Fixing a Corroded Muffler

My jerkbutt roommate broke my perfectly fine, wouldn't have broken anyway, totally corroded tailpipe off my muffler by driving to hockey practice last night. Since I was in a hurry to get my truck to the shop to have some work done today and couldn't do a complete repair, I zipped a couple holes through what was left of the flange and put a few screws through to keep it in place. I only drove about 5-10 miles with it, but it seems to have held up quite well.

Shortly, I'll be removing the muffler and pipe and trying to weld what's left of each back together. Hopefully, this will buy me another couple of months before I have to go out and buy a whole new exhaust pipe.

Official Results!

Seven Sisters Results

I finished 42nd, 2:34:48

John did quite well finishing in 3:30:23. John has only been running since early last fall and this was his longest run to date, so he made personal records on several counts.

Seven Sisters Success

I completed the Seven Sisters Trail Race yesterday. My buddy John, who I've been helping/beating into shape over the past several months also completed it despite a late in the race mishap that involved the pack of runners he was with ending up way off course. I consider the days events to be the completion of several successful projects.

I was told I finished 43 out of 280 entrants with a time somewhere between 2hr15 and 2hr30. I didn't want to pester the organizer for actual times so I'm waiting for the official results to get posted.

In addition to project fitness my latest batch of goo (that's energy food, perverts) was a success. Both John and I used 2 packets a piece to get through the run. I'm also recognizing the value of preservatives, especially on 80+ degree days, where do I get these?

Here's me crossing the finish line like an escaped zoo monkey:


And a post race sandwich with the light of my life:

More on goo (again, a food), tail pipes, bike racks and fitness projects to come.

New Project - New Goo

Precalculus is over. I took, and undoubtedly failed, the final exam, tomorrow seems like a good time to run a 12 mile trail race, so I'm doing the Seven Sisters Trail Race.

In preparation for this race, I made 3 new batches of energy food.

Ingredients:


Baggies:


From bottom up, I'm calling the first row "Raspberry Oat Fucker." That sounds catchy to me and anything to honor the '40 Year Old Virgin' with an unrelated bag of raspberry, oat and protein powder makes sense. This one tastes pretty good, highly digestible, texture still has remains of oats so I might blend the oats into a finer powder next time. Estimated Nutritional Facts - Calories 300-500 - Protein 20-30 grams - Sugar medium - Vitamins some.

The next row is my generic 'Peanut Butter Honey Bomb'. It tastes better than the last batch but still isn't peanut buttery enough. The problem is to get a consistency someone can suck down with little to no effort midway through an endurance event requires adding water which is basically a flavor remover. Estimated Nutritional Facts - Calories 400-600 - Protein 20-30 grams - Sugar yes.

A note about the PBHBomb, it goes bad, real bad. I found a bag in the bottom of my camelbak during a run on Thursday morning and tried to eat some despite the smell. Apparently, banana and peanut butter turn into vinegar yogurt when left unrefrigerated for a few weeks. This experience made me appreciate preservatives and I'd consider using some. Does anybody know where to buy and how it works?

The last row I call "Fire Walk with Me." For moments when you need to put a raging murdering Bob inside you. I keep making the mistake of tasting some at 9pm when I'm making it. Next thing you know its 5am and I've spent the night cleaning my bike with a toothpick and dental floss. Estimated Nutritional Facts - Calories yes - sugar lots - caffeine 2 TB of raw bean powder.

Next week I'll be posting about the usefulness of this stuff, how the race project went, the PVC bike rack for my truck and the gym I plan on making out of my garage.

Old Project #4: Closer to done

Another project 2 years in the making. I fixed a crack in a friend's frame a year or two ago and he gave me a couple headsets and this frame (also in need of repair).

I don't know what to make of this bike. Its lugged steel, the seat stays meet the seat tube a few inches beneath the seat lug. Its unclear whether or not the person who built this bike knew what they were doing. By the time it ended up in my hands, the seat bridge had been replaced (or it had never existed) with some oval tubing that had been brazed in place by some HD style pre-fluxed brazing rod. The seat bridge was totally rotted out and in removing it, I must have ground out, without exaggeration, at least an eighth inch if not a quarter inch of brazing material.

My brazing needs work, but its definitely light years ahead of what had been there. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of the old bridge before grinding it out. The former owner of the bike had been using electrical tape as a 'fix.'

I'll be finishing this over the next week or year. I need to sandblast the whole thing and give it a nice rattle coat of gloss black.

If you have any pointers on my brazing, please let me know. I think I may have gone a little nutty with the flux and also been working too hot.

More pics here.

First Stem Finished!

It only took 2 years.

