The Best Electronics Come in Ziplock Bags

Sure has been a while posting on here, maybe this will encourage me to get back into the swing of it again. A big thumbs up to Ian for throwing down the gaunlet and posting about some model A adventures! A quick scroll through my last posts reveals how much has happened since... cripes I feel old!

I was surprisingly productive last weekend, lately it seems I'm finding myself all over New England (and sometimes elsewhere) with my lovely lady friend Kaitlyn. As always I've got half a dozen projects in various states of disrepair so traveling around and having all this fun can be a little detrimental to progress. Last weekend though I had one of those rare times where everything seemed to line up just right such that I was able to make some milestones on a couple things and do some socializing along the way!

I recently took rental of a storage unit in Westbrook for my motorcycle(s). Last year I was able to store my bike at work but it got in the way and was generally a hassle to have around. Being an old bike I really don't want to leave it outside for long periods unattended if possible. I've been slowly working my way into building it into a reputable machine so I wouldn't want all that work wasted. Here is a small list of the improvements I've done on the bike since I got it late in 2014.

• Full carburetor rebuild (Took them off line 4 times for various assorted screw ups. Who knew you had to synchronize your chokes... and the vaccum on each carb... and that the idle adjustment in the rebuild kit is just junk and you should use the original one anyways?!)
• Carb synchronization (I bought 4 gauges to do it with, it was quite the site... real mad science).
• Valve adjustment and timing 
• New battery (which I killed due to a posionous bad starter which was very hard to find.)
• New starter (new to me anyways)
• Newer battery (AGM)
• Starter solenoid(s) ... I welded a brand 2 new ones shut with my bad starter/battery combo luckily they sent a new one for free, also the Cb750 doesn't have a fuse on the starting solenoid so.... if it welds shut it is just on until you can disconnect the battery. Bad design, still haven't corrected it.
• New side covers ( I painted with a matched paint not the exact stuff which is crazy $$. The covers I got were cast by this guy on a forum who replicated some orginals in ABS and they are pretty cool but took a lot of sanding to get right and lots of paint to look good. I still need to shape the mounting features on them to fit right into the rubber grommets on the side of the bike.)
• Various fasteners updated to stainless steel allen heads from old chewed up phillips heads which required an impact driver to remove
• A couple little electrical things
• Front brake dis-assembly/rejuvenation and adjustment (weird design but seems to be working pretty well now)
• New spark plugs
• New fuel lines and hose clamps

The 750 without side covers and missing a handlebar grip

Despite all these items I still haven't really put many miles on the bike. I have taken it back and fourth to Litchfield from P-town a few times but I haven't really gotten things dialed to the point where everything runs 100% as it should. There are a couple of items to address with it still. Firstly is starting, the bike is painfully cold-blooded and no matter what I do it seems the idle will change while I ride the bike. So I'm constantly adjusting the idle to start and then once the bike is warm it will settle down kind of. My quest to fix these issues has led me to the one, the only Hondaman. Hondaman is apparently this badass guy named Mark who lives out in Colorado. Besides making awesome improved parts for old honda bikes in his spare time, he appears to have experience making a lot of cool electrical stuff for his day job. Apparently one big issue with the only CB750 is the points which used to be made of a higher quality material than they are now. Modern points are notoriously bad until they warm up resulting in cold blooded engines. However Mark made a super sweet transistorized ignition that solves that problem. It even goes one step further, it leaves the existing points in place and so in the event his ignition module fails (which is apparently pretty rare) you can jumper it out of the circuit and ride home on your normal points, brilliant! I recently got one of these ignitions but haven't installed it yet, I couldn't help myself and had to take it apart. Luckily Mark responds to e-mails readily and told me how to get it back together! 

I still have the same bike I've had since high school as well, my 1984 Honda CM450 which is a sweet little bike. It has front and rear drum brakes, both mechanically operated (no need to bleed anything). Starts easy and runs solid. This weekend I put a rear tire on it and got it started up, as well as the 750. I drove the 750 down and put it in storage so now it's nice and close for me to ride/wrench on. 

Additionally, I have been planning to build a desktop computer for a while. I finally made it happen after much debate with my coworker using PCPartPicker. It's a great website and allows you to really optimize and see what's out there. My build was loosely based on this featured build which clued me into a super quiet CPU cooler. The goal was a kickass machine that could do solidworks, play rocket league, be up-gradable and basically handle anything I could throw at it without using too much power and making too much noise. I will say so far the machine is super quiet, boots crazy fast and looks pretty sweet too. I have some computer building PTSD from when I was in middle school and threw months of my hard earned landscaping money into a machine that ultimately never worked. Happy to say everything went off without a hitch on this machine which was a huge relief. 

