Posts

Posted on

new parts on order

I just received some 3/16″ black neoprene rubber to be turned into a front fender mudflap. There are aftermarket fender extensions available, but there are a number of reports of cracked rear fenders after the extensions were installed. Some folks surmise that the extensions are catching too much wind and putting more pressure on the fender mounting points than they were designed to take. I’m going to make a fairly flexible rubber mudflap that won’t catch too much wind but will be curved enough to help hold at least part of it’s shape while moving. It should keep mud and road debris off the lower cowling and for a lot less money than the other extensions.

Also, a late addition to my over-the-road-toolkit is a Pocket Tire Plugger by Stop-N-Go. It’s a very compact kit that allows you to patch a hole in a tubeless tire without removing it from the wheel or even removing the wheel from the bike. Since two of the primary three reasons for being stranded on a bike are a flat tire or a dead battery, I’ve done what I can to cut those risks down. Now, I can patch a flat tire and pump it up using the Cyclepump Adventure 12v pump. The battery meter will help me to ensure the battery and charging systems are in good shape and hopefully to spot a problem before it turns a ride into a hike.

The third one is running out of fuel, and the Goldwing has a pretty hard to miss fuel gauge, so I can’t blame running out of gas on anyone but myself – and since I don’t intend to push the Goldwing around I WILL be watching.

Posted on

And the projects continue…

I decided that the battery tender pigtail coming out through the left-hand side panel opening wasn’t neat enough. Since there is a power distribution/fuse block behind the side panel there isn’t enough room to tuck it back inside, so I moved it. I drilled an elongated hole and brought the lead into the left-hand passenger cubbyhole. Yes, the cubbyhole isn’t completely weather-tight now, but the hole is very close to the size of the wire, and it’s protected by the seat. The advantage is that it’s completely out of sight except when it’s needed.

I purchased an LED voltmeter from Digital Meter to help monitor the battery condition and decided to install it in the right-hand panel, below the lock for the panel pocket. It will be wired directly to the battery (fused, of course) so that it will operate even if the bike is off. Anything less than about 12.5 volts with everything off is indicative of a problem, and anything less than 13.5 volts while moving is also indicative of a problem. Early warning of problems is easily worth the cost of the meter. It works great and is easily readable.

I removed the top shelter to run the wiring for the voltmeter and to try and improve the shielding over the cruise control actuator. I hadn’t planned on becoming good at removing the top shelter, so I really hope this will be the last time for a while.   I riveted on a ground lead for the shield and soldered a ring terminal on the other end that fit under one of the bolts holding down the electronics.     Ohmmeter showed a good connection to frame ground.   Also, I wrapped several of the wire bundles in heavy-duty aluminum foil.   Hopefully, both the good ground and the wrapped wire bundles will cut out the cruise control noise from the audio system.

Weather permitting, I will reinstall the top shelter tomorrow and see if I’ve fixed the audio noise problem.   I sure hope so, ’cause if it’s still there it’s going to the dealer under warranty.

Posted on

And the projects begin…

I finally decided to tackle a project I had been avoiding but needed to accomplish that involved removing the top shelter on my Goldwing. It isn’t simple, but if you are organized and careful it isn’t too bad. Since I’m writing this afterwards, I would say that removing the top shelter should take 15-20 minutes after having done it once.

I removed the top shelter and the first task was to run 12v wiring to power my Garmin 2610 gps. I know there is 12v power available at the left pocket, with plenty of current available, but I wanted to be able to turn the gps on without turning on all of the accessory circuits as well. Also, I needed uninterrupted power for an LED voltmeter that uses such a small amount of current that I will leave it on all the time. It will be nice to use at the voltmeter to get an early warning of battery problems before you wind up stranded. Installing that is another project, I’m sure that’s a surprise.

Second task was to adjust the slack out of the cruise control cable. I tied string to the 8 and 10mm open-end wrenches so that I could retrieve them if they were dropped and I marked the top of the adjuster barrel with a sharpie pen so I could easily count the number of turns. I had read several posts about this adjustment and the consensus was that 3-4 turns was about right. I decided to try 3 turns and that was right for my bike. Before the adjustment, the speed would drop 6-8 mph and then climb back to the set speed.

Third task was to put a shield over the cruise control actuator. There is a medium-pitch sound in the audio system when the cruise is active that changes pitch when the cruise is maintaining the set speed. Basically, this makes the audio system unusable when the cruise is active – on a long trip this is exactly what the audio system is for. I made a shield out of thin sheet aluminum and cover the edges with self-adhesive weatherstripping since the edges are sharp. There are a lot of wire bundles around the cruise control actuator and I don’t want my shield cutting into any of them – nothing good could possibly come from that.

