Author: Oddity

Flowers are beautiful, sure. Even so, it can be easy to ignore or take for granted, In several anime, the flowers serve as something more than just beautiful objects in scenery. They often mean something.

I find myself blown away by the beauty of some anime scenes, but i;ll inevitably forget some of it after a few years. This post is to serve as a record for me and anyone else who stumbles upon it. Enjoy

Aster

The Aster is associated with memory according to some articles. A better way of translating it is as: keeping in your thoughts, or thinking about someone or something. The Director chose this as a code name for Lev in Irina The Vampire Cosmonaut when asked what flower was for praying for the safety of someone far away.

Chervil

What do the stars look like in space?

 

What do Chervil look like? A little white flower that blooms in bursts that look like fireworks.

Lycoris (Red Spider Lilly)

Lycoris flower, seen in Demon Slayer’s OP

This flower is normally associated with death, and appears in shows like Kimetsu no Yaiba: Demon Slayer. It’s said they flower when someone leaves and you don’t know if they’ll return. In Irina the Vampire Cosmonaut, the Director gives this code name to Irina before launching into space. Fitting, considering the chances of survival. However, rather than emphasize the risk of death with that name, he chose it because to him it means wishing for a safe return: “I hope we meet again soon.”

Sakura (Cherry Blossom)

The purple cherry blossoms that bring hordes of tourists to Japan each spring. If an anime covers more than a year, it’s almost guaranteed you will see them in the show. It could have other subtle meanings, but the main one is just: it’s spring. Studios use them to make magical scenes that will you to go outside and appreciate life. A few memorable ones are below.

A scene from the Clannad Visual Novel
Your Lie in April

Wisteria

Another flower that blows me away in demon slayer is the Wisteria. In the show, they’re used to repel demons, Guess they aren’t a fan of beauty.

Demon Slayer

While visiting japan I went to Ashikaga Flower park and among their other displays was a led Wisteria display.

LED Wisteria Tree at Ashikaga Flower Park

 

                                                         Overview

Creating Parts using Fusion360 isn’t terribly hard, but is a bit of a process and easy to forget. This post will document the steps for future reference.

I learned how to do it from this YouTube video.

Process

  1. Create part in fusion 360
  2. Switch from design to CAM
  3. Setup:
    1. change operation type to cutting
    2. stop box at bottom left corner
    3.  
  4. Click cutting operation
    1. Select tool
      1. Samples
      2. operation type: cutting
      3. Select .04 plasma
    2. cutting mode: auto
    3. feed rate 80 in/min
  5. Geometry
    1. select object
  6. Add Tabs if necessary

Notes

  1. If you have warnings
    1. Linking constraints
      1. lead in too big to fit into hole
      2. change parameters for lead in

As I’m going through my research I’ll use this post to document some of the things I find so I have a guide when I go back to do the wiring for real.

Wiring a kill switch

A kill switch must be wires such that it cuts off both the battery and alternator. If it only breaks the battery then the engine will still run if the engine is running, which can spike the system and damage electronics.

 

 

Materials:

Wire:

Power supply-red

Power ground – black

Sensor supply – orange

sensor ground -green

remaining- white

Process:

  1. Generate component listing
  2. Determine needed connectors

Power Supply

  1. Group components into those that need 12v power supply
  2. Group those into 3 categories
    1. Main power- need power regarless of if engine is running
    2. Enable power- only when engine is running
      1. the positives should be powered by output of the main relay to prevent backfeeding
    3. Fuel pump/other- need to be switched on and off
  3. Size wires (current/resistance= peak draw)
  4. Determine fusing for these components

  5. FD3S Power Supply Sketch from HP Academy
    FD3S Power Supply Sketch from HP Academy Practical Wiring Course

Grounding

  1. Goal is to eliminate having multiple ground paths. This will prevent gremlins when something fails. Star point earthing
  2. You can have two star earthing points but if so, components can only be connected to one or the other not both. i,e, the block and chassis joined by a 2awg ground strap, then one is connected to battery negative. It’s recommended to use the block for all grounding except where impractical(fuel pump)
  3. List all components that need grounding
  4. Size ground wires. Typically power supply and ground are the same, except where one ground supplies two things.