Electrical Incident

Exhibit A, Melted Fuse Holder

This should not have been a difficult trip.  We were going from the house to the monthly meeting at a restaurant 1/3 of a mile away and then back.  This was the first breakfast Kingsford had made it in several months (September?), due to the extended brake job / Ian being lazy.  The drive from the house to the restaurant was uneventful.  Kingsford started fine, and the short jaunt was uneventful with the new brakes holding their own (later adjusting would bring them into A+ form).

As always, breakfast was delicious with much discussion of old cars.  We stayed late to talk about an upcoming swap meet, and also have some discussion on proper Model A mechanical brake adjustment in the parking lot.  When the dust settled, it was only Mike (former club president you might remember from the wedding), and I.  I hopped into the drivers seat and tried to start the truck.  No dice.  I tried a couple more times, and still no signs of life.  Kingsford is usually pretty good about starting, and 0 signs of life means that the fuse has blown.  

It is salient to note that original Model As do not have fuses.  Given the rat's nest nature of the wiring, this is somewhat dangerous so most owners have subsequently installed them.  The most convenient location is somewhat obnoxiously downstream of the starter and upstream of literally everything else.  Short in the headlights? -- engine dies.  Short in the brake light? -- engine dies.  Short in the horn -- engine dies. And when the engine/ignition dies, everything else (wipers, horn, lights) goes with it.

So, you can check to see if the fuse is still alive by attempting to blow the horn.  I got a wicked weak horn blow that cut out after a second or two -- and subsequently wouldn't blow.  I have been bit by a blown fuse before, so I carry spares.  So, I grabbed a spare, hopped out, and opened the hood expecting to replace the blown fuse and be on my way.

Unfortunately, the fuse had not blown.  Or, maybe it had, but also the fuse holder had also completely melted.  As you can see in exhibit A, there should be additional plastic & a wire at the top -- not air and bubbly plastic.

Mike hadn't left the parking lot yet, so I flagged him down, and he came over.  Being that this was 1/3 of a mile away from the house, I hadn't tools or spares to speak of. Mike had his full kit, so with this help we spliced a new piece of wire in where the fuse was -- and luckily whatever had caused the original event was no longer making sparks.  Sadly, even with the electrical circuit complete, the car still showed no signs of life.  The distributor wire showed no signs of life when held near a head stud, so our next thought was that whatever electrical short there was may have killed the coil.  Mike didn't have a spare but I had one at the house, so we hopped in his Fordor & took a quick jaunt to the house where we picked up a new coil.  Back at the restaurant, the new coil went in, & still there were no signs of life holding the distributor wire next to a head stud.  Having nothing to lose, we decided to try starting it anyways.  To my great surprise, it started -- and I limped the 1/3 mile home with Mike in tow.

I subsequently discovered that the timing was waaaay off, which may have been a contributing factor.  Still have no idea why the fuse holder melted to begin with.  I also later found a short in the headlight bucket, but that shouldn't have caused a short while the headlights were off....

Running Down a Chicken

Today, Liz & I ran over a chicken.

As you might remember from the wedding, the Model A brakes were very poor.  They could bring the car to a stop on a totally flat plane, but any kind of incline or reasonable speed would result in exceptionally poor deceleration. It got to the point where even I had had enough of panic stops.  So, the Model A went up on blocks for a brake job.

It took much longer than I was planning, and included several long stretches of doing nothing -- including one where I was in the UK for a month.  But, with the help of the Moon on A club and a guy in California who rebuilt the backing plates, attached my old hubs to new cast iron drums, and turned the new drums -- the Model A can now stop!  It is truly a wonderful thing to be able to stop your car when driving on the road.

Getting them dialed in just right has taken quite a bit of trial and error.  It's a complicated system of mechanical components, and any slop can quickly compound.  In an 80+ year old car, there can be a lot of wear.  Many of the worn components were replaced, but there are still a few bushings that I haven't gotten around to yet, so some monkeying was required to get desired performance.  Thus, many drives around the block to get everything right.

But now, everything was pretty close to right.  It was time to venture a bit farther away from the safety of the garage, but not too far away as I also recently had an electrical episode (a fuseholder burned up, resulting in zero electricity).

