Immigration: Scary Stats

Immigration: Scary Stats

If this doesn't open your eyes... nothing will!

From the L.A. Times

1. 40% of all workers in L.A. County ( L.A. County has 10.2 million

people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This was because they are

predominantly illegal immigrants, working without a green card.

2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.

3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal

aliens.

4. Over 2/3 of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien

Mexicans on Medi-Cal, whose births were paid for by taxpayers.

5. Nearly 25% of all inmates in California detention centers

are Mexican nationals here illegally.

6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in

garages.

7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles

are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.

8. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.

9. 21 radio stations in L.A. are Spanish speaking.

10. In L.A. County 5.1 million people speak English.

3.9 million speak Spanish.

(There are 10.2 million people in L.A. County).

(All the above from the Los Angeles Times)

Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops,

but 29% are on welfare.

Over 70% of the United States' annual population growth

(and over 90% of California , Florida , and New York )

results from immigration.

The cost of immigration to the American taxpayer in 1997 was,

(after subtracting taxes immigrants pay), a NET $70 BILLION/

year, [Professor Donald Huddle, Rice University ]. The lifetime

fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) for the average

adult Mexican immigrant is a NEGATIVE number.

29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens.

If they can come to this country to raise Hell and demonstrate by

the thousands, WHY can't they take charge over the corruption

in their own country?

We are a bunch of fools for letting this continue.

THE U.S. VS MEXICO

On February 15, 1998, the U.S. and Mexican soccer teams met at the Los

Angeles Coliseum. The crowd was overwhelmingly pro-Mexican even though most

lived in this country. They booed during the National Anthem and U.S. flags

were held upside down. As the match progressed, supporters of the U.S. team were

insulted, pelted with projectiles, punched and spat upon. Beer and trash were

thrown at the U.S. players before and after the match. The coach of the U.S.

team, Steve Sampson said, "This was the most painful experience I have ever had in

this profession."

Did you know that immigrants from Mexico and other non-European

countries can come to this country and get preferences in jobs, education, and

government contracts. It's called affirmative action or racial privilege. The

Emperor of Japan or the President of Mexico could migrate here and immediately be

eligible for special rights unavailable for Americans of European descent.

Corporate America has signed on to the idea that minorities and third

world immigrants should get special, privileged status. Some examples are

Exxon, Texaco, Merrill Lynch, Boeing, Paine Weber, Starbucks and many more.

DID YOU KNOW?

Did you know ... that Mexico regularly intercedes on the side

of the defense in criminal cases involving Mexican nationals?

Did you know ... that Mexico has NEVER extradited a Mexican

national accused of murder in the U.S. in spite of agreements to do so?

According to the L.A. Times, Orange County , California is home to 275

gangs with 17,000 members, 98% of which are Mexican and Asian.

How's your county doing?

According to a New York Times article dated May 19, 1994, 20 years

after the great influx of legal immigrants from Southeast Asia, 30% are

still on welfare compared to 8% of households nationwide. A Wall Street Journal

editorial dated December 5, 1994 quotes law enforcement officials as

stating that Asian mobsters are the "greatest criminal challenge the

country faces." Not bad for a group that is still under 5% of the population.

Is education important to you? Here are the words of a teacher who

spent over 20 years in the Los Angeles School system. "Imagine teachers in

classes containing 30-40 students of widely varying attention spans and

motivation, many of whom aren't fluent in English. Educators seek learning

materials likely to reach the majority of students and that means fewer words and

math problems and more pictures and multicultural references."

WHEN I WAS YOUNG

I remember hearing about the immigrants that came through Ellis Island

They wanted to learn English. They wanted to breathe free. They wanted

to become Americans. Now, far too many immigrants come here with

demands. They demand to be taught in their own language. They demand

special privileges ... affirmative action. They demand ethnic studies that

glorify their culture.

NOW ...

