Two five gallon kegs of homebrew.

One is my Flat Tire, the other Fauxberon. I'll surely have forgotten which is which by the trip.

I've got my 10 gallons of beer, I expect everyone else will want a similar quantity for themselves.

"There are times when sediment-free draft beer is an option of choice, particularly when you will be traveling into the wilderness for days with only draft homebrew to sustain the spirits."

The motor on it it is seized. I initially had ideas of breaking it free and making it run -- it's a two-stroke, how complex can it be? Those were abandoned when I found a crack in what I think is the water jacket. It would be a lot of work and replacing parts to drop 5 HP compared to the other motor. I also had ideas of moving the motor from the old boat over to here, since this one looks really nice, has a good windshield, no holes drilled in it, etc.

As you can see here, I got it running.

So back to the hull.

I've finally gotten all the leaves and such out of it... it was pretty scuzzy, and I should have made sure I had it covered over the winter... doh. A lot of scrubbing on it, and the deck is looking presentable... still more to be done, though, and some areas that I couldn't reach real well that still need to be done.

I think I'll wind up replacing the seats, I'll probably do back-to-back ones, like the other boat has. They aren't my favorite style, but they're fairly price effective on an old boat. I think I'll also scrub the deck entirely, maybe see about some kind of paint, and maybe even lay down some carpet. Probably build some side panel things to hold fishing poles and other junk, as well.

Over the weekend, it was time to finally swap the motor over. Saturday morning I disconnected all the wires, linkages, and hoses from the old motor, and got Kyle and Matt over. We were able to lift the old motor off without much trouble, all things considered.

The new motor, though, that's a bit heavier. Certainly feels heavier, anyway.

We quickly abandoned brute force lifting, Kyle had the excellent idea of a block and tackle. After a trip to home depot, and picking up a few pulleys, we had things together and were ready to test it:

It works awesome. If I had known before that, for $38 I could have this much fun in my garage... well...

So anyway, this made it a 10 minute thing to drop the motor on the transom. Now I just have to patch the holes from the old motor, add a couple more bolts, get the thing legal, and a bit of cleaning and polishing... it's in sight. It'll be ready by early or mid-june, I think.

Finish off a wonderful day of hard work, good food, good beer and good company with a great dinner with great company, all washed down with week-old wine... it doesn't get any better than that.

I've now replaced all of the electronics aside from the coils and spark plug wires (but including spark plugs, stator, trigger plate, rectifier, switch box (ignition), and wiring harness).

Well, after all of that, that switch box showed up today (finally). Put it on, left off the kill wire, in case there's something wrong in the wiring harness on the control (boat) side.

Cranked it with a spark tester in one of the wires... it fires. Hells yes.

Yup, terrible pictures off my cell phone... but they show what's needed.

There are two important things to see in these pictures.

1) Blue smoke coming off the prop. It's a 31-year old two-stroke, that's what it's supposed to do

2) Water coming out of the pee-hole up top, a nice fast stream. I don't have to change the water pump (think I'll still do the lower end lube, though).

Hot damn, she runs! She freaking runs!

I don't really expect anyone to play the sound file, it's recorded from my phone, really crappy, just thought I'd put it up there for the hell of it... but don't bother, it's just the sound of a boat motor out of the water (surprisingly quiet, I expected it to really scream on the driveway.)

It's running well enough, that I think the tuning can all be done on the water. Now time to get the boat legal. (posting of that comes later)

I freaking win. And fishing trip now has 30% more stupidity horsepower.

13-05-08_1856.amr

"How long are you going to age this for?"
"about 45 minutes"

I'm going to have to start another batch pretty soon here. The instructions implore me to "try" to give it three to six months in the bottles. Suggestions welcome on types of wine for the next one.

Lawnmower needs oil.
(Not mine)

Bottling the homebrew just got a whole lot easier. Now to figure out how to cool them in a river.

That sucker is going to wind up blowing foam all over the place, I think... hmmm... tomorrow I think I'll have to setup a blowoff tube for it.

It's a midrange kit... I'm very excited to see how it turns out.

Also wonderful: the instructions implore the winemaker to "Try" to keep some back for the 6 months or so it takes to get really good.

The picture sure doesn't look good, but that's with foam from stirring, oak chips floating, and the yeast on top of that.

Also started another batch of flat tire.

