November 27, 2008
Happy Thanksgiving, peeps
I've been pretty busy lately, what with all the slackin', but I wanted to take a few to say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. I can't even begin to say how much we've got to be thankful for, but let's start by saying if you're reading this on a PC (or a Mac) over a high speed internet connection, you have probably got far more than what you actually need--Much like us. If that's the case, I highly recommend finding a way to give a little sum-sum back to your local community. Even if it's just an anonymous donation to your local soup kitchen or Jesus House. They'll appreciate it and if you're not one for Christian doctrine ("There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land." Deuteronomy 15:11) then remember this: Karma knows where you live.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
// posted by wayne @ 11/27/2008 09:29:00 PM 
November 06, 2008
The Procedure
Ladies and gents, boys and girls of all ages, I bring to you a tale of how a once ugly duckling was transformed into a stunning beauty! Well, not really, but you get the point. Last weekend, I chopped the fender and this is how it went.
You may notice that my pattern bears a striking resemblance to other fender kits already on the market. Think of it like copying the wheel because that's the only way you can make things roll, you know what I mean? There just isn't another way to make this work on this particular bike. Surprisingly, ACE had every thing I needed, except for the LED plate bolts (which I didn't originally intend on using, but more on that in a bit) for the whopping sum of $21.56, tax included. Here are the goods:
You'll see in the pic a piece of 26g sheetmetal (probably should have used 24g sheet but they had either 22 or 26 and 22 was too thick and $5 more expensive. Then we've got the template, assorted hardware, jigsaw blades, rubber grommets, a fresh cup of coffee and of course, tunes. First, I had to transfer the pattern to the metal by tracing. Duh.
After tracing with the sharpie, I used the jigsaw (18tpi blade) to cut out the pattern, then used the dremel, hand files and sandpaper to get its final shape. Like this:
Now, I've skipped the portion where I took off the rear bodywork, but you knew we had to do that anyway, right? Good. Now it's time to drop the sub fender and cut off the offending ugliness. Note the amount of stuff they have stuffed under the seat and body work while we're talking about it.
If you look realllllly close in the pic below you can see the scribe line for the cut. Obviously, I had marked it while it was on the bike making sure to preserve enough of the material to provide mounting surfaces for all the gear Suzuki tucked away under the seat. Have a gander at the ugly:
And now, the moment we've all been waiting for...the cut!
It cut pretty easily, with just the coping saw. With the exception of a tiny bit of trimming and sanding, that was pretty much the only cut I had to make. After that, I had to mount the sub fender back on the bike and do the marking and drilling of the bolt holes for the plate we made earlier that will now take the place of the hunk I just cut out. Then, we have to check the fit by taping the plate up to the bike and marking for any final adjustments.
Now, if you have a look at this next pic, you can see where the original sub fender ends, and my smooth-daddy "kit" begins. That part in the middle with the wires is the igniter (I don't know either, but it costs about 6 bills to replace it, so if you see one in your bike, DON'T break it!). The nuts you see to the left and right of the igniter are the ones which are holding the fender plate in place. The ones which are actually holding the igniter in place are also holding the bolts which keep the license plate bracket attached. Check it:
Also of note in this picture is that for some odd-ball reason, Suzuki mounted the rear brake fluid reservoir under the rear seat. Don't know why, but that's the way they did it.
At this point, I'm going to spare you the boring details of fabricating the license plate and turn signal brackets by saying this: I put the license plate on the sheet metal and traced it, adding about 2 inches to the top so I would have something to bend and drill to provide a mounting point. Then, I cut a 1.75 inch wide strip of metal 10 inches long, so it will fit behind the license plate and have 1.5 inches on either side to bend back and make little "ears" for the turn signals. The turn signal bracket is bolted to the back of the license plate mount using the LED bolts which conveniently light my plate. Have a look at it all mocked up:
After this, all that was left was to take it back apart, prep and paint the metal then get the wiring sorted while it dried. Oh yeah, and remove the rear bodywork--again. Once the fender parts were dry, I mounted them back on the bike so I could see what was going to be where and how I would be able to hide the wiring. With that done, it was all down to soldering the factory pig tails (which had been cut from the original turn signals and tag light earlier) to the new lighting. As I mentioned, the original plan was to re-use the factory tag light in some fashion. What I did not know is that I would end up having to use that space to re-mount the igniter. I wasn't really aware of its presence earlier because it was jammed up SO far into that sub fender. In actuality, I originally thought it was the wiring harness for the rear lights, but that just wasn't so.
This little adventure took me about 20 hours labor, or so, but it was worth it because it is exactly what I wanted and I did it all myself!
Brace yourselves: we went from this:
To this:
Tidy.
