Thursday, April 30, 2009

Transplant: Week 10 engine bay touch up

Tomorrow is the convoy trip to Pantai Merdeka, but because my car is not able to be complete... anyway its still pending:
1) Rear disc brake - Removed on loan for someone to get his car approved by JPJ
2) Change steering rack
3) Change dashboard light to ah bengz red LED
4) Change head gasket
5) Change to heavy duty clutch
Basically those are the things needed before can drive safely in our hectic road

And now the snapshot for this week...


The engine has been cleaned and touched up, all vacuum hose has been replaced with bengz silicon tubing, the whole engine back has been painted flat black, even the exhaust manifold are covered with high temperature silver paint... One of the relocation was the radiator reservoir where it made way for the intercooler piping on the left



The standard ah bengz intercooler had been installed and it seem small compared to most of the turbocharged car out there, but this is intentional as I want to drive with the best heat management setup that I can afford and I believe this type of front mount intercooler will be able to absorb most of the heat and leave my engine heat alone...

Wait till Shidi comes back from the convoy....

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Nasi Kandar Shariff Gelugor

One of the best dinner that I tarpao is this Nasi Kandar Shariff just outside my taman... Its located at the same row as Gelugor post office, near Clinic Aman or directly opposite the Gelugor 7-11 to be exact. The reason its one of the best is because everytime I find it deliciously appetizing and I can always finish the dishes no matter how full or hungry I am.
Picture courtesy of Malaysiabest.net


Unfortunately everytime want to order, sure have to endure a minimum queue of 7 person and above... and if really even bad luck, those people in the queue will order like 10 take-aways and you have to wait patiently and hoping that the telur bawang won't finish...

After consuming 3 weeks straight of nasi kandar with frequency of at least twice a week, I noticed a consistent pattern from this famous nasi kandar operational standpoint that could be further improved to serve its faithful customer...


As can see from the picture on the left, we could see the setup of the nasi kandar store which consists of 3 workers:


- Worker A and B are dish picker and they manage the customer ordering and attend to the next on the line customer, they only need to gather the rice and know whether customer is dining in or take away. They are capable of doing automated repeat ordering and also some form of telepathic understanding with customers. They also provide costing for each customer

Cycle time: 30 seconds



- Worker C works on packing the order, receive payment of each customer, provide change of the customer, and complete shipping packing bag, he also responsible of providing the utensil if the customer is dining in. This worker C does not have complete control in costing and have to rely on worker A and B for confirmation

Cycle time: 45 seconds to 90 seconds depending on customer payment and amount of orders per customer


The customer also queue up via arrow 1, and then upon completion of order, he / she tracks via arrow 2 and engage worker C for finalization.



So anyone with a bit of common sense would know that having 2 workers working on a short cycle time task while assigning 1 person doing a heavy and highly variable work load is a spell for disaster. Ask anyone that knows Shariff and the first thing they remember is the ridiculously long queue....


If anyone wants to streamline this process, some or all the following shall take place to minimize 'wastage' of customer time:

1) Provide training to worker C so that he had the ability to compute and provide costing of order

2) Allow customer auto payment at counter (means customer put the money and take their change themselves)

3) Reroute the queue line so that worker A and B able to gauge the processing time and provide 'help' to worker C if it holds up (resource management)

4) Relocate either worker A or worker B to do something else other than the front line
One of the plus thing is that every order they manage to use FIFO (First In First Out) system and that is really impressive, the only problem here is storage location for the placed order that could be clumsy, but without fail this system won't go wrong because customer is always there confirming and prevent any wrong order packed.


Maybe despite all that, the secret ingredient is the long wait? They say stuff that you waited long enough would taste better, hehe

Sunday spree

This weekend a little more free than usual, one case mainly that my manufacturing line is up and running with no more pending issues, therefore I am right here at my apartment watching movie, cooking and blogging. Can't beat this kinda life huh? Yesterday had a wedding dinner at Lone Pine Farlim area, the place is kinda cool with nice environment for a wedding dinner, but the food can be better...