We took a cruise to the west of Snohomish through what is a large flood plain & a hill sticking out of the flood plain.  Coming around a blind corner (marked in red below), there was a chicken standing in the middle of our lane.  The brakes work pretty good, but "we was cruisin'", and Model A tires are basically bicycle tires so even when they are fully locked up you really don't stop that quickly.  Liz & I both went "Aaaaaahhh!!!!" and the chicken saw us and tried to outrun us.  Chickens are not fast, so we quickly closed the distance.  The chicken disappeared, and we both held our breath as the Model A soared over the chicken.
...
Then, in the rear view mirror -- A NOT DEAD CHICKEN!  The chicken must've been sufficiently short that it was not cleaned out by the Model A undercarriage.  That chicken will have a heck of a story for its chicken friends.  The view out the windshield of an 80 year old car of a chicken trying to outrun you is hilarious.  It really looked like it should have been part of Chicken Run.

Model "A"dventure to Anacortes

[Editor's Note: This trip occurred 9/13/2014, this blag post is very late]

(NOTE: Not the actual map, apparently google maps doesn't save the "no highway" version.

Shortly (basically immediately) after I purchased my car, I joined the "Moon on A" chapter of the Model A Ford Club of America (MAFCA).  It just so happens that the next scheduled tour was to Anacortes.  Anacortes is a solid 60 miles from Snohomish, and at that time I don't think I'd driven for a stretch any longer than 5 miles.  Clearly, a big leap.  But, I figured if there is a time to break down, it is when you've got 6 Model A gurus in tow.

We were scheduled for a 9:00 AM departure from the Erickson Furniture Co, which is highlighted on the map.  Liz & I left her house at a little before 8:30, stopping to pick up some coffee and breakfast before heading over to the meetup spot.  The Model A does not have cup holders, and as you can imagine it isn't the smoothest ride around.  So there was lots of spilled coffee in the early part of the trip.

The view while cleaning spilled coffee...

We were the 2nd to last to arrive at the furniture store.  We left the store with 5 cars and picked up a 6th en route.  We were 2nd to last in the line-up, and away we went!  The first part of the journey was through a fairly busy part of Everett, which wasn't much fun because the brakes were bad and I wasn't yet used to using the parking brake in hairy situations.  Luckily, there were no catastrophes, and the reward was leaving the north end of Everett over a spectacular bridge that spans the Snohomish River.

Then we proceeded up along the side of I5, before cutting up through Skagit Valley.  Here is a timelapse of part of the trip, including a fast stop that almost resulted in a rear ending...

After this we got on state route 20, which is a 2 lane each way highway.  We stayed at about 45 mph on the right.  Kind of fun, we got lots of waves, honks, and smiles.  SR20, dumps you into Anacortes, where we were heading for the engine show, below are some pictures.

Neat display of old electrical thingies

This fire truck helped put out the fire in SF after the earthquake in 1906

Another Ford!

All the Model As lined up

To be continued...

Solving the Lunch Problem

First a couple cool things.

Went to UNH this past Friday to see the Umaine vs. UNH game. Sat directly beside the student section and being a Maine fan was of course the target of various insults and put-downs. Can't say I'd treat them much better at the Alfond, but it was all in good fun. Unfortunately Umaine got out goalie'd pretty hard. UNH's goaltender was on his game pretty hard that night and they took the game 3-2.

They had a pretty cool blimp flying around before the game and at the half. It dropped little tickets (not sure what they said) but I wasn't able to really see how the mechanism for dropping them worked. Either way the driver was really well practiced and went underneath banners and all around the arena. They also had two mascots (overkill much?) and a t-shirt cannon that hurled shirts but could only launch a total of three before emptying the air tank. Using my anecdotal pneumatic estimator I guesstimate that Umaine's T-shirt launcher has roughly the same amount of energy storage onboard but we dial ours back significantly so we can launch all 6 shirts.

Blimp!

In VW news, I made some progress on repairing the tears in vinyl on the seat covers for the most recent bus. I hand sewed a few small tears in plaid tops but vinyl is one funky thing to repair. I bought a kit from Permatex for vinyl repair, it was intended to repair seats that are still installed. It gave me a bunch of color matching crap and even a little metal thing to heat up and melt the coloring to make it look textured. All of that sounded like I would just end up drawing more attention to the tear, what are the chances I could actually match the color perfectly?

