screen displaying the car's status in a variety of options, text, graph, digital meters, line? haha, choices abound, and the road ahead looked a lot less interesting than the readings on the screen.
But I needed to go get the devices tuned properly, so I went back to Speedworks, coz they were the only ones, well, the only ones I knew who could do a dyno test, which would also concurrently tune my SAFC, which stands for Super Air Flow Controller. Basically it controls the air flow into the engine.
Dyno test, that was new, I should've brought my camera coz it isn't every day that someone puts your cars on rollers, secures it with harnesses and then steps on it until the RPM meter goes well into the red line. But as soon as the test started I could see people starting to form a crowd around the cordoned off area where my car sat, well it was making the most noice in the workshop, and it did worry me a little about my gearbox, you know. But for that moment, all the attention was taken away from the 2 EVO VII's, a modification-in-process Elise, some really nice BMWs and there was this Toyota that I particularly liked. It was an import corolla if I'm not mistaken. Well, for that moment, I was interested to know what people thought at that time, because frankly I was feeling 'ouch, watch the gearbox...' maybe some of them thought 'what a dumba**', I did read somewhere that it takes a few months of the engine life but then it was worth it. At least I thought it was, I got a nice chart at the end, and I finally knew that my car's generating 110bhp from the engine.
The test drive. Well I couldn't find a road to really push the car, so I didn't, it felt smoother somewhat, but deceleration tends to be slightly jerky. So much so that my car actually stalled when I was at a junction, and that was very alarming. So all night I was trying to figure out why my car, which had just been really tuned, stall? So throughout the rest of today I did some reading, I read through the manuals countless times, and in the evening I decided to retune the engine at the lower RPM Levels. It was something I had never done so I don't know if that was advisable, but I went for it anyway.
I did a +1.0% correction at 1000rpm on the Lo throttle. The engine seemed alright. So I decided to take it for a slow drive.
Nothing happened, that was good, it was all smooth. So I decided to test out the car. It was about 7pm so it wasn't exactly the best time nor place to test cars but then I was really, really curious. So I set the RSM for a 0-100km/h test to see how long it'd take. My stock satria with a used K&N clocked 12 seconds, that was when the engine was relatively new, so now with a new K&N filter and the SAFC, I stopped my car completely, then just stepped on it. Some might say that was a stupid move, since it was a winding road and a bumpy one too, plus I overtook about 3 cars on a 1 1/2 lane road, I managed to clock 00'10"51 which was about 10 seconds assuming I was on a straight road. I was feeling quite happy about that.
Some might say, does it really matter? Well, when you really think about it, perhaps not. But I think that was perhaps the most exhilarating 10 seconds for today, and I decided to tell you about it.:)
PS: I've been told by a few ppl my last posting sounded too technical. I just wanted to top that, but not intentionally, I will write something normal the next time around, I hope...
