Today in the shed you did...

[grant81rs]

Moved shit from one side to the other and then back again hoping that the shed will grow in size.... F@%K it never works

[2valve]

You need a neat freak like myself to help you clean it out !.

[enigmaT120]

Upgraded the water bottle holder on my Rocky Mountain Fusion. Adjusted the choke on the '81 Toyota 4x4 pickup. Postponed a bunch of interesting projects, again.

[equipo5]

Put in new battery, coil and starter motor and cleaned up the wiring for the starter relay.

Battery
The odyssey pc160 sits a little lower than my old motobatt. That means I don’t have to jam the seat closed now. There is plenty of room for the tool tray. And yes, the bright orange compliments the blue tank.

Coil
Spark was blue on the left but yellow on the right, thus purchased one new coil. Unfortunately I bought the larger diameter coil. Anyway, spaced the bracket with washers, sourced longer bolts but I didn’t have to raise the tank as advised as there was plenty of clearance for the coil. Bike starts well and runs stronger at low revs. (Well that’s what I am telling myself.)

Starter
To save the battery I installed a Nippon denso starter that I had lying around. The Nippon denso has a completely different sound, a sort of a higher pitched gnashing metallic sound. I don’t know whether I like it but it certainly starts the bike with much more confidence.

Starter relay wiring
Well that’s not entirely true. Sometimes I was only getting the sound of the solenoid clicking when pushing the starter button. What I found if I held the button down there would be a few seconds delay between the sound of the solenoid click and the starter turning over, like it took a while for the solenoid to pull fully on to the starter contacts. I ran the multimeter over the wiring looking for increased resistance. The ground tab in the headlight shell was loose and actually covered in paint. I cleaned the paint off and tightened the tab, as well brightening up all the connections on the starter relay. It didn’t make that much difference in the multimeter readings but the starter operates normally now but every now and then there is that slight delay so it may not be the end of the story.

Cheers

Ian

[SteveD]

It's great getting shed time when you've been rejected for jury duty isn't it!

[ME 109]

It's great getting shed time when you've been rejected for jury duty isn't it!

I don't hear any objections. Your on a good thing there, Steve.

[equipo5]

some times unexpected shed time is the best shed time

perfect weather ....and she indoors at work.

[Duane Ausherman]

I am jealous of all this talk about shed time. No shed time for me driving my con-Fusion down the road. I do dream of many things that could happen in a shed, if I had one and had tools too.

I just turned over 10 k miles in my conFusion Hybrid. It shows total miles and the average mpg. I started out with about 3 k on it with an average mpg of 52.6. Ford claims that it is rated at 44 mpg city and 40 mpg highway. My first 3 k miles was about 50/50, so 42 mpg would have been reasonable, but my obsessive need to learn it way exceeded it.

I had two days of 15-25 mph head winds and that cost me an entire whole digit of average mpg. It dropped from 49.2 to 48.1 mpg in two days and that is huge for an average over 9 k miles. I was only able to squeeze out mpg in the low 30s for the entire two days. The car thinks that at a road speed of 60 mph, it is actually going 80+ due to wind resistance.

Yesterday I turned it the other direction and had probably 8-12 mph tail winds. I was getting well over 50 mpg all day long and that actually bumped my long term average up a bit to 48.2 mpg. That is the first time on this trip that I was able to increase the long term average any at all.

To get the average bandied about by advocates, it takes these things.
1. Care enough to learn the many tricks to squeaking out mileage.
2. Be willing to pay attention to nothing but using them while driving. It is really a video game of using the right display that shows the computer analysis of what is going on. One must be able to multi task and stay alive with a bit of actual driving.
3. Pay close attention to the road traffic, as one must attempt to "fit in" and not create road rage. That is really hard to do.
4. Watch the terrain, traffic lights, curves, hills and valleys, and just the entire surroundings. The computer doesn't really know this stuff.
5. Weather, especially wind. Driving on snow packed roads really takes away from the amount of attention that one can devote to the video game of gaming the computer to get the good mpg.

Numbers 3,4 and 5 are not in any order of importance and can change at any time.

Often I get tired of putting my whole attention on the video game and just wish to drive and relax. The mpg goes down.

I haven't found the computer display that shows my heart rate and blood pressure yet. Also the one that shows if my zipper is up or down. I am sure that both are available if I only knew what I was doing. This thing is a very complicated, for me, computer that just happens to have 4 wheels. My computer skills are well known among my friends on this forum, or should I say, "lack of" skills?

Thank goodness the seat is totally adjustable, or I would get even more of a tired butt. Most of my driving days are 400-500 miles with stopping at every rest stop to pee and walk around a bit. The weather has often been so bad that I don't get in my walking. I am in a heat wave of about 15-20 degrees above average. It has been 15-28 F at night and days can rise up to breaking 40 F. Yes, I am a CA weather wimp.

A few of you are getting my travel reports and I think I will issue another one now.

[jimmyg]

I pulled the cover off my R90s and just sat with a cup of coffee and enjoyed Hans Muth's creation.

jimmyg

[Steve in Golden]

What a super nice R90S Jimmyg.