Good Morning!!!! 53F @ 8:00AM. Sunny. High 78F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
Was awakened early yesterday morning to the pitter patter of rain on the porch cover, but it was gone after a minute or two and wasn't even enough to wet the concrete. But it's a sure sign, along with the very mild temperatures, that summer is passing into fall. I found a Facebook group that keeps tabs on the leaf colors in the Sierra, and will put a few days together to ride up there for a look when they hit their peak. A lot less people in the mountains after Labor Day, but a lot of places cut their hours or close down all together. I also leaned a few years ago the USFS campgrounds are open, but they lock the toilets so as not to have to clean them. Our tax dollars not at work!
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Happy Birthday Ed! Hope all your birthday wishes come true!
Heard from my friends in New Bern yesterday again. No pictures, but she said the water was up to their front porch steps and was 20" deep in the street out front. A neighbor's pecan tree dropped a very large limb that took the electric service panel off their house, knocking the electricity out for a day or so, but other than that, they suffered no other damage. I guess this means they're safe for another thousand years, huh?:confused2:
Had a little job to machine a cam lobe for the throttle gear on the old BMW yesterday. To get the arc where the lump will glue to the gear I clamped a 5/16" thick piece of aluminum plate to the table, with another piece of plate underneath it for a cutting buffer. Then I used a 3/4" end mill to rough in the arc, leaving about 1/8" of material. Used a boring head to finish it up, adjusting the cutting diameter until I got a snug fit. It was a fiddly bit of work, but it came out well enough. All the fuss was necessary because BMW changed the throttle gear profile and housing when they reduced carb size from 40mm to 32mm, and even though I had the lumpy cam, it wouldn't fit the housing on the old BMW. So that little bit of metal got epoxyed to the new style round cam, and will put enough extra pull on the throttle chain to completely open the throttle butterflies with only a quarter turn of the throttle.
While I was messing about in the shop, I put together an adapter plate to mount the new fangled electronic ignition "brain" where the old trigger unit used to sit. Classic case of similar shape components with mounting holes that used two different distances between them. So the plate mounts to the frame using the original hole spacing with flat head screws that are countersunk below the plate surface, then another set of holes that match the new "brain" get drilled to hold that on. Made up a drawing to drill the holes, but then decided to just use transfer punches and match drill the holes one at a time, the old fashioned way.:confused2:
The electrical work and adaptations for more modern hardware take a lot of fiddling and don't show much progress in photos, kinda like what happens when the framing is done on a house and all the interior work is being completed. Hopefully most of that is done, though I do have a couple pieces of 10mm round stock to thread so the engine will be held in with stainless steel hardware. I don't have dies that size, so it'll get done on the lathe today. And maybe a little brake work on the front end, too.
Hope you all enjoy the rest of the weekend!
