Start a garage in your gym.

Well, here's one of a mass of boxes for jumping on. And...we painted them.

Welding Spline to Tiny Motor Shaft

Had to Weld this tiny spline on to a tiny motor shaft. 15-30 amps, tig welded, stainless steel. I'm pretty happy with the outcome. These had been laser welded on the face of the shaft to the spline and the laser weld failed. We drilled small holes (not sure the exact size of the hole) through the spline and I did a rosette weld on each hole then re-welded the face of the shaft and spline.



More photos here.

Truck Repair

Swapped the rear shocks last weekend, needed it bad:



I really like how the billstein blue & yellow contrasts with the rusty hew of the undercarriage:



The exhaust filler is I used in my hack repair is totally cracked, I need to replace the whole unit soon, but I'm doing the front shocks first:

Doubling Up & Coaching

I've been doubling and tripling up lately on workouts hoping to get ahead as much as possible. Additionally, I've been coaching a general fitness class once a week at work and coaching a weight lifting class once a week at work.

With the permission of those participating, I hope to post some early benchmarks soon and then follow up with those in a few weeks to look at progress.

Friday, I did my longest run since March w/Chris at the Fells, 8.15 miles on the Skyline and Reservoir trails in about 1hr 45min. 4 hours later I did "Annie" (50, 40, 30, 20, 10 - double unders & situps in 8:43 and "Coe" (10 rounds, 10 95lb thrusters, 10 ring pushups) with a 30 minute time limit. Finished 7 rounds + 10 thrusters & 5 ring pushups.

We built this pullup rack at work this past Tuesday.

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.