You’re on the ground floor of a motel, on your way to your room on the second floor, and you’ve found the elevators:
Which one of those six button-like objects will summon the elevator for a trip up to your room?
Quickly, press one of them!
Author: Ed
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Goose Parade
Canada Geese seem primed to travel in a straight line, whether in the air, on water, along a rail trail, or even on a sidewalk:
Canada Goose parade – A They proceed around corners in an orderly manner:
Canada Goose parade – B But they completely ignore crosswalk markings:
Canada Goose parade – C We think two goose families joined forces for this outing: four large geese and seven goslings by our count.
The sidewalks sport a rich assortment of goose poop, so the geese obviously enjoy their hikes.
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Amber Side Marker Light Hackery
Start with the amber side marker light sporting a cataract and distorted beam:
Side Marker – beam test – E Part off the lens:
Side Marker E – cutting case The cut is just in front of the PCB and went slowly to avoid clobbering the SMD resistors very near the edge.
The cataract turned out to be crud adhered to the LED lens:
Side Marker E – LED cataract Brutal surgery removed the LED and installed a replacement:
Side Marker E – replacement LED The PCB had two 150 Ω SMD resistors for use with 12-ish V automotive batteries. While I had the hood up, I removed one and shorted across its pads to make the LED work with the 6 V switched headlight supply from the Bafang motor.
In round numbers, 6 V minus 2.2 V forward drop divided by 150 Ω is about 25 mA. The original LED ran at 35-ish mA, but it’s close enough.
Glue the lens back in place:
Side Marker E – clamping case The bubbly stuff is solid epoxy from the original assembly, which is why removing the PCB is not an option.
The new LED is no more off-center than any of the others:
Side Marker E – new LED – front It does, however, sit much closer to the lens, due to the ring of plastic I cut away to get inside. As a result, the beam is mostly a single centered lobe with only hints of the five side lobes; there isn’t much waste light from the side of the LED into those facets.
Replace the one I originally put in the new fairing mount:
Side Marker E rebuilt – installed However, it’s still not much more than a glowworm in the daytime, so we need more firepower …
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Another Power Outage
We woke just after midnight to a completely dark and silent house, I padded around shutting of half a dozen UPS units under various desks and benches, and we eventually got back to sleep:
Rt 376 midnight crash – 2021-07-20 – status According to our clocks, power actually returned about four hours later.
Our grocery ride the next morning went past the crash site:
Rt 376 midnight crash – 2021-07-20 – A Tracks in the grass leading up to the smashed mailbox on our right suggest the driver didn’t quite make the very slight curve leading to the straight section.
It was garbage collection day and the debris field covered the entire front lawn:
Rt 376 midnight crash – 2021-07-20 – B Both poles have rectangular reflectors, but the one on the smashed pole (on the left) shows the pole is maybe four feet shorter than it used to be.
We have no idea how a can of white paint got involved in the proceedings:
Rt 376 midnight crash – 2021-07-20 – C [Update: Now we know where the paint came from.]
Quite some years ago, an errant driver demolished the front corner of that house and, more recently, the whole building burned out, so there may be a jinx on the site.
Other than that, we had an uneventful ride …
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Bafang Charger Cord Anchor
The Bafang battery charger uses an AC line cord “binocular” connector with what must be the weakest spring contacts ever made, which finally annoyed me enough to fix:
Bafang charger – AC line cord anchor Also, the case now sports four thick fuzzy felt feet to keep it from sliding around quite so easily.
Another customer-does-the-last-ten-percent product …
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Just One More …
Spotted behind a mall undergoing renovation:
Overloaded dumpster Perhaps they were loading it from the end and didn’t notice the instructions:
Overloaded dumpster – detail Protip: Always get the biggest dumpster available!
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The Value of Closeout Pictures
With the Bafang BBS02 and all its gimcrackery on the Terry Symmetry buttoned up and ready to go, I took a few closeout pictures for future reference.
The motor has a sheaf of wires sticking out of the bottom crying out for a protective covering:
Bafang BBS02 – wire bundle cover Although cameras tell only the truth they’re allowed to see and can be made to lie by omission, sometimes their latent truth was completely invisible to eyewitnesses in real time.
I only noticed the mis-routed shift cable when I looked through the last set of pictures.
It should pass through the plastic channel under the metal tab holding the cable guide to the bottom bracket shell:
Bafang BBS02 – wire bundle vs shift cable Normally, aiming the cable into the channel is no big deal. In this case, I had to undo the shift cable, remove the left crank, loosen the motor and rotate it out of the way, nudge the cable with a small screwdriver, then reinstall in reverse order.
Dang, that was close …
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 