All sorts of things kept me from doing the full MotoGP weekend, but I took Friday off, charged up the Zero, and headed to the track. I felt I’d be punished for wasting such a beautiful day not riding out to COTA. Free motorcycle parking is a joy, though still a hike to the entrance.
Gear check and Couch Potatoes
I forgot to leave my pocket knife at home, so was denied entry. Fortunately, the Christian Motorcyclists had their gear check behind the main gate (by the oddly placed potatoes). I stuck the knife in my jacket pocket, stuffed it in one of the provided trash bags and was on my way, no charge, no proselytizing. Thanks, Christian Motorcyclists!
Hashtag made manifest on Earth Prime.Pulpo Mecánico, though not shooting flames at the time. Replaces the Evel Kneivel rocket. FP2More FP2
I got my dosage of prototype motorcycles. I’ll always try to get to live racing, for at least these reasons: The smell of exotic hydrocarbons (at least one team is running synthetic fuel), the brilliance of the colors of the livery are always a thousand times more vivid, and the sound. I wasn’t there long enough to do much exploring, but just this little taste will be a booster until next year.
Also, I encountered PHANTOM CHARGING on trip to the track on my Zero. It’s about 40 miles round trip from my house to COTA, and I did it on the Zero before, just last October. I left the house with a 95% charge and arrived at the track with about 45%. A little worrying. When I saddled up to ride home, I had 63%, which was good until I was a couple of blocks from home and it was reading 3%. Checked it a couple hours later, and it was at 36%. Classic phantom charging, which is a drag since the fix is a trip to the dealer (which I just did a couple of weeks ago to get a new rear tire). We will see.
Saturday we went to the Handbuilt Motorcycle Show at the site of the old Austin American Statesman HQ on Congress and the river.
Exquisite
It was great to have the very sociable Julie along who started chatting with the maker of this amazing machine.
The shape of the carbon fiber “tank” – chef’s kiss.Birdcage BMW R18 – Smaller than I expected.
Zero! Zero! I can appreciate a nice orange metal flake. Hey, a Bonneville!
I ate a T-Loc Sonoran hot dog, and saw too many exotic cars prowling up and down Congress and Cesar Chavez.
To distract myself from the usual sources of dread, I’ve been car shopping. I’ve not actually test driven or visited a dealer, because, c’mon, it’s 2022 and until recently there have been no cars on lots, and dealers have been “market adjusting” the prices. Things have been settling down a bit in the past month or so.
Why do I need a new car? Not sure I do. My current commute is only about two miles along residential roads, which is in the operating parameters of my two motorcycles and my forty year old Mercedes. The Mercedes is fine, but if I needed to travel a significant distance, I would be stressed. It is old and has needs. I’ve put off addressing a significant vacuum leak in one of the HVAC pods. To repair it would involve either growing tentacles or pulling the dash. If I pull the dash, there’s all sorts of “while you’re in there” items: preemtively replace all the pods, replace the capacitors in the clock, and fill the cracks and recover the dash. I want to get the driver’s seat recovered, and eventually fix up the minor dents and paint flaws. These tasks may mean significant downtime for my primary rainy day/cargo toting/ passenger accommodating ride.
So what are my needs?
Reliable Grocery Getter – Enough for three full sized adults. Now that my son is taller than my wife, I’d like a comfortable back seat with plenty of leg room for who ever decides to sit back there. I don’t have much cargo needs, but would like enough room for groceries, or the occasional Alfa Romeo Nord 2000 block.
Fun to drive – From time to time, I really miss my Focus RS. It was a hoot to drive, no matter the destination. Engaging, lithe, snorty, and not bad looking in the Nitrous Blue. Not that I need that level of engagement, but something approaching it would be nice.
Safe – Safety is good. Could this be my son’s first driving experience? I’d like to know he has every opportunity to survive a crash, and every advantage in trying to avoid one. Same goes for my wife and myself, but the first couple years of learning to drive are high risk.
Good looking + Color – I want something I can appreciate visually, and that is not black, white, or grey.
