>At 03:11 AM 6/10/2000 -0400, erik aasland wrote:
>What does it mean when gas (and an occasional blueish flame!)
>comes out of the carb? It means that you own a car that Gau and
>I have tried to time.
>
>Erik
>(still have that dent in my chest where the airflow meter used to
>be.)

OH MY GOD!!!

I had forgotten all about this...but while I was spending the TWO MONTHS trying to get my turbo car running (a nightmare salad of L-jet, Callaway, MSD, Mallory distro, Dirk's clock radio, etc.) Erik finally came down for the weekend to help with the car. We were up for two days trying to get that goddamned thing running.

One nite at about 3am we were in my cramped one car garage and Erik had his head under the hood of the car in the vicinity of the turbocharger and I was cranking the car when all of a sudden...

KA-BLAM!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have heard grenades go off beside me, I have detonated claymore mines, I have stood next to M1 tanks when their 120mm cannons have gone off and I have sat on top of a Bradley Infantry Fighting vehicle while Apache attack helicopters have hovered overhead while I called in Close Air Support on a target...but I have never,

Ever,

Heard anything as loud as the backfire coming out of that turbocharger.

It was so damn loud and volatile, it blew out the light bulb on the drop light. All I saw was an eight foot long tongue of bluish/white flame burp out of the turbocharger, blowing the AFM into oblivion. Car alarms started going off all around the neighborhood...dogs were barking, plaster was falling off the ceiling, windows cracked, cows went dry, etc.

Somehow, astonishingly, Erik lived.

Of course, the next day when we got the car running, we had the pleasure of driving to the post office in the world's only turbocharged, fuel-injected Bavaria. With an open header. We destroyed the tires and guibo in a howl of rubber thru third gear. It was absolutely crazy.

My car is very docile now, with carpeting, seats, etc., but back then, when it was just two milk crates, a steering wheel and a turbocharger. It was absolutely insane. No headlites, no taillites, no interior, no nothing. About 2,500 pounds. Heh.

[ 2 in the afternoon | 2 in the morning ]

THANKS AGAIN Erik. You're a freak.

Heh.