Since I had the covers removed, I carefully taped the tears closed and butted the seems together and applied a patch from the back. I basically bought the kit for the adhesive which seems to work nicely.

Can you see all 3 tears?

The repairs came out pretty well and I was very satisfied with the results. A couple of them are still kind of visible but I don't think you'll be able to see any of them without really close inspection once they're installed. No color matching needed, just had to remove any crap left behind from the masking tape using some denatured alcohol. 

Currently the seat frames have gotten a coat of paint and are drying right now. Here they are all taped and ready for paint.

The Lunch Problem

Now what I really wanted to talk about. The lunch problem. You know what I'm talkin' about, I'm looking at you employed single dude who works fairly regular hours! I like to cook but I'm often too busy to make a great dinner, I've got breakfast pretty well nailed but lunch has always been a bit of an issue. Sure leftovers are awesome when you have them but for me that seems to be pretty rare. Various fast and cheap noodles are available but pretty disgusting and pretty bad for you too. Sandwiches are great but they actually cost quite a bit to make at home and I usually end up wasting a lot of my deli meat because it doesn't keep very long. "Yes Tony, but you can't have it all fast, cheap or healthy pick two," you say to me. Well there is where you're wrong. 

Two words, Black Beans. These delicious economical protein and fiber filled bastards will keep you chugging along during the coldest days of January in New England and for mere pennies! If you're fortunate enough to have a refrigerator at work this shit is about to become your new best friend. Here's what I've been doing, buy a pack of tortillas, 3 cans of black beans (Goya is the best I've found so far they have a pop top too so you don't even need a can opener you frugal, frugal man), jar of salsa and an industrial sized brick of cheese. Bring said ingredients and a plate to your place of work. For lunch through all the crap in the tortilla, microwave for 2 minutes and enjoy your well balanced hot lunch that costs about $1 to make. I've been doing this for several weeks and the best part is waking up and knowing that your lunch is already at work when you wake up. 

So you say "But Tony, that sounds pretty bland. I mean, I'm not like you, I actually have taste buds and it's much easier to just buy lunch anyways." 

FALSE. Introducing.... Green Mountain Gringo This salsa is the cat's pajamas! It really adds a lot of flavor to your cheapurrito and it's damn good with chips too. However, I'll admit after a few weeks of eating the above described recipe I was longing for some more veggies and a couple other improvements to make lunch. So, today I picked up some summer sqaush, red pepper, onion and burrito seasoning along with a bigass 1lb 13 oz can of black beans (which by my math is actually more expensive per ounce than the smaller cans). One problem with the black beans is that they let out a decent amount of liquid which makes it hard to eat the burrito with your hands. After talking to resident foodie (Hamlin), he suggested I switch to refried black beans so they'll be more sticky and less watery. 

Cooked up a bunch of veggies, heated up a bunch of black beans, mashed the crap out of the black beans (more on this ghetto refried bean technique later, but probably not) and chucked it all together. 

Lunch all week baby!

From experience I know that I eat about half of a 15.5oz can of beans per burrito. I made a spreadsheet (yeah I'm a dork) the other day to estimate how much it costs for lunch every month. Today I kept my receipt from the store, added in costs for the veggies and spices and tallied it all up.

$250 a year for lunch... whaaatt?!

The numbers don't lie folks. For a pretty healthy lunch that takes 4 minutes to make at work everyday and costs a whooping $0.90 I would say that's pretty good. Keep in mind this is with the added ingredients, if you still wanna eat poverty-rurritos they're even cheaper than this. Also, that calculation was done with more expensive black beans. I don't know why but I am seriously getting a kick out of optimizing this insanely cheap lunch solution. The folks at work seem to get a kick out of it and they like to make suggestions on how I can get the costs down even lower. That's where I got the idea for the industrial brick of sharp cheese. 

Anyways, props to whoever actually read that dissertation about my lunch. Have a burrito on me.

In other news, Dean's kickstarter book finally arrived on my doorstep the other day. Haven't had a chance to go through it with a fine tooth comb but it looks sweet and it's HUGE.  

Unique New York

Bought tickets a couple months ago to go to this year's Frozen Fenway game and it did NOT disappoint. The first hockey game at Fenway I went to a couple years ago, we brought the T-shirt launcher and got a shirt into the upper deck. This year there was absolutely pouring rain. After playing for a few minutes (and Umaine scoring 2-3 unanswered goals), there was thunder and lightening and the skies literally just opened up. After the squall passed we watched 8 guys with shovels skate around the rink in perfect formation and push water off the end of the ice. The camera guys even got in some action shots of the water rushing out of the rink. I was honestly just impressed with the effort put in by the crew to keep playing. They easily could have called it, but I'm really glad they didn't. 