 

Hoping to move towards a career that’s interesting this year, so I spent some time researching and collecting a few pieces of advice I liked: to have decicion making herusitics that help guide you (Naval), and to decide on 6 starting principles and remind yourself of them daily until they’re memorized (Julian Shapiro).

 

Decision Making Heuristics:

  • “When faced with a difficult choice, if you cannot decide, the answer is no” Naval
    • Moving to a new city could be a 10-20 year decision. You have to be set on it since there are nearly endless options and you might miss out on an opportunity that pops up after.
  • “If you have 2 choices to make, and they’re relatively equal difficulty (50–50), take the path that is more difficult and more painful in the short term.” Naval
    • Taking the one that is less painful in the short term often means sacrificing more in the long term due to the brain’s tendency for conflict avoidance.
  • “Make the choice that will leave you more equanimous (calmer and peaceful) in the long term. If you chase happiness instead what you’re actually chasing is pleasure.” Naval
    • This helps avoid regrets
  • If something is expensive to do or make, then ask yourself: would it still be expensive at scale? If the answer is yes then the process is the issue. Elon Musk
    • Another form of this is that simplicity is the end goal in design

 

My 6 Starting Principles:

Inspired by this Julian Shapiro thread.

  1. Create and adventurer card and become the most powerful mage
  2. Be a net creator.
  3. Avoid perfectionism and therefore despair.
    • “Luck is a function of surface area” so you need to make as many moves as you can.
  4. Don’t fall into the “Valley of disappointment.” Growth happens slowly then goes exponential.
  5. Work like a Lion not a Cow. “We have limited time in life, so enormous success can only come from having superior judgement, not from working harder.” -Jordi Alexander
  6. The end result must be beautiful

 

 

 

 

Rising Sun

On the last day of 2021 I spent a bit of time looking through my photos and was shocked to realize memories I thought happened in 2021 were from 2019. Almost all significant recent memories were from 2019. 2020-2021 was a gaping hole.

2 years of some of the most useful years of my life were wasted.

I find the New Year to be relatively meaningless: If you have a goal you should start immediately rather than wait until some arbitrary date. That’s just using it as an excuse to procrastinate.

Nonetheless, New Year’s helped me notice something I’d been ignoring. I can’t let another year go wasted. I’m in my 20s and so is the calendar so to quote Mr. Musk:

“Let;s make the roaring 20’s happen!”

Making the roaring 20s happen

New Year’s is arbitrary and I’m not going to make up goals just because my phone screen says it’s 2022, but I do want to take a moment to focus on a few things I’ve been working on and will continue to focus on.

1. Train to be a Mage (Let me explain)

As far as I can tell, there’s no magic in this world. However…

“Engineering is the closest thing to magic that exists in this world.” Elon Musk

Sometimes I watch shows where characters get reincarnated into a world with magic and find myself wishing I could be one of the mages in the world. I envy those that put their all into their research/training to develop new techniques that influence the world  and allow them to be heroes of the story despite being ridiculed and outcast for it early on.

After hearing this from him I realized we already exist in a world like that but don’t always appreciate it. Science and engineering is the magic of this world. A few examples:

    • Alchemy: Chemistry
    • Flying Carriage: Airplane
    • Healing spell: Surgery and medicine
    • Illusionary world: Virtual Reality
    • Glowing communication orb: Cell phone

It’s just a matter of perspective. Maybe I can’t get on a broom and fly but I can get in a plane and do the same. I can even build the plane myself. In those worlds magic probably doesn’t seem too special to the average person similar to how hopping on a plane and ending up anywhere in the world doesn’t blow to many people’s mind.

