Racing Beat knockoff header

I've learned something from my foray into the bottom-of-the-barrel cheap parts: There are two levels of shitty.

Level One: Low price, good build quality, but materials that aren't the most durable perhaps because of lower quality.
Level Zero: Lowest price, terrible build quality, horrendous materials.

My recent reviews of Raceland's header put them squarely into Level One. Their header is well built, looks good out of the box and is well supported. They also have a real company/brand name to uphold, as evidenced by their stickers and catalog included in the order. Their downfall is that their steel isn't pure/robust enough to stand up to the harshest commutes through aggressively salted Chicago interstates. I'm confident that someone living in, say Florida, would be perfectly happy with their product.

This one, on the other hand, is simply not worth a purchase. I don't mean to single out SpeedyRacer--an eBay seller--as there are multiple people peddling this shoddy product. It's the only header that imitates the Racing Beat with a 4-1 design (all the others imitate the 4-2-1 or Tri-Y design of the Jackson Racing); since the Racing Beat is reportedly the best off-the-shelf header out there, it's truly unfortunate that the only imitation is so incredibly awful.

See for yourself in the slideshow. The welds are so awful, I'm surprised I didn't find welding rod sticking out of them. I wonder if they're even airtight. I saw one car with this header at SCCA Solo Nationals (STS class), and wasn't surprised to find it was rusting just like my Raceland unit--though that particular car certainly didn't see the heavy winter commuting duty that mine did.

The final straw--and this really killed me, because I was nearing the end of my engine swap at the time, filled with exhaustion, frustration at already too many broken surprises, and anxious to hit the road--was that it just didn't fit. It hit the flat horizontal part of the body below the brake and clutch master cylinders. I was so goddamn angry when I couldn't get the piece of cockblasting assnugget* to fit that I literally bounced it off the fucking concrete floor and across the garage.

Since I've seen this header fit on other cars and it's gotten some positive eBay responses, I can conclusively say their quality control department and the jig they use to build this header are both not very consistent. And, judging by the fact that a magnet will stick to certain parts of it--most notably the bends, as demonstrated in the slideshow--they clearly use ultra-low quality stainless steel too.

By "they," of course, I mean whoever makes this piece of garbage, not Speedyracer or any other eBay vendor--though they are responsible for selling a shit product. Much to that vendor's credit, they did take a return on the header even though it was past the 30-day return period. So thank you, Speedyracer, for not totally screwing me.

There you have it, friends: real buying advice. Don't buy the absolute cheapest garbage. Pay a little extra instead. I'd buy the Raceland header again. You couldn't pay me to use this one--which is just as well, since it seems to no longer be available on eBay.

*I'm a classy guy.

Portable soldering iron: Such a wonderful thing does exist!

Whiskey not included.

Have you ever stumbled across a tool that made you wonder how you ever got along without it? How you never so much as considered such a thing might exist or how it would work?

The Weller Portasol is one such tool. A couple Xmases ago, I received this butane-powered soldering iron kit and the standard tabletop electric kit behind it. Both were gifts from Amanda's dad, Jim, and both had been sitting at his place unused for many years. The Portasol is probably the best unexpected gift ever.

I've often needed to solder something inside a car, but it was impractical or impossible to take the part out and bring it indoors to solder. Using a soldering iron in a driveway is also annoying, especially when you don't have a long enough extension cord and it's too cold and/or windy outside for the iron to stay hot. Herein lies the joy of this little tool.

The kit has a sponge, a stand, and a handful of attachments including a hot knife. There's even a striker in there, so to take it anywhere all you need is a wet sponge and some butane. The solder has an on/off control, and a flame (temperature) adjustment.

It was 30-some degrees and windy last night when I went outside to repair Amanda's coil pack connector. I loved being able to just grab the kit and go to work. No need to run an extension cord out the window and down one story. It's easy to use and does everything you can ask of it. A perfect tool. Even for quick indoor jobs I prefer to use it over an electric one.

This particular model is no longer sold, but you can find new Portasols out there.

Mad props to Jim for this gift. The variable temperature electric iron is handy as well. Thanks!