Also, I have to be able to afford it. I’ve got some money tucked away so I’m looking at cars under $45,000.
Back when I bought my Taurus (reenactment)
First, the ICE candidates.
Hyundai – Sonata N-Line or Elantra N. The Elantra N (along with the Golf R) seem close to my old Focus RS except with a good rear seat leg room. The Hyundai forces the potential Elantra N buyer into the “you can only get a sunroof with an automatic” decision, but I think either would be fine. The Sonata N-Line sounds fun, and is a little bigger, with a few more gizmos, but not too much more money.
Kia – Stinger or K5. The Stinger is a gorgeous car, but with the 3.3 turbo six it is pushing the limits of my budget. The K5 GT could be an option, the fraternal, more traditionally handsome twin to the Sonata N-Line (same 2.5 liter turbo four and 8 speed wet DCT).
Alfa Guila – Good looking, sporty, smaller back seat, and there are some available around town. Something with the LSD and non-black interior would be pretty cool. And brand loyalty, you know.
Honda Civic Si – Could be the ticket. Fun, but not necessarily powerful, sufficient back seat room, manual AND a sunroof, some FREE colors, and, even if it is marked up, still pretty affordable. I remember cross shopping the Civic Si back in 2000 (when I ended up with the SVT Contour), and it just didn’t fit me. Brilliant shifter, though.
Then the Electric options.
Hyundai Ioniq 5 / Kia EV6 / Ford Mustang Mach e – Again, pushing the limits of the budget, but with the offset of cheaper running costs, and a tax offset. Plenty of room, probably engaging enough to drive even in the lower spec single motor. I hesitate due to cost and size. The Party Trick spec for each Korean model is beyond my budget, and I worry that the crossover size of these vehicles will feel like my Taurus, like a pair of pants a couple of sizes too small when parking or driving narrow roads. I’ve always felt most comfortable in a hatchback/small sedan. My preferred Mach e trim, the Premium, seems to be unavailable for ordering until the next model year, so there’s that.
Polestar 2Single Motor – I like the looks of the Polestar, and the single motor is in my budget. The problem is getting a color (other than black), adaptive cruise, and a sunroof adds $8,400 to the price. You get a bunch of other stuff, but it costs an additional $1,200 to get a shade of car other than Void (black) and these are barely colors: Snow, Magnesium, Thunder, and Moon are varieties of beige and grey, with only the blue Midnight sponsoring contributions from the color wheel. When we went to the Electro Expo (or something like that) at COTA, I sat in the Polestar 2, and tried to fit in the back seat. The front seat reminded me of the Taurus, with a high center console that made the car feel snug considering it was such a wide beast. The back seats would draw complaints from the potential passengers.
Chevy Bolt – The Bolt doesn’t sound like a bad deal. No tax credit but about $7,000 cheaper than the alternatives. Plenty of leg room, decent range, ok performance. It’s just that the recall due to battery fires has pulled the scab off Chevy’s supply chain problems.
I wish there was a good electric sedan that wasn’t a luxury car. “Dude, the Model 3.” I know. A couple reasons I’m not considering it. Configuring a single motor Model 3 short range at $48,440. Add a color for $1,500 to $2,000. Seems at the limits of the budget wheelhouse I’ve been outlining for myself. I just find the Model 3 kind of ugly, and the interior goes beyond minimalist to boring. Also, not a fan of the company’s leadership.
I’m thinking the time may not yet be right for an electric vehicle for me yet. The ICE options have to be sorted. Maybe it’s time for some test drives.
I read a book! And it wasn’t a comic book or a repair manual!
Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers
ISBN 978-0-525-56463-8 348 pages
Andy Greenberg provides a compelling narrative of the advancement of cyberwar tools as they crossed from pure espionage to sabotage and ancillary tools of disruption used in wider attacks and “hybrid warfare.” The information security disciplines, including malware analysis, incident response, threat hunting, and risk analysis are vividly illustrated in some of the highest stake scenarios information security faces. Although I was aware of most of the events described in the book when they happened, for example, the revelation of Stuxnet, the Ukraine power outages, Sony breach, and the Mearsk NotPetya catastrophe, Greenberg’s book informed my recollections with additional context, background, and consequences.
