Random Thought 7 Engines

Engines confuse me. Not mechanically speaking. I understand all that garbage. It’s what manufacturers do with their engines that confuses me. For instance, Chrysler has a 3.6 Liter Pentastar V6 that has been a very solid engine that can be found in almost every single vehicle that Chrysler rolls out it’s even in the Ram trucks.

Next year a 3.2 V6 will be put into the Jeep Cherokee and I’m having a really hard time figuring out why. I don’t think the engine will overpower the chassis. They put the 3.6 in everything from midsized cars to minivans. Maybe they just want to change things up. That would be weird considering the engine has only been around for three years, but who am I to judge.

My point of this whole thing is that manufacturers get so caught up in making niche engines, or trying to beat out competitors for five horsepower, even ten. Some manufacturers are caught up in enough to completely redesign or scrap an engine to get there. Yeah, sometimes engines do definitly need to be scrapped or redesigned. Like Ford's 6.0L Powerstroke. Bless it's little head gasket blowing heart. If I built engines, which I don't, it’d go about like this.

Ten engine options.

Three naturally aspirated gas, three turbocharged gas, and four turbodiesels.

I’d stick with the same few displacements, say 1.5L I4, 3.5L V6, and 5.5 V8 for a LONG time. The blocks will stay the same. If I want to redesign a better cylinder head or fuel injection system every four years or so, okay. But most of the internals are going to same. Retooling and retraining takes time and money. Time and money that is usually wasted.

I really wish manufacturers would start cranking out diesel cars as well. They get SUCH good mileage, and they only cost a few thousand more. They more than make up for it in maintenance intervals, longevity, and at the pump.

Anywho... there's my random thought on engines.

Random Thought 6 Camping

You know, I've realized that I hate traditional camping. I'll tell you why.

Traditional camping consists of pitching a meager tent, sleeping on a foam pad the thickness of a blanket, not showering for days, and eating completely burnt hot dogs. It's just not that fun. The only way I survive comfortably in the outdoors is in a motor home with dirt bikes or a boat on a trailer behind us.

Most people would tell me to go on a hike or something, but I hate hiking more than I hate fishing. And I pretty much loathe fishing. You sit there for four hours and get two bite that never yield fish. I can stand to fish for about ten minutes. Until I get bored out of my mind and consider taking one of those nice, sharp looking rocks to my head. Unless the CATCHING is good. Then I can last about an hour. Which will typically fill your limit. I've been my dad's little fishing buddy for years now, but it just doesn't jive with my any more. Hunting I'm totally cool with, but I think that's because I'm out walking around and looking for something. Not just sitting on the bank of a river, or in the bow of a boat getting a massive sunburn. With fishing, you just don't do ANYTHING. So fishing while camping is lame, in my opinion.

Hiking? Everyone loves hiking! NO. Hiking is for hippies that want to get in touch with nature and people that have legs that are better than mine. I can stand to hike for about a mile before I get bored, and then about 3 miles before I want to cut my legs off and crawl back to camp. So hiking is no bueno.

Hiking and fishing are done, what are you going to do now? Play card games? Yeah right.

Don't get me wrong guys, I can stand this kind of camping. I've been to Scout Camps and haven't showered for a week. But it just sucks. If you're not a gear head, camping is worthless. I just got back from a camping trip. I slept in a tent, ate burnt hot dogs and sat around reading a book.

The only good thing about it was being with my family, and getting away from school. It was a great time. But it could have been so much better if we had my grandparents RV, our boat or our dirt bikes.

Camping just isn't as fun without gasoline.

Random Thought 5 Fathers Day

Well, as I lay in my bed this Father's Day night, wondering what I'm going to fall asleep to on Netflix now that I've finished watching Scrubs, I remembered a conversation I had with my family when we were out at my paternal grandparents house about childhood memories. As my dad and uncle relayed stories of the childhood and how blessed they were to have parents that let them have motorcycles and buy dangerously fast cars, and how my grandpa spent the time to teach them how to work on the cars and do it right.