You may notice that my pattern bears a striking resemblance to other fender kits already on the market. Think of it like copying the wheel because that's the only way you can make things roll, you know what I mean? There just isn't another way to make this work on this particular bike. Surprisingly, ACE had every thing I needed, except for the LED plate bolts (which I didn't originally intend on using, but more on that in a bit) for the whopping sum of $21.56, tax included. Here are the goods:
You'll see in the pic a piece of 26g sheetmetal (probably should have used 24g sheet but they had either 22 or 26 and 22 was too thick and $5 more expensive. Then we've got the template, assorted hardware, jigsaw blades, rubber grommets, a fresh cup of coffee and of course, tunes. First, I had to transfer the pattern to the metal by tracing. Duh.
After tracing with the sharpie, I used the jigsaw (18tpi blade) to cut out the pattern, then used the dremel, hand files and sandpaper to get its final shape. Like this:
Now, I've skipped the portion where I took off the rear bodywork, but you knew we had to do that anyway, right? Good. Now it's time to drop the sub fender and cut off the offending ugliness. Note the amount of stuff they have stuffed under the seat and body work while we're talking about it.
If you look realllllly close in the pic below you can see the scribe line for the cut. Obviously, I had marked it while it was on the bike making sure to preserve enough of the material to provide mounting surfaces for all the gear Suzuki tucked away under the seat. Have a gander at the ugly:
And now, the moment we've all been waiting for...the cut!
It cut pretty easily, with just the coping saw. With the exception of a tiny bit of trimming and sanding, that was pretty much the only cut I had to make. After that, I had to mount the sub fender back on the bike and do the marking and drilling of the bolt holes for the plate we made earlier that will now take the place of the hunk I just cut out. Then, we have to check the fit by taping the plate up to the bike and marking for any final adjustments.
Now, if you have a look at this next pic, you can see where the original sub fender ends, and my smooth-daddy "kit" begins. That part in the middle with the wires is the igniter (I don't know either, but it costs about 6 bills to replace it, so if you see one in your bike, DON'T break it!). The nuts you see to the left and right of the igniter are the ones which are holding the fender plate in place. The ones which are actually holding the igniter in place are also holding the bolts which keep the license plate bracket attached. Check it:
Also of note in this picture is that for some odd-ball reason, Suzuki mounted the rear brake fluid reservoir under the rear seat. Don't know why, but that's the way they did it.At this point, I'm going to spare you the boring details of fabricating the license plate and turn signal brackets by saying this: I put the license plate on the sheet metal and traced it, adding about 2 inches to the top so I would have something to bend and drill to provide a mounting point. Then, I cut a 1.75 inch wide strip of metal 10 inches long, so it will fit behind the license plate and have 1.5 inches on either side to bend back and make little "ears" for the turn signals. The turn signal bracket is bolted to the back of the license plate mount using the LED bolts which conveniently light my plate. Have a look at it all mocked up:
After this, all that was left was to take it back apart, prep and paint the metal then get the wiring sorted while it dried. Oh yeah, and remove the rear bodywork--again. Once the fender parts were dry, I mounted them back on the bike so I could see what was going to be where and how I would be able to hide the wiring. With that done, it was all down to soldering the factory pig tails (which had been cut from the original turn signals and tag light earlier) to the new lighting. As I mentioned, the original plan was to re-use the factory tag light in some fashion. What I did not know is that I would end up having to use that space to re-mount the igniter. I wasn't really aware of its presence earlier because it was jammed up SO far into that sub fender. In actuality, I originally thought it was the wiring harness for the rear lights, but that just wasn't so.This little adventure took me about 20 hours labor, or so, but it was worth it because it is exactly what I wanted and I did it all myself!
Brace yourselves: we went from this:
To this:
Tidy. // posted by wayne @ 11/06/2008 02:00:00 AM
November 04, 2008
Fenderectomy!
Yes! I have finally removed about a half-ton of ugly from the back of the Mighty SV. I guess it is DOT regulation that every bike sold in America has to have a giant plowshare of a fender with about 200 reflectors on it. The one which used to be stinking up the smooth visual goodness of my bike is now laying on the garage floor, crying for it's mommy. Figuratively speaking, of course. It took about 20 hours labor, $20 in parts, 2 pots of coffee and the seeming endless task of putting on the sub-fender and body work to do the fitting, then taking it off again. I bet 3 hours of that time was spent either taking off or putting on the body work and tail section. But it is done now. And it is visual perfection. Sadly, it is waaaaaay to late to try and do the whole write up and post the pics. Sorry, Kelly. Monday night is Grocery night so it will have to keep until tomorrow night.
Now get up and VOTE...for someone who is not Obama. If you do, Krispy Kreme will give you a free patriot donut. How's that for motivation? Check out their website for details, and I know you have the address bookmarked!
