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Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
Wed, 24 Feb 2010So, last fall, I made myself an improved camshaft for the CL175 streetbike. (Seriously, if you're not into engines and tuning, you can completely skip this entry.) Then, life got in the way, and I've only been able to get back to it in the last few weeks. Finally, a couple days ago, I got all the bits and pieces put back together, clean, beautiful, new oil seals, the works. I had stalled enough. Time to degree the cam. Degreeing the cam is not, in concept, hard to understand. The camshaft is locked to the crankshaft with a chain. The tensioner makes sure there's a minimum of slop in the chain. As the crankshaft moves the pistons up and down, the camshaft controls the opening and closing of the valves. Easy enough. If a valve opens too early in, say, the power stroke, then some of the expanding gas gets blown out the open valve instead of powering the crankshaft. If that same valve opens too late, then the exhaust stroke isn't as effective, wasting some power on compressing the exhaust against a closed valve. Likewise a bunch of similar scenarios -- the cam has to open and close the valves at exactly the right time, if you want to make the most power. Degreeing the cam is just the act of making sure the cam is lined up exactly where it should be in relationship to the crankshaft, so that the valves open and close as the manufacturer intended. Honda, at least with the 60s and 70s era 160/175 motor, wasn't always super precise when pressing the cam sprocket onto the camshaft, as far as how everything lined up. It could be off. It could be off by a lot. According to Mr. Bateman's article on cam degreeing, even 1 degree of cam timing is pretty significant. That's what made my degreeing experience so interesting. After first bending a valve and cursing a great deal, and then remembering that I had a couple spare valves from the race engine (note to future cam degreers: no really, don't stick the piston stop pin in the cylinder with the valves adjusted to .002"! Really!), I got my shiny new adjustable cam degreed. What should I find, upon degreeing the cam as I'd pressed it back on (admittedly without any precision at all)? 98°. The 175 is supposed to be at 105°. Yeah, that'll never work. I did the math real quick, and decided I had to move the cam 3.5° thataway (the cam rotates at 1/2 rotation per crankshaft rotation). I did, and was almost blown away by how easy it was. Turn the crank around a couple of times, loosen the three bolts, and give 'em a quick tap with a drift and hammer. Done. Without the adjustable adapter, you have to take the head halfway apart, pull the cam out, press the sprocket off, and press it back on to do the same thing. I'd taken a ~30 minute operation and performed it in about 3 seconds. I had marked 5° increments on my adapter (you can see a few more pictures of this stuff here), and moved the pointer what looked like about 3.5 degrees, more or less. I re-tested, and found I was at 103°, so I'd gone the right direction, and adjusted it just a tiny bit further. The numbers worked out to 105° on the nose. Hot! So now, the engine awaits final assembly, and I can finally put it all back together, and see if it works! I really hope the old cam was actually at 98° (but don't expect it was, I'm not sure it'd run at all in that condition) -- the performance increase from re-setting the cam at 105° would be huge! And the best thing is that the increased performance would come along with improved fuel economy. I've got my fingers crossed. Posted at 11:40 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 16 Feb 2010I know you're just dying to see it.
Note the yellow stain along the bottom edge. I'm pretty sure that's oxidization from being old. Never a good thing. And here it is inverted and contrast-enhanced (but nowhere near as contrast-enhanced as the first one):
So, more developer time is good. Fresh film will be even better. Posted at 22:45 permanent link category: /misc I developed the second exposure from our epic four-shot 5x7 photo shoot on the 31st. The first exposure was pretty milquetoast, as far as contrast went, so I went from 11 minutes to 15 minutes in the developer. It definitely made a difference, but the contrast still seemed weird. In fact, once I looked closely, I realized that the bits of the film which were covered up by the film holder were... well, kinda foggy. Uh-oh, thought I. 10 year old film. I might be dealing with film that's just past its use-by date. So I developed an unexposed sheet of film, to see if the film right out of the box was foggy and gross, or whether it was somewhere else in the process (such as handling, the film holder, light leaks in the camera, etc.) that it was getting fogged. So, this is the completely unexposed film:
That's pretty much exactly what it's not supposed to look like. Note the even darkness (it should be nearly glass-clear), plus the slight yellowish fringe around the edge. Oh well, I guess that 10 year old film is junk. I'll still process the other two exposures, because they're salvageable, but I know I'll get much better results with fresh film. Well, this is why I wanted to do a throw-away photo shoot first. Posted at 21:51 permanent link category: /misc I walked out the door to head up for lunch today, and stopped in my tracks. Between the towering rooflines of the buildings around me, I could see a strip of sky, and it was pretty stunning, bright blue and big puffy clouds. It was clearly a day on which I needed to bring a camera with me. So I did. And when I got to the cherry tree, I knew just what needed to happen. These were photographed near the PCC store in Fremont.
