Ha haaaaa, I just had to call the post that because I just finished up one of the most brutal classes I've taken for engineering, Electromechanical Control Systems or 'controls 2' as it is called. This was my last ME class (only physics, math and humanities electives to graduate) and I'm perrrrty happy about it, so now that I'm finally 'out of controls' I can get radical on mopeds again.
To start with I had to fix up this shoddy excuse for a website. I know I should be on here more, but my ADD pulls me toward wasting all my time on the $@#$ing moped forums all the time, starting fights with depressed elderly people and the mentally handicapped. A book I read about ADD said that people with it are drawn to internet forums and chat rooms and mopeds... just kidding about the mopeds part, but its creepy how true that can be.
Anyhow, taking a break from all that nonsense and focusing on this for awhile has it looking better. This whole debacle started with the picture on top getting resized and ended with me getting so mad that i deleted the whole template and just left it with whatever default. The new 'OOC Choppers' website... which this is, of course, comes with a cleaner interface that is easier for your eyeballs to find content on, a left side junk tab which i like better, and a welcome-to-2004 screen width of 1000 pixels. I also added RSS feeds for everyone's blog and made that shorter so now people who update more often are at the top. Your blog link is now governed by an automatic meritocracy, instead of a myspace-esque 'who do i put at the top' decision that i refused to address.
In the next couple months i'll try to add a couple 'projects' pages for my ongoing projects, and i'll try to get the moped factory blog turned into something useful. I have so many products in development and coming out that i want to make it easier for people to get good setup information and hopefuly i can spend more time producing useful content than repeating the same crummy instructions 20 times. A 'how to properly shim your head' video is needed very badly so i'll try to get that done too.
On to mopeds, I've been pretty dormant the last couple weeks but got started up again last weekend trying to re-stock some popular items. I made over 30 sets of hobbit rollers, an entire 10 foot chunk of material was cut into tiny pieces... made a couple custom heads that have been on the shelf for a couple weeks, and got some computer design work done. This week i'm trying to get prepped for next weekend, i hope to have two long days of cranking out everything from cylinder shim plates, to batavus intakes... yikes!
Personally I'm trying to get my bridgestone ready for Frozen Snot ride, march 17 this year. Caitlin wants to go so I'm going to try to get a motorcycle fixed up, as the puch polini is still a ways out and totally untested, so she'll have to wait. Frozen snot is always a fun time to bring out your winter project and this Bridgestone is coming along nicely, so i'm pretty excited. I have a ton of work to do, but its starting to come together.
The polini is hours (a lot of hours i guess) away from running, but those hours i just haven't had. The engine is 'done' it just needs to be assembled, really. All the shims and everything are in place, but i need to have 2-3 uninterrupted hours to sit down and piece it together. ZA's aren't black magic or anything, but you do have to take your time and work clean, careful and precise. Currently the garage is pretty messy and 40 degrees, not very condusive to that kind of work. I need a spotless, brightly lit environment to do a good job. Also need to finish fabricating the pipe and piece together a few sundry items such as air filter/velocity stack, intake manifold modded to clear ZA, pedal shaft extension, electrical system. I'm pretty sure at least to start with i'm going to run the 2041 pietcard box on the 'treats' cdi stator. I'm hoping for a mild retard around 8 or 9k rpms. The LK95 pipe i got from Devin at MLM really needs to be retarded when it hits, and there is no way i'm springing 200+ bucks for one of the top dollar CDI units.
Oh yeah, weedwacker? Another in my series of tuned up vintage 2 stroke power equipment. This is about the fewest moving parts you can possibly combine to make a running engine, which makes it cool. I was really missing not having a weed wacker last year with my crazy hillside 'back yard' so this year i can trim the weeds and pick up dog poop!
Controls 2 was my favorite class...
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