When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
I worked on the car some on Saturday this week. I did a little bit of diff positioning, realized I needed some lasers I didn't have, sighed, and moved on to other things. Started making brake lines and oh man, this is gonna be slow lol. I got uh....one done. Tbf, I spent a bit of time plotting out where I wanted to run stuff and whatnot, but it definitely took longer than I hoped and took an extra try as well. In the end, I was happy with how it ended up, although I do need to space the little splitter off the firewall some since right now the line is pretty much rubbing on the firewall seam.
Running the line to the MC on the other side should be relatively easy which is good. I had kinda wanted to run the splitter behind the engine to hide it for MAXIMUM STREET CRED, but decided against it since it will make servicing it a bitch.
My teammate and I went to pick-n-pull this weekend in search of a new diff for the e46. There were 5 cars there and thankfully one of them had the diff we were looking for. Scored a 3.46 and some more 330 front calipers as spares. We now have spares for every corner which sets my mind at ease a little more. Since I'll be buying a diff through (not from lol) work, it probably means I'm going to buy the diff for my 8.8 as well. So RIP my wallet I guess. The plan is to chuck a wavetrac in both cars. This was after like 2 hours of cleaning **** off of it. It'll get a deeper clean at work, but at least it's not disgusting to handle now.
Spent some time on the car this weekend. Did another brake line, this time going from the MC to the split in the line. I've been using old scaps of steel line for my prototyping, but the next sections I need to do are longer than anything I have, so I need to buy some of the armature wire that thebeerbaron recommended in Arca's thread.
Since I didn't want to attempt a long line without some sort of cheaper prototype, I decided to move over to other things in the interior. A couple of items that needed to get checked off were a steering column brace and a gas pedal bracket brace. Both of these items were floppy since I had removed their original brackets for the installation of the pedals. The steering column still had it's the upper mount, so I just needed a lower one to keep it from moving around. I finished grinding the old bracket off and smoothed it out a bit.
Since I had already made the brake line that pretty much went right above the steering column, to give a little space, I made a little swoopy bracket. Yay for plasma cutter! Cut it in .065 first and then jumped over to some .120 I had laying around. Steering column is still easily removable, pretty happy with it. The upper weld was left-handed tig under the dash and it came out better than expected lol
Next up was the gas pedal brace. This really didn't need much, just something to stop the old gas pedal bracket from rotating laterally and maybe damp some vibrations that might fatigue it otherwise. Just to **** Aidan off, I used the plasma cutter to cut a rectangle. I didn't nail the right bend angle on my first shot, so I made a second one and drilled a couple of holes/knocked off the sharp corners and that was that! Bolts to the same area as the steering column brace.
Because it's been looming, I decided to start tackling the wiring. This car is kinda simple at this point lol, so it feels a bit like cheating. Racepak further simplifies things since it runs on CAN. Wiring is kinda hard to take pictures of, I guess I'll try to take some as I'm working next time.
I also bought both the wavetracs. RIP my wallet indeed. I got a 20ish% discount from a dealer we sell to at work and I still want to die lol. Anyway, those are projected to be shipped in mid-late Feb, which gives us plenty of time to set up the BMW diff and for the 8.8 diff to sit on my desk at work.
Been pretty busy the last couple of weeks, so I haven't got a ton done on the car. I did make a little progress this weekend and made a new tombstone panel thing. If you remember my old one at all, it was basically just a rectangular sheet of aluminum with sharp edges and such. Kinda not ideal. The new one has bends that get rid of the sharp edges and it's narrower at the bottom so that it doesn't stick over the transmission tunnel and add to the chance of getting stabbed. I was really wishing I had bought a sheet roller years ago while doing the top edge. Basically used a couple of different radius tubes clamped to the bench. The roll turned out better than I expected doing that, so overall pretty happy with it. I also forgot the cut a hole for my USB/charging port panel, so I guess I'll do that the old-fashioned way. Left the switch holes as 6mm pilot holes that can be drilled out to whatever size.
Got some diffs. One of the left is the 8.8 for the LS car, one on the right is for the e46.
Had to buy carrier bearings from diffsonline which physically pained me since all their stuff is way overpriced and the entire BMW community sucks their dick. They then charged me $26 to ship 2 bearings via ground. *********. I'm pretty much twiddling my thumbs until those show up. Hopefully setting it up goes without any hiccups. That's kinda it for updates, nothing too exciting this week.