It all brought me back to how blessed I am right in this instant. I'm blogging about this crap because my dad and grandpa (Both grandparents actually) instilled a passion for gearheadedness (some say bullheadedness as well) and how much that has effected my life. If you know me, my WORLD revolves around internal combustion. From the earliest days of rocking out to our Van Halen tape in the old 67 Plymouth Barracuda. Fastback Formula S, (we still have the tape, and the car) to nowadays when we're leaning over the hood of my 28 Ford Model A Sport Coupe. I think I've spent more time in my garage with grease up to my elbows than I have sleeping and my dad has been there every step of the way.

Because of my dad, I can pretty much rebuild a lawnmower blindfolded. Because of my dad, people I hardly know ask for my "professional opinion" on what is wrong with their car/mower/scooter because they know my dad, and they know I've been right beside him in the garage my whole life. It's bit of a blessing and a curse. 

For one, everyone things I am a genius when it comes to fixing cars, but I'm not. My cars don't break because I know how to maintain them properly, so 90% of the time, when I'm in the garage, it's tinkering on a small engine. Lawnmower, dirt bike or snowmobile, because they are much more prone to failure because they usually run at much higher RPM's and require more upkeep because they wear at a faster rate. The reason my dad knows so much about cars is because he had to rebuild half of his when he was a younger man. I was given a perfect running truck that I still haven't touched since I started driving it. I can tell you about the cylinder shut off system in the new Chrysler Hemi's but I can't tell you how to troubleshoot them.

Even still, I can BS my way through most stuff, or at least give a general idea. And I'm pretty thankful for that. About the only time we've ever had to send something in to be fixed is our transmission, and that's because that's just a pain in the butt to work on.

So yeah, I'm thankful for my dad. I'm thankful for my grandpa's too. They gave my parents the knowhow to do a lot of cool stuff. Something as simple as maintaining a dirt bike just comes second nature to me, but some people don't even know how to change their spark plugs.

Random Thought 4 Silent Bliss

Two for one on the posts today kiddo's! I'm bored tonight

Again, if you're in my family, you might as well just go back to Facebook, because you've already heard this a million times.

I wrote a book. 

Me being a guy, you're thinking maybe spy novel, with fast cars, tuxedo's and scantily clad women with exotic names that end up dying in the end. Nope.

Maybe it's an action thriller about a teenage solider that illegally enlisted in the army and is shoved into the heat of battle on the beaches of Normandy? Nope.

Dear gizzards, it's not another zombie piece is it? Not this one. But I'm working on it.

This my friends is Silent Bliss. And it is a romance novel. Straight up "boy-girl fall in love and over come the odds" kind of stuff. And I'm a dude. I know.

Weird right? And what am I doing writing a book when I can't even make a half-cheeked attempt at a blog about nothing?

Honestly, I wonder that myself sometimes. Silent Bliss is my stab at being an author (totally just typed that as "other" for a second. hahaha) and so, it being my first book, with only a high school diploma and semester of college under my belt, I wrote a book. Well, technically it started the summer after Junior year. So I didn't even have that to my name.

My English teacher (Thanks Mr. Owen) got me into writing by forcing us to write a short story. I'm really glad he did, granted that first story was absolute crap. It still is. I've revised it ten times and it's just crap. There's no plot line. It's just me rambling on about this fictitious alternate reality I created for myself to explore what I would do if my family is rich. Just like how I ramble on about crap on this blog.

Turns out the whole rich kid life would be pretty much the same, at least I hoped and portrayed that it would be. Only, I'm a little more reckless and have a lot nicer toys.

So, Junior year, after being frustrated with this original short story that turned into a trilogy of crap, I started to write a spy novel. Sadly, that spy novel has vanished. Probably because it was crap too. That's the curse of being happy with a delete button. Who knows, maybe its on some flash drive buried in my room that I'll find in ten years.

I keep getting off topic. Curse my self-diagnosed ADD. Okay. This spy novel I wrote,  started with these teenagers finding out they were spy's.(Original right? No It's not.) Then somehow the plot line had them going to a motocross race the next day.

Well, this was about the time I found out about Ashley, and so that somehow evolved into this spy hitting it off with a female rider. Then it evolved into it's own plot line as a normal  teen hitting it off with a female rider, that happened to be deaf. Then, knowing that people might jump to conclusions, and not wanting a lawsuit on my hands if the thing ever got published, I changed A LOT of stuff in the book for "right to privacy" laws, copyright infringement, and all that fun stuff.