A few weeks ago, I put together a snippet of Perl 6 (well, only a small chunk of Perl 6, pulling in two Perl 5 CPAN modules) to calculate the wind chill. It gets a little ugly when moving array refs of hashes back and forth between p5 and p6. Such is life.

use perl5:Weather::Underground <get_weather>; 
use perl5:Temperature::Windchill <windchill_us>; 

my $w = Weather::Underground.new(place => 'Dexter, MI');

my $ar = $w.get_weather();

my %h = $ar[0].kv;  # p5/p6 fun

"The windchill will be: " ~  windchill_us(%h<fahrenheit>, 75);

This is part of a bot, so I can say:

[14:45:25 03/17/08][chris] should I ride to work?
[14:45:26 03/17/08][g6] The windchill will be: 15.130352145929617

So, several mornings of late, I've looked at the weather, checked when the sun would rise, checked cloudiness, asked the bot, and decided to ride the motorcycle to work anyway. Last friday this turned out great, with a gorgeous day for riding.

This morning, I asked the bot, and it said it would be a windchill of -2. Hmmm. Asked again when it was closer to time to leave for work, and it came up with a -1 or so.

Fine, I'll do it. Can't ride home if you don't ride to work.

I managed to make it, but by the time I was pulling down the last road before work my fingers weren't working so well, and my reactions couldn't have been great.

At lunch time, though, I went and got an electric vest. Wired it into my bike's electrical system in the bike shop parking lot. Fired up the bike, plugged in, cranked it up... It's everything I dreamed it would be.

So warm and toasty, I never need to be cold on the bike again. I should have got one of these a long time ago.

This is really just a test post, since I think I've fixed this blog. I've had it messed up for the last several months as I was testing MT4 with a copy of a database for a consulting client.

At this point, though, MT4 is deployed there, and so I can run this with my original DB... only took me 6 months or so to get it back together.

Obviously, there is big news as well... still deciding about posting that part, though

A few weeks ago, I had the boat out for the first time. No problem getting it started and such, ran just fine.

Thing is, I got a bit away from the boat launch, got a bit of cavitation (really ventilation, I guess), a pocket of air around the propeller, indicating that the motor is too high.

I stopped, pulled the engine up, and moved the stop down a bit. Went to restart it, and it didn't want to go into neutral. It has a neutral safety switch.

So, I started messing with the throttle/shift control, and it just wouldn't go into neutral, was bound up somehow. Eventually wound up forcing it. Above is the result.

It actually went around the lake and such just fine, for several hours after that, but while coming up a river, I got into a spot where it would not engage into gear. I wound up jamming it into gear with a screwdriver, which worked, but certainly wasn't ideal.

So, after a week or so of searching, I found the parts I needed, and replaced that.

Which brings me to:

The white side boards you can see, I replaced -- just simple plywood with new vinyl over them. Looks awesome, all things considered.

The seats had been rotting, and were fairly loose. I was planning to just replace some of the wood in them, but every time I mess with them, I'd break screws. I wound up ordering some for more than I care to think about right now.

Hopefully they'll be here soon, or I'll be bolting down some lawn chairs.

Yup, it's finally time for the Cletus Truck's last ride. Sometime in the next 10 hours or so, someone from the donation lot should come by to take it away.

It's amazing how big my garage is without that in there.

With the bike running well, and ridable anytime the temperature is [checks thermometer] over 24 degrees or so, I can't really consider it junk anymore.

Luckily, I should have another piece of junk (that runs!) coming in tomorrow or so to fill the empty place of the Cletus Truck.

Ugh, I hate to think how long it's been since this thing ran... and I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know what I had to do to make it run. I hit it, kicked it, drilled screws out (3/16" allan key is not an acceptable substitute for a 5mm one), grinded on them with a dremel, hit it with an impact driver, nothing.

Popped off the timing cover, wiggled the wires slightly, used the timing light to detect a spark... *boom*

Put the gas tank on it, and there it goes -- firing on two cylinders. A little checking had me realize I had pinched the right side fuel line. Quick move there, and those cylinders fired up, too.

Idle seems a bit low, and it will stall out with that, but that might be more related to the gas in it. I think I'll wind up putting in completely fresh fuel, maybe some octane booster, as well.

Well, now what's left is to cleaning supplies, oil change supplies, insurance, and register it... The bike has seen better days, and looks downright ragged right now, but it's getting there, and some good cleaning will get it going nice. Plus, it's still a bike.

Soon, I shall have my bike back and running... soon...