WHY CAN'T WE SEND THEM HOME

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

YES WE CAN, the sheriff od Mecklenburg County NC requested training from ICE (immigration) and since May IN HIS JURISDICTION ALONE over 900 illegals, convicted criminals and regular run of the mill (wets mohows, creek jumpers, brown travelers ect ect) have been scheduled for deportment or have been deported. Seems someone in our or your community has dropped the ball if they are not also doing the same w/these slugs. Seems AL, NC, CA, FL and AZ have all received training from ICE, and there are only 14 depts and 6 states that have requested this training. WHERE are the community leaders on this matter?????
So hey if/when U fwd this to another please ask, "WHAT IS OUR COMMUNITY DOING REFERENCE THIS MATTER?"!!!
Did U vote? Do U pay taxes? If yes then it seems U have a right to ask the elected local/state/federal officials, "WHAT THE HELL R U DOING? Do U only puff up and act like U care when votes are needed or DO U REALLY CARE? How much has the local population of illegals costs OUR community and maybe UR PAY should reflect Ur action or lack of."
No backseat/couch quarter backing/bitching if U cannot do something about the problem, we have enough bullshit from those who make a living off our inactivity.
So you are either a supporter or a opponent of the current status quo!!! PICK

The long weekend is almost over

Well, it's Sunday, Thanksgiving weekend is almost over. Haven't done a whole lot this weekend, spent T-day itself just relaxing on the coutch and in front of the computer. Spent Friday and Saturday messing with the chopper, finally got it out from under the tarp in the backyard where she's been hiding since we got to Tulsa. Gotta say that I love those old Hondas, she's been sitting for about three months now and I know the battery was half dead when I covered her up. I put the key in her, turn on the gas, closed the choke and two kicks and she was running. :) Mind you not purring like she should, but she made a couple of laps around the block ok. I rolled her back up to my garage and decided that maybe the timing was off a bit. After getting the timing light hooked up I noticed that I wasn't getting a pulse from the #1 wire, so I checked the rest and they were good. I pulled the wire and checked it with my meter and got a reading of 10K ohms, yep a bad wire, just for the fun of it I decided to check the rest, I avg. 5k ohms on the rest, ok, one really bad and the rest not far behind. I did a little research and decide the problem was that I had used graphite core wires. So, after a trip to the local O'Reily's Auto Parts, I had a set on order for Saturday morning. The next morning I did my running around gathering a few tidbit parts and my new wires. After putting on a new set of wires, I took her for another spin around the block, well, she's running a lot better now, but still got a few bugs to work out.

All for now - Asta

Yes, it's been awhile

Ya, I know it's been quite a while since I last posted. Not much has changed in my world and I spent most of my time today working on my new blog site, it's for all those joke you get via e-mail. Check it out while I go move a truckload of mulch. LOL

http://woogaus-jotd.blogspot.com/

Time flies ...

Just happened to look and see when the last post was, didn't realize it was that long ago. It's been real busy for me lately, I finally finished mocking up my bike last monday. Everything is done except for the seat, so it all got ripped apart for the finish work. I'm going to be bringing the frame home tommorow so I can work on it at the house some, Sweets gets a bit lonely when I spend half the night at the shop. But the clean up work I have to do on the frame I can do at home, so I'll work on that here. Laz, our painter is going to bring some fine line tape to the shop tommorow so I can get my tank ready for paint, I think I'll do the painting here as well since I'm only going to rattle can it for now.

'Night everybody, it's time for beddy bye. Asta

It's Monday - yippie?

The start of a new work week, and the start of a new project at the shop for me. Hmm, I haven't been talking much about what has been going on at the shop lately, quick update.

1. Hired a new guy, fresh outta MMI two weeks ago. He's doing great, him and the boss get along great and he actually knows enough to be past the danger point. Best thing he knows is when to ask for help or advice on how things are done in the real world as opposed to the classroom world.

2. Hiring the new guy has let me get back to build projects, namely Victor's chopper, since he was complaing the most. LOL. It's a sky high monster, I can barely see over the fuel tank and I'm 6'1". We finished the mock up and most everything a couple a months back, but without a third guy at the shop, it's been a pain to work on it, since hiring the new guy, I've been able to devote the last week and a half to getting it finshed and on the road. It's about 90% done, but I had to stop because I ran outta parts, gotta love backorders.

3. The Smoke Out is this weekend, so we all have been spending a lot of time helping guys get thier bikes ready for that, mostly little things that they can't take care of themselves. Most of the guys that go to the Smoke Out tend to work on thier own rides and usually only come to us if it's beyond thier abilities.