My goal is to continue pushing myself to learn in as many fields as possible so I can apply that to creating things that are interesting and help advance humans. It’s way too easy to feel clever in one thing and stick to it. My goal is to avoid that, be greedy and learn everything I can, especially in difficult areas that others avoid so that we can make some magic!

2. Be a net Creator not A Net consumer

It’s too easy to just hole away in a room and work on things for personal enjoyment or challenge but never share them. It’s hard to put those ideas out there to help others, get feedback, and maybe learn something new.

Even though the chances someone reads this are slim to none, saving it on this site rather than a note in my phone is scary and it’s so tempting to make this a private post. I’ll continue working on fixing this avoidance by making the internet a two way medium for me, not just another thing to consume.

I’m not saying my goal is to be an internet star, but rather to open up on the things I’m working on so that I can meet others working on similar things, get feedback, help others, and make something that serves someone other than myself and do it better than I could alone.

3. Make an adventurer card and level up those skills!

Resumes are so boring that it hurts. If I didn’t know who Musk was and was handed his resume, there’s a good chance I’d still find it uninteresting, or just think he’s full of himself and lying. The goal of resumes seem to be to take something interesting, and condense it to something boring yet boastful with no proof.

I’ve been wondering how I could keep track of things I’ve done as well as my skills in an interesting way and actually back it up. The answer came to me in a stupid way:  watching an Isekai anime where the character gets sent to another world as a spider and chooses some useless ability called appraisal that lets her investigate objects as well as see her own stats. Well, this skill turns out to be pretty useful.

How? Well, rather than fighting randomly and hoping you improve, you can look at your skill list and say hmm, this would be useful if I were better at it so let’s work on it. Or maybe you find yourself in an unexpected situation not knowing what to do, but instead of panicking you open up your list and find something you forgot you can do that’s actually super helpful.

A resume should be able to do this, but it sucks at it, and it’s boring! I created this site to accomplish number 2, but it will also help with this goal. I’ll also use it to create my own skills page where I can track skills I have or would like to add as well as my progress on them.

 

4. Stop being a perfectionist: wage war against despair

The past two years if feels like doom and gloom is the narrative being pushed by the most vocal of people. It’s easy to let this creep in and influence your thoughts.

The past two years are a hole in my memory, and part of that might be that I subconsciously chose to forget. I started working and hate almost every minute of it. Despite that, I find myself two years later in the same spot with no idea how. Recently I think I figured it out and plan to work on it.

“In the end…Everybody says ‘I’m bored’ or ‘Isn’t there anything interesting out there?’ like pet phrases. But in reality none of them are really looking for a change.” Sakuta Azusagawa

I heard this a year or so ago, and despite my best efforts to not be like those people. I was. It was only a few weeks ago I understood the reason why people are like this. It sounds dramatic, but it’s despair, and the cause of it is a form of perfectionism.

I’ll start with this: Perfectionism is the enemy of progress. I’ve heard it many times but it had no meaning until now.

I was talking to my boss after being overloaded at work for so long that I burnt out and was ready to quit. He listed out some other possibilities rather than outright quitting but I was so set on quitting I couldn’t consider them. Then, during the conversation he asked me something about what made me hate the work that really stuck:

“have you ever thought if maybe you’re a perfectionist?”  My gut reaction was no. Work was stressful but I knew we just had to get the project done and improve over time, not perfect it. I later realized this question had far more general implications:

Perfectionism in life, not just what I was working on currently

Senior year of high school I had to pick a major, and as a result a career. I probably haven’t moved forward since I had to make that choice. There’s endless choices for careers with information readily available to dive into any of them, how do I pick one and not regret ignoring another? That’s perfectionism in disguise. The rational approach is to pick one, try it, and choose another if you don’t like it. The perfectionist will instead agonize endlessly over the right choice and float through life, or choose one yet never be satisfied with the present as it falls short of perfection. Your profession ends up being despair.

