Soapbox

I don't climb up here often but I'm feeling sassy. The Department of Wildlife recently tracked and put down a bear over near Aspen. This bear had bitten 2 people on 2 separate occasions (a Friday and then a Saturday). They found him at 0700 Sunday morning and killed him. The camper from Saturday's incident did admit that they had food in the tent. And now a bear has been destroyed. Very little makes me more upset than hearing about things like this. A bear that learned a behavior because of irresponsible people is now dead.

This has inspired me to look into something.

All done

I picked these up yesterday morning. I love them. Most of the minor scratches that were bothering me are all but gone. Rob charged me a whopping 10 dollars to polish them up. If you have anything that needs polishing...go see him at Front Range Polishing. I poked around quite a bit to see some of the stuff he was working on. There was no shortage of skulls that were to be used for choppers or shift knobs but I was more impressed by the trim off an older Chevy pickup, parts and pieces off a pot belly stove and, of course, two sets of Ford flatheads.

Really?

If you know me you know that I'm not really a people person. Sometimes I think people are the worst. I am not the type of person that engages in conversation with strangers all that often. The other day I'm in a waiting room avoiding eye contact with others and acting extremely interested in an article in Time magazine. Really I was just looking at pictures. There's a guy who's wearing a beret. There's nothing wrong with that...I'm just trying to set the scene for you visual folks. He's talking with a few other guys about whatever. All of a sudden he asks if they wanna hear a story. They say yes. Who's gonna say no in that position? He scoots over closer to them and starts in about his father. Then I overhear that his father is no longer with us. Then I feel bad because that's unfortunate for anyone. He goes on (in a bit of a whisper) about how his father lost an eye. I forget how but that's so not important. Well this guy talks about how after his father passed on he wanted to do something special. Next thing I know this guy pulls out a necklace and the pendant....you guessed it. It's his father's fake eye. Then he says that his father is always keeping an eye on him.

Recently when my father in-law passed on, Heather and I were going through his belongings. It felt very inappropriate at first for me and I left the room and went to watch t.v. and thought about it. The next morning after talking with my friend Adam, I realized that if he were still living, he would want to show me all of the really neat stuff he had accumulated through the years. As we looked through his jewelry, I found a Saint Christopher necklace and pendant that he wore a lot. Before I drove back to Colorado I asked Heather if I could have it and she said yes. I was baptized Catholic but I've been at odds with God for years. I hope it's not disrespectful to wear it. It's not a fake eye but who am I to judge how other's remember loved ones?

I have been struggling with Heather's Jeep for about 6 months now. About a month ago I was done with the thing. I actually talked to her about burning it or crashing it while flying back from PA last week. In the past 2 months it's gotten new tires, 2 tire balances, 3 alignments, new tracbar, new draglink and all tierods, new steering stabilizer, new AC compressor. After all this, it had some weird shimmy at 49-51mph. Normally this is indicative of a tire balance issue but I had it done twice in 2 weeks with no change. I also swapped a set of tires from a known good vehicle onto it and there was no change. I had a buddy that built me a custom steering setup for it look at it and he couldn't find anything other than a slightly loose tracbar bolt. Then I dropped it off with another buddy while we were in PA and let him deal with it. He also found a few issues but couldn't solve the shimmy problem. I had no clue what else to do with it. I found a Dana 30 axle in Denver that I was considering installing (but dreading) just to see if that would work. Before I did that, I decided to get it aligned once more with a different guy that had a laser rack. I took it to him today and walked up the street to get the worst sandwich I've ever had and a beer. After I got back Clark said the alignment was a tad off and...the front tires were about 1/4 ounce off. That's significant. He threw me the keys and said he didn't feel the shimmy any more. Yeah right. I took it out and was stunned. We have spent about 2 grand on that thing in the last 2 months and the issue was the result of lazy mechanics. We're thrilled to not have to drive it off a cliff. If you're local and in need of a good/trustworthy mechanic...let me know and I'll get you in touch with Clark.

Here they are:

There are still some very fine scratches in them. It's hard for me to tell if they're going to be noticeable when they're on the bike and not in isolation. The new bike will be more colorful than my Orbea so that will help.

I'm not sure I can get much better just working with my hands. I think what I'm going to do is find a metal or hot rod shop down in Colorado Springs and take them in and ask if they think they can do better.

Bling!!!

Just for grins I decided to hit this arm with some polishing compound before stopping for the day. Real happy with this. Now I'll start in on the other one.

More crank work

It's no surprise that when I went back down to the garage today, I wasn't happy with the work that I had done yesterday. I noticed a few spots that needed more sanding with 150 grit. So yesterday's efforts were in vane as I roughed things up again. Here's after I was really done with the 150.

This is after 220 and some 400 wet sanding. At this point I had one arm in a bench vise and noticed 2 nice gouges in it after repositioning it. Back to 150 again and no more vice.

I also decided that, while I was re-doing things with 150, that I'd go back and touch up some gouges that I had lazily left on the back of the crank arms and then I decided to take off the factory stamping as well.

This is how I just left this arm. This is after a ton of 600 wet sanding, and then I jumped straight to 1500 wet. Then I used a buffer that I mounted in the vice and used rubbing compound. This is pretty good but not at all what I was hoping for. I still have a long way to go but they're gonna look good.