I’ll start off with my appreciation for @jminer and the rest of you who helped set this place up. We have some Opponauts (this one included) going through some shit this year, and it’s been very uplifting to see people get support on a car forum of all places. Here’s to hoping everyone can harness some of those positive vibes into the New Year.
If an older guy with lots of toys mentions to you that he’s going through a divorce, work their asking price down. He even let me test ride it, which is something I’d never do when selling a bike. This was my first time riding a Harley, and holy shit are these things heavy. Feels like riding a cement block with a diesel engine attached to it. I wouldn’t want one as my only bike, but it should be good for lazy cruisin’.
2000 883 Sporster custom with a dealer installed 1200 “kit”. I called the dealer and they said their kits include the cylinders and valve work, but there is no paperwork to verify, so I’m going to install an SS kit along with a new head so it can actually breath. Fires right up and runs smooth. Gonna wait until I’m a bit more seasoned on it before making it faster, as these things do not handle like motorcycles are supposed to handle. It’s nice to have modern brakes again, though!
@gin-san That's what happens when you trust an oil filter company to deliver packages.
I told this guy I really liked his Jeep as he was loading his groceries hoping to get a laugh out of him. He just stared at me like an asshole and drove off. He was wearing a Triumph shirt, and I was dismounting my Harley, so maybe he just has a searing hatred for American iron. I guess you can’t expect much from people in a Whole Foods parking lot. Guy loading up next to me said it’s a Bronco, which nearly put me in tears. Stay excellent, Oppo!
Is Scotland on the way to Moscow?
I wanted to push the hog a bit today to try and find anything that may be close to failure. I finally got the ignition really tuned in and she’s been making very nice potato sounds. I headed fifty miles north into a 15mph sustained headwind with lots of big gusts into the forties. I was on the highway at a speed of 75 mph for most of the time. Ten miles before I reached my destination I headed due west, and that headwind turned into a crosswind, which feels wonderful with my bike’s solid rear wheel.
When I got to where I was going I stopped for a cigarillo and took some time to inspect the bike. There was a bit of oil spray on the back of the transmission, and a bit collecting on the swingarm. It wasn’t actively dripping, but I could see where it had exited one of the oil tank lines. It seems the line developed a curve, which pulled it a bit off the nipple. I checked my oil, wiped her up a bit, and headed back home. She’s still damn clean for a twenty year old Harley.
The ride back was much more enjoyable with the wind now at my back. While filling up at the gas station, I noticed some oil on top of the ignition cover, which seemed to be dripping from the air filter. This is just something most Harleys do, especially with modified motors. Overfilling the oil can make it worse, as can a worn out motor. The crank vents into the heads, which also serves to oil the air filter. I have an aftermarket air filter, but the holes where the crankcase is vented are circled below.
Knowing the design, I cleaned my filter, and applied very little oil, hoping it could soak up enough blowby so that it wouldn't drip unless it was really dirty. Well, the oil isn’t even touching the filter media. It just drips straight down to wear the rubber seat meets the carb mount. The breather holes are angled up so that any oil will drain back into the crankcase, but it looks like the oil is collecting at the seam of the hole until it eventually drips. The bike is running great, with no smoke and beautiful plugs, so I’m going to try and find a way to keep that oil from dripping out of the filter (I might try putting a breather on the return oil line).
Anyways, the looks of this bike are growing on me, especially after removing the chrome heat shields and installing retro grips. I’ll probably leave it as is a while longer. Only thing I might add is a sissy bar, so my kids feel more comfortable cruising around our neighborhood (buncha sissies!).
It’s definitely the cleanest sub $3k bike I’ve ever purchased. I need to start pulling some of the chrome bits off. The chrome exhaust pipe covers have got to be the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. I might leave the lowering kit on as I’m really liking how it looks with the 21” front wheel.
I just sold my ‘66 GMC. I think my youngest daughter is going to miss it more than me. It needed more attention than I’ve been able to provide it. It went to a friend who’s going to add some lightness and race it, so we will still get to enjoy it’s wonderful rumble. There’s now one less V8 in the desert rat household. Now I really want to supercharge my Tundra.
@bahamatodd Never knew @ForSweden was a copy writer
@midengine said in ugh forgot that today was my 1 year ago "last normal day":
@dipodomysdeserti My uncle was in a home suffering from advanced dementia, when my mom called to say he died a few months ago I was very happy for him.
