nutherjrfan said:KyAllroad (Jeremy) said:Added 18” of height to my gate so the shiny happy person dog would stop escaping.
He’s a 75 lb pit I adopted a month or so ago. In my mind, pits were always like the super-heavyweight boxers of the canine world. Strong but not fast. This guy is more like an Olympic gymnast. Incredibly strong with the ability to spring up and over most anything.
Last day I was off, I took my son to school, took my wife out for breakfast, put some wax on a model of a Toyota S800 that I've been building, played some Fortnite, and then went to work 
I was mandated to work the Florida Georgia football game. Walked around babysitting drunk people all day.
11 hours of overtime, so I guess it wasn't a total bust.
It's been raining all weekend here in Philly. I spent Saturday with some friends I hadn't seen since about the Spring. Went to the Ida Automotive open house where there were displaying a Tucker they had recently restored.
They had some other stuff in the shop. It was crowded and tight, so it was hard to get a good picture.
That's a twin turbo LS in one of their reproduction Tuckers.
They also have a LSR bike they restored.
A couple of hot rods they've been working on:
The undercarriage work on the blue one is simply beyond belief.
This is the front suspension.
When we got back to their house, we tried a beer flavored with squid ink I brought home from NH. We all agreed it was... interesting.
Then to a brewery and a tap house with German food for dinner.
A good day.
Did the front brakes on my daughter’s Sequoia. One of the pistons in one caliper is stuck, so looks like I’ll be replacing that soon.
I get to do the rear brakes today.
Mostly “enjoyed” the first real head cold of the season. Worked in the studio moving stuff around to use the space a bit more efficiently, mixed down one of my band’s rehearsal recordings, got The Answer ready to put away for the season, and then played a gig with some friends. Back in the rack at about 3am.
I wonder why this berkleying cold doesn’t seem to be getting better...
Today was less enjoyable. We went to a family reunion for my wife's family. They are a fairly standoffish crowd so I mostly hung out with the kids and grands. Thankfully it was a pretty day to be outside eating BBQ.
I had to work 3:30a to 3:30p today (not normal, I had a software implementation go live today). But none of my users are working on sundays so any issues will start up for me tomorrow.
So, I designed (well, stole the design from some super smart person who invented the 'monostable multivibrator') a circuit to make a quickshifter for the bike transmission in the fiat challenge car. Here it is:
The idea is with bike transmissions that they can be shifted up (2 to 3, for example) without the clutch, you just need to release the torque on the trans for a moment. This is usually done by rocking your throttle hand while applying modest pressure to the shift lever. With full throttle torque on the trans, it will not shift, but as soon as you release the throttle just a bit and free up the teeth, the trans will snap into the next gear. Yes, many people are quite good at this.
But, you can make the process repeatable for even a gorilla driver like me by making a quickshifter that kills the engine for a very short amount of time (like 50 milliseconds). If you trigger the kill of the engine with the moving of the shift lever, you now have a system that will auto-upshift for you and you can keep the throttle matted. Basically you floor the throttle, and when you want to shift you start pushing on the lever. As the lever moves (right before it gets to the point where it starts moving the shift forks), it hits the microswitch that initiates the monostable multivibrator circuit that cuts the engine for 50 or so milliseconds, just enough time for the shifter to find the next gear with the unloaded transmission.
How am I going to kill the motor you ask? Well, first I'm going to try using the kickstand switch - the switch on bikes that kills the motor if you put it in gear with the kickstand down. If that doesn't work I'll think of something else.
This is a simple circuit and I could likely buy all the parts for less than $5, but for the challenge it would be cooler if I can scavenge this stuff from an old broken VCR or something. So now I'm off to find some broken junk in the trash!
p.s. if you are building or want to learn about circuits, falstad.com/circuit is about the coolest site known to man. Build, test, and watch your circuits function. It's an entire undergrad degree packaged in one simple java page.
Flew to Michigan and winterized the cottage. Better when I get a longer weekend, but I still like to tuck it in for the winter.
Installed a direct-drive LiftMaster 8500 garage door opener and pulled the old chain-drive opener down. $570 later, it's all good. Yeah, I paid retail.
Then I replaced all the flushy and filly parts of our 1st-floor toilet.