Throughout the first 200 or so pages of the book, the description of the threat actors and clarification of their motives are only the conjecture of observers. Not until the description of the GRU and their culture of secrecy are the questions about the threat answered. The answers are limited, as the GRU defectors are few, and, as the Skripal assassination illustrates, never out of reach. The best that information security defenders can do is infer their motivations from the political objectives of Russia and from patterns emerging from their activities once attribution is made. This situation is a suboptimal stance for a defender, who will remain uncertain of the strength and objective of the attacker. If the defender can’t determine if the temporary turning off of the Kyiv power grid was an attack or just a demonstration, the level of success of the response could either be “good job, well done” or “holy smokes, we dodged a bullet.”
The story of Sandworm should lay to rest some persistent fallacies I’ve heard about the inability of cyber attacks to cause significant impact to real world systems, including injury and death to individuals. Dismissing cyber attacks by nations as merely espionage and misinformation attacks underestimates the power of the attacks to sabotage critical infrastructure. As a survivor of last year’s Texas power grid failure, the impact of the ability to turn of the grid should not be underestimated.
Is there an LS or a ECOTEC under the hood of Tinkerbell’s sled? Didn’t sound like a Duramax, but hard to tell with the PERSISTENT UBIQUITOUS CHRISTMAS MUSIC ALL THE TIME EVERYWHERE AT HIGH VOLUME.
Recently returned from a visit to Orlando and its variety of amusement parks. A real paucity of traffic that was not a sponsored or tied to an intellectual property.
Disney has some sort of relationship with GM. GM abandoned its sponsorship with some of the attractions, leaving the People Mover as moving advertisement for nothing. In fact the highlight of the ride a is brief period of darkness. (Don’t get me started on the Carousel of Progress). I figure that Disney World’s deployment of alternate transportation methods (monorails and suspended gondolas for the love of Mike) are a passive-aggressive dig a the automobile and car culture in general.
Disney Hollywood Studios was a low touch GM property, as demonstrated by the “vintage” billboard by the entrance and the parade-spec V6 Camaro convertibles that shuffled Santa Claus around the park. I found out that Lightning McQueen is also a Camaro, so there you go.
Disney brought to you by General Motors.
Members of the expedition chartered a Chevrolet Express for the nine members of the party. The 11-passenger 4.6 V6 was kitted in anonymous white over stain-camouflage grey cloth. The Perfectly Adequate Suspension Pak combined with the AC Delco CONELRAD audio system carried passengers back and forth along Orlando highways with sufficient comfort. I was glad that I was not driving. My previous experience with a van of this size was chauffeuring attendees of an alternate newsweekly conference to Donn’s Depot in 1993. Curbs were hopped, and I was a general rolling road hazard. Driving anything bigger than my current 82 E Class makes me feel like I’ve gained a couple hundred pounds and I’m sitting in the middle seat in coach. My son discovered that consciousness can be briefly lost, even in the outboard seat on the third row.
Snoozing while arriving at destination, Chevy Express style.
Universal Studios was a little more shaggy in its licensing orthodoxy, with more opportunities for crossovers and lost properties and general oddity. There was a Cathy branded ice cream shop. Ack.
Did NOT come in a men’s XL, or else I’d be wearing it now.
If you could tear yourself away from Harry Potterville (“I don’t care”), stuff gets random and autos appear. The old school Mini in the lobby for the Jason Bourne Stuntacular (a truly fine stuntacular, highly recommended), the Fast and Furious cars (a Challenger! and other stuff I don’t remember), American Graffiti cars had the “Do Not Touch” sign, but no Boomer in a ball cap sitting in a lawn chair next to them. Hoods were not popped, and after eyeballing the body panel alignment and a peek underneath the Thunderbird I wager its performance was limited by the number of park employees pushing it.
Non-automotive transport did bring thrills, especially for today’s youth.
