BZ is on a diet, and he would really like to eat more than we give him.
That’s why he’s on the bed every morning, making sure I’m awake: He’s hungry.
So the other day, when a mouse moseyed out of the closet and watched me watch TV, I made sure BZ was asleep on the ottoman when I went to bed.
Next morning, BZ didn’t care whether I was awake or not.
Next day, a perfect little tail showed up on the floor. Just the tail.
Next night, a big turd.
Home improvement
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The five stages of grief.
When my truck badly failed inspection, I couldn’t believe it.
It’s fine! It gets me where I want to go! Nothing wrong with it!
I was pissed.
I thought about fixing the rocker panels myself. Then I thought better of it.
Shit oh dear. What am I gonna do?
So I bought a new truck.
I’m only 77 miles into it, and I already miss my old one.
I miss the manual transmission and the olde tyme metal key.
I miss the dents and the rattling sounds and the seat that’s molded itself to my butt.
I even miss the dirt. That new car smell just ain’t the same.
Too much electronics for me.
This, here, is more to my liking. Easy to fix, and now the door to the deck locks.
I know, I know.
I said I finally fixed the Kawasaki and, indeed, it starts fine, and runs great going up and down the driveway. But I went on a longer test drive – got the engine good and hot – and it was dying by the time I got back.
I decided the problem had to be a blockage in the pilot circuit.
So I took it apart, cleaned it right, put it back together, fired it up, and took a test drive.
Same problem, but at least it idled better.
Meanwhile, the float bowls started overflowing. Gas everywhere.
Can’t have that, so I decided to take it apart one more time to inspect the seats, and when I got it back together, it wouldn’t idle below 4k rpm.
Sigh. Not even a test drive this time.
So I took it apart – again.
And this time, I did a coarse vacuum sync with a post-it note and a screwdriver. “That ought to do it,” I told myself.
I put it back together – again.
Fired it up – again, and …
That did it, all right. The idle and sync are good. But the test drive? Same problem.
So: starts fine, good idle, good wide open, good sync, but terrible mid-rev acceleration with a hot engine. I stewed on that for a good long while.
And then it hit me: 2 of the cylinders’ vacuum ports feed a controller on the exhaust.
I’ll bet the diaphragm leaks when it gets hot, giving it faux vacuum sync symptoms!
This is going to cost me about 35 cents and 20 minutes to check, but it’s raining, and it’s the 31st, so you’ll just have to wait in suspense to see if it works.
Ha!
See the little cork cone on the straw?
It’s a game changer if you want to clean a carb.
And this is the cork I made it out of.
I’ve been watching the glue dry a lot lately. Epoxy, that is.
I got to the point, in C3PR, where I had to connect the shoulder housing to the waist column with a carbon fiber bridge.
You only get once chance to get this right, and it’s real easy to ruin it, so I planned the daylights out of this structure, and it took close to a dozen separate wrapping operations. Here’s how it came out.
Figure-8 loops and cross diagonals.
Bias layer + flat diagonals
Outer loops and bias layer, torsion coil, and skin.
Five star fit and finish.