Now get up and VOTE...for someone who is not Obama. If you do, Krispy Kreme will give you a free patriot donut. How's that for motivation? Check out their website for details, and I know you have the address bookmarked!
// posted by wayne @ 11/04/2008 05:10:00 AM
November 03, 2008
VOTE! or DIE!
Remember those T-shirts P-Dizzle or P-Diddle or the artist formerly known as Sean Combs printed up a while back? I wonder how many people he killed because they didn't vote?
I promise, my admonition won't be nearly as dramatic or life threatening. I'll simply say, if you choose note to vote then you are turning your back on literally the greatest responsibility, I feel, we have as Americans--while at the same time, disrespecting the men and women who have served and died just so you can do so. Yeah, yeah, everyone has said that before, but to me it really does mean something. Okay, if your under about 26, I KNOW that's not going to move you, so think of it this way: if YOU don't get up and vote that means your letting your neighbors pick your next president. Think about that for a second. These are the people on your street who thought pink plastic flamingos and Hummels were a good idea! Now imagine for whom they're going to vote. Yeah, that's what I thought.
Folks who've been reading for more than the last year (thanks to the two of you!) may have been puzzled by my silence regarding this here election. It is very simple indeed: my guy lost my party's nomination months ago and at that exact instant the election for me became the old "lesser of two evils" game. No McCain is not "my guy" but he ain't Barack Obama, either! To be honest, I don't know much about our man McCain other than he was a military pilot and a POW. Which, in my book, already makes him about 34,584% more qualified for the job than the distinguished senator. In actuality, it wouldn't matter if George Burns had the Republican party nomination (forget that he's dead for just a minute) the simple truth is that the prospect of an Obama presidency absolutely terrifies me. Now old boy talks a good game, but I have yet to hear him answer one question with a simple, direct answer. Sure, that comes with the territory when we're talking politicians here, but this cat is a master of avoidance. I just watched a little snippet of him with Bill O'Reilly and it was like watching...well I'm not really sure. I was waiting for him to answer one question about Bill Ayers, or anyone for that matter, without having to give an elaborate back story about how they came to be in the same city at the same time, under a starry sky and bla bla blah. At the end of the day, do we really want a guy whose cheerleaders include Hamas, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and North Korea? No thank you. (And yes, McCain has some unwanted fans, too, but isn't is strange that the commies are flocking to Obama?)
So I'm not saying you should vote for Obama, but you should certainly vote for someone. Someone else, perhaps? I think it should be someone who is definitely running for president, but most likely not Barack Obama. Oh, I know--If you can't bring yourself to vote for McCain, vote for Ralph Nader!
I promise, my admonition won't be nearly as dramatic or life threatening. I'll simply say, if you choose note to vote then you are turning your back on literally the greatest responsibility, I feel, we have as Americans--while at the same time, disrespecting the men and women who have served and died just so you can do so. Yeah, yeah, everyone has said that before, but to me it really does mean something. Okay, if your under about 26, I KNOW that's not going to move you, so think of it this way: if YOU don't get up and vote that means your letting your neighbors pick your next president. Think about that for a second. These are the people on your street who thought pink plastic flamingos and Hummels were a good idea! Now imagine for whom they're going to vote. Yeah, that's what I thought.
Folks who've been reading for more than the last year (thanks to the two of you!) may have been puzzled by my silence regarding this here election. It is very simple indeed: my guy lost my party's nomination months ago and at that exact instant the election for me became the old "lesser of two evils" game. No McCain is not "my guy" but he ain't Barack Obama, either! To be honest, I don't know much about our man McCain other than he was a military pilot and a POW. Which, in my book, already makes him about 34,584% more qualified for the job than the distinguished senator. In actuality, it wouldn't matter if George Burns had the Republican party nomination (forget that he's dead for just a minute) the simple truth is that the prospect of an Obama presidency absolutely terrifies me. Now old boy talks a good game, but I have yet to hear him answer one question with a simple, direct answer. Sure, that comes with the territory when we're talking politicians here, but this cat is a master of avoidance. I just watched a little snippet of him with Bill O'Reilly and it was like watching...well I'm not really sure. I was waiting for him to answer one question about Bill Ayers, or anyone for that matter, without having to give an elaborate back story about how they came to be in the same city at the same time, under a starry sky and bla bla blah. At the end of the day, do we really want a guy whose cheerleaders include Hamas, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and North Korea? No thank you. (And yes, McCain has some unwanted fans, too, but isn't is strange that the commies are flocking to Obama?)
So I'm not saying you should vote for Obama, but you should certainly vote for someone. Someone else, perhaps? I think it should be someone who is definitely running for president, but most likely not Barack Obama. Oh, I know--If you can't bring yourself to vote for McCain, vote for Ralph Nader!
// posted by wayne @ 11/03/2008 03:44:00 AM
