What do you mean the weekend is half over?

Damn, Sunday got here quick! Oh well, good food and lots of activities have a tendency to do that to a guy.

Speaking of lots of activites, you can picture me hanging Christmas lights and trimming the tree today because that is what I’ll be doing.

If you’ve got some time, Joe of The View From North Central Idaho Blog and Boomershoot fame has a request that we actually give a hand to Washington Ceasefire by taking their poll (second box down on the right side). Since I have a fairly decent contingent of Washington State readers, take a second and go here to help this anti-gun group answer this question,

“How serious do you think handgun violence is in Washington?”

I’m not going to tell you how to vote as I know that you all can think for yourselves, but take a look at the possible answers and vote how you feel. You folks from outside Washington can vote as well, because if there were a handgun violence problem here in Washington, you’d know by our nationwide record breaking crime statistics.

Since we don’t have those kind of stats and the only places that do also have draconian gun control laws like the ones Washington Ceasefire wants to get enacted, I think you can figure out which way to vote as well. BTW, our side is currently leading in that poll, but we could always use more votes.

Once you’ve done that, you should go on over to Gullyborg’s Resistance is Futile Blog and catch the last Carnival of Cordite for the year. It’s a doozy with loads of gunny goodness.

And last but not least, swing on over to this actually decent LA Times article on the Bugatti Veyron 16/4 that I found at Knowledge is Power.

If it looks fast, that’s because it is, with a record setting factory top speed of over 250mph.

FYI, for those who don’t already know, the 16 in the model name stands for the 16 cylinder engine and the 4 is for the number of turbos attached to the intake/exhaust system of said engine, helping it create close to 1000hp, with a 0-60 of 2.1 seconds, a 0-200 in 20 seconds and a maxing out at 253mph in just under a minute.

Make sure you read into the last section of the article (past the stuff about VW’s Piech) and read what they had to do to get the car to go above 225.

I’ve been reading about this car and its various changes in bodystyle and powerplant, among other things, for years and it finally looks as if I’ll be able to get a look at it. My big question is how they are managing the forced air question.

Multi-turboed cars have the problem (albeit a minor one) of losing cylinder pressure between when one turbo (or set of turbos) spin down and the other one(s) spin up. For instance, the Toyota Supra TT lost 12-16lbs of pressure and the Nissan 300ZX TT lost 8-12lbs between turbo cycles. Not really a major detail, but if you don’t watch out, you can easily get caught in the difference, possibly leading weird/harrowing cornering situations, especially in a car with independent rear suspension (if you want to hear more about this, email me and I’ll bore you for a few paragraphs). I want to know how the system on the Bugatti works and none of the writings available on the car will tell me if they’re running simultaneous or sequential or the make/model/size/etc of the turbos the Bugatti is using. I know VW is behind all of this and I know who they like to use, but I can’t see that manufacturer making something this potent. Minor details, I know, but these are the questions that make me, me.