The Think Tank

21 April 2014

Fuel valve fix and engine dampener

The fuel valve on my motor pushbike has been leaking horribly. About 2 litres flowed into the tank overnight. Not cool!!

Here you can see the tiny rubber seal is decayed quite badly.

So I'm making a new one from some recycled car-tyre rubber lying around. It's difficult to make nice clean holes in rubber.

Pretty ugly. Hope it works.

Nope, that didn't work at all. I'll try a thinner rubber seal. This time I'll use an old bicycle inner tube.

...and a proper hole punch instead of a drill bit.

Super tidy. That looks much better.

A dab of silicone should stop the new diaphram from moving around (rotating) inside the petcock. (ps: post-install, works like a charm. Problem fixed)

The motor vibrates like a beast. It's hard metal-to-metal bolted to the bike at every point. I think I'm going to pad everything with this recycled car tyre strip.

First I'll line all the frame-mount brackets with some rubber padding.

That should do it.

... I'll add some between the mount-plate and the engine also...when I get back into the shed. Updates eventually...

More "favorites" geocaches.

Did a couple really nice geocaches today. One being another of Muzza's electronic game geocaches. Well worth it. Check these out when you get a chance:

http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC4062J_national-treasure http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC2HWVE_who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire-v-2

16 March 2014

Super yummy Honey Mustard.

1 part seeded (wholegrain) mustard.
1 part dijon mustard.
1 part honey.
3 parts mayonaise.

Put it on everything chicken. And then everything else.

10 March 2014

Dave scored himself an absurd mountain bike and we've been out a few times to Lysterfield Lake Park to run some of the trails out there. Part of our route takes us on the Commonwealth games track used in 2006. Dave has been killing me with his super-bike, and my road-hybrid just isn't cut out for the beating the trail dishes out.

So in the tradition of "Real men ride steel frame K-Mart bikes", I picked up some dual-suspension cheapo bikes for myself and Jana at KMart.

However, I was not happy with the front suspension bottoming out with little effort due to my excessively manly body weight. All muscle of course. Gizmology was called for.

The black spring is the original. There's one of those in each fork. The small silver springs are what I'm adding in addition to the original to both pre-load the existing springs, and increase the overall force required before they bottom out. They're some part that Wes had lying around his workshop from Yachting components. I found two springs stacked inside each other offered a resistance of ~10kg before fully compressed. (I pushed down on them on a set of scales) A pair, in each fork, should add ~20kg.

Tightening down the restraining bolt. This socketted screwdriver has a 1/4 inch drive socket in the back of the handle. Super handy for that last bit of torque by adding your 1/4' ratchet!!

Beware, stripping threads is now easier than before...

So, I'm super happy with the quick dirty mod. I rode a trial run on the full trail and had a blast. Didn't bottom out a single time. Cycling FTW.

18 January 2014

Old Speedster

I bought myself a few model RC planes to build for my birthday.

Flite Test Website here.
Flite Test Planes here. Plans are provided for free, but the laser cut kits are well priced and ultra crisp. This made the build ultra fast, but still rewarding.

I bought the Old Speedster, Baby Blender, and Racer. Plenty of build videos and flying videos of all the planes can be found throughout.

Here's a few pics of the Old Speedster. I'm yet to fly it as it's an indoor flyer...so ultra low, to no wind is a must. The Baby Blender and Racer are traditional outdoor flyers.

20 December 2013

Rustic Coin Box

Christmas is coming. The Secret Santa theme for our study group was "ethical, reclaimed, recycled, fair-trade" etc. So I decided to build a rustic money box out of relcaimed pallet timber I'd scavenged the year before.

I had some BEAUTIFUL redwood timber of varying red-li-ness that I ripped lengthwise, and sash clamped together to form a workpiece. The alignment isn't fully optimised to "left justify" one edge, as the timber is quite bowed in all directions, and seating them in a best fit scenario was quite the tetris-challenge.

Doweling is for chumps. Just glue together and hold everything down from exploding under pressure somehow. The F-Clamps are used to align the stray ends. Pallet timber is warped like the Enterprise (groan). ...one day I'm buying a thickness planer.

Test fitting, rough n ready.

I've said this before. BUY YOUR MAN MORE CLAMPS. There are never enough.

I decided some coins inlaid into the top would look nice.

A small swinging polycarbonate access door for the base. I've positioned it so that it can't swing out of the user's reach as it bumps against the side in both directions before getting too far away.