I got some hardware. Instead of my HD grade shitty bolts, I got some proper ones and slipped those into the bellhousing to trans and bellhousing to engine last night. The flange diameter/spot face diameter fit made me pretty hard, not gonna lie. Not a whole lot of progress, but I did reach out to DSS about getting some axles/hubs made since they don't have the exact combo I need OTS. I'm expecting to hear back from them in the next 3-4 weeks if their customer service is still the way it always has been. That should put me getting them somewhere around December, can't wait!
Progress slowed down a little because I've been working on getting ready to go back to school and studying a lot because of that. In short, for the general area that we live, and our future wants/needs, mechanical just isn't really ticking the boxes. So both Katy and I are going back to do a CS certificate program that feeds directly into a Master's. Whether or not I continue on to the masters is still like a 70/30 split. I'd like to do it, but a few people in the industry have told me it's not really needed. So still going back and forth there. I'm approaching this a little differently than my bachelors where I was sure of what I wanted to do and just wanted to get through college and out to get a job. Hopefully with a touch more maturity (big maybe) I can learn and concentrate more on the subject matter than before but I'm not really pointed in a certain direction yet.
On other personal news, I finally got around to proposing and we're looking at getting married next July. It was a super nice day weather-wise which is crazy rare in February up here and we had a little picnic out on this peninsula with no one else around and a beautiful view. Then took the dog over to the off-leash part nearby. Also, hit 10 years together the day after I proposed lol. So yeah, lots of **** going on/lots of changes.
On car stuff progress, after some fuckery with DSS I finally got them ordered. Thankfully I'm not in a rush, so they'll show up when they show up and I don't really care. I also got the fittings for my tilton pedals that took like two months and they were pretty far from advertised which was annoying.
Because we're doing a 5sp swap in our e46 along with the new diff, I wanted to use the lift which meant putting the miata on the ground. Threw some uprights with 1.6 axles in the rear to roll it around, but it felt weird to finally have it down again. I miss this car a lot. Spent a bit of time last night poking at the dry sump and trying to plot what fittings to buy. I'm sure whatever I buy will be wrong because that's life lol.
That's where I'm at right now. With the axles purchased, there's honestly not that much left to buy in terms of money value. School is gonna be a massive drain on any fun money for the time being, but I think I can pick away at things here and there. And I'm trying to get some work done on things between studying.
Other than personal car stuff, I did some hanging out with local and not-so-local frens over the past month. We worked on @concealer404 's 80 series that came in from Canada, ate cotton candy, and ground pinion gears on jeeps for an ARB locker install.
Progress slowed down a little because I've been working on getting ready to go back to school and studying a lot because of that. In short, for the general area that we live, and our future wants/needs, mechanical just isn't really ticking the boxes. So both Katy and I are going back to do a CS certificate program that feeds directly into a Master's. Whether or not I continue on to the masters is still like a 70/30 split. I'd like to do it, but a few people in the industry have told me it's not really needed. So still going back and forth there. I'm approaching this a little differently than my bachelors where I was sure of what I wanted to do and just wanted to get through college and out to get a job. Hopefully with a touch more maturity (big maybe) I can learn and concentrate more on the subject matter than before but I'm not really pointed in a certain direction yet.
From my perspective as one of the engineers reviewing resumes and interviewing candidates for everything from mobile to firmware engineering positions, I'd say the masters really depends on what you want to accomplish. I have one; it was a good decision in some ways and a poor decision in others. Short version; the time you spend getting a masters might not get you ahead of where you'd be if you just got an entry-level position. Go for the masters if it will develop your skills in an area you particularly enjoy. Go for the masters if you can get into a masters program at an elite/brand-name university (and your undergrad degree is not). I don't think it's worth it if you simply "continue on" with no specialty. I don't think it's worth it unless you can take either really noteworthy classes and/or do a killer master's thesis.
If you really want to develop a noteworthy resume, find an open-source project and start making contributions. Treat this as a class - spend time on it every week, make contributions, no matter how small, and show growth, collaboration, etc.
And I'll stop with the old-man-shouting-at-clouds rant here. If you want to hear more, hit me with a PM, I'd be happy to chat IRL.
Does "CS" expand to computer science in this context? Assuming so, the majority of my coworkers over the last couple decades have had master's degrees but I think a lot of that is driven by US government immigration rules. The bay area tech industry has a lot of people on H1B visas, and those visas basically require a graduate level degree. There are a lot of people who do their bachelor's in their home country, come to the US for grad school, get a master's, and then switch to an H1B for a software engineering position. I only have a bachelor's, but I've taken a number of grad-level courses out of personal interest and I tend to feel that for a software engineer it doesn't add much above and beyond the base bachelor's level of CS studies which is why I never bothered to turn those personal interest classes into another degree.
