Hmmm, it's Friday night

It's friday night, raining like cats & dogs with winds like you wouldn't believe. The rain hadn't started when I got off from work, so I was able to ride the bike home instead of calling Sweety for a ride. But the wind was terrible, it keep pushing me around durning the ride home. Plus I think I've fouled a plug in Old Blu', she just wasn't sounding right or running right on the ride home. Tommorow's going to be a busy day, after work I have some business to attend to then get back home and get to work cleaning/straightening in the garage again. My goal is to have it straightened out by next weekend. I made a pretty good dent in it a couple a weekends ago, but haven't been able to get back to it until this weekend, but I made the announcement tonight that I'm going to work in the garage this weekend. Some times I have to do this just so that I don't get other Sweety-do's. LOL Oh well, not much else to say tonight. Have a good weekend all and keep it fun.

TV commercial

Why can't we have TV commercials like this?
http://www.zipperfish.net/video/may2005/bouncing.php

http://www.zipperfish.net/mediabase/popup.php?Active=Zvideo&&ID=696

http://www.zipperfish.net/video/july2005/likebrunette.php

Sloooow Day at the shop

Not a whole lot happened today, I started mocking up a new rear fender on a '03 Deuce, I got it bolted on but that was about it, we wanted to get that much done so that we could have the customer check it out since he wasn't sure about the fender, he was happy though when he stopped in to check it out. Now I just have to wait on the rest of the parts to come in so that I can finish the full mock up.

My other big project today was putting new risers and a new starter in a Dyna WG that we put a 240 wide tire kit on a couple of years ago. The risers turned out to be a no-go, after I got them install it looked like there wasn't going to be enough clearance between the bars and the tank, turned out there wasn't, so I reinstalled the original risers back on it. The starter was pretty much the usual HD bs of installing a starter, the only technical problem I ran across was the starter shaft bolt, the 240 kit that we had previously installed included an offset kit for the primary drive that spaced it out from the motor and trans approx an inch and a quarter. After digging a bit through the parts bins, I realized that I didn't have one long enough, I ended up making one out of 3/16" dia rod by threading the ends and then welding a nut to one end. The new starter shaft bolt ended up being about 8 inches long, I'm just glad that it doesn't have to support a great deal.

Well, that's about it for today, catch ya' all later.

Sunday Evening

Well, it turned out to be a somewhat busy day, built some short fences around Sweety's rose bushes in the backyard to keep the dogs from peeing on them, and replaced the gate that goes into the backyard. Sweety did make up for the lack of our normal sunday morning routine, she fired up the grill and cooked me a couple of beautifully delicious steaks just the way I like, and then suggested that we ride the bike over to visit with a friend of hers. The bike ride doesnt' sound like much unless you know Sweety, she loves to ride but she's a warm weather type, she doesn't usually even suggest going out on the bike if it's even a bit nippy. It was a short ride, her friend just lives about 5 minutes from here, on the way back we swung by the nephew's house since I saw his garage door up, we waved as we went by since she wanted to go home. I ended up dropping her and the V-Star at the house and riding Old Blu' back over to his house to visit for a bit. The V-Star is more comfortable when riding two-up, but I prefer to ride Old Blu' when I riding alone, it's a '75 Honda CB750 Four that's about 90% original and what's custom on it was done back in the 70's. Well, not much else happened today. Just going to relax a bit, play with F.R.E.D. then hit the sack.

Sunday Morning

Ok, sunday morning is supposed to work this way -
- Wake up smelling a fresh pot of coffee
- After a bit, the smells of breakfast wafting up the stairs
- After stuffing myself, retiring to the computer room to read e-mail, etc.
- Farting around enjoying the rest of the day

This morning -
- I had to nuke my coffee
- A bowl of cold cereal
- My wife asking for a big hammer, so she can rip apart the deck
- So much for farting around and enjoying a nice day.