A teen’s thrill of perching atop an inoperable bicycle rickshaw loaded with bogus coins was enhanced by the 1,394th listen of Andy William’s “Happy Holidays”
The last ride did not require an Express Pass, but did have a recorded message from the mayor of Orlando.
The scooter engine reached it’s state of maximum entropy this round, and is coming back together.
The marriage of the cases.
I used a torch for the first time to install a replacement bearing for the fried fly side one. Let the bearing sit in the freezer while I braised the case with a tiny torch. It went in, though not the first time, but the second time, with some gentle persuasion and some refreezing from an inverted can of air (used to clean computer equipment – a tip I found on YouTube).
I was uncertain what should be lubed and how it should be lubed. I had to stand back and look again at how the system works, I figured it out. Gears on one side and explosions on the other. So, yeah, motor oil and two stroke oil everywhere.
After I “offered up” the fly side case with a rubber mallet, I pulled it back apart, and realized I needed to install the crank race separately, whispering the mantra “Patience, and gouge not.”
Italian heart and lungs for the Indian body
The next step is installing the piston and barrel. I’ve chamfered the barrel ports so I think maybe they won’t catch the rings, but maybe chamfer some more? I dunno. Peaceful times in the garage with a file.
A little late, but I did go to the US round of MotoGP a couple of weeks ago. It’s the first time I’d been in a while, which is a shame, since it is in my home town. For qualifying, I rode the Zero and worried about range, when I really shouldn’t have. I put the SR/F in eco-mode down there, but dialed in sport mode on the way back, after quickly realizing that eco mode is speed limited. A Charger SuperBee asked me about the bike while at a stop light, figuring that only electric bikes around were Harleys. Zero has been around for a while, but for my money, the SR/S and SR/F were the only ones that looked like real street motorcycles, and had the big battery, big motor, and level 2 charging. I love my Zero, and it did stand out in the sea of BMW GSs in the motorcycle lot.
Lot H on Saturday
It had been long enough since I’d been to the racing that I forgot the excitement walking to the track, excitement brewed from the sound of a dozen prototype machines wailing and whiff of exotic petrochemicals, with woody undertones of burnt rubber and fried foods.
Negotiating Turn 12
This race was the third time at COTA, and I’ve gone from General Admission (ending up at the esses – turns 5 to 8 or so), grandstand (which was fun to watch the pits, excellent Jumbotron, comfortable seats, and shade) to the bleachers at Turn 12. Despite the full sun and cramped aluminum seating, Turn 12 provided an excellent point to watch both qualifying and the race, as the riders have to brake hard to negotiate the tight corner. You could see the rear wheel of Marquez’ RC213V hover over the rippled tarmac leading into the corner. You could hear the Desmoseidicis bang down through the gears, and you could see the Yamahas gracefully kiss the apex, Fabio’s elbow skimming the inside rumble strip. You could also see the KTMs never quite figure it out. I saw Pol go down, but pop back up pretty quickly.
American flag with the number 69 means something to road race fans, but may be misunderstood in other venues.
The race was pretty typical for COTA when Marquez doesn’t fall. We did see Nakagami lowside, but get back up and make his way back up through the pack. He earned some fans. We saw pole sitter Bagnaia make some passes on his way to the podium.
Winner
A highlight for me was Marquez grabbing a Nicky Hayden flag on his cool down lap. I found out that despite the yellow smoke, we were sitting in the Marquez section, resplendent with 93 and 73 flags. An Marc saluted the fans with tire smoke.
It was hot, the riders complained that the track was bumpy, and the actual race was not a thriller. It did feel good. Someone once compared live motorsports to medieval tournaments: riders coming from far away, tribes identifying themselves though their dress, and colored flags to represent your champion.
I’ve got the scooter’s engine apart and on the workbench, and now I’m trying to figure the cause of the initial failure, and how I can make all these Italian performance parts work together. At the same time, I’m trying to get my head around how two stroke engines work.
Initially, it seems pretty straight forward. The tiny scooter power unit was simple to pull and, due to its aluminum construction, weighed almost nothing (or much less than I thought it would). I cracked the case and it was easy to see how straight forward the whole operation was. No valve train, just single cylinder driving a crank spinning a set of gears that move a wheel.