That said, if your bachelor's is in mechanical engineering and you're looking to get into software dev, then I think there's potentially more value in the master's because you presumably don't have that basic level of bachelor's CS. Many certificate programs tend to focus very heavily on coding, but often don't address other areas of CS, such as algorithms, combinatorics, systems, etc.
From my perspective as one of the engineers reviewing resumes and interviewing candidates for everything from mobile to firmware engineering positions, I'd say the masters really depends on what you want to accomplish. I have one; it was a good decision in some ways and a poor decision in others. Short version; the time you spend getting a masters might not get you ahead of where you'd be if you just got an entry-level position. Go for the masters if it will develop your skills in an area you particularly enjoy. Go for the masters if you can get into a masters program at an elite/brand-name university (and your undergrad degree is not). I don't think it's worth it if you simply "continue on" with no specialty. I don't think it's worth it unless you can take either really noteworthy classes and/or do a killer master's thesis.
If you really want to develop a noteworthy resume, find an open-source project and start making contributions. Treat this as a class - spend time on it every week, make contributions, no matter how small, and show growth, collaboration, etc.
And I'll stop with the old-man-shouting-at-clouds rant here. If you want to hear more, hit me with a PM, I'd be happy to chat IRL.
No worries at all, I didn't take it as shouting at the clouds I'd certainly prefer not to do the masters for the sake of doing it and I'd really prefer to have an employer pay for at least part of it if it happens, so we'll see how that plays out in the next year+. My current goal was to finish the program's bootcamp this summer/continue with my own studying, then start applying to internships and entry level positions in August/September. From what I've seen so far, I'll probably take a little bit of a pay cut, but that's fine. Aidan also mentioned working on an open-source project as something I should do, and I have been looking at doing that once I feel a little more confident in my abilities. Any/all advice is appreciated and I'd love to chat about it outside of the thread as well and hear your other thoughts, I'll shoot you a PM!
Originally Posted by codrus
Congrats on the engagement!
Does "CS" expand to computer science in this context? Assuming so, the majority of my coworkers over the last couple decades have had master's degrees but I think a lot of that is driven by US government immigration rules. The bay area tech industry has a lot of people on H1B visas, and those visas basically require a graduate level degree. There are a lot of people who do their bachelor's in their home country, come to the US for grad school, get a master's, and then switch to an H1B for a software engineering position. I only have a bachelor's, but I've taken a number of grad-level courses out of personal interest and I tend to feel that for a software engineer it doesn't add much above and beyond the base bachelor's level of CS studies which is why I never bothered to turn those personal interest classes into another degree.
That said, if your bachelor's is in mechanical engineering and you're looking to get into software dev, then I think there's potentially more value in the master's because you presumably don't have that basic level of bachelor's CS. Many certificate programs tend to focus very heavily on coding, but often don't address other areas of CS, such as algorithms, combinatorics, systems, etc.
--Ian
Thanks Ian! You were right on the assumption that it expands to Computer Science And yeah, that's a good point about ME bachelor's as well. Thankfully I've got some time to figure it out!
Originally Posted by turbofan
Big congrats to you both on the engagement! Classy ring too.
Jelly of hangouts in Aidan's garage. Looks like fun.
Thanks Ed! Yeah, it was a good couple of weekends hanging out! I hope that we can get the whole MRLS crew together again one day, I miss you and some of the others I haven't seen since the last one! I'm really glad that Katy and I went to pick it out together because I would have had a really hard time choosing it by myself and probably wouldn't have gotten exactly what she wanted haha
01-24-2022, 11:51 AM
2
I'd certainly prefer not to do the masters for the sake of doing it and I'd really prefer to have an employer pay for at least part of it if it happens, so we'll see how that plays out in the next year+. My current goal was to finish the program's bootcamp this summer/continue with my own studying, then start applying to internships and entry level positions in August/September. From what I've seen so far, I'll probably take a little bit of a pay cut, but that's fine. Aidan also mentioned working on an open-source project as something I should do, and I have been looking at doing that once I feel a little more confident in my abilities. Any/all advice is appreciated and I'd love to chat about it outside of the thread as well and hear your other thoughts, I'll shoot you a PM!
And yeah, that's a good point about ME bachelor's as well. Thankfully I've got some time to figure it out!