I positioned everything and buttoned it back up, hooked up the gps, and headed out to test my wrenching. The gps works well and will be a useful addition on a long trip. The cruise works just as it should, engaging and maintaing the set speed without any noticeable drop in speed. Why this can’t be adjusted properly I don’t know, as the volume of forum posts indicates it is a common problem. However, I was only 2 for 3. The cruise still causes noise in the audio system. Maybe my ground connection on the shield wasn’t good, or maybe I should wrap the audio system wire bundle in heavy aluminum foil to provide additional shielding.

Posted on

First ride of Spring

I took the first (OK, three rides, actually) ride today. The thermometer passed 70 on the way to 75 and that was just too much of a temptation to resist. The first trip was to the post office, where a wireless PCI card for my Powermac was waiting – a useful trip even though it was a 25+ mile ride and the post office is only 4 miles from home.

After the first ride I decided to complete a mod that I had planned to finish over the winter. There are bumps molded into the trunk bottom whose apparent function is to align the trunk lid, but they will quickly wear through the paint. I ordered some 3/4″ diamater self-adhesive teflon discs from McMaster-Carr (page 3327, item number 7801A33) and today I applied them on the trunk lid where the lid contacts the trunk bottom. Others have made similar changes and their reports over time indicate that the teflon works well – trunk closes properly and no paint wear.

The second trip was to the hardware store to get a replacement bulb for the reverse light on my F150. The hardware store is about 6 miles away and this trip was about 35 miles. Apparently I’m incapable of going directly to and from a destination.

The third and final trip was to a wide circle of asphalt that I use for figure 8 and slow turn practice. I spent 30 minutes practicing slow-speed handling and re-familiarizing myself with the clutch, brake, and throttle. That kind of practice leads to good control and precise handling, even at very low speeds where most riders are not as proficient as they should be. More riders should practice slow-speed maneuvers – their riding at all speeds would improve.

Posted on

Work software for my new Mac

I need to edit web pages and manage servers so I began looking for something a bit more productive than terminal.

I took the trial of BBEdit and decided to purchase it.   TextMate was another possiblilty, but I liked the built-in ftp client the BBEdit has so I went with it for now.   I may change in the future, although the TextMate forums indicated ftp client functionality was a top-requested update and it is still not available.

I need to log in and manage a server farm running a mix of RedHat and Ubuntu Linux, I chose iTerm for that.   I still need to get the correct code for the delete/backspace key, but other than that annoyance it works quite well.   Keeping connection information as favorites saves time as well.

I chose Transmit as my ftp program, I am used to the my-files-on-the-left and the server-files-on-the-right layout.   I don’t like that it wants to choose ascii or binary based on the file extension as that is not always the proper choice, but I have added a few extensions through preferences and it seems to be working fine.

I use the Adobe reader a lot, Preview works fine too.

I use Openoffice.org v2 and have no need for any microsoft office programs.   I have found only one problem with OO.org v2, and that has to do with updating and saving files in an encrypted sparseimage file.   It hangs 100% of the time.   Moving the file out of the sparseimage file is all that’s required.   It is a nuisance but I want to ensure security of certain files at all times and the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Posted on

Essential software for my new Mac – part 2

Well, I receive zip files via email and downloads so I need to expand zip and sit files, and it turns out that Tiger does not include the Stuffit program that was previously included. No big deal, just go to the Stuffit site and download the expander app.

I moved my copy of Adobe Photoshop to my new Powerbook, and ran the updater to v7.01. I have no need of any more recent version of Photoshop so I’ll stay with this one for now.

I should retitle the post to “Essential software for my old Mac” as I decided to upgrade the OS on my powermac to 10.4.8 Tiger, so I purchased a copy of it. I also added memory to get it up to the 2gb max. This MDD Powermac has dual 1.25 ghz processors, and has a 1600×1200 digital display. It works quite well. So that I could work on video equally well on either Mac, I bought a copy of iLife ’05 and installed it on the Powermac. That gave me the latest iTunes and iMovieHD, and iDvd.

I purchased Roxio Toast Titanium v7 even though v8 is available. v7 is cheaper since v8 is out, but I don’t need the functionality of moving video to a video iPod since I don’t own one. If I get one in the future, maybe, but for now that was unneeded so I decided on v7.

Posted on

Moving Thunderbird email to my Mac

This is a little more complicated, but the complications are largely due to the fact that I want to move my entire message archive to the Mac from my Linux server running Ubuntu. There are a couple of gotchas, but if you’re careful and check things ahead of time it will be surprisingly straightforward. Before you start this series of steps, you should have installed the latest (or your preferred) version of Thunderbird.