Pretty straight forward.
After knocking the crank out, the proximate cause of the failure is pretty evident. The big end of the rod that latches on to the crankshaft was locked solid. The flyside crankshaft bearing had also failed. I had to do a double take when I was examining the new bearings, as the new flyside crankshaft bearing looked different from what I had just hammered out of the case.
Why are these different?
The old bearing on the right left its inner race on the old crankshaft. The clutch side crankshaft bearing was fine. It was ball bearing, not a “needles in rubber” bearing, and spins freely. What happened that these other bearing failed? Lack of lubrication is the obvious, but again, this is how two strokes are weird.
This scooter has an oil injection system. A pump driven by gears off the crankshaft pulls oil from a reservoir under the seat and into the carb. It get mixed and dumped into the combustion chamber and burns and lubricates the crankshaft, piston, and all the other goodies. In this engine, this did not happen. I checked the oil pump mechanism and it spun freely.
My thought is that when I tried to get this scooter running a while back, I cleaned the carburetor and the gas tank, and filled the oil tank. I gave it some kicks, and it ran for a while, but then didn’t. I’m thinking that that the old didn’t get pumped up to the carb before it started running just on the gasoline. So it revved, then locked up. Some scooter engine builders on Youtube run a premix of oil and gas in the tank to make sure everything gets well oiled on initial start up. Which is what I’ll do, as well as insure that the oil flows freely from tank to the carb and make sure the line is without kinks or blockage.
This sorting of the lubrication serves as a reminder that no matter how straight forward, light, and elegant the function of a two stroke motor is, it is incredibly filthy. I’ve been reading A. Graham Bell’s Two Stroke Performance Tuning. Much of it is significantly over my head, and irrelevant to the task at hand. I read it to find out what is important, and how the engines fail. It describes the art of carving out the ports and channels within the engine to encourage the air and fuel and oil to flow and explode and lubricate in the ideal manner, and the practice of chamfering and honing the rough edges to speed the flow, and rely on the shockwaves created by the explosions to excavate the exhaust and squeeze yet still more power. It all seems very craftsman, elegant, this carving and honing by hand while working in a very simple framework, especially in this engine. It has not cooling system (just some fins), no cams, rockers, or even oil splashing around, just old dinosaurs in, power out, ring-ding-ding.
But the smoke. Two strokes burn oil by design, the primary reason the design was abandoned forty years ago. Does my Zero balance the limited use of the scooter? Can I have it for fun, just a little bit, before the world ends?
Over the Labor Day holiday, I journeyed to the wife’s homeland in Northern New Mexico, and spotted cars and motorcycles.
The common vehicles of this area include the following:
The Ford F250 4X4- Both turbodiesel and Triton V10 abound, usually equipped with aggressive tires and coated in dust. No crazy lifts, no fancy chrome wheels.
Subaru Outback – also coated in dust.
Toyota 4Runner topped with $4,000 of Yakima racks – amazingly, not so dusty
When exploring the neighborhood that my wife grew up in, we turned the corner to an amazing display of the automotive unusual. Multiple projects parked on the street, in multiple degrees of completion, including:
Volvo 240 – with a wide body kit.
Volkswagen Scirocco 16v – with racing stripes!
Numerous sport bikes from the 90s to 00s in varying stages of undress.
In another neighborhood, an absolutely menacing 1959 Buick Electra deuce and a quarter finished in oxidized black crouched under a split level’s carport.
Since it was a long weekend in a geographic concentration of the most amazing roads in the world, there were plenty of motorcycles, including more KTMs than I’ve seen in years. Harleys were represented according to the sales in the US, i.e., there were a ton of them, but sprinkled in were the occasional BMW GS, Suzuki Savage, and more than one Dr. Big.
