I can hear my neighbor hacking up a lung in the upstairs apartment. I feel badly for him/her (can't tell which one it is), because I had that cough too, but, c'mon, I went to the doctor eventually. They've had this cough for like a week now. I'm about to go up there and start slipping my antibiotics under their door.
Ada just walked up and bit me for no reason whatsoever, other than that she's Ada, and she does that sort of thing.
good to know.
So I had lunch with Peter today, during which he informed me that the smoke
coming off his bike was not in fact coming from the exhaust, but from a
little reservoir of leaking oil which is pooling up somewhere on the engine.
When he revs the bike, this "somewhere" (he actually told me exactly where;
I'm just forgetting) gets hot enough that the oil burns out of its little pool.
He said it's probably the head gasket leaking.
This conversation annoyed me on a really superficial level for a second or two. This same man gets upset (and with good reason!) if someone files a bug for him that says, like, "I looked at the machine, and then it stopped working." Apparently, though, "it makes a noise and it smokes and there's some oil" is enough of a bug report for one's mechanic girlfriend. Hrmph. So I guess the next time I'm over there, I'll check out this puddle of oil he's talking about, and assume that the head gasket just needs to be replaced. I still wish he'd told me all the details to begin with, though. It was really frustrating to hear that "carolyn, you're the mechanic" and etc., but then as soon as I started telling him my diagnosis and thought patterns, he was like, "no, that isn't the case, it's XYZ, and so I think the problem is actually foo blah zurple, and in order to fix it, you should mumblefloozle the ziglesnarf." To me, that warrants a surly "fix it your damn self, then," but I know he wasn't being a big git on purpose. ;)
I'm still concerned about the valves, however; I'm still leaning towards thinking that that's what's making the noise. I guess we'll replace the gasket and check the plugs (both of which are easy repair made horribly inconvenient by the wonders of the VF750 engine and frame design -- I've never checked, but Peter claims you have to remove the gas tank to check the plugs. This doesn't surprise me, since we have to remove the radiator to change the oil filter.). Speaking of changing the oil, I also found out today that overfilling the oil can cause a lot of these problems, most specifically, oil leaking out of loose rings and gaskets. We know that the bike was overfilled the last time we changed the oil, so we'll drain and replace the oil, and replace any seals that we notice are loose, and maybe all that will fix the problem. The valves'll probably still need to be adjusted, though. Feh.
Hrm. I guess I *do* need to get that Nighthawk back in one piece and out of the garage. Though god knows where I'm going to put it once it's reassembled...not that that's imminent, since I still haven't heard back from Spears about the new bearings. I think that when I go to get those, I'll just bring the damn steering stem and have Greg take the stupid race off himself. I can't wait to see the look on his face when he sees the bent-up, dremeled mess. *sigh*
those silly germans.
I just got this month's Rider magazine in the mail. In their little "bike blurbs" section, they
have a paragraph about a children's toy company, Playmobil, whose "Adventure Police Set" features cops and "bad guys"; the bad guys just happen to wear chaps and leather and ride
motorcycles. See the product in question here. The magazine insinuates that we, as assumedly *not*
bad-guy riders, should contact Playmobil and complain about the stereotype.
I have a personal opinion about this, and y'all can send hate mail here. I think that some people get very excited when they have a chance to complain about how they're horribly discriminated against. OK, maybe it isn't really *accurate* to portray the bad guys as bikers, but, shit, the cops have vehicles, why not the bad guys? And who's to stop the second cop from pulling up on the bike while the two bad guys escape on foot? Personally, I'm just thrilled that one of the two police officers is female. I guess people have to pick their battles, though, and when there aren't a lot of battles open to you, well, you go with what you can. I tend to complain a lot about women in programming, and women in motorcycling; I don't have a lot of complaining-energy left over for some poor little toy company in Germany. Besides, their little people are the cutest little things. I almost want that police adventure set, just so I can play with the adorable little bad man in chaps and a bandana on his little bike.
I'd like to hear more feedback on this. Mailing list, anyone?
very important.
So, I'm trying to decide what I want for license plates for the SVS.
"DNGR GRL" was annoyingly taken. I'm leaning towards "REDPOOF," just, y'know,
because, but I'm also toying with "R33T SVS" (though I think Jan is the only
person who reads this that'll understand that one) or something like
"SVS GIRL." Anyone have any suggestions?