Oh Well, it was good while it lasted. LOL

Gotta love changes

Well, another fun day at the shop. When I got there this morning all set to finish up the lenses on the Victory, I noticed someone had been doing some doodling on the bike, when I asked the boss about it, turns out him and the painter had decided to do the lenses differently. Yep, two days of cutting, grinding and fitting down the drain. Oh well, life goes on. LOL I just wish that they had thought of it before I did the other lenses, it only took me about ten minutes to make the new lenses, they're still discussing (arguing) about who's going to recut the sheetmetal. I'll let them figure it out, not that it really matters, I'll end up doing the work anyway.

Not much else happened today, I did a summer check up on one bike and got back to work on a bagger that I started on last week.

Maybe tommorow will be more interesting.

Four days in one. LOL

I've been kinda tired the last couple a days when I've gotten home, so I haven't really haven't felt like getting online, but here goes, so get comfy. Started working on a Victory on monday, actually started on it about two months ago, but the guy wanted to go to Daytona, so I put his original sheetmetal back on the bike so he could make the run. I got back to it finally, it's just a sheetmetal job on it, replace the front and rear fenders, reworked the sissy bar mounting, and installing flush mounted leds in the fender and bags. The front fender I did two months ago when I first started working on it, He wants an Indian Chief fender on it, defently wasn't a quickie job either. It took four days to mount that fender, now while that may sound crazy, you have to realize one thing - an Indian Chief fender is designed for a 18 inch rim with a standard profile tire, a Victory runs a 17 inch rim with a low profile tire, this makes for about a 4 inch difference in radius. So it was more of a job than normal. First I had to carefully cut out the fender skirts, so that they could be reworked later, then I cut about twenty slices down each side of the fender so that I could collapse the overall radius down to an acceptiable level. Once each of the slices was tacked, I started on the skirts. After examing the right side skirt, I decided to just pitch it and recut a new one because of the cutout it had for the Indian style brakes. Next up was more fitting and tacking until they fit correctly, then finally doing cutouts for the Victory brakes. It took one whole day just to do all the finish welding and grinding but it defentaly made the front end look a lot better. While he had the bike in Daytona, we had Eric make up a frenched license plate box and mount that in his new rear fender. Jump to this last monday and now I get to work on the rear end. I got started on monday reassembling the bike back together with the pieces we had mocked up so far and I layed out the new lighting. The design for the led's is based on a "V" shaped chevron, he had originally picked out a set from Hi Tech, but after looking at the specs on them, decided that they were too small for the look he wanted, so I layed out a larger chevron pattern on paper and transfered it to the lens material, fender and both bags. a few hours of work with various power tools and files and I had four lenses made and four big holes cut in bodywork. That pretty much sums up monday and tuesday. Wednesday, being my day off, and a beautiful day to boot, I spent the morning working on my truck (oil change and monthly cleaning) and Mom's truck (distributor problems). The afternoon was spent cleaning the garage, still have about three or four more days work there, picture having a 30 x 40 ft garage 90% full and having somewhat trained chimps shoving all that into a two and half car garage, need I go further? Anyway, back at it today at the shop. The day started out with a break, and not a good one, to mold the lens into shape you have to heat them, I use an old electric roasting pan, the same type as your see at the church socials usually full of beans or sliced beef. Well, I pulled the first lens out a bit too soon and when I pressed it into the cutout, it decided to snap in half, after cussing about it for a minute, I tossed it aside and put the next one in the oven, didn't have any problems with the other three lenses, spent a few minutes cutting out a new lens and gluing it up, it'll be ready in the morning to fit. I finished up the day working on the sissy bar, he didn't like the way the stock attached, it bolts in between the saddle bags and the fender. He wanted to be able to remove it easier, since his wife doesn't always ride with him, so I took an underseat HD version and sliced it up and reworked it to fit. He stopped by this afternoon to check out where things stood, and was pretty happy with progress so far, he's going to bring his wife by either tommorow or saturday to see how she likes the new sissy bar before I finish it up completely and send it out for powder-coating. That about sums up today, I'll finish up fitting the last lens tommorow and roll it off my rack until him and the wife show up. Hopefully they show tommorow, so I can finish the sissy bar on saturday. I get to spend the rest of tommorow doing odd jobs, got a couple a bikes that need new tires and checkups for the season. Well, that's enough for tonight, LOL, time for a head run.