Closer to home, it’s been a little on the light side for the wild and wacky in transportation. My long term plan is to acquire an electric vehicle to replace the Mercedes as a daily driver and occasional road trip machine. I’ll probably wait to pull the trigger until I can test drive the Korean entries (Ioniq 5 and EV6), but I have spotted a couple of Polestars and they look good. And I spotted a Volvo XC40 Recharge in Stormtrooper Helmet white and lord that was not good, which is funny because the XC40 is not a bad design. The big white plate over the grill put me less in the mind of a PV544, and more in the mind of a Maytag. Maybe it’s better in black.
I did spot and snap these electrified beasts while either at a full stop or as a passenger.
Here’s the first Ford Mustang Mach-E I’ve spotted, making a left hand turn. Not bad, but I’d probably spec mine in a color. There’s too much grey, black, and white on the planet.
Mustang Mocky
Later, I spotted a fresh Jaguar I-Pace.
Jagwar Eye Pays
Ehhh. It reminded me of the Land Rover Evoque. It’s a crushed, lead sled version of a truck, or a silly putty stretched sedan. The mailbox slot rear window and extended hips give me the feeling that it would be a pig to maneuver in traffic.
Added the last bit to the Bonneville – a Pingel petcock. The old factory petcock was weeping fuel, and I figured I go with the blingy chrome Pingel. Easier than I thought – it took less time than it took my son to take a shower – and it seals nicely.
The old fuel tap was ready for replacement
With that, I’m pretty much done with the major work on the Triumph. It rides nicely and stops as it should. The engine purrs at idles and pulls solidly. In the next couple of months it will need a new set of sprockets and chain, primarily due to my neglect.
Next up was the scooter. It’s a 2006 Genuine Stella. Which is a rebadged LML Star. Which is an Indian manufactured clone of the Vespa PX150. I’ll probably write more on it, it has a little bit of a story, but its low miles and state of neglect is not uncommon.
And this little scooter had been marinating in its hydrocarbons for as long as my son has walked the earth. A while back I scoured the tank, replaced the petcock, and cleaned the carbs. Still, it didn’t run quite right. I went back to figure out later, and got it to run (but not idle) until it didn’t. Not only that, but the kickstarter would move. I took that as an excuse to buy parts, so I got a Malossi cylinder kit (before I even pulled the head). Over the past year, I’ve been trying hard to move away from that “buy a part” first response before I understand a problem. I’ve wasted money and time using that approach, and have only gotten frustrated. This past weekend I figured I find out what the problem was, hoping maybe it was just a jammed kickstart gear. It was not.
World’s tiniest flywheel puller, and the naked magneto. But what lies beneath.
Once my minuscule flywheel puller (Italian made) came in the mail, I made it do what it was made to do. I have also learned that an investment in the right tool always pays off. I split the cases, and examined the fly side of the scooter’s soul. And it was not a good sight.
Yeah, it needed some oil and didn’t get any.
Behold the carnage. Forensically, it looks like I didn’t get the oil injection lines right when I reinstalled the carburetor. Two strokes need oil in the fuel to keep the spinning parts spinning, and the piston big end and the needle bearing just didn’t get any. Of course, at the time, my approach was to keep kicking. Lesson learned.
But the transmission looks good.
I’ve got a new crank, bearings and crankshaft install tool on order. Combined with the cylinder kit, it should add some grunt. I think this is what I need – a full rebuild with some uncharted territory, including replacing bearings, timing crankshafts, and measuring squish. I’ve always wanted to measure squish.
Another slow couple of days in the car spotting practice.
My wife saw a Volvo PV 544 in a non-standard color. (Anything other than black is a non-standard color).
Spotted another Triumph Bonneville when I was on my Bonneville. Waved. (Of course. I always wave, unless I’m dealing with a traffic situation.)
Yamaha R1 with gold paint and aftermarket exhaust (a Kerker LOUDERIZER 3 I believe), crawling down Lamar while bouncing off the 1st gear rev limited. Live loud, my friend, and don’t forget about proper chain maintenance.
And this I spotted whilst dining on tacos. It was prowling around the Wal Mart parking lot in a reasonable fashion. No idea what it was. The vent or whatever up on the front fender makes it look a little AMG GT, but the back end is all wrong. Shrug.
The One In Five 