4. Started a new project this morning, an OLD shovelhead FLH, it's not excatlly the kind of job I like to do, but I'll do my best on it. The owner was rebuilding it himself, kinda of a long term project for him, unfortunally he passed on before he could finish it and his family asked us to finish it for him. I imaging that once it's finished, they will probally want to sell it. Personnaly, I think that if that's the case, they should just sell it as is. Basicly though, all I'm doing is getting it running, doing what's needed to be able to show it does run. I figure if there are no major setbacks, I'll have it finished by friday and hopefully the rest of Victor's parts will be in and I can finish his next week.

Ok, that should bring everyone up to date on the shop work. As for the personal rides, I'm planning on finishing the oil tank/battery box for mine on thursday night, hopefully have it mounted as well, I'd like to be able to spend this weekend tying up a lot of the little loose ends so that I can spend next week wiring the bike. I've decided to get the bike running as a rat chopper for now, I'm still not 100% sure I'm gonna like the sucide clutch / jocky shift setup, plus I need to see how the Amen suspention will need to be tweaked for the best ride, so it's just gonna be a rattle can paint job for now, I figure by this fall I should have all the bugs worked out and then I'll finish it up completely. That will let me get to work on Sweety's trike project sooner, gotta keep her happy, so I'll be happy.

Well, that's all for now. Asta

it's been awhile

Yep, it's been awhile since I've been here. Life is like that. It's mostly been the usual crazed pace of life that's been keeping me occupied lately. A big project that's been going on is research, Sweets has decided that she would like a trike. So I've been researching them, looking at different kits, convertions, and of course the costs. Let me tell ya, there not cheap, no matter how you do it. The photo above is the one I like the best so far, it's made by a local outfit www.eztrikekits.com . We drove over there last wensenday to check them out and we both got to take the one in the picture for a test ride. You can't tell it by the photo, but this one has been raked out to 40 deg and was set up as a drag bike, not excatlly a streetable setup. But it did ride nice for the most part, it had a bit of a shake in the front end taking off, I'm figuring is due to a improperly balanced front tire, but other than that I liked it. Of course like most, it's not cheap, but at about half the cost of most, it's an option we're discussing a lot.

Well, I'll try to get back later, time to get ready for work now. Catch ya all on the flip side, asta.

I wanna be the product tester !!!!

The SP9004 Spudgun

Only in America can a guy make a living making and selling potato launchers! Just amazing, here's the link to his site.

http://www.spudtech.com/default.asp

Lazy Sunday

Well, it's a lazy sunday around here. Not that I just sat around all day doing nothing, I did go to the shop and work on the chopper I'm building for a few hours. I manage to get a start on the rear brake setup, that's been fun, the Amen Saviour frame I'm using was designed around drum brakes and I'm trying to rig a hydraulic system on it. I also worked on the oil tank and electric box as well. I managed to get the box made and got a good start on the tank, I figure about one more night should take care of that. As for the rest of the day, well...... I found a fun website.

http://www.veoh.com/


You can watch the previews if you like, but it doesn't cost anything to sign up, you do have to download a viewer program to watch them, but there is a lot of content there and not just porn either!

But just for you preverts out there ----

Fun with garage doors

Well, keep the first part short, my Dad and me had a discussion about the garage, his thoughts were to tear it down and build a new one, after explaining that the current garage was grandfathered under the current building codes and that the only thing wrong with the old one was the doors, we went out today and bought new doors. Let me tell you, garage doors ain't cheap! But, we came across a deal at Home Depot, they had a two sets of matching doors the right size that had been returned minus about half the hardware needed to install them, so we did some talking and ended up getting the whole mess for $250 bucks, the doors were originally $300 bucks apiece. These are some nice doors too, two inch thick steel clad insulated doors. :)) Well, after getting them home and inventorying what was there,I had everything new for one door except for a couple of brackets. Not a problem, considering that the east door never gets opened, I've got a work table and one of my toolboxes up against it now and the door is locked down so that it won't raise. I spent today taking down the west door and installing the new one, had to do a little engineering with the brackets at the top to get it all to work. Had real fun doing that since the instructions didn't mention which way they had referenced left and right, turns out that it is looking at the door from the inside. With a little help from a Hilti hammer drill that I borrowed from my nephew I was able to get the door up and almost working, remember that left/right thing I mentioned. I've got to switch the two bottom roller brackets around, right now the door will only go up about two thirds the way up and gets stuck. Oh well, that's tommorow nights job fixing that, by the time I got that far I was beat, so I just called it a night. The other door gets to wait until wensenday.

