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Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater Thu, 13 Mar 2008I'm one of these people who's got a sort of sparse utility belt -- I have a big multitool and a flashlight in little holsters on my belt. The flashlight holster in particular looks exactly like something a policeman would wear. So I'm in at BF Day Elementary, tutoring today. My normal student pushed too hard, and I found myself working with a new kid. This kid, whose name I never clearly heard (not uncommon in this situation) is black, and speaks with some kind of African accent. I think he's in 4th grade, but I'm not sure. I sat down to help him with his math assignment (a graph-reading assignment involving a feisty flea's ability to bench-press dog hairs of varying weight). It's pretty common to get attitude from these kids, of some variety. Maybe it's just me, maybe it's them. I'm not sure. This one was generally accepting of my help, but a couple minutes in, I saw his head crane around to look at my belt. He looked back up at me, an odd expression on his face. "I'm not a cop," I said, guessing what was on his mind. Someone a year or two ago immediately accused me of being a cop, and hid from me. "How did you know that?" he asked, wondering that his private thoughts had been intercepted. Not waiting for an answer, he continued, "Are you sure?" "Yes, I'm positive I'm not a cop. I work down at Adobe," I said. "Adobe hut?" "No, Adobe Systems. We make software." I thought this was the end of it. We settled down to the feisty flea again, and I led him to the answer for each question, as I do every time -- I never tell them the answer outright, but generally have to resort to such hugely leading questions that I might as well. Then another tutor showed up (I was nominally helping three kids, but the other two seemed pretty self-contained for the moment). The volunteer coordinator had my student and one of the girls go off with the new tutor, and I was left with the other girl. However, before he went, the boy I was working with got more excited about accusing me of being a cop. "You're a cop!" he exclaimed, half way between excited and horrified. Then he laced his fingers behind his head, and put his forehead down on the table. I was at a complete loss for words. "Aren't you going to arrest me?" he said, looking up, his face pressed against the table. "Why would I arrest you?" I said. "You're a cop!" He turned to face down again. I really couldn't tell if he was playing or not. I turned to work with the girl, which took up the rest of the session, and the rest of my attention. I'm afraid the whole encounter was terribly depressing. I was raised to believe that the police were who you went to when you wanted help. Obviously this kid thinks the police only exist to arrest people. The problem is, I don't think that's just based on hearsay or watching TV. And that, I must say, is tragically, mind-alteringly depressing. Posted at 23:11 permanent link category: /misc The quick update on the race bike can easily be summed up: things are generally going well. However (the purpose of this post) -- it's also possessed. I discovered a big jetting problem yesterday, and corrected it: the left float was hanging up on the bowl gasket, which was making things all kinds of screwy. So I figured tonight, I could go out and see where things are knowing that I'd solved one of the weird problems. I warmed the bike up, and took it out to a big empty parking lot, so I wouldn't be annoying anyone. I sat there with a tiny screwdriver, and started playing with the idle settings. This bike has two idle settings per carb, and two carburetors. One setting is the idle speed, and the other is the mixture. It was idling alright, but I thought it was probably super-rich, since I'd richened it considerably last night. So, I started adjusting the right carb in the direction of lean. This should, in an ideal world, make the engine run slightly faster then slow down as you pass the ideal mixture. To my dismay, I turned the screw all the way in, until it was seated, and the engine didn't change pitch one iota. I backed the screw out a turn or two, and moved to the other side. Tried the same trick on the left carb. Turn screw in, turn screw in... engine dies. It never sped up. So I backed it out again, re-started (good thing these bikes are so easy to kick-start), and pondered. I swapped sides again, and tried turning up the right idle speed screw. The sides aren't linked in any way, so each adjustment as to be made to match as closely as possible. I was breaking away from that, but I was trying to figure out what was going on. The idle speed went up, as I had expected it would. I returned it to normal, and swapped sides. On the left, I turned in the screw, and in, and.. the engine died. Now, what should have happened is that the engine speed should have gone up, exactly as it did on the right. I played with it some more, but couldn't really make sense of it. I rode around a bit, and got some gas (discovering that even despite my throttle-heavy breakin style, the bike had turned in around 67 mpg). I tried adjusting the idle again sitting at the pump, but it got even weirder, dying with a little pfut!. I think at that point it was getting pretty warm. So I rolled on home, my head abuzz with question marks, but no answers were forthcoming. I'm totally boggled how the bike could act like this. There's got to be some factor that's completely messed up. I guess my first tasks tomorrow are to check compression, and adjust the valves. I can't think what else to do: the float levels looked good (I even checked with the "visible fuel" method where you jam a piece of tubing into the float bowl drain); the spark plugs looked good, perhaps a bit on the dark side; the new air filters are fitted, but didn't appear to change the mixture or performance at all. It should be working like a new bike, but it's definitely not. At least the problem is with idle. That's essentially the last thing this bike will be doing while racing. However, it does seem like it points to other problems that may come around to bite me in other operating modes. Hopefully I can get it all sorted out. Posted at 22:56 permanent link category: /motorcycle Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net. |