[Ender]

So I've been getting anxious. I have a little over 500 miles on the rebuild and I realized that I'd probably get a little better mileage with the wastegate hooked up (until this weekend the arm had been detached so it was always freely open to prevent boosting, which was still incredibly easy to do. a good thing, just not at the moment). But, so I'm not just wasting that exhaust energy, I decided to hook up the wastegate (in stock form). Two tanks ago I got ~15mpg. Last tank? 19mpg. Now, I had a larger percentage of those miles on the last tank on the highway, but I was a little harder on it, too.

Admittedly, I have boosted to 5psi a number of brief times and taken it up to 5k RPM, but I'm trying to keep it under 2psi. It's kind of hard when stupid chicks in their heavy, automatic Grand Prix's are trying to race you around a gentle bend, but instead they're losing and almost sliding into you in the process... Honestly I don't know how she pulled it off, she must have been retarded. I wasn't pushing it at all, medium throttle @~4kRPM and only a few pounds of boost and I'm holding strong and she's falling behind on my flank, her tires squealing like stuck pigs.

In related news, Saturday my oil pressure dropped (again. if you'll remember, I had 0 oil pressure upon the first startup. no front cover o-ring). Well, I managed to screw up the fix and it blew out, so I spent ~4 hours today fixing that and a couple really minor things, then testing it out. YAY! I have good oil pressure. I didn't use the Teflon ring because I thought the 'later casting' in the Mazdatrix FAQ referred to an S5 casting as opposed to the S4 casting and not the 13B casting as opposed to the 12A casting (the latter being reality. damn. oops). So I put that in... I should remount the AC again before I go to bed; it's such a pain, but I don't want it rattling around too much.