That's about it for tonight, I'm beat and I think I'm going to call it a night early. Asta.

It's finally over, at least as far as I'm concerened.

Sweets and me have been having a series of discussions about work, my job in particular. She wants me to quit and work some where else, doesn't matter where, or if I actually like the job, just not at the bike shop. It's not that she doesn't want me to work at a bike shop, just not the one that I currently work at. There are several reasons behind this.

1. She doesn't like my boss - on this one, well a lot of people don't like him, he's one of those types, you either like him or not, period.

2. The pay isn't the greatist - I've been checking around, the pay isn't too hot anywhere. But at least I'm getting a raise at the end of the month.

3. No benifits - Been checking around on that one too, not too many places have benifits that are worth even mentioning, most places you have to pay for your insurance anyway. I worked for Motion Industries for six years, big outfit, google it's parent company sometime - Geninue Parts, I was coughing up 80 bucks a paycheck for insurance - $2080.00 a year and I wasn't even paying the full amount, when I started the company was called BerryBearing and the insurance was paid by the company, all the Berry employes got a bump in pay to cover the cost of insurance at the time of transition, but it was a one shot deal, after that if the cost went up, we had to pay for it.

4. No overtime pay - This issue is fixed, the boss and me had a talk today, starting at the end of the month, I'm no longer on a salary pay schedule, it's going to be hourly and I'll get overtime pay if I'm needed to work some extra hours, not that I expect extra hours, I very rarely have any now.

Anyhow, to sum things up, the boss and me had a nice chat today and straightened out a few points and straightened out a few issues and I've decided to stay put and stop looking at other jobs. Of course the fun part has yet to happen, telling Sweets this. LOL

Oh well, asta for now.

I like what he said

This is an e-mail I got, like most "chain letter" e-mails I don't know if it actually came from him, but whoever wrote it, I think they got it right and I agree with what is said. I have NO problem with people wanting to live in America, just do it the legal way. Sign on the line, become a legal American like the rest of us.

Mexican Standoff

I don't know how everybody else feels about it, but to me I think Hispanic people in this country, legally or illegally, made a huge public relations mistake with their recent demonstrations.

I don't blame anybody in the world for wanting to come to the United States of America, as it is a truly wonderful place. But when the first thing you do when you set foot on American soil is illegal it is flat out wrong and I don't care how many lala land left heads come out of the woodwork and start trying to give me sensitivity lessons.

I don't need sensitivity lessons; in fact I don't have anything against Mexicans! I just have something against criminals and anybody who comes into this country illegally is a criminal and if you don't believe it try coming into America from a foreign country without a passport and see how far you get.

What disturbs me about the demonstrations is that it's tantamount to saying, "I am going to come into your country even if it means breaking your laws and there's nothing you can do about it."

It's an "in your face" action and speaking just for me I don't like it one little bit and if there were a half dozen pairs of gonads in Washington bigger than English peas it wouldn't be happening. Where are you, you bunch of lily livered, pantywaist, forked tongued, sorry excuses for defenders of The Constitution? Have you been drinking the water out of the Potomac again?

And even if you pass a bill on immigration it will probably be so pork laden and watered down that it won't mean anything anyway. Besides, what good is any other law going to do when you won't enforce the ones on the books now?

And what ever happened to the polls guys? I thought you folks were the quintessential finger wetters. Well you sure ain't paying any attention to the polls this time because somewhere around eighty percent of Americans want something done about this mess, and mess it is and getting bigger everyday.

This is no longer a problem; it is a dilemma and headed for being a tragedy. Do you honestly think that what happened in France with the Muslims can't happen here when the businesses who hire these people finally run out of jobs and a few million disillusioned Hispanics take to the streets?

If you, Mr. President, Congressmen and Senators, knuckle under on this and refuse to do something meaningful it means that you care nothing for the kind of country your children and grandchildren will inherit.

But I guess that doesn't matter as long as you get re-elected. Shame on you.

One of the big problems in America today is that if you have the nerve to say anything derogatory about any group of people (except Christians) you are going to be screamed at by the media and called a racist, a bigot and anything else they can think of to call you.