After that hang out with Horny and Jeebs at SOHO, nothing much, just seeing that Integra guy trying hard to beat some foreigners and make friends, then received a message from Sheeb and say they are at Soi 11, never heard of that place (yeah, I memang aw) so went there and hang out with them for a while... took a shot of Chivas I think before heading back to SOHO, dunk the remaining Carlsberg and headed back home, nearly killed myself on the last leg of the corner entering Halaman because some idiot parked a 4 wheeler right at the corner apex.

Nevertheless it was a good evening spent, I seldom play until so late already, guess its age calling out to me...

And now for the weekly update on my car...

The front mount intercooler is getting in, this is going to be sweet, I just hope the lag is not obvious, but by using a medium sized IC coupled with 2 inch piping, it shouldn't be that much lag on the CT9...

The car is now being 'wrapped' with a blue clothes because Shidi claims that too many people wanted to go in, start the engine and play with the throttle -.-"

Hope the IC will get fixed this week and roll out for test drive next week... still have alot of cleaning up to do on this scumbag... I miss you dear :P

Anyway today had watched a movie called "Cloverfield" which is one of the shittest movie I have ever watched, it talks about a creature terrorizing NYC and with the filming effect of the portable camera (ala Blair Witch, Quarantine...etc) it made me felt so damn dizzy after the show. Granted its interesting but I find it hard to visually track the footage while remaining focus of whats going on, thumbs down for the show... alot of impossible things happened like removing a victim from impaling WITHOUT having much problem on over bleeding, things like no corpses on the road after all the crap that had happened, things like the US military using non-guided rockets against an enemy in their own home soil... I doubt so



Then after that watched another movie called "The curious case of Benjamin Button" starring Brad Pitt... this show pulak totally change the experience, nearly cried watching this movie (read: I still didn't), it talks about a baby that was born very old, and he gradually become young again...

So basically the timeline for this movie is:
Mental age: 1 physical age: 80
Mental age: 10 physical age: 69
Mental age: 80 physical age: 1


So when he was newly born, his skin is old like fart, and when he is 80 years old, he is back to become a baby again, the main story is how he meet with a gal and how their relationship turns out to be... the last few years of the relationship is nice because he is living the best of everyday because he knows one day the gal will become old and he will be too young... So anyway, something worth watching with a little change of typical flavour in movie.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Transplant: Week 9 of the completed framework

Yay, can't believe its completed. The everything from the dashboard is IN! Not to mention the whole engine bay, everything from the original dashboard is functional and all wiring has been traced to all the supporting equipment.

The video says it all...

Dashboard is sweet, it probably goes into the record of the most copy-exact transplant being done in the Northern region, pending validation.


Mouting looks strong, not much movement during maximum rev

Friday, April 10, 2009

Lepak at JJ

Life is boring lately, didn't go much for shopping and lepak for the past few months, main reason being nobody to teman out, and of course due to the hectic work schedule, all free time will be used to stay at home to catch some winks... if the winks are not there, I will be busy checking out my car status or watching movie during my free time.

Lepak was never the agenda or on my mind... but last Saturday Neebs came back from Singapore and Juju somehow manage to puncture her tyre... luckily it made its way all the way to the car park of JJ and Neebs had the honor of changing the tyre... However it was Jeebs who are happy like a monkey in a zoo...


Tell me if he is suicidally happy? Never see people enjoying while people there sweating changing tyre... LOL.

Transplant: Engine started...

Yay yay, the car started without any problem.... except for the radiator leakage which require the whole core to be tore down and service. Other than that the ignition was good, the idling was good and the air cond is working fine. Can't wait for it to release for a spin



Sweet dashboard, 4E dashboard looks dull compare to Deto, but then again you can't compare Japanese rice car against Italian design... Its like comparing MNG with LV, different class alltogether... Now I kinda miss the red Deto dashboard light... its so peacefully sinister


Not so sweet engine coz its more dirty than longkang... but overall the idling is great, air cond kicks in and pings out nicely with the rev stabilizing at 800 to 1000 rpm. Seen here is Shidi checking the air cond high pressure piping leakage, no leak observed.

Now lets hope its on the road next week... still has the intercooler, alarm, ICE and central locking to install...