The photos are unretouched, except for a slight bump in exposure and exposure offset, which has the effect of increasing contrast and dynamic range. In Photoshop, look under Image > Adjustments > Exposure (at least in CS4). Posted at 14:40 permanent link category: /misc Tue, 09 Feb 2010
The Positive Benefit of Negative Dreams
I woke up from an anxiety dream this morning, and found that I couldn't get back to sleep. It wasn't a normal anxiety dream, in which there's just a vague feeling of tension. This one was definite, and quite realistic. It was after a performance of Penguins, and several people were walking away from the theater, talking about the show. There were some actors from the show, and some of their friends, and myself. At some point, one of the friends is describing a part she particularly liked, which included a prop gun. Only, instead of miming a gun with her forefinger and thumb, she actually pulled out the gun itself as we walked through this public square, and started gesticulating with it. My reaction was swift, and had none of the moving-through-molasses quality that dreams sometimes have. I swiped it out of her hand, and pulled the slide back to check that it was empty. I ejected the magazine. In the midst of this, I also fumbled it, and it dropped on the ground, breaking several large chunks off. While doing all this, I was also asking in a too-loud voice and with rather too many expletives who had let her have this thing. The commotion brought over a police officer, and then the dream branched into a bunch of different exploratory endings as the cop A) pulled her own gun on me; B) started waving around some kind of magical gun-sensing wand that looked like a boom microphone; C) sauntered slowly over to talk to me; etc. None of them ended particularly badly for me, as I just reacted calmly and laid down the now-broken blank gun and kept things mellow, all the while casting dirty glances at the person who'd brought the thing out in the first place. Of course, the anxiety part of this dream is that this is the exact situation I've been worried about for as long as I've been helping productions as armourer: someone brings a fake gun out in public, and Bad Things happen. In real life, it's pretty reasonable to guess that this situation would lead to someone causing a panic, getting shot, getting arrested, etc. I give each cast a speech filled with dire warnings about this kind of thing happening. The value of the dream is that I had not, up until this morning, considered what I would do in a situation like this. I think that in the dream, I reacted partly right, and partly wrong. The right reaction was to get the pistol away from the person waving it around, clear it, and ensure it was safe. The wrong part was to make a commotion about it. I should have just dropped it in a pocket and immediately headed back to the theater, saving any loud speech for later, and in more private circumstances. On this topic, I wanted to relate a story which directly bears on this situation, and illustrates perfectly what can happen. I wasn't involved with this particular show, and heard about it second-hand from one of the people involved. A theater company, which shall remain nameless, had a temporary rehearsal and storage space in a light industrial part of Seattle. It was mostly warehouses and industrial businesses, but there were some consumer businesses there, a gym across the street, etc. For the show they were rehearsing, they had these wooden rifle props, which were approximately shaped like AK47s. 
What a real AK47 looks like On a smoke break, several of the actors were standing outside the door, goofing around, as actors do. They had brought a couple of the wooden rifles out with them, and were presumably play-acting shooting at each other. A few minutes later, smoke break over, they went back inside, and continued with rehearsal. About 20 minutes later, everyone looked up in surprise as the door banged open, and a dozen SWAT officers poured in the door, assault rifles up, and shouting, "DROP YOUR WEAPONS! DROP YOUR WEAPONS! HANDS UP!" Real SWAT officers. Real assault rifles, capable of shooting real bullets that would go through a bulletproof vest like butter. The actors, fortunately, dropped the wooden guns and stood there with their hands in the air, as Hollywood had trained them to do in a situation like this (note: this is a fine reaction to have in this situation). Fortunately, no one thought he'd be a joker and aim his stick at the SWAT guys. Fortunately, the situation was quickly defused, and everyone had a hearty chuckle as the SWAT van trundled off. No arrests, not even a fine for calling out the van. What had happened was this: one of the gym patrons across the street had seen the actors, questionable looking fellows even in good light and close up, playing with AK47s outside a warehouse. The patron's mind being full of 24 and airplane hijackers, he naturally hopped it to a phone, called 911, and reported a group of suspicious men with assault rifles in a warehouse. As the police, this is not the kind of call you half-ass. You don't send a couple of patrol officers in a cruiser to check it out. You call out the anti-terrorism troops you've been training for just such a situation: terrorist cell in Seattle. I'm sure the chief could see the headlines scrolling through his head about his cool, overwhelming and successful response to the situation. Not only the SWAT van and many SWAT officers arrived. There must have been dozens more normal patrol officers. They shut down a 2 block radius around the building. The response was huge. Fortunately, as I said, no shots were fired, and no one was hurt. However, all it would have taken was one joker, and it would have been a very real tragedy. A dozen edgy guys with machineguns turn into a wall of molten metal death very quickly. The moral of this story, of course, is that theater props stay in the theater, and they're not for joking around. You use them for your scene, then you put them back on the prop table. The AK47 props were plainly not AK47s up close, but from a distance, it's hard to tell unless you know what you're looking for. My greatest fear on any of the shows I provide prop guns for is that someone's going to get hurt or killed because they didn't take my warnings seriously. I now use this story as part of my gun speech, just in case anyone thinks I'm joking. Posted at 07:18 permanent link category: /misc Mon, 08 Feb 2010
When I was a big wee lad of 17, I had a crush on a girl. I would leave cherry blossoms in her locker, and ever since then, blooming cherry trees remind me of her. Even now, I miss having someone like that in my life. Older and wiser does not always mean older and happier (although a lot of the time, it does). Photographed in Fremont, camera balanced carefully on knee. Posted at 22:14 permanent link category: /misc Sun, 07 Feb 2010
His Majestic Dustiness, Conqueror of Floors and Corners, Lurker Under Beds and Despoiler of Tidiness Everywhere, King Dustius von Bunnenstein, the Holy Dustbunny Himself, did command my death for crimes against dustbunnies everywhere. Fortunately, by quick use of my wits and a nimble wisk-broom wrist, I was able to avoid his terrible, dusty wrath, and escape with my life. The kingdom of the dustbunny mourns the loss of their leader, and has vowed to regroup and conquer, and I fear it is only a matter of time until I must face a reprise of the terrible, dusty ordeal. Posted at 12:50 permanent link category: /misc Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
