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Monday, December 8th, 2008
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10:03 am
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Does anybody in the world believe that the soldier says, 'My leg is nearly dropping off, but I shall go on till it drops; for after all I shall enjoy all the advantages of my government obtaining a warm-water port in the Gulf of Finland.' . . . . Whatever starts wars, the thing that sustains wars is something in the soul; that is something akin to religion. It is what men feel about life and about death. A man near to death is dealing directly with an absolute; it is nonsense to say he is concerned only with relative and remote complications that death in any case will end. If he is sustained by certain loyalties, they must be loyalties as simple as death. They are generally two ideas, which are only two sides of one idea. The first is the love of something said to be threatened, if it be only vaguely known as home; the second is dislike and defiance of some strange thing that threatens it. . . . Men are moved in these things by something far higher and holier than policy; by hatred. When men hung on in the darkest days of the Great War, suffering either in their bodies or in their souls for those they loved, they were long past caring about details of diplomatic objects as motives for their refusal to surrender. Of myself and those I knew best I can answer for the vision that made surrender impossible. It was the vision of the German Emperor's face as he rode into Paris. This is not the sentiment which some of my idealistic friends describe as Love. I am quite content to call it hatred; the hatred of hell and all its works, and to agree that as they do not believe in hell they need not believe in hatred.
--GK Chesterton
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(Pour Me a Guinness!)
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| Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008
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11:43 am
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They say, "God told me", or "God replied to me". And yet most of the time they are talking to themselves.
-- St. John of the Cross
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(2 Pints Poured | Pour Me a Guinness!)
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| Thursday, January 17th, 2008
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2:29 pm
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Quatuor vero sunt maxima comprehendendæ veritatis offendicula, quæ omnem quemcumque sapientem impediunt, et vix aliquem permittunt ad verum titulum sapientiæ pervenire: videlicet fragilis et indignæ auctoritatis exemplum, consuetudinis diuturnitas, vulgi sensus imperiti, et propriæ ignorantiæ occultatio cum ostentatione sapientiæ apparentis.
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(2 Pints Poured | Pour Me a Guinness!)
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| Wednesday, May 9th, 2007
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3:44 pm - Driving Experience: VF-supercharged E39 540i--aka My New Pet Snail
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As many of you know, I bought my E39 540i from Bimmerwerkz.com user Eric S. back about seven months ago. It had 130,000 miles on it and had been very well-maintained, with many very tasteful upgrades, all of which I would have done myself anyway. Since then, the car has become a Dinan 5 with further suspension work, a Dinan free-flowing cat-back exhaust, and software. I previously drove an E36 M3, and while I was very impressed with the 540's greater torque and horsepower numbers, I knew somewhere down deep that I would eventually want to go F/I--and sooner rather than later.
After a lot of thought and budget-calculating, I settled on the VF Engineering supercharger kit. The numbers for the kit from the VF dynos are 415 horsepower and 400 ft-lbs of torque at 6psi. That is running on 91 octane California gas and with the stock exhaust system. Given that I always run on 93 octane and have a free-flowing exhaust, I would imagine that my numbers are now a tad higher than that. For comparison's sake, the numbers for a stock E39 540 are 290 hp and 324 ft-lbs of torque, and the numbers for a stock E39 M5 are 394 hp and 369 ft-lbs of torque.
Before, I drove a highway beast. Drop it into 3rd gear at 55 mph, and I practically ruled the road.
Now, I drive a highway monster. Huge gobs of power are available in every gear. Changing gears when I'm really going for it means that the car takes a HUGE lunge forward when the clutch engages. The exhaust sounded great before. Now it sounds deeper, bassier, meaner at low RPM, and at high RPM, it practically sings. I haven't taken it to a track or dynoed it yet, but I have every confidence that I'll be quite satisfied with the results when I do.
What is most impressive to me is the smoothness of the results. The E39 540, despite its huge amounts of stock torque, accelerates more smoothly than any other car I'd owned due to the rail-flat torque curve. The supercharged version has a much steeper torque curve...but it is equally flat. It presses me firmly back into my seat when I give it the beans, no question. If it was the ultimate driving machine before, I can't even think of adjectives to describe it now.Needless to say, I'm on cloud nine right now.
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(2 Pints Poured | Pour Me a Guinness!)
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8:24 am
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| Sunday, March 25th, 2007
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10:15 am
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| Saturday, March 19th, 2005
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1:43 am
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As of March 19, 2005, I have converted all entries of this journal to friends-only.
In order to access my LiveJournal, you will need a free account on Livejournal.com, and I'll happily add you to my friends list.
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(38 Pints Poured | Pour Me a Guinness!)
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aristotle2002's journal