But the integrity of the story stayed the same.

And that's the story of how a high school English class spawned a novel about a deaf chick.

Random Though 3 Ashley

Right now, I don't even know if anyone is even looking at this blog. It says 17 page views, but that very well could be my contribution alone. Maybe I should hook this up with my Twitter and Facebook or something. I'll figure it out later.

Anywho..... You're probably wondering what the post title is about.

Well, if you know me personally, you probably already know, and you might as well just wait for the next blog post. Seriously though, you might as well just go back to Facebook or whatever you were doing. You know who you are.

A few years back, I started to write as a hobby. That’ll come next blog post.

In my search for a good book about dirt biking, I came across a girl. Her name is Ashley Fiolek and she's got bigger balls than most guys out there. And I say that with all the respect in the world. I really do.

Ashley rides dirt bikes professionally. I know right? Crazy. I didn't even know they had a professional women's racing until I found out about her. I found her autobiography, read it, and was hooked. This girl turned pro at eighteen, has won four Women’s Motocross championships, two X Games gold medals, and was the first women rider to have a full factory sponsorship. This chick rips!

Oh yeah, did I mention she was born profoundly deaf? Yeah. She can't hear her bike.

Almost forgot about that, sorry.

I'll let that soak in for a second.

Times up.

I started to wonder what it would be like to meet her. With her being deaf and all, how would one strike up a conversation, or even ask her for an autograph? Well, I started researching how people become deaf (Ashley's was due to viral complications in her mom’s pregnancy) how people handle being deaf (American Sign Language is harder than it looks) and how every day life is for the deaf community (try just ordering a hamburger without speaking) and as I started learn everything, I realized how insane the feat Ashley has pulled. Not only has she devoted her life to a sport that is pretty shutout for girls, with little pay, little to no TV recognition, and getting on and staying on a factory team is near impossible.

All of this piled on her, and she can't even hear her bike. She’s a 5’ 2” 100 pound chick that’s throwing a bike around that’s more than twice her weight. You thought she had balls before, didn’t you?

Ashley got me back into racing. And by “back into racing” I mean watching racing, not actually racing. I’m not that fit. So I started watching the races on the weekends and made it a goal to go watch her and all the rest of the guys and girls race. It had been nearly a decade since I had been to a race. I needed to go back. Plus I had to meet this chick.

So I asked my dad if we could go to the Thunder Valley Motocross in Denver just after my high school graduation. Sweet present right? Yeah. It was. You think motocross is cool on TV? Trying being literally three feet away from over forty bikes as they come screaming off a downhill jump and before slamming on their brakes and blasting around a corner into another jump. It’s insane. I have smelled race gas, and it is sweet. Burns your eyes though. High octane Go-Juice right there.

It was funny to watch the riders line up at the starting gate. The guys were all business. In the zone, spitting fire out of their noses as they stared down the other guys at the gate. The girls on the other hand were passing around iPods and playfully hitting each other, only to go out and beat each other up on the track. It was a good laugh.

Other than the awesome racing (One) of the best parts was getting to meet Ashley, and the rest of the American Honda Racing team. Up and coming guys like Eli Tomac, Justin Barcia and Will Hahn were at the free shin-dig we were at, so we didn’t have to pay for “pit passes” to go and meet riders at the actual races, which was nice. It let us watch more racing and saved us $15 a pop. Win-Win. I brushed up on some ASL and asked Ashley for an autograph, picture, thanked her and wished her luck. Not going to lie. She seemed impressed. Or maybe that’s my overactive brain trying to make myself look cool. Yeah. It’s probably that.

At the races, there was a couple hour rain delay between half of the motos (individual class races) but the weekend was awesome. James Stewart, one of the fastest (and cockiest) guys went down hard and was out for most of the season, and Ashley went down in her second moto and suffered a fractured tailbone and a moderate concussion. But she came back to win her fourth championship. She’s a beast.

The worst part of the whole weekend was the ten hour drive to and from Denver. Good thing they have a race three hours away from me this year. Utah Nationals, here I come!

Random Thought 2 Car Audio

Okay

I, like most of the rest of the people on this planet, hearing and deaf, can appreciate a good audio system. (The deaf can feel the sound, friends. Take a drive in a car that has a subwoofer in the trunk, or under the seat and you'll understand. They still like music.) The problem with most systems nowadays is that they are complete overkill.