Tool Review: Task Force mini locking pliers

Edit: Brevity! I got this mini locking pliers (Vise-Grip knockoffs) at Lowe's for $2. It is awesome. I keep it with me all the time. It's saved my ass on more than one occasion, and I haven't had it more than 2 months. Highly recommended. The End.

These were an impulse buy at Lowe's. Cost me all of $1.99. They've really small, but fully functional locking pliers. These are also known as Vise-Grips, though that's a brand name.

This thing is cheap, but surprisingly well built. The jaws line up like they're supposed to, the rivets hold tight, it doesn't wiggle or feel insecure when you lock it up.

It does everything you expect locking pliers to do. They open, close, adjust, lock, and unlock. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw how wide the jaws open; they open wide enough to grab the thick part of the Miata's shifter, and you can lock them down tight enough to mar the living fuck out of said shifter. Yeah, those jaws have real, functional teeth that get excellent bite.

They do not open far enough to grab a spring-type radiator hose clamp, however. When I went to procure a radiator hose at a junkyard last week, I used these along with my multi-tool to open the clamp up. The locking feature came in handy there.

That multi-tool and these locking pliers are the tools I keep with me nearly at all times. They take up little space and are excellent performers. And at a tenth the price of that multi-tool, these locking pliers are a performance bargain.

Pocket multi-tools actually ARE useful

I changed the fuel filter on the ZX2 today, using nothing more than this, a Leatherman knockoff using the Columbia name. I did this on my lunch break. It took no longer than it would have with the proper tool(s): about 10 minutes, including hand-washing. All I would've needed was a flathead screwdriver, and my tool has one. Sort of. It did the job, anyway.

On a related note, I've discovered that my skin doesn't really like gasoline. It turns red and blotchy where I come in contact with the stuff. 

Pardon the shitty photo. I don't think my cell phone camera focuses at less than a few feet.

This book is terrible. (a book review)

I realize the motorsports publishing well might be a little dry of authors, so I can understand if some books by first-time writers aren't very good. Car "enthusiasts" (a polite word for "nerd") may not be the cleverest writers in the world.¹ Take as evidence nearly every article in SportsCar Magazine (basically the SCCA's monthly newsletter, in magazine form), and that Car and Driver, when asking readers for stories to print in their 10Best issue, admitted they rarely received good content and pulled that part of the reader content feature.

But for every interview I've trudged through, every nationals event recap I've skimmed for the few interesting details, every thinly veiled sponsor plug I've dismissed as the cost of business, I never thought I'd get to something quite this awful.

Ross Bentley is a writer who either doesn't understand what "writing to an audience" means, or he thinks he's writing books for 4th grade dropouts who managed to get a driver's licence.

Reading his book, Speed Secrets: Winning Autocross Techniques, is an exercise in repetition. He'll start by telling you something obvious, in broad, almost completely useless terms. Then he'll repeat it, over and over for a page and a half before he says something that truly adds to his point. Then he'll hammer on that for a while. Don't rinse: just repeat.

An example: You're starting Chapter 9, and he just spent the previous chapter covering a few racing lines. This new chapter is titled Priorities, subsection: Prioritizing turns.

"... successful [drivers] know how to prioritize the various turns on a course. Good drivers know where to push hard and where to be patient.
Some corners are more important than others. Winning autocrosses comes from knowing where to go fast and where to go (relatively) slow. .. Concentrate on learning the most important turns first. ... In autocrossing, you will have to compromise one turn's speed for another. ... If you know which corners are most important, you know which ones can be compromised and which ones can't. In terms of your car's setup, there are times when you must compromise the setup to suit one corner more than another. ... It is best to set up the car for the most important corners."

These are lines lifted from 3 consecutive paragraphs. Between the second and third paragraph, in big, bold letters in the middle of the page is a SPEED SECRET. There's a number of these throughout the book, to highlight major points. It's his gimmick. The point of this section, in case you're really a numbskull, is Focus on getting the most important turns right first.

This book does have some good information. It's not completely useless. But it is unreadable, and it's not going to get anyone interested in the sport.

¹ I dispute this idea. Car and Driver (recently, and some years ago), Top Gear (both TV and magazine), and Grassroots Motorsports are proof that there's plenty of good authors out there who are also car guys. Apparently these guys either don't work cheap, or don't write instructional books about racing.