Well I've been pounded by the media before and I'm still rockin' and rollin' and when it comes to speaking the truth I fear not. And the truth is that the gutless, gonad-less, milksop politicians are just about to sell out the United States of America because they don't have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the face reality.

And reality is that we would never allow any other group of people to have 12 million illegals in this country and turn around and say, "Oh it's ok, ya'll can stay here if you'll just allow us to slap your wrist."

And I know that some of you who read this column are saying "Well what's wrong with that?" I'll tell you what's wrong with it. These people could be from Mars as far as we know. We don't know who they are, where they are or what they're up to and the way the Congress is going we're not going to.

Does this make sense? Labor force you say? We already subsidize corporate agriculture as it is, must we subsidize their labor as well?

If these people were from Haiti or if they were from Somalia or Afghanistan would we be so fast to turn a blind eye to them? I think not.

All the media shows us are pictures of hard working Hispanics who have crossed the border just to try to better their life. They don't show you pictures of the Feds rounding up members of MS 13, the violent gang who came across the same way the decent folks did. They don't tell you about the living conditions of the Mexican illegals some fat cat hired to pick his crop.

I want to make two predictions. No. 1: This situation is going to grow and fester until it erupts in violence on our streets while the wimps in Washington drag their toes in the dirt and try to figure how many tons of political hay they can make to the acre.

No 2: Somebody is going to cross that border with some kind of weapon of mass destruction and set it off in a major American city after which there will be a backlash such as this country has never experienced and the Capitol building in Washington will probably tilt as Congressmen and Senators rush to the other side of the issue.

I don't know about you but I would love to see just one major politician stand up and say, "I don't care who I make mad and I don't care how many votes I lose, this is a desperate situation and I'm going to lead the fight to get it straightened out."

I don't blame anybody for wanting to come to America, but if you don't respect our immigration laws why should you respect any others.

And by the way, this is America and our flag has stars and stripes. Please get that other one out of my face.

Pray for our troops

What do you think?

God Bless America Charlie Daniels; April 10, 2006
http://www.charliedaniels.com/

Time flies ...

Another week gone, not much to tell about this week.
Monday & Tuesday - life as usual, not much happened at the shop we're doing a lot of spring maintance right now, getting everybody ready for the riding season.
Wednesday - went out and got a truck load of mulch for the flower beds, got all the soaker hoses laid out and hooked up, started working on fixing up the cook shed.
Thursday & Friday - pretty much same as Monday & Tuesday
Today - Finished up most of the work on a bagger I started yesterday and due to the cold wet rain outside, decided to hibernate the rest of the day after work.
Tommorow - big fun, Monday is the annual mass trash pick-up day, you can pile as much as you want to on the curb and the garbage company wont charge you extra, so that meant I'll be carting all the garbage and junk I've been piling up behind the garage out to the curb tommorow, rain or shine.

Boring isn't it?

Deck the Halls (or at least the back porch)

Been kinda one of those weeks so far, had monday off due to Easter, actually what happened was that the boss got talked into something by the wife and kids so he called me monday morning and told me not to come in. It was fine by me, did some running around and worked in the garage a bit. As for tuesday, well, I bolted a couple a more of those shiny go fast chrome bits on the fatboy, rewired the driving lights, can't remember what else I did, I guess that shows how exciting that day was, LOL. Oh, I did haul a load of my bike parts home and started sorting out the stuff, one truck load down, about two or three more to go. Today on the other hand, while not as exciting as building a cool chopper was a busy day. When we built the addition onto the house a few years ago, my bro built a small landing at the back door that had three short funky steps going down to the deck. Everybody complained about them because they were kinda short and stumpy, not to easy to walk up and down, plus the landing outside the door was kinda small. Trying to get in the back door with the groceries while three big dogs are trying to get out/in/see/sniff everything was a bit of a feat. So today out came the building tools and after a trip to Lowe's to get building supplies I re-did the landing. I extended it all the way to the cook shed, about four feet, and built a new set of stairs going down the front part. Didn't completely finish it today, I still have a set of stairs to put in on the backside and then do the hand rails and such, but it's looking a lot better and everyone's happy with what I got finished today. You can now walk up a nice set of stairs to a landing that's big enough for everyone including the dogs to get on and move about. Once I get the rest finished, I've got to buy some Thompson's water sealer and hose everything down so that it doesn't go to hell.

