hmmm... scale chainsaws available anywhere?

there's a local here with a homemade electric bike. it's very long, too.

...chainsaw-cle?..

no, his is a row of batteries, about twice normal bike length. i believe it's 48 volt. it's well made and he keeps up with traffic. it's eerily quiet, too. loudest part is the chain and tire noise, so you can't hear him coming. i'll try to get a picture, but he's like the shadow. a quiet woosh and he's gone.

Woodland Scenics makes G guage figures, including some loggers. I seem to remember a guy wielding a chainsaw; I was thinking at the time of a

...yeah...that's a problem with hybrids - blind people can't hear them coming and step out in front of them into traffic.

Got my '03 fixed - turned out is was slightly out of alignment as well as slightly out of balance...laterally, if you can get that. They swapped a weight somewhere from the right side to the left so they said. Anyway, big improvement during the ride home...got an Otto's breakfast out of the trip.

...now I get to spend tomorrow bike washing...in the rain?..

fortunately, the unsighted have some good tech for walking. it's still expensive and not universaly known, but it is finally out there. yum, breakfest, insert home rs drool. yrah, i get lateral unbalance. it can be a real problem on drag bikes. bad enough staying strait on 4, but two wheels can be a real nightmare. knew a guy who raced drag bikes. something happened at the greenlight and he went right into the wall. messed him up, but 14 months of hospital, learning to walk and all that and he was right back on the line. he was one tough dude. i cleaned 2 of the sr's. oh yeah, you haven't seen the sleeper. it's a dead stock looking 78. you remember the hot rod? well, i bought a stocker for cheap, (i've told that one.) and except for the sound, you can't tell it's a hot rod. but really cleaning a bike is tough. for the shine, believe it or not, son of a gun types stuff works on the whole bike. wipe and shine and it lasts. even on the thirty eleven miles of chrome on your bikes. try it. so both bikes are roading and good? i need tires again.

oh yeah.

Yeah - both of them are running fine (on four new tires, now that I think about it...), but now I need to do something with the front exhaust bracket on the '98. Keeps sheering bolts...a problem with the Evo Dynas. I think I can get an FXR bracket that picks up three bolts instead of two and that should solve it...if the reach for the clamp is right. I think it will be.

...and I should wash that horse, too.

the bolts literally sheer off? or stress fracture? either sounds bad. is there a lot of stress from the muffler setup? can't picture it in my head. i'll google it up. 3 bolts sound like a better way to spread the forces.

It's a vibration thing - the bolts are too hard/brittle, IMO...should be grade 5 instead of grade 8; they crack at the case, but just the aft one...so far. Cycle fatigue fracture, would be my guess...and a mighty fine pun, at that...

The bracket is bolted onto the side of the lower case/timer cover and picks up a clamp on the header pipe - that's so the pipe can float with the rubber mounted motor and not crack at the head. I was about to rig one attached to the frame until I figured that out. On the '03 the bracket has it's own set of bolts in the bottom of the case and the vibration transmitted through the hole pattern/against the bolts is lessened - the bolt spacing in the bracket is wider and the bolts are heavier.

so it's happened more than once? it's a chronic fatigue fracture? (ya walked into that one.) sounds like they made it cheaper/less strong. or some lazy engineer didn't test it well. that's why i like the pre 2000 sr's. yamaha resized them to

Yup...it's a design flaw alright. I've seen it happen on a couple other Evo powered Dynas as well. Word is that the fix is to use the FXR bracket - Harley doesn't even make the OEM bracket as a replacement any more...which was a shock to even the parts guy.

Both me and one of the shop owners think that the Evo Dynas run smoother than the Twin Cam ones. He says the new counterbalanced Twin Cams run smoother than the rubber mounts, but racers end up removing the balancers because they're chain driven and heavy. I don't know why they didn't make them gear driven - the cams are chain driven too, but you can get replacements to make the cam train gear driven. Racers/hotrodders will generally do that.

simple, chains are cheap and gears are not. very few have used gears. the ducati desmo engines used gears. the 450 single has a big tunnel on the side where a gear runs. they got 45 hp out of a 450cc without much stress. runs on cheap gas and goes like stink. they sell for big money now because no one bought thumpers then. i rode a 450 racer, 70 hp, toy brakes and very stiff suspension. all on a bike that weighed about 280lbs. i was blasting around the crotch rockets and pissing them off. they were $4000 when new, now it's impossible to buy one. business jeks buy them and mount them in their boardrooms. like the nortons and early speed twins. so they aren't ridden. balanced chain drive cams can be very smooth. they have to be set up right and timing is critical. the sr's have chain driven ohc's and balanced cranks. you heard the beast, so you know it has guts. they're too light in heavy wind, but so?

The racers only go to gears because they stand up better at higher RPM, and because you can get and maintain more control over timing tolerances in the valve train - chains can stretch and wear.

Not really an issue for us street pounders, but if you're fine tuning and trying to make a buck, yeah I could see such. If I ever get to the point where I'm revving a Harley high enough to make a diff, I probably need to quit riding as a matter of self-preservation...one of my barber's built factory 120ci race motors into his Road King and blown up three in the past year and a half...all under warranty.

they must love him. personally i think 1 litre is a good limit for a bike. i really think the vincent motor is the best v twin design. and it happened by chance.

...most really good things happen by chance, IMO.

Got that sucker washed...and it didn't rain on me. Wind is blowing like crazy. Need to oil some leather now...it never ends.

But in blowing that off, I did make some major progress on my twin amp guitar rig - thought I had a tube blown in a head, but turned out I tweeked some knobs in moving my tape echo around and I was REALLY overdriving my input to the heavy head. Velco, Velcro, and more Velcro, and some cables to build, and I should be up and cranking again by tomorrow.

...one of these days I might even work on a model.

do you use neat's foot oil? only thing for leather. silicone is the kiss of death. i've got 4 bikes running well, the other 2 will run when i want, so that is good. i loaned the hot rod to a friend in texas, he's rebuilding the honda chopper for me. i'm going to have 2 armor kits done by xmas. the dragon king tiger and the academy staurt. both are challenges in different ways. the stuart is eye strain and the kt is technical. i'm still green with pe, but learning. i don't have any fancy tools, so i roll cylinders on whatever found objects work. it's actually fun to figure it out. i use super glue on stresed pe and future on stuff that just hangs. i'm also working on the ar 234 v22 using another lindberg kit. buying a crate of those for $11 was sweet. i still have 7 left.

Mink oil, generally. Never anything with silicone in it...nasty stuff.

I've been using found objects and razor blades for working etch for years...gets the job done. I'm about to go on a big spending spree soon...I really want that Dragon 1/32 Me 110. And then I gotta get me a whole basket load of these for the 109s and 190s I've already got -

yeah, that 110 is sweet. hope to get one for xmas. i have the revell, but it's so flawed i haven't started it. seatbelts, yeah, i need them too.