Yeah, it's tough. We visited my wife's grandma a few months before she passed. Thankfully she was able to stay in her home until then. A friend's mom was moved from her care facility to a hospital covid unit after breaking her wrist (they were assuming everyone coming from a home had covid). It was literal torture sticking her in isolation as she died. My friend was able to get her home where she could pass surrounded by family, friends and music. Same thing happened to my wife's grandpa, but he had to die alone in the hospital. It's absolutely shameful what has been done to the elderly community, especially over the last year. Very indicative of what kind of society we live in.
@nickhasanexocet said in I think I've figured out what bothers me about Modern Marxism:
Since around WW2 and running right up through the early 2000s, there was a belief in the US that good people, those who weren't racists or bigots, simply didn't see race as a major factor.
That belief was mostly held by clueless white liberals. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote and spoke quite a bit about this, often singling out white liberals for believing that as long as they weren't overtly racist, racism and the mistreatment of blacks would be solved. I would encourage you to read MLK's Where Do We Go From Here, Chaos of Community. He discusses this in detail. However, I think the same clueless white liberals are still at it, and this debacle with Dr. Seuss is pretty good evidence of that.
And Zinn's Peoples History definitely focuses quite a bit on class. In regards to his focus on labor rights, he gives a lot of ink to the Wobblies, who were mostly anarchists. It'd be pretty funny if people start thinking of Zinn as a Marxist, as his ideas had a heavy dose of anarchism sprinkled in. A lot of the "socialists" he writes about we're heavily influenced by anarchist thought, and were very hostile towards the Soviet Union (I'm thinking of people like Emma Goldman).
The American Left is just as full of shit as the American Right. That's what people like MLK and Zinn were trying to point out, but it's hard to get through to people when their heads are full of shit.
@bicyclebuck said in ugh forgot that today was my 1 year ago "last normal day":
@dipodomysdeserti said in ugh forgot that today was my 1 year ago "last normal day":
@akioohtori We’ve mostly been back to normal here since late August. Everyone just wears masks now.
If everyone here would just wear masks, we could get closer to normal. Instead, people keep ignoring mask mandates and our risk remains high. The "moderate" risk areas are very rural.
I do have a beef with this map - it lacks numbers to help people understand the relative risk levels. I've spoken with the map maker and his hands are tied by the state since ultimately, this is a tool built to meet their requirements.
My county has been red the entire time, and we even had the highest transmission rate in the world a few times. Thankfully our hospital system never collapsed like in NYC, with the vast majority of deaths being people who were already very sick with other things. I frequent a lot of moto and hotrod shops, and none of those guys wore masks even with a mandate. My wife and friends have had a few family members pass at this point. All contracted covid after being brought to hospitals by their nursing homes for unrelated issues. They all had dementia. I've instructed my family to drag me out into the desert before ever putting me in a home.
@silentbutnotreallydeadly said in ugh forgot that today was my 1 year ago "last normal day":
@akioohtori it's pretty clear this is going to be a very specific cultural experience at a world scale because it's fair to say that our (my?) mileage has varied...considerably.
Not even at a world scale. My work life has been back to normal since August. Unfortunately my kids’ school still hasn't gone back, mostly because their district is run by morons.
@akioohtori We’ve mostly been back to normal here since late August. Everyone just wears masks now.
@pickup_man I snapped the clutch cable on the TT500 while riding a few months ago. Thankfully it was from a stop and I wasn’t too far from home.
@old-busted-hotness I avoid parking next to sketchy looking pickups for fear of getting my bike stolen.
@silentbutnotreallydeadly said in F*** startrack:
@pip-bip now that I've got the tracking number...where would you like me to redirect it to this time?
If it makes you feel any better...my fuel rail is still in the UK.
It’s in quarantine per Australian covid precautions.
@rusty-vandura said in COVID-19, Workplace Safety, Unemployment Benefits, California: Seeking Input:
@dipodomysdeserti said in COVID-19, Workplace Safety, Unemployment Benefits, California: Seeking Input:
If an employee doesn't think an employer is taking proper measures to ensure their safety, they can get OSHA involved.
I don't think anybody around here has the stamina for such an activity.
In AZ OSHA showed up anytime someone filed a complaint. We got one every time we fired someone. Can’t be too hard if the meth heads we fired could do it. Proud to say we only got one violation (no fine), because we failed to show a specific video to our employees. Pretty good for a place filled with dangerous machines, chemicals and hazardous waste.
@fintail said in Not a good look for Democrats:
It's that "compromise" and "unity", which really means just submitting to the whine of those who screech about debt and deficits during a pandemic
How’s it a compromise when they’re lowering the cutoff below what the last Republican administration had? That’s just called being even shittier. Biden didn’t even try to increase the payments, and just added the $1,400 to get to what Trump called for on the last payment. These people are all assholes, some of them are just more up front about it.