It's Sunday

Ya now what really sucks, 6:30 am, that's what time I woke up this morning, and I didn't even go to bed early either. It ended up being a pretty full day, Sweets and I did a little shopping at Lowes, we bought a small stack of lumber and a truck load of dirt. Needless to say, I spent the day beginning the spring gardening. I built raised flower beds around two of the trees in the front yard, 3 ft by 4 ft by 1.5 ft tall. Then I took down the last of the Christmas lights, ya I know, it's freaking March, but it was the first day that I've worked outside that the ground was solid enough to put a ladder up. I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing from the work, then spent about two hours working on killing the virus on her computer. It was one of those adware viruses, ended up having to research it on the net to find out how to kill it, since Norton Internet Security 2006 couldn't get the job done. The virus is from a company that sell spyware removal software, namely Spy Falcon. Now isn't that a kicker, an anti-spyware company infecting a computer with a virus. Thing of it is, most of the leading software packages can't kill it, they can identify it, but not kill it. You have to do it the old fashoned way, manually. Looks like it time for all you high-techie people to bone up on the old MS-DOS commands from my day. ROFLMAO!!!

March Equinox

Tommorow is the beginning of the March Equinox

Approximately March 20-21)

This day begins fall in the Southern Hemisphere and spring in the Northern Hemisphere. There are twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of darkness at all points on the earth’s surface on the two equinoxes. Sunrise is at 6 a.m. and sunset is at 6 p.m. local (solar) time for most points on the earth’s surface.

North Pole: The sun is on the horizon at the North Pole on the March Equinox. The sun rises at the North Pole at noon to the horizon on the March Equinox and the North Pole remains light until the September Equinox.

Arctic Circle: Experiences 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. The sun is 66.5 off zenith and low in the sky at 23.5 degrees above the horizon.

Tropic of Cancer: Experiences 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. The sun is 23.5 degrees off of the zenith.

Equator: The sun is directly overhead the equator at noon on the equinox. On both equinoxes, the sun is directly over the equator at noon.

Tropic of Capricorn: Experiences 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. The sun is 23.5 degrees off of the zenith.

Antarctic Circle: Experiences 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness.

South Pole: The sun sets at the South Pole at noon after the Pole having been light for the past six months (since the September Equinox). The day begins on the horizon in the morning and by the end of the day, the sun has set.

Was a quiet day at the shop

Not much to tell other than that, I've been working on a softail that a guy got a good deal on, he bought it with the thought of doing a little work to it and then selling it for a profit, quite honestly, if he makes any profit on it, it won't be much. He did get it for a song, and in my opinion he got a good project bike for the price, but I don't think he'll make the kind of profit he thinks he will, I say that he'll probally break even, including my bill, or maybe five or six hundred more, but that's about it. His dad brought the bike into us and is the one keeping tabs on it for him, he stopped in today and we chatted about it while I was putting the primary back together (it had a couple of bad seals) I basicly gave him the lowdown on the bike's condition, and my opinion about what his son should do with the bike. That and showing/helping Eric put the seat and brake part together for Tony's bike that I made on tues. not much else happened. Oh well, asta for tonight.

Giving 100%

What Makes Life 100%?
Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%?
We have all been to those meetings where someone wants over 100%.
How about achieving 103%? Here's a little math that might prove helpful.
What makes life 100%?
If
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z is represented
as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.
Then,

H A R D W O R K
8 1 18 4 23 15 18 11 = 98%

K N O W L E D G E
11 14 15 23 12 5 4 7 5 = 96%

But,

A T T I T U D E
1 20 20 9 20 21 4 5 = 100%

And,

B U L L S H I T
2 21 12 12 19 8 9 20 = 103%

So, it stands to reason that hardwork and knowledge will get you close, attitude will get you there, but bullshit will put you over the top.
And look how far .........