The impetus here was to finesse my welding abilities, learn to braze and make something useful. I think the welding is sound, I'm better now than I was two years ago. At the time, the only access I had to brazing material was pre-fluxed stick from HD and a mapp gas torch. Needless to say, the brazing is horrendous. I've since learned to use an oxy-acetylene setup. This particular stem is 1 1/8" and the dimensions match pretty darn well to the Deda Pista Newton stem that I based it off of, hence the track bars in the stem. The finishing here is terrible, I didn't want to final cut the tubes before brazing and welding for some dumb reason so I ended up cutting and slotting these with a die grinder and it shows.



Another point of vexation for me was that I'd anticipated being able to weld two steel threaded pieces I ordered from Nova Cycles to the steerer clamp tube. However, I soon discovered that there was some serious impurity in the steel and despite cleaning them thoroughly ahead of time, there was simply no way to achieve a clean weld.

Below are some photos of an orange Kelly stem and a Salsa stem that I based the construction of this stem off of. Sadly, I think my stem will be obsolete as I really favor removable face plates and when I started it, I had more than one track bike and it would have made sense to have two bikes with the Deda track drops on them. The 4th stem is a Salsa stem that I decided to repaint safety orange for no good reason.



If I were to take another swing, I'd take the time to have a jig made to hold the tubes while welding. For these, I ordered tubing that had a close inner diameter to what I needed and I incorrectly assumed that slotting them would open them up enough for a good fit. Next time, I'd ream the tubes to the exact ID before welding and slotting. I'd also fabricate the threaded pieces myself out of steel I knew to be suitable to welding.

More pics here.

1977 CB750K Front Brake Overhaul

I began overhauling my front brakes in November when I took the bike off the street. My plan was to order stainless steel lines, new banjo fittings, new hardline, new brake pads and a master cylinder overhaul kit. I ordered most everything from bikebandit.com, however, they shipped me an incorrect adapter fitting for the hardline 3 times in a row before finally just crediting my account and letting me keep the wrong parts for free. I was finally able to track down the correct adapter fitting for the stainless steel hose to the hardline at PegasusAutoRacing.com, who shipped quickly and knew exactly what I was talking about when I called.



The first thing I did was to pull the caliper off the fork, remove the brake pads and use the lever to push the caliper piston out. This took forever and once I'd succeeded I realized I needed to order a new caliper piston as mine was extremely pitted. This part has proven incredibly difficult to find and I am currently in the process of having a few made. If anybody else would like to obtain a 1977 CB750K brake caliper piston, please get in touch as I'm planning on having a few extras made since this part seems increasingly hard to find.



The master cylinder also proved difficult to work with as there is a deep seated snap ring in a long narrow bore. Its purpose is to hold in the rubber boot keeping the master cylinder piston clean. Regular snap ring pliers will not gain access to this snap ring. After several hours spread out over several days trying to coax the snap ring out with sharpened nails, vice grips and other assorted home made tools, I broke down and ordered some long reach right angle snap ring pliers of Ebay.

As of right now, I'm still waiting on the caliper piston and have to finish the master cylinder so I haven't begun reassembly and I haven't bothered to install the lines yet.

Its clear to me that the entire front brake system has likely not undergone any maintenance beyond an occasional bleed and possible pad replacement. The lines, piston, master cylinder components and fittings are all 30+ years old and have 40k on them. Its a testament to Honda that I was still getting function out of these brakes even if it wasn't optimal.

For those about to undergo this process for the first time, I recommend confirming with absolute certainty the availabilty of all parts in the brake sytem ahead of time. If you can't afford to keep your bike down or don't have more than a weekend to complete this task, you'd be best served ordering absolutely every part possible for this system as once you're into this process, you will undoubtedly discover additional parts that need replacement or overhaul.

I'll be posting more on this later and additional pictures can be found here.

February 2009

Thailand
Originally uploaded by B.Frank

The first half of this video is for people who appreciate haircuts and STD.

The second half is for people who are amused by the irony of hooking up a gas powered generator to re-charge a battery powered cart while operating the cart.

Relevance: for work I purchased the a Haulz-all powered drive, cut up an existing handcart and mounted batteries and powered drives to the front and rear of the cart.

Stems

I started these in Spring 2007. I need to clean them up, slot the two clamps, cut down excess material. A bit of work.

I probably should have made these with tube stock that had a much thinner wall thickness. At the time, I only had access to mapp gas and pre-fluxxed brazing rod from HD, hence, brass bird poo.

More photos here.

Old Project #2

Sometime in the fall of 08, a motorist struck my bike while it was parked curbside on Mass Ave. They didn't leave a note, but they did distort the alignment of my fork. So, I propped the bike up on 2x4s, removed the wheel, loosened the tree and aligned it by eye. I've been riding it since and haven't had any problems with the alignment.

More photos of the alignment: here

Currently listening to Diarabi by Issa Bagayogo. I found it here.