The BU crowd began to thin out but the Maine fans stayed strong and got rowdy. The game ended 7-3 with a very pleased group of Mainers. 

Seriously, check out that water!

After and during the game I caught up with the one and only Mikey B, who of course was "working" at the game.... Who is this guy?! He had a field pass and was just walking around rink side like a boss. Kid is king of Boston sports. 

The next day I took off for NYC to catch up with my sister and eventually Tyler. Mo, her newlywed husband Chris and I went out for BBQ and it was delicious.

No idea what building this is, but it's awesome. 

Tyler with an energy drink, behind an aircraft carrier of fighter jets.

In line for the Daily Show

 This sign is on the wall adjacent to the Daily Show studio. Apologizes for the blurriness.

Oh, Jon... 

There was pretty tight security at the show, made us go through metal detectors and the whole bit. They were very adamant about not using cell phones during the filming. They let the audience take pictures for like 2 minutes before the show started. Note the gawking tourists taking selfies in the background.

But, it's so small...

Mo!

Tyler!

The show was good, it was weird seeing them go to a reporter in the field. The "field" is just a green screen that is right next to Jon's desk. Also Jon Stewart looks pretty old in person he is quite grey. Tyler expertly called that Jon would do a pizza rant because the Mayor of NYC ate pizza with a fork the previous day. Nailed it. 

After the show we walked around a bit and got tickets to the Comedy Cellar, which was a great decision. Three hours of comedy from comedians who have specials on Comedy Central (Tyler has the line-up). We sat right up front and naturally got made fun of for being from Maine. I also learned that making windmills isn't sexy.... news to me.

The show let out at 1AM and we were way out in Manhatten somewhere, needing to get to the Bronx to catch up with Renee and Toby. We were all dead tired and didn't make it to the Bronx until 3AM. Of course Toby came in hot and answered our call to let us in (he knew we were coming... just didn't expect it to be that late). Unfortunately, Toby and Renee had class the next day so I didn't see them at all really. 

We dragged ass a bit the next day making our way to the train station to get out of NYC. Grabbed Tyler's brother's whip in Connecticut and cruised in the Caddy back to Maine. Overall a successful trip, could have had less rain but got in some quality activities. Also Megabus is awesome, if you buy tickets far enough in advance it's $1. Money.... how does it work?

Yes and Another Raspberry Pie

Just another dump of pictures of things I've been up to lately. 

Bonsai trees! 

Last weekend Hamlin invited me to come over and make Kimchi. For those of you who don't know, it's a spicy, delicious fermented side that you can put on all kinds of stuff. You can put it on noodles, eggs, pasta and just straight up eat it.

Kimchi Makin'

After you cut up all the vegetables you have to let it sit and ferment at room temp for a few days. Mine has been spewing some stuff as it ferments. After it settles down you stick it in the fridge for a while and I think it's good for eating after a couple of weeks. Apparently it lasts for months too, which is awesome because it's kind of a messy endeavor to make.

Wire brushin'

I've been redoing the front seats for my bus. Since they were fairly rusty, I wanted to sandblast them. Since they're so big I would've had to do it outside with the awesome sandblaster I bought a couple summers ago. However since it's ya know... January. I'm not real keen on doing that. So, I wire brushed them instead and I've got some sort of rust restoring paint to use. These will be well undercover so I'm not too worried about it. It took a lot of brushing though.

Trashcan Slinger 3000

I got around to characterizing the motor I plan on using for the rowing machine. I'm calling it the REbus Rower, for those of you watching at home. I jimmied up this ghetto testing setup with the brake tester at work. Luckily I was just testing open circuit voltage so since there was little to no torque, I got away with spinning the motor like this. Turns out this motor is roughly 0.2V/RPM.

Raspberry Pie Round 2

Last night I made it over to the Havu Estate for dinner. I tried making another raspberry pie that was less thick.... it turned out ok but still thicker than I wanted. I've gotta nail down that recipe. MORE PIE. 

Tonight I went to my first improv class. It's going to be a weekly thing for a few weeks I guess (when does this thing end again?). It was pretty fun and I think it'll be a nice outlet from work and it'll be fun to interact with people I don't normally see.