About Lugnut -- Patrick Malone

Oh no. Doug's going to think less of me. I helped my neighbor slip a 350 into his old RX. One reason for doing so was that his motor went belly up and there were no replacements to be found. Now, get this, this was just about the cheapest and cheesiest transplant I've ever seen. We had to leave the hood off permanently since the only radiator we could afford was too tall to allow it to close. Because of a lack of funds we didn't do any front end modifications to handle the extra weight. The car proved to be dangerous but the owner had fun. He later put some slicks on it and added nitrous and went street racing against my advice. He is a fun guy and luckily outlived the Mazda.

I can't remember the cars name but another friend took the original rotary coupe from the 80's and inserted a motor that dyno'd at over 1000 h.p. before the four stages of nitrous kicked in. It made approximately 2500 h.p. on the bottle and ran in the low, low seven second range. This was a real street legal car that was driven regularly. This fellow hauled this thing around the U.S. competing in the fastest street car shootout races for big bucks. Deep down he was a street racer and lost his life behind the wheel of this car in a spectacular crash while racing another car for pocket change. When I later drove out to the crash site of this lonesome two lane road I found that the quarter mile measured an actual third of a mile with a huge dip and corner at the end of the straight away. His wife and daughter were spectators at this late night illegal event.

I like Doug's car a lot and yes, it is very sexy. Too bad that he is flying into Miami. If his car were there I'd love to be a passenger while he pushes it to the maximum. From what I've read about these cars the cornering is unreal. That would probably raise my heart rate higher than listening to tonearm and cartridge changes.

Gimme a BOSS HOG!!!

Ron,
Sorry for the confusion. Overhead cams? What are cams? What do you use them for?

RX8man,
Great website! I love winding the rotary out and I'm not into drag, on street, track or nightclub, but that's some cool stuff. Have you posted on rx8club.com? Lots of modders there.

John,
Austin who? Them's fightin' words baby!

Pat,
We could always try to wangle a test drive out of a dealer. No good roads near Miami though. Everything's pretty flat and straight AFAIK. Give me New England hills or your mountains for RX8 driving.

Doug,

There are always residental streets. They still have corners in Miami, no? he he

Speaking of cars and Connecticut, I spent quite a few weekends back in the '70s with a Lotus 23B at Lime Rock Park in SCCA C-SportsRacer class competition.

Lime Rock is a fun track. The roads around it aren't bad either.

Cams? Yes the Lotus had a pair of them, on top of a hemi-headed big valve 1300(1600 de-stroked to make C class), short ported with dual Weber DCOE, dry sump, mid engine, 5 speed Hewland transaxle with Elektron hubs, all tube space-frame chassis, Bruill custom bodywork, and all Colin Chapman design and handling. It was originally the Lotus Factory entry in the Nurburgring 1000km(w/twin fuel tanks) with Jim Clark behind the wheel. We got it later, and raced it as a C-SportsRacing class car.

That was about 215hp at 11,500rpm, not bad in those days, out of only 80 cubic inches displacement. The car weighed just over 900 pounds. No turbos, no injection, no nitrous, just plain ol' normally-aspirated Cosworth aluminum.

We always wanted to drop a 285hp Cosworth BDF 4-valve injected motor into it and run Class B, but it cost too much to do. Eventually we had to sell it because it was too expensive for a privateer to run against the "big bucks" sponsored boys.

Steve sat down at his computer to share the information about the recording I referred to above but Audiongon must have been rebooting or something and it didn't get posted. So, with all the spare time I enjoy I figured I'd do the typing instead.

There are only two vinyl records available from this label. Though they have other recording on CD, and I understand they are stunning as well, I can't speak about their audiopile characteristics.

Before I share the artist's name and purchasing information I'd like to express what it is about the album that tripped my trigger. Steve's system is very, very nice and has the ability to reproduce all of the information thrown at it. It's very musical and does a very fine job of not being as picky about source material as you would think. Generic pressings sound very good. But, as the recording quality goes up so does the reproduced sound. My system is very modest in comparison but it too responds well to better recordings and does a very nice job with generics too.

Steve had attended the last CES and had heard this pressing used as demo material and was impressed with the level of detail and the content so he wrote down the purchasing information and ordered it for himself. He didn't say anything to me about its sonic attributes before he put it on his Teres. From the first note I heard things I've never heard quite so clearly on his system. It was like finally a piece of software that wasn't holding his system back. The record exceeds the performance of my system....

The artist is David Roth and the title is "Pearl Diver". It's a direct metal master on the Stockfisch label. Maybe there is an online retailer where you can listen to the content but if you can't find anyway to audition it I offer the following information to try and help you determine if you would like this. David Roth has a manly voice and the entire album is acoustic with perhaps up to five instruments total playing. His music is slow balads and the lyrics reflect his politics. My guess is that he's an environmentalist and a proponent of tolerance. Personally, I prefer artists that don't try to influence my belief system whether I agree with them or not. In this case, I'm not offended in the least as I simply view what he sings about as coming from a gentle soul. The songs that represent his personal views are not "in your face" and come across as sincere and thoughtful. His rendition of Don McClean's "Vincent" is simply incredible. That one cut alone is worth the price of admission.

Stockfisch has only one other vinyl offering and it is a two record set from Sara K.'s "Waterfall". I know you can audition this album online to determine if you like it enough to buy. I've played but one of the records and enjoy it a lot but can't comment of it's sonics. I've not listened to it on Steve's system.

Cut and paste the following to place an order:

www.stockfisch-records.de

The website is mainly in German. Go to the order link and then select viny records. You'll see the two albums and what they sell for in Euro's.

I'm sure that the sonics are about as good as it gets but this is all IMHO, submitted that YMMV and all the stuff that will keep you guys from sending me hate mail if you don't like it.