Well that's about it for now, Asta.

Good Friday ?

Well, it was a pretty good friday for me, I'm not really the religious type so I didn't even realize it was Good Friday untill Jeannie at the shop mentioned it. I finished working on a custom softtail this morning, it had a rats' nest wiring job under the seat, I had talked to the owner late last summer when he had bought it and told him then that he might have some problems with it. The bike is in really nice shape otherwise and he did get a good deal on it. He managed to make it through the end of last season without too many problems, but he brought it to the shop earlier this year for us to fix a couple a bugs. One of them was the tail/brake light, it was acting funky. We had the shop kid start on it yesterday, thinking it was just a loose wire, but after a bit of fooling around with it, the boss put him on something else and had me take over. After I got it on my lift, the sparks started flying literally, I managed to get the battery unhooked before it exploded. The way the battery was sitting in the bike it was able to tip forward, the positive cable didn't have any protection on it and it welded itself to the oil tank, not a good thing. LOL After that little incident the decision was made just to rewire the rear end of the bike. After a little wiring tracing and marking I ended up cutting out a bunch of wire, about a dozen scotch-locks and three of the four load equalizers I found, leaving just one mounted up under the dash. This morning I finished up re-routing and cleaning things up, it all looks good and actually works, and now I've got three spare load equalizers in my toolbox to boot. LOL

The job I started this afternoon is a pretty straight-forward one, changing out stock parts with shiny go-fast chrome ones on the front end of a fatboy. Of course I won't be able to finish it this weekend, I'm still waiting on the new rims to come in, but I'll get done what I can.

Started working on Sweety's V-Star tonight, I bought a set of hard bags for Old Blu' but I decided that they didn't look right after getting them and they've sat on a shelf for a while. I got to looking at them the other day and decided that they were the right size for her V-Star. So tonight I started working on the mounting brackets, I managed to get things figured out so that I only have to make four tabs and two support bars to get the racks mounted. Now all I have to do is fix the couple minor problems with the bags and repaint them to match her bike, do a little rewiring, rework the license plate mount since I'm removing the stock turn signals, etc., etc., etc., just another simple job. LOL

Well, that's about it for tonight, time to hit the shower and then crash for the night. Asta!

The Sunday To-Do List

Well, it's sunday. It was yard work day today nothing exciting or funny. Trimming and pruning trees, working on the flower beds, and general clean-up. Checked out the lawn mower as well, Dad ran over a big rock last year and broke it, I pushed it out of the shed today and cleaned it up enough so that I could see what got broke, went online to check out the parts, it's going to be about 90.00 in parts to fix it, but it's worth it. It's only a year old, so I can justify the cost. Not much else happened, just have to wait until tommorow to see if anything good happens.

Somedays

Somedays are best forgotten, I've had a couple this week. Tuesday was so-so until amost the end of the day, I was installing a new clutch cable on a bike that I had put new bars and controls on to dress it up. I don't know excatly how many of these I've put on since starting at the shop, lets just say so many that I don't even think about how it's done anymore, I just do it out of habit. So anyway, I've gotten the cable run and snugged into the trap door, next I bolt the trap door back on the trans and tourqe it to 100in/lbs, next I pick up my wrench to give the cable it's final snug, as usual, then snap, the cable end breaks off. Yippie!?! The previous post explains thursday, so I wont go into that all over. Today, I finished wiping down the bagger and moved it and the trailer up to the third floor until the customer comes for it. Then I started reassembling a bike that I did some fab work on about a month ago. Part of the work I did previously on the bike was removing the tail/brake lights that were on it, the plan was to install a tail/brake light on the side mount, It ended up being a bit more of a project than it really should have been, the light that we wanted to use wasn't designed for the side mount that was on the bike, so instead of getting a new side mount the decision was made to make an adapter plate to mount the light to it, not really a hard job, just takes a bit of time to lay it out so that it loks good and then make it. That didn't take a real long time, but I need to rework the light itself some so that it would work. As it was, the light mounted with two 1/4-20 flathead bolts from the backside, well that wouldn't work with the adapter I had made so I subsitituted a couple of smaller bolts that would work just fine, except now I had to use nuts on the inside of the light housing. After getting everything mocked up, I realized that the nuts would contact the electronic board that the leds were mounted on, so I had to clearance things so I wouldn't have a short. Easy enough, I made up a quickie jig to hold the light housing in the drill press and chucked up an end mill in the drill to cut down the mounting spots inside the housing. The first one worked great, I eased the end mill into the housing and it easily cut the mounting spot down cleanly, then I shut the drill press off and repositioned the light housing so that I could do the same on the other end. I was just about finished when I noticed that I was off just a bit and it was leaving a bit of an edge on one side, what I should have done was finish the cut and then take my dremel and use a burr bit to clean the little bit out, but that wasn't what I did. I released the lock on the press table and nudged it a bit to the one side, BIG MISTAKE, the end mill caught the edge of the housing and yanked it to the left, chewing half the side out of the housing before I could slap the off switch. And there we have it, a sixty dollar tail light ruined. I was so pissed off at myself that I just cleaned up my tools and work area, showed the ruined housing to the boss, then told him I was done for the day and went home. The weather outside reflected my mood on the ride home, a cold dreary dampness, defently not an enjoyable end to the day. I just rode home dodging the cell phone chattering nitwits in their cars, parked the bike and went inside and made myself a pot of coffee and turned on the boob tube and vegged out. Hopefully tommorow will be a better day, I've got an appointment with the accountant to go over last years taxes. Yippie.