Man, I feel like a slacker. We went to church in the morning. This afternoon I blew out the lawn sprinkler system, cleaned some stuff out of the car trailer and took one of the grand kids for a walk down to his friends's house to play for a while. Really worked up a sweat :)
Loaded everything up and drove out to the range with SWMBO. Didn't think to call first and arrived to find out the range was closed for a competition. Oh well, went out to lunch and came home and cleaned. Future mother in law is in town tomorrow for a few days.
ProDarwin said:Various homeowner projects. Some spackling, caulking, painting. Finished repairing a dresser I got from ReStore and put a base coat on it. Will paint some dinosaurs on it tomorrow with my son.
Hung out with the boy all day today. Finished up the dresser. It's far from perfect, but for $55 I can't complain. And its easy to sand down and paint again should his love for dinosaurs fade.
I spent the afternoon stripping the decks on my little boat.. yes, the boat I just spent a month getting seaworthy, so I could sand off all the paint and remove the ply for new.
I hope to bring her home wednesday so I can start sanding her hull free of paint
Wow, I feel like a total underachiever compared to you guys.
I didn't even get dressed today 
Spent today getting storm(my 2 year old lab/heeler mix) more comfortable with having a puppy around. She's still not a huge fan of the puppy being on me but she Hasnt tried too eat it. I'm new too this 2 dog thing.
I spent some time with dad and the Factory Five. We finished up drilling all the rivet holes on the front aluminum panels. I’ll be doing more tomorrow and then I will update the build thread.
Mom had some ratty looking carpet that in her old VW convertible, so she bought a nice carpet kit for it, which I volunteered to install.
Pulled the seats out, which requires the removal of one bolt and about half a minute, because that Porsche guy was a sharp cookie. Mocked up the new kit, which is really pretty nice, with a thick pad of that moving blanket looking insulation stuff. The carpet currently in it was cheap when I installed it back in the 1980's to replace the rubber mats Karmann put in it. Pulled the carpet out easily, 30 year old glue, I actually tacked it in a couple spots, but only a few.
Discovered a bit of surface rust on the floorboards in the back seat, nothing under the battery.
My quick job turned into bit of a chore. There was a thin layer or tar infused styrofoam that came up easily with the heat gun. Pan cleaned up nicely with a wire wheel, seat tracks were clean. Masked it all off and painted it today. Will do another coat one day after work and put the carpet in next weekend. Need to order new nylon doodads for the seat tracks. To paint the legs of the seats, which are chipped up from the seat belts, you have to take them off, and they are sort of a wear item anyway, have been there since the carpet went in, during the Reagan administration
It was supposed to take one day, does that count?
Car in question
Sealed the engine compartment on the Molvo, thus concluding the bodywork and ready to go to paint.
Well it wasn't a day off, just the afternoon, so I went in and had a temporary crown put on a tooth. Painless, but not fun.
They did have a really cool 3D scanner that they used to scan my teeth so they could make a permanent crown. They scan the tooth to be crowned and the teeth next to it. Then scan the upper teeth above it. Finally they scan around the tooth with you teeth closed. That digital image will allow them to make a crown that fits perfectly. No more molds or impressions needed. They also make the crowns in house. It will be installed Thursday.
wed and thurs are my usual days off. I got a lot done on my little boat these two days.
after bringing her home from storage, I stripped everything, cleats, trim, floorboards, anything and everything that was not glued down (and some of that too) came off. Then I flipped her over on the trailer and proceeded to start sanding. For a boat made of mahogany plywood in 1964, she is in remarkably good shape beneath all that nasty looking paint.
First I flipped her over.. at under 300 pounds fully rigged, this was rather easy.
Then came the sanding. I am a quarter of the way done the stripping of paint. It's supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow, so back into storage she went
I am going to refasten her. The bronze screws have lost most of their zinc and turned red. This means they have gotten very brittle and it won't take much to break them off.
In reply to mad_machine :
Cool little boat. One day I'd love to build one.
In reply to Toyman01 :
What is your feedback on the newly installed crown? A great idea for 3D printing. I wish my dentist would do that but his office still decorated from the 1970’s.
In reply to Bubbal :
It fit well enough that it only took them about 15 minutes to install it this afternoon.
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