OM guitar

Visualizing the new rosette which will be handmade on the top. The center of the rosette will be an interlocking wave pattern surrounded by multi-color bands.


This is a new top for an orchestra model acoustic guitar. The body is walnut, mahogany neck, Honduran rosewood fretboard, and Sitka spruce top, trimmed probably in maple. It will be a left handed steel string guitar.

Commuting on a race replica

All the issues with this bike are resolved and it's been my commuter bike for almost two weeks while the car is in the shop.
A v-4 engine like on this bike has a lot of torque, so it accelerates really fast. Handling is neutral but responsive without being twitchy. I have learned that I need to temper my driving and slow down so the cage drivers have time to see me and respond. It's hard enough on a normal bike to be seen, but when you're riding a fast bike like the Honda Interceptor, the rider must slow down so that the drivers see more than a blurry streak or the sudden appearance of a vehicle where there was nothing before.
For a little while, I was riding without instruments and judging speed by flow of traffic and wind resistance. Once I got the replacement instrument cluster, I realized how fast I was really traveling. The bike is very smooth and quiet, and the small fairing displaces enough air over the top of my helmet so that I was not able to correctly judge my speed or acceleration. Also, I can now calculate my fuel efficiency, which is just under 50 MPG in city driving.
Not bad for a $900 bike.

This motorcycle is a 1985 Honda VF700F Interceptor.
The paint scheme is black and white instead of the factory Blue and White.
When I got it, it had been dropped a number of times and worked on by a monkey with wrenches.
It is now almost in good enough condition to be seen in public.


The motor is a low mileage replacement. The cams are shiny and smooth with no sign of pitting.

Improvements made include;

• Cleaned and lined the fuel tank.
  
• Replaced the exhaust system. The header pipes are wrapped.
  
• Replaced the head gasket on the rear bank and also a broken head bolt.
  
• Re-torqued both sets of heads and adjusted the valves.
  
• Cleaned the carbs.
  
• Replaced various screws and bolts, re-tapping when necessary.
  
• Got new turn signal lights and rear view mirrors.
  
• Repaired the radiators and replaced leaking cooling system gaskets.
  
• New tires.
  
• New paint, to do; decals, pin stripes, clear coat, etc.
  

On the wish list; new wind screen, replace sprockets and chain, 750cc engine.

VF700F back to life

This 1985 VF700F Interceptor is running after some repairs to the cooling system and the motor rear bank of cylinders. It's now time to put a paint job on it. The original paint was blue on white, but I'm leaning toward black & white or a dark charcoal & white, since I've got yellow decals.

Out with the old bikes, in with the new one.

Sold the GS750, Sold the GS450L, sold a guitar, transferred money from an investment account.

Got a '85 VF700F for $900 plus have already bought parts for about $300+.
Is there money left? You betcha. Pay off a CC, get a bike!

This is a nice ride, it just needs to be brought back to a reasonable maintenance level.

For me, one of the nice things about getting used bikes is, if they aren't wrecked, they only suffer from benign neglect. Easy to get them back running.
The reason is that many who purchase bikes don't know how to keep a shovel in good running order, much less a motorcycle. Bad for them, good for me.

Fitting in on the highway.

One problem with hyper-miling is being so out of synch with most other drivers that you stand out.
This last tank of gas, I drove a little more normally (for Atlanta) and it cost me 3MPG or 1.5 gallons more or less. From my personal best, it 5MPG, which is a couple of gallons lost on the highway. The way gas prices are going, that's no small change.

Smoky Sleeper

When I first got this 1978 Suzuki GS750, it had a hole in the lower crankcase that I patched with some high temperature epoxy. Well, that lasted a couple of years, and it started leaking. It turned out that it was cheaper to buy another engine than to replace the lower crankcase.
I got a running 1978 GS750 engine, but there were some signs that it wasn't what it seemed. It had oil cooler pipes, the covers were all chromed, hmm...
Well, after a lot of cleaning, the engine was swapped in and everything was buttoned up and tested. The starter motor is a little weak, but the engine will start on the weakest of kicks on the kick start. Hmm...
It's got torque, and it growls like a 900cc... Hmm.. I mighta lucked out and picked up a bored out rebuilt motor. It smoked real bad on #4 piston, but after it got hot, the smoke went away. I did put a little seal conditioner in the oil to help the valve seals plump up a little. After all those weekends of wrenching, I AM going to ride.
While the engine was being swapped out, I did a quick paint job that I signed 'Infidel'. That's my left hand print on the top of the tank. Red and yellow should be bright enough for most other drivers to see me coming.

Repairs & new high MPG

Over 222,500 miles on this 1993 Ford Probe 2.0L means that things are worn out. The radiator was replaced two weeks ago, and the timing belt and water pump two weeks before that.
I was running with 20W50 motor oil and an oil additive to stop smoke out of the tail pipe, but went back to 10W30 with an additive. It smokes a little when cold, but things tighten up after about a minute.
Despite this, the car got 37.8 MPG at the last fill-up!
Driving to maximize fuel efficiency can be accomplished without standing out in the crowd on the highway, even in a place like Atlanta where flow-of-traffic is well over 65 MPH on the highways, and 10-20 mph over the speed limit on many surface roads.
The techniques I use include using cruise control set at just under 60MPH, coasting with engine on or off, depending on circumstances, and accelerating slowly. Off the highway, there are many opportunities to coast, and driving in a higher gear is possible most of the time.
I have noticed that I spend more time moving than before. When I drove like the crowd, I found myself standing still or crawling at less than 10 MPH a lot. By driving slower, I find myself in clear roads most of the time, and moving. There's a lot less stress, and I'm probably safer.
Before changing to hypermiling techniques, I averaged about 30 MPG in mixed driving conditions. I am basically picking up an extra 100 miles per tank of gas, which is about 22% in gas savings just by driving differently.
Imagine if everyone did what I'm doing. We could really do a slapdown on the OPEC nations in a hurry, and gas prices, at least temporarily, would plummet.

