The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning
Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Cruisin’ the streets
He could claim to be accelerating after a stop signal and that’s just how those big Chevy “clean diesel” engines work, even with DEF and DPF in full effect.
In point of fact, this was deliberate:
I wish no ill on any man, but, should the Fates decree that a big pickup must be found wrapped around a tree, I have a recommendation.
We were northbound on 9W, returning home after an end-of-summer party.
Seven days and 300 miles of pedal pushing:
We rode north to the start of the Cycling the Hudson Valley ride in (wait for it) Hudson, rode south while crossing the Hudson six times, then I rode north from Da Bronx while the other 100 riders proceeded south to the tip of Manhattan and the finish line in Brooklyn. Mary, alas, drove the last few days to avoid aggravating a tender tendon.
While everybody else had a touristing day in Hyde Park, we slept in our own beds for two nights.
Everything you need to know about modern bicycle touring:
The straight line along the right side of the map, from just below the New Croton Reservoir to Hopewell Junction, represents data loss from riding in a valley, plus knocking the coaxial power plug out of the battery pack where the South County Trail becomes one with Rt 100 / Saw Mill River Road for a few miles.
That last day had plenty of hillclimbing, even on the rail trail, but with a rewarding section of Rt 52 that drops 500 feet in a mile; I hit 41 mph while passing under I-84.
A good time was had by all!
Based on having to seal the rear vent hole of the previous earbud, I did the same for the new one:
The audio quality was terrible, so I tried another bud with a foam windscreen over the hole and a hole punched in the middle of the double-sided white foam tape:
The audio remained unintelligible, so I tried an upscale (but still cheap, because surplus) Koss earbud, first without blocking the vents and then with snippets of Kapton tape:
The earphone has three slits on each side, but only the middle slit has a hole penetrating the case; it must be a stylin’ thing.
That sounded better, so I’ll roll with it. There’s supposed to be a foam cover over the housing, but those things always get grody and fall off; there’s not much point.
As nearly as I can tell, contemporary earbud designs optimize for volume (dBm/mV) and thumpin’ bass, all to the detriment of actual audio quality. Based on numerous samples over the years, there is zero correlation between price (admittedly, on the low end) and audio quality (admittedly, with my crappy hearing).
I own a pair of very nice (and thoroughly obsolete) Shure E2c sound-isolating ear beetles that sound great (even with my crappy hearing), but I’m unwilling to chop them up for the bike headset …
After building the mic mount, another dab of epoxy mounted the length of AWG 10 wire I said I wouldn’t use:
The whole point of the complex mount is to expose the two noise cancelling holes on the back of the electret element:
Add heatstink tubing over the entire length of the boom wire, use more black cable ties, shape another foam ball:
And it worked on the first try, not that there’s much to it.
Yeah, that’s the HDR-AS30V camera mount up top: dork mode in full effect.
Coming out of Adams, we’re ready to make a left turn onto Rt 44:
He was one car back in the left-turn storage lane when his light went yellow-to-red, crossed the stop line on the red, and was one car length over the stop line and accelerating when our light changed to green.
We’re ready to start rolling on green, but we’ve learned to wait a few heartbeats for just such occasions; what counts as a fender-bender for you would be a fatality for us.
Y’know how motorists get very, very angry at cyclists? I’ve always wondered why they don’t get that angry when motorists do those same stupid things, at higher speeds with much more energy.
We ride as though we’re thin cars, which is how it’s supposed to be done, and generally don’t get too much hassle.
One thing that is annoying, though: short-stroke yellow cycles that last maybe two seconds. We can cross the stop line on green, accelerating firmly through the intersection, and still get caught in the middle as the signal changes to green-to-yellow-to-red behind us and red-to-green for opposing traffic. No, we didn’t run the yellow, but that’s what it looks like.
The elastic cord behind the left-side under-seat Easy Reacher pack on my Tour Easy snapped some time ago, probably due to wear against the brace I installed to keep it from flopping around. Quite contrary to what I expected, the repair turned out to be almost trivially easy.
The cord terminates in a pair of plastic lugs, each with a ferrule that slipped off under moderate persuasion to reveal a pair of wedges that engaged the cord:
I expected the ferrule to have a positive lock engaging those wedges, but, nope, there’s (at most) a small ridge. Pry the wedges out and the cord slides out of the lug without a protest; the wedges don’t quite meet in the middle with the ferrule in place and there’s plenty of retention force on that flexy cord.
One of the shorter bungie cords in my collection turned out to be exactly the right diameter and length, with ends secured in its hooks using a simple crimped wire. Bending the ends of the wire at right angles freed the cord from its embrace:
The original stainless steel hook lies by the edge of the road along my usual bicycling route, but a slightly reshaped S hook (made, alas, of ordinary steel) fits around the cord well enough. When this one rusts away, I have plenty more.
Insert cord into lugs, push ferrules over locking wedges, remove one ferrule and lug, install reshaped S hook, reinstall lug and ferrule, install new cord on pack:
Install pack on bike: done!
I have no explanation for how well this worked out; I fear the Universe is saving up spit for something truly awful.
The venerable Greenfield kickstand on my Tour Easy doesn’t quite match the mounting plate under the frame, with the result that it can pivot just enough to make the bike tippy with a moderate load in the rear panniers. I’ve carried a small block to compensate for sloping ground, but I finally got around to fixing the real problem.
The solution turned out to be a spacer plate that fills the gap between the back of the kickstand casting and the transverse block brazed to the mounting plate:
That little lip is 2 mm wide, so it’s not off by much.
The aluminum came from a Z-shaped post that contributed its legs to a previous project. I flycut the stub of one leg flush with the surface, then flycut a slot 2 mm from the edge:
For no reason whatsoever, the width of that slot turned out exactly right.
Bandsaw along the left edge of the slot, bandsaw the plate to length, square the sides, break the edges, mark the actual location of the mounting plate hole, drill, and it’s done!
An identical Greenfield kickstand on Mary’s identical (albeit smaller) Tour Easy (the bikes have consecutive serial numbers) fits perfectly, so I think this is a classic case of tolerance mismatch.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 