A S S K I S S I N G
1 19 19 11 9 19 19 9 14 7 = 118%

will take you.

Blankness

It's wed. my day off, it's been a forgettable day, we all have them now and again. Nothing interesting happened, didn't do anything exciting, unless you can somehow count hooking up a washer and drier exciting. The most enjoyment I had today was tickling Sweety in the kitchen this afternoon and threating to drop a piece of ice down her shirt. I've been parusing through the blogs and community boards for about the last half hour and yawning, boy has it been a fun day.

Another day, another fight

Day 2 of the virus fight, I've been reading up on the nasty little bugger. Hopefully I can kill the bastard tonight, we'll see.


In other news....

Saturday was a freaking busy day, it was nice out, good riding weather. That meant that everybody stopped by, of course I was busy as all get out, I had a seat pan to make. Luckly I had prepped the bike on friday night so I was able to start laying glass as soon as I hit the door saturday, I didn't even stop when all the guys started walking in, I just waved and kept on laying glass. Between Laz working his magic with bondo on one side of the shop and me over in the other corner working with fiberglass, we had the whole shop stinking to high heaven. LOL About two hours later, I finally finished and took a break. After taking a few minutes to air out and get my nose cleaned out (yes, I do wear a respriator mask) I went back in and started rearranging the showroom, the shovelhead FL that we had out front had sold, so I had to get it out, that was fun wiggling a bike with 38" beach bars out through two doors 36" wide. Of course the battery was dead since it had sat there for about six months, had to push the heavy ass mother around to the back door of the shop. At least I got to ride the other bike that replaced it in the showroom around to the front. The guy that bought the shovelhead wanted a few changes made, nothing major, he wanted a old school tractor seat with springs, and also needed the brake pedal relocated. I started making up some mounts for it saturday, I finished mocking them up today, the old style seat looks good on this bike, the bike has that old style look. The new owner came by this afternoon so I was able to have him try it out, he was happy, so I get to finish it up tommorow along with reworking the brake pedal. Other than that not much else going on, you can tell from my previous post how I spent my sunday and how I'm spending tonight.

NVCTRL.EXE The virus that's impossible to kill

NVCTRL.EXE That's the name of the virus on Sweety's computer. It's more a pain in the ass than anything, and most likely you have it and don't even realize that you do. Ever click on a webpage link on your desktop and all of a sudden it redirects you to a different site, usually one either selling anti-spyware/virus software or porn. Good chance that you've got it then. You don't even need a fancy virus scanner program to see if you have it either, just click on the your start button, then click on run. When the dialog box comes up, type "regedit" and press enter. A new window will pop up. Then click on "edit" at the top, then click on "find", type "nvctrl.exe" in the box and press enter. If you have it it will pop up highlited right there on your screen. Of course that's the easy part, getting rid of it is a bit more diffucult, there are whole webpages just about this one virus, google it sometime. Ah well, time to get ready for work, more on this later.

It's Thursday and back to work

Well, not a whole lot went on today. It rained some this morning and is still raining as I type, yadda-yadda-yadda, on to the good stuff - Gearhead Porn LOL