Ten Minute Job

Gotta luv those ten minute jobs, had one today that lasted five hours. LOL Wiring up a trailer plug on a bagger, sounds easy doesn't it, especally since I had already worked on the bike and had pre-wired a pigtail down to where the plug was going to be. The only reason I didn't finish it when I was working on it the first time was that I didn't know how the customers trailer was wired. Normally on cars and trucks there is a set pattern as to how a light plug is wired, but knowing bikers the way I do, I didn't take it for granted that they had followed any set pattern. Since I wasn't sure about the wiring and the customer couldn't tell me either, I asked him to bring the trailer to the shop so that I could verify the wiring pattern. He dropped the trailer off late tuesday, so it was on my board to do today. It took me about five minutes to decipher the pattern. The pattern was fairly normal, the only goofy-ness was the wire colors on the trailer itself, they didn't run along standard color patterns, but it didn't really matter as long as the plug was ok. The fun came with the bike, I decided to test things before doing the final hard wiring, so I hooked the wires together and put a bit of black tape around each one to keep things from shorting. Then I grabbed my test light to check things out, running lights were fine, brake lights were fine, turn signals - a dead short, or at least that was my first guess. It defently acted just like a dead short, I could pull the main plug going to the rear of the bike and the turn signals would work ok, so I started with the easy stuff, I pulled all the light bulbs from the rear and started trying to isolate where the short was, couldn't find it, then I pulled the bags off and dropped the shocks so that I could get to the underside of the fender, no problems there. By now I've killed about two hours tracing wires, finally yelled at the boss to come over and put his two cents in, he fiddled for about twenty minutes before giving up and telling me that it's got to be in the wiring job I did putting in the pigtail and he wants me to cut it all out and then start over. After lunch we messed with it some more and finally decided it wasn't the wiring job it had to be the turn signal module. On older baggers this module is in the fairing - somewhere. Usually it's just behind the headlight, so all you should have to do is pull the headlight assembly out, needless to say it wasn't where it was supposed to be. Like I said, it's an older bike and has been worked on before. I ended up having to pull the front part of the fairing off, about twenty misc. bolts later I had it off and was digging through the wiring nightmare looking for the module, finally found it zip-tied to the back side of the fork leg, and of course it was the older style unit, spent about twenty minutes digging through the cabinets before I found another one, I've got a whole box of the new style on the shelf, we've pulled a lot of them rebuilding bikes. That turned out to be the problem, the module was failing, it had enough strength to work the bike's turn-signals, but it couldn't hack the additional ones on the trailer. Got to spent the rest of the afternoon rewiring all the wiring I cut out, then putting the bike back together. But it's all done now and ready for the road. You know this is the second time that turn signals have really messed with me, the first time was on my '76 750ss, I spend two weeks tracing a dead short in it, the sucker would blow the main fuse as soon as I turned on the key, that ended up being the turn signal flasher, turns out that the expensive honda flasher needs to be grounded, but the cheap replacement one doesn't, as soon as I pulled the ground wire off, everything was fine. Oh well, another lesson learned.

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.