Despair is it’s own nasty thing and brings us back to the end of the quote “but in reality none of them are really looking for a chance.” At first it just seems like these people like to complain about everything but secretly like their situation but I realized it’s the opposite. These high schoolers hate their situation, but in school there’s only ever one right answer. People are taught perfectionism without realizing and are lead to think that 100% is the goal.

But in real life a 100% score is just some imaginary concept. There’s no one answer because everything lies on a spectrum with tradeoffs. So when exploring what their options are, nothing seems right because there’s no perfect option. This is despair. All paths seem closed off so they spend their days complaining, but don’t want to change because they feel they can’t.

I resolve to battle perfectionism so I can move forward for once.

 

Final Thoughts

These goals shouldn’t be considered separate, and all feed into one another. For example I’d like to avoid despairing, but it’s easy to lose confidence when you’re stuck. Having that adventurer card gives me something to look at and remember: oh yeah, I’m a mage with all these cool skills I can use, whereas without it I might ignore those skills and curse my uselessness instead. It’s also impossible to judge yourself fairly, so number 2 is important for evaluating things fairly and finding things you thought you sucked at but are good at and vice versa. Working in a bubble is a bad idea! When it goes pop it will not end well!

Good luck future self or anyone who reads this!

-Oddity

 

 

 Going to use this post as a list of what needs to be done to assemble the engine. There’s two reasons for this: one is to help others in the future and two is to provide myself a dry run of the assembly that will help me find anything I’ve forgot to consider or order/make my life easier when I do it for real.

Sanity checks/ Measurements

  1. Measure piston to bore clearance
    1. this is more of a sanity check than anything else . To verify things are sized properly
  2. Measure crank oil bearing clearance
    1. order the proper bearings if you don’t already have them

Component Balancing and Preparation

  • For this, View the post on balancing the pistons and rods.
  • The crank could be balanced, but we’re using the stock crank and left this out
  • Pre torque the rod bolts several times to ensure things go well in final assembly. It’s important to torque it 4-5 times as read in this article: Blueprint Series: Measuring Rod Bolt Stretch vs. Torque with ARP.
  • Piston Rings: File the rings and set the end gap for them. Also install on the piston
  • Assemble the Piston Rod Assembly
  • Tap all threaded holes in the engine to ensure proper torque is achieved and not hindered due to debris (do this before cleaning engine)
  • bevel any sharp edges i.e. coolant to head galleys, where the pan attaches, etc
  •  

Engine Assembly

  1. Assemble the Piston Rod Assembly after balancing
    1. use moly based assembly lube when installing wrist pin
    2. make sure all are assembled in the same orientation on the piston and in the correct orientation if there are oiling spray holes
    3. when installing oil control ring make sure the two ends face down
    4. make sure top and second ring have correct orientation (look for a mark on the ring)
  2. Install crank bearings
    1. note that there are upper and lower shells and can be identified based on holes
    2. oil the shells after install
  3. Place crankshaft in place
  4. Install main studs
  5. and main caps in order with oil
  6. Install thrust bearings
    1. use moly based assembly lube
  7. Install ARP washers and nuts
    1. Use ARP lubricant on both sides of the washers, underside of nut, and the threads
  8. Torque main caps using factory pattern and ARP specs
  9. Spin crankshaft to ensure there aren’t any issues
  10. Measure thrust clearance and verify within spec

Install Pistons and Rods

  1. Apply oil to bearing shells and ring pack and piston skirts
  2. Rotate engine and using an 81mm ring compressor(make sure it’s clean and oiled), insert pistons into the engine and attach rod cap
  3. Torque rod bolts(don’t forget ARP grease) and use stretch gauge when possible.
    1. note that you should do this based on stretch on the bench to figure out what the equivalent torque value should be
    2. do in two stages (i.e. 20, 60)

Cylinder Head Assembly

 

 

 

 

For most engines, rebuilding can be a straightforward process of googling a few articles online, picking parts from a catalogue or even a kit and then the fun starts a few weeks later and you can build your engine.