Hypermiling works.

My normal driving style was to go with the flow of traffic and try to get to work and back in the shortest time possible. I found an article on Hypermiling while Stumbling, and gave it a shot about 150 miles into a full tank of gas.
My average MPG was about 30.5.
After implementing the techniques; use cruise control, never go over 60MPH, coast whenever possible, turn off the engine when coasting (when it is safe to do so) and when not moving, etc. My gas mileage was over 34 when I refilled my gas tank today.
With a full tank of gas, I'm looking forward to beating 34MPG.
I also started riding a bicycle again. Riding a bicycle gives you the feel for maximizing coasting. After riding the bike for a few days, my coasting behavior in the car became more instinctive.

My car is a 1993 Ford Probe SE, manual transmission. I have 16" alloy wheels with 235-50 tires inflated to 37psi.
Hyper miling is more fun on the road than driving fast. It makes the commute a game of strategy where you actually get something in return in the form of fuel savings and a sense of contributing to the US economy and also to National security.
As stated in a previous post, we are in a position of weakness by being dependent on Petroleum for the majority of our Energy, and by being so, are subject to the violence, blackmail, and unearned influence of the oil producing nations.
If more people practiced Hypermiling techniques, IMHO, demand for oil would go down, OPEC would get poorer, and over long periods of time, we would be safer and our economy would be stronger.
Of course, there are other things we can do to help the cause of putting down the oil cartels; use fluorescent lights and more efficient appliances, buy more fuel efficient cars, and let our government officials know that we want them to work hard on fixing our energy problems by providing tax breaks and other incentives for moving off of fossil fuels as fast as possible.

I don't believe that Global warming is human induced. There's not enough evidence, and it's quite arrogant to believe that Humans are powerful enough to affect geological processes like the entertainment industry, I mean the news media claims.

Our problem is in security and economics.
The economic problem is that global economies depend on fossil fuels as the primary resource for energy. The opportunity is for the countries that get off of petroleum first. Those countries will jump ahead of their competition in the long term and be richer and more powerful than the countries which remain enslaved to the oil cartels.
Security is directly related to dependence on petroleum. We are ensnared in Middle East problems because of the Strategic importance of petroleum.

Like the Romans discovering Greece

Having acquired a Nokia 770 and loaded fbreader, I set out to Google up some FREE ebooks.
The expected ebook for profit cloud of gnats arose, but after searching awhile, the gutenberg project yielded some gems like Kafka's Metamorphosis and a little Spanish language reader.
Then today I found Bartleby, containing among other things, the Harvard Classics.
I now have a couple of essays by Cicero to devour, and I'm sure to go back for more.
My Dad had a set of Harvard Classics and I faintly recall reading them all, probably after I devoured the contents of Pine Bluff's pitiful public library.
In our modern world, any hack with a ghost writer can publish and even have a best seller. The problem for me is the value of the contents is not worth the price of admission. For most of the stuff in print today, I wouldn't read it if I were paid to. Well, I probably have a price.... But on the other hand, space in my brain is limited, and who would want to put pig entrails into a temple?
I wonder if this was what it was like when the Romans discovered the culture of the Greeks or maybe finding these classics is like the Italian renaissance, when the Italians rediscovered the culture of Rome and Greece.
Anyway, I am thrilled to be able to escape the shallow rumble of the modern media and take a taste of the rich elixir of the past glory of humanity.
Let's just hope that the freedom of the Internet is not spoiled by those fixated on charging money for access to these gems of human history.

Who's Really Responsible?

There's a lot of blame and pointing fingers. George Bush did this or that, Exxon is making obscene profits, global warming is so and so's fault, blah, blah, blah.
Who is still using incandescent bulbs? Who uses water heaters with tanks? Who drives a vehicle which gets less than 30 MPG average? Who drives instead of walking, taking mass transit, or riding a bike? The list goes on.
Anyone who points to others as the villain without first changing themselves is a hypocrite, and most of the loudest public voices are unworthy of their self righteous posture.
Each of us has a responsibility for our current condition, and change occurs first with each individual. Sacrifices have to be made with no thought of immediate reward.

When the Arab Oil cartel drove the price of oil up in the early 1970's we knew we had a problem. We didn't have the benefit of hindsight to see that the result of our collective failure to eliminate our dependency on those who blackmailed us would result in the threat that we face today of being embroiled in a war with terrorists and their sponsors in the Middle and Far East.

We have in our grasp the tools of energy independence; alternative energy technologies and local sources of conventional energy. What we don't have are the population or leadership required to go full force to the task of leaving the uncivilized, backwards, ignorant Islamic Fascists to their destructive ways.
As quickly as we can disentangle ourselves from them, the sooner they can return to their habits of killing each other off. Israel will be temporarily lost, but they are always welcome here with us until some future time.
When JFK defined for the nation a specific goal with a specific time table, he energized the Government and the Nation to fully support the achievement of a man on the moon. There is no such leadership apparent in any current public servants, especially those who would pretend worthiness to be elected President. There is also no will in the soft, cowardly population of the USA to do what is needed to free ourselves from the result of our own complacency.
Are we lost? There are always survivors of any holocaust. But just as in any holocaust, it can be avoided. It requires leadership that is absent in Washington DC.
Whatever George Bush's faults, which are many, at least he has the fighting spirit and balls to stand up and be counted, right or wrong.
Can you say that?