Well, finished putting Nature Boy's kicker together today, all the pieces I made up on Tuesday were nice and dry from the rattle can paint job I gave them. Got them all bolted in place first thing this morning then started finishing up the rest, I decided that since it was an old 4-spd kicker it just had to be bolted up the old fashioned way, fat stainless steel acorn nuts! Bossman had bought a bunch of stainless button head cap screws originally, he gets a woody over the damn things, everything he puts together gets 'em. I can't stand them anymore, LOL. But button heads just didn't look right to me, come on, it's an old fashoned 4-spd kicker, it screams "Acorn nuts!". I made short work of a piece of 5/16th threaded rod with my handy cutoff wheel and made up studs for the case, along with my handy-dandy home-made stud install tool, I had it all set to go in a matter of minutes. Of course it took a bit longer to get the damn thing on, holes never line up perfectly when your dealing with different manfacturer's parts, hell, sometimes even with the same manufacturer they don't line up just right. Next tool out of the toolbox, the offical Harley Davidson fine adjustment tool, (for those of you not familar with it, it's a 3 lb dead blow hammer). After a couple of minutes "discussion", it decided to go into place and I was able to tighten ever thing down and fill the tranny back up with fluid. Then came the easy stuff, putting the fuel tank back on and cleaning up a few bits and pieces here and there. After finishing up there, I moved onto the next project in line, mocking up the new rear fender and struts on a Fat Boy that's getting a 200 rear tire. I was in the groove buy then and it only took me about 20 minutes to get the fender and struts fitted and mounted in place. Then spent about 30 minutes cutting and fitting a set of filler pieces for the side skirts since they just weren't the right shape.

Well, that's about all for tonight, tommorrow will be welding the struts and filler pieces to the fender and making sure nothing warped to badly, then it's on to the stinky job, making a new seat pan for it.

I just love the smell of fiberglass in the morning.

Gotta have a kicker !

Things have been going pretty good this week sofar, i finished most of the work on the dyna I'm currently working on, I mounted a 4-spd kicker via a adapto plate to a 5-spd dyna trans. That was the easy part, the fun began with engineering a clutch cable setup for it, I started with a stock clutch arm and atttempted to make it work by cutting a bit off the end to clear the start button mounted on the starter and then took the torch to it to bend it, so that it would clear the top of the 5-spd. After looking at that a bit, the general concensous was that it looked like doggy do-do. LOL So, I ended up cutting the end off where it bolts to the clutch rod, throwing the rest away and making a new one out of 1/2" steel rod, now it looks good. Next up came figuring out the cable mounting, that actually worked out pretty nice with a simple clean bracket made from some angle stock that was in the bits & pieces pile. It all turned out pretty cool looking, even with the clutch cable running along the right side of the engine instead of the left. "The Nature Boy" as we call him, wants to do a jockey shift next winter, so all I have to do now is to convince him to do a X-Treme suidice clutch setup since the clutch cable is neatly running down the right side now, other wise I'll be figuring out how to get it looped over to the left side for a regular jockey setup. That was the hard stuff, the easy work was swapping out a new set of rims and tires and powder-coating his handlebars. Well, it's off to update the shop's website now.

Another day, another reason to say f@#k it

Ya now it's been one of those weekends. It all started Saturday morning, Jazz our rotty had a thing on one of her paws and Sweety decided to take her to the vet to have it checked out, she's not a pup anymore so I didn't mind. She got back from the vet just as I was leaving for work and as she pulled in, I could see the coolant steaming from under the hood, I just shook my head and told her I'd check it out when I got home and to ask Dad to give her a ride to work. As I walked into work there's the little green sporty that I spent two days making a custom set of pipes for back on the rack, apparently the boss decided that he didn't like the set of pipes that I had made and he was making a new set. I thought "Screw it!" In my opinion his weren't as good looking as mine. His were all bent and twisty and didn't look that nice, while mine were clean, simple and followed the lines and style of the bike. Some of the guys were there and I ended up working on another bike that day. When I got home and checked the truck out, it turned out that the water pump had gone to hell. Luckly the local parts store I deal with had one on the shelf. Fifty buck plus a ten dollar core charge later, I was the proud owner of a reman Dodge water pump. I decided to wait until today to put it on since I had to clean out a spot in the basement for the new washer and dryer that I picked up this morning, managed to get five more boxes of garbage packed up and ready for the dumpster. Well, not much else happened this weekend, ended up changing the water pump in my nephew's garage since it snowed today, got about 4-5 inches, and to thing it was a beautiful day yesterday, about 45 deg and nice and sunny. I knew I should have took the bike out for a ride, LOL.

And then they complain

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