The Waiting Episode 1 Part 2

After a significant amount of annoyance to my wife, friends, and strangers, I finally made some decisions about the car and am waiting for the results of those decisions to arrive.

The first major decision was made after spending hours, that I should have spent sleeping, pouring over a mountain of turbo specifications. I had a few selected and then finally took the advice of a friend and called a local shop that actually spent their entire day working on these types of problems. The shop did recommend one of the three turbos I had been considering and answered all of my questions in the disassociated but knowledgable way I've come to expect from a speed-shop answering a phone. They probably only make a sale once for ever ten to twenty callers, so they develop a significant apathy about calls that start with, "I'd like to talk to someone about..." Or they expect to give a recommendation and be immediately hassled over the price. As much as I do love to hassle a sales person, I do tend to feel bad for these guys. They are trying to make a living running a business that caters to a demographic that is notorious for using price as their only selection criteria. This particular shop gets it even worse as they tend to cater to vehicles driven by younger, less knowledgable, and even more financially strained drivers.

And the last bit is dealing with gauges. The little dials and instruments seen on a typical factory dash board is generally lying to driver. Auto manufacturers decided long ago that the average driver simply will not understand why the needles move so much on their oil pressure and water temperature indicators. There are other useful bits of information to know also. On a higher powered turbocharged car it is useful know the oil temperature, the fuel mixture, the exhaust gas temperature, and the amount of pressure being produced by the turbo. Part of the build goal for this car is to avoid decorating the interior like a carnival ride with lights and needles pointing everywhere. My hope was to allow people to sit in the car and find it to be unobtrusive, easy to drive, and brutally quick.

My initial thought was that I could find a nice looking gauge that integrated more than one of these read outs into a single display. The results of the research of that thought proved I was entirely correct -- if I was willing to spend $400 or more to get the proper setup. I decided to eschew with this and get a few repair parts for the gauges I already own. This will lead to a more carnival like atmosphere in the car but it will be a savings of over $300.

So now I wait, the turbo is schedule to ship from the manufacturer today and the gauge parts are scheduled to arrive tomorrow.