For the 1GZ-FE, it’s a different beast:

Documentation is rare to nonexistent

If it exists, it’s in Japanese or roughly translated with little explanation

Buying parts might have months in lead time as you wait for them to ship from Japan, and  current supply chain conditions aren’t helping.

This article, or series of articles, is my attempt at documenting what was involved in the process and where we sourced our parts.

Part of it is so that crazy people like you have a guide that I didn’t have the luxury of, but a lot of it is so when I come back in a year or so after blowing the engine spectacularly I can figure out how to do it again.

 

 

1. Workshop Manual

The first thing I bought was a workshop manual for the engine. For most engines this is a simple task, not the case here.

These are rare enough as is, and by the time you read this they might be harder to find than a 2000GT. I was searching online for whether a workshop manual existed and found a few photos on Imgur of what could be one. It had a few diagrams in it that I guessed might help with engine assembly so I decided to buy one.

I translated the text to grab the characters I needed and googled them. After a few hours of searching I found a few on a website called Buyee and bid on it. For $100 I obtained something that saved me thousands.

Unfortunately, this manual is in Japanese. Thankfully there are pictures to help me find what I need and I can translate the text to English as needed. Since these are so rare, I plan to scan the entire thing to preserve it for future builders, and may even translate it with one of my Japanese friends as I go.

I’ll attach it somewhere on this site when I do.

1GZ-FE Workshop Manual Cover

 

Why it’s helpful:

A workshop manual tells you how to assemble and disassemble things. Most processes are self explanatory, but things like reassembling the cams and timing chains as well as setting the timing is not.

It also contains other things like bearing clearances and torque specs.

 

 

Tools

Measurement tools

In order to get parts you need to make certain measurements and having the right tool set helps. This will be detailed in a separate post that will be linked.

 

 

Generic Tools

This engine is wonderfully designed. with various forms of 10mm and 14mm sockets you can take apart almost anything in the engine. There are a few specific tools like huge allen head sockets that are required here and there, and I’ll keep a running list as I find new tools.

 

 

Engine Internals

Crankshafts and Camshaft Bearings

Camshaft and Crank Bearings

Pistons, Connecting Rods, and Conrod Bearings

 

Pumps

Water Pump

Oil Pump

 

Bolts & Studs

Choosing tools to Build an engine

What started off as a cheap engine is quickly rising up to become what could be an expensive one,

As a result, cheaping out on things is not an option in some cases. while researching how to build an engine I’m finding many processes that need to be done that I didn’t expect and require special tools. To an expert these might be obvious things: like setting the ring gap, but to the inexperienced builder these seem like things you’d expect to be done when you purchase them.

 

Some of these tasks seem like they could be entirely skipped and there are many items that could be purchased cheaper. However, when it comes to the most complex, dynamic, and expensive part of the car: the engine, I refuse to destroy it simply because I was too lazy to check a tolerance or too cheap to buy the right tool.

 

In this post I’ll document the tools I purchased and update it with links to how I’m using each of them as I go along. Let’s get started:

 

Ring Compressor:

A ring compressor is a simple device made to compress the rings on a piston so that it can be installed in a block.

There are two options:

  • A universal winding type
  • A billet size-specific type

 

The universal type works by placing a coiled piece of metal around the ring/piston and winding it to tighten it, and works for almost any bore size.

The billet type works for a single bore size

 

At first glance the universal type seems like the obvious choice. However, you’re more likely to damage a ring.

Since the 1GZFE has 12 cylinders, there’s a high probability a ring is damaged and the engine gets ruined. As a result, the billet one was an easy choice.

I chose a Wiseco 81mm tapered piston ring compressor sleeve RCS08100 for $55 on eBay.