  1. Start Thunderbird, and create your main email account. We’re not going to download any mail yet, we just need to have Thunderbird create the directory structure for us. Close Thunderbird.
  2. Locate your profile directory. Most likely, it will be in Users/Library/Thunderbird. The profile directory has an automatically-generated name ending in “.default”. Change into the profile directory, and then to the Mail subdirectory. There should be a directory named “Local Folders”. We will be replacing this directory with the “Local Folders” directory from our current installation of Thunderbird, so rename it to “Local Folders Save” to make that a bit simpler.
  3. Copy your “Local Folders” directory to your Mac. As long as you are logged in as the user for this Thunderbird installation, place the copied directory in the Mail directory. Now, there should be a “Local Folders” and a “Local Folders Save” directory present.
  4. We need to delete all files with an “msf” extension. These are index files for the various mail folders you’ve creted and they are re-created when the folder is referenced. If you don’t delete them, Thunderbird will likely hang when you start it. To delete them, open a terminal window and change to the “Local Folders” directory. At the command prompt, type “find . -name ‘*.msf’ -print” to locate the files we need to delete. Now, to delete them, we will modify the command we used to locate them. At the command prompt, type “find . -name ‘*.msf’ -exec rm -f {} \;”.
  5. Start Thunderbird, you should see your archived email messages in the “Local Folders” directory. Now you can create any additional email accounts you need. Close Thunderbird.
  6. There are a couple of other files you may want to copy to simplify your migration. Your address book is in the file “abook.mab”. It should be copied to the profile directory. If you’ve marked messages as junk and you want to use this information without starting over on your Mac, copy the file “training.dat” to the profile directory. If you used message filters to put junk messages into the local Junk folder or other filters, copy the file “msgFilterRules.dat” to the “Local Folders” directory.
  7. I have my signature files in the profile directory, so if you copy your signature files there you can set them up by editing account settings from within Thunderbird.

All done! Thunderbird works as well on the Mac as on any other platorm, and you can move your mail including your archived messages by following this simple series of steps. I started with this howto and added my own wrinkles.

BIG HINT: If you have mail in your inbox that you want to move (and you use the POP protocol), just create a folder within “Local Folders” named myinboxsave, and copy all the messages from your inbox into this folder.   This way, when you copy the Local Folders to your Mac, you will have copied your inbox messages at the same time.   Just open the myinboxsave folder and copy the messages back into your inbox. Nice.

Posted on

Essential software for my new Mac – part 1

When I received the Powerbook, it didn’t take long to get it going. I set up a wireless connection to my existing network at home, which includes two printers, an Ubuntu-based linux fileserver, a windows server, and a Powermac running 10.2.8 Jaguar. It took me longer to find the WEP password than it did to set it up.

The new Powerbook came with iLife ’05, which has an updated version of iTunes on it.   I was not about to re-rip my entire cd collection into the new laptop, so I used podworks to move 4000+ songs from my iPod into iTunes on the new laptop.

Now, I needed to make the machine suitable for daily work. I installed the Verizon software for my KPC-650 cellular modem and it worked immediately. I have read that you need windows to activate the card, but since I had already used it in my windows laptop I didn’t have a problem with activation. It works well and I can ping sites by name and IP, so dns resolution is working fine. The pings showed the latency is much lower than my current satellite internet connection.

OK, now I have internet access. Safari works fine, but I need to test sites in several browsers to ensure they are compatible. Let’s start with FireFox 2.0.0.1 – it installs easily and I grab the bookmarks.html file from my windows laptop and instantly I have all of my bookmarks available on the Mac. Nice.

Next is email. I use Thunderbird, so I grab 1.5.0.9 and install it. Now to move my mail from Thunderbird running on my Linux server to the Mac.

Posted on

Off the deep end or finally may have gotten it right

I decided to buy an 17″ Apple Powerbook laptop. Yes, the Powerbook instead of the very popular Macbook/Macbook Pro Intel-based laptops from Apple. The Intel-based Apples seem to be all the rage, but they were lacking in one critical area – they do not have a pcmcia slot. Without that slot, I can’t use my Verizon cellular modem. A second, slightly less important difference is that the Powerbook has a built-in telephone modem. With the cellular card handling my main internet connection duties out here in the country, I need a backup means of connecting to the ‘net. It’s just simpler if you don’t have to take a dongle with you.

The 17″ G4 Powerbook is a really nice machine and the underlying *nix OS is just fine with me. I ordered 2gb of RAM from www.ramjet.com and the installation took all of 5 minutes. About This Mac now reports 2gb of DDR2 RAM, which should really help when running Virtual PC.

Now, the software tools need to be identified, located, and installed.

Posted on

Fetching the Wing – part 4

I got up Wednesday morning and it was FOGGY. There was no real hurry so I had a nice breakfast and coffee with my parents. After the sun had burned off some of the fog I decided to get going. There was a lot of condensation on the windshield as I rode through the fog, lights on high beam to try and be as visible as possible. When I got to Columbia City on 30 west of Fort Wayne, the fog was almost gone.I bought gas In Plymouth and finished the trip home, arriving at my house shortly after 12 noon.

The first adventure with this bike is over, but I can’t wait for my first long trip on this bike. Stay tuned.