I got pressed for time, so took it to work on the day it was to be gifted in order to finish it off throughout the day!! Here I'm about to attack it with my electric planer before routing the edges and giving it a final sand down.

It looks awesome!!

Coins are hot-glued into the top. A few coats of Tung-Oil are applied.

I attached this letter to the box.

I don't know where other people's interests lie, but to me this thing is gorgeous. I was actually quite mortified to give it away, particularly in a random Kringle style gifting method. I got lucky and my boss ended up with it. He lives in Ferntree Gully so hopefully there's some appreciation for that rustic timber look. :)
I have enough leftover timber to make a 2nd one. (as seen from an earlier picture). I may keep that one for myself. :D

Biggest bed in the galaxy.

Beds are too small. "Double beds" are akin to saying a "3 man tent" is adequate for three people camping. I've always wanted a monster bed, and finally did it.

Stage 1 was to prep the bed for widening. This meant raising the existing bed slats to become flush with the top of the outer rim of the bed all round. You can see here I've added an extra runner down the full length of the bed on top of the old one in order to raise those slats.

The intention was to leave the old queen sized bed completely intact. That meant I'd need to cut a new support beam for the new outer-length of the bed. I did this from the last of my leftover reclaimed deck timber.

Here you get an idea of what is actually going on.

New slats in place. This whole new section is quickly removable with 6 allen key screws. (I used threaded inserts, made the job easy)

My queen sized bed is now KING length in both dimensions, making it a MONSTER-KING.

I've had this spare narrow mattress for years. It fills the gap well. I now sleep across the bed at 90 degrees to the old intended direction, meaning my feet are on the new part. This ensures my hips/shoulders etc are on the nice futon part. You don't even feel the break in the bed across your legs. Eventually I'll buy king fitted sheets to stop that extra mattress bit from sliding away every now and then.

18 December 2013

C25K update.

Dave and I have been slowly plodding through the "Couch to 5km", or C25K jogging plan. It's a 9 week plan that we've been implementing between workout days when we decide we need a cardio day. That means we've taken about 7 months to get to the week-6 stage 'cus workout cardio isn't my thing.

The ultimate goal is to run 5km non-stop. With a secondary goal to perform that run in a 30minute or less timeframe. But either goal on their own also qualifies. Today I did the week 6, day 3 plan. Run 25mins non-stop. I got 5km exactly in that time.

In conclusion. I'm awesome. I'd like to thank Cadbury's Chocolate for giving me the remorse I needed to complete this run after having eaten 1/2 a block of their chocolate in about 5 minutes...Also thanks to the swines at my study group for putting chocolate in their secret santa gifts in the first place. :)

17 November 2013

Grampians 2013 Cup Day long weekend getaway.

Our beautiful hut.

Cheeky Cockatoo keeping it's eye on Jana.

Roos in our front yard every morning. An entire mob could be found on the local footy oval each evening munching on all the fresh baby grasses.

Day 1: no cicadas. Day 2: millions of cicadas. They literally came out of the ground en-masse on day 2. Squished all over the roads and footpaths. Birds were having a field day.

Jana before she jumps for it at Chataqua Peak.

She didn't jump, and stuck around to take this shot. :)

We saw perhaps six Blue Tongue Lizards over the weekend. This guy was baking on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere while we were exploring. He didn't move away till I got out to take close up shots. :)

A fun Geocache in town.

Accidental shot. Hiking from Zumsteins to MacKenzies falls. We'd left the bikes at MacKenzies, so enjoyed a long 6km downhill ride down the mountain at the end of our hike. Lots of fun.

11 November 2013

Dave's Firefighter Test

Dave is doing some Firefighter proficiency test thing for work. Part of it is completing one of the actual Firefighter fitness tests. The test is in a week or so, and we got in a practice run to be sure he'd smash it. Turns out he's too fit, and crushed the test no worries. :)

Did I mention we were carrying 20kg packs?? We had to stay within a minimum of 38mins, and a max of 45mins, so locking in a solid pace was crucial. The pace required to meet the 4.83km (3 miles) distance within time was a fast walk, just shy of breaking into a shuffle or a slow jog. About 9mins per kilometer, or ~6.5km/hr.

Sports-Tracker link here: http://www.sports-tracker.com/#/workout/mashee/fsvt2ok3dktqvk2s