Take for instance, my1996 Dodge Ram. It has six speakers; a pair of 2 inch tweeters in the top of the door, a 5 1/2 inch mid range below it, and a 6x9 low range in the back of the cab. They were the top of the line Infinity Audio package when the truck came out, and they are still pretty great sounding speakers.

Today, the Ram has an optional Alpine 9 speaker audio system. Now, I think this is the limit on speakers. A tweeter and speaker for each door. If you want a subwoofer, go for it, but if you have some good mid-low range speakers, you'll be cherry.

Now here's where it gets really sad. The Dodge Charger and Chrysler 300 have the option to get a 19 speaker system. WHAT? I want to know where the crap they're fitting all these speakers? Oh wait, I do.
3 on the dash, 4 in the front doors, 2 in the back doors and 4 on the rear deck lid. I've heard this system is pretty freaking awesome, but I just can't get over the fact that there are that many speakers. If this system is so high quality, I would think you would need less speakers, or they would integrate the speakers into eachother so you'd have a tweeter and mid in the same package.

But what to I know, I'm just a consumer.

Random Thought 1 Trim Levels

Well. This is a blog, and what are blogs good for? Nothing really. Other than ranting about crap. That'll probably end up being what this is all about. Usually car, motorcycle or snowmobile related. Sometimes it'll just be a rant about the stupidity of people. There are a lot of stupid people out there.

So, for my firs random thought, I want to know why car companies have so many trim levels on their cars. Lets take Dodge for instance. I am a hardcore Chrysler fan, so I will relate most everything to them.

Deal with it. (pre-rant)

On the Dodge Charger, their full-size bite-your-head-off sedan, they have basically 12 trim models. TWELVE.

The SE, SXT, SXT Plus, R/T, R/T Plus, R/T Road and Track (which is a redundant name, R/T stood for Road and Track in the 60's and 70's) R/T Max, SRT Super Bee, SRT Core, and SRT. Don't forget the Blacktop and Daytona special editions.

Now, if we look at these trims, they are pretty much in $1,000 to $2,000 increments. If you compair all the models side by side, the differences in them are the finnicky little options. But, if you want to get heated seats in your SE, you're going to have to spend $3,000 more to get there, and that will come with the eight way adjustable seats and the heated mirrors. Plus some other cosmetic junk. Why on earth does it cost that much just to get heated seats? And what if I don't want that stupid eight way adjustable seat? I just want it heated! No. You can't have it.

And another thing, What's the point of having higher trim levels when I can get almost every option available on the Charger on that basic SXT model? Yeah, I can't get the 5.7 Hemi in the SXT, but I think that's what should define trim levels. The engines.

Back in 2009 when Dodge introduced new trim levels to the Challenger, there were three models. The SE, The R/T, and the SRT8. These models were defined by their engines. The SE had a 300 hp V6, the R/T had a 375 hp V8, and the SRT8 had a 425 hp V8. There were hardly any "packages" within these, other than the standard Smokers Group. That's how it should be done.

The only problem with this, was the sunroof wasn't available on the SE, only on the R/T and SRT. You couldn't have a sunroof and a V6. WHY NOT? So they came out with other trims that did. Then on these higher trim levels, they put in other standard features, remote start, premuim cloth seats, yada, yada, yada.

Why don't manufactures just build a car and let people have what they want on it. If I want a top of the line SRT8 with no infotainment system and cloth seats, I should be able to have one. It's not hard to build it. If car companies really wanted to be cool, they would cater to the customer. Give them a car and let them throw on the options. If it takes an hour for them to pick out their stuff, GO FOR IT. I've seen women look at two pairs of shoes for three hours only to buy neither of them.

If a car company wants to differentiate their big engined models, put a badge on the outside.They already do that anyway. I feel that companies, and people as well, want to spout out that they have 2014 Chrysler 300C Ultra-High-Super-Duper-Better-Than-Yours Luxury Edition and then have a badge on the back of the car that says that. All of it. It's pointless and vain.

Half the time, real car people end up customizing their cars how they want them anyway, why can't we do that from the factory?

Anywho . . . Rant Done.