Mission Accomplished

What needed to be removed
Posted my issue with the damaged body panels on Maximum-Suzuki and got some great info on how I should attempt to glue it up. Got it all squared away on Friday night and was able to put it all back together on Saturday afternoon.

Still needed a light bulb and couldn't find it anywhere.. turns out it's some special size that you can't get at the auto parts store...argh. Called up the local stealer, er dealer and they said they had several bulbs to fit the brand of turn signals I have. Knowing my neighbor Sean couldn't turn down a trip to the dealer I asked him if he wanted to tag along...

Of course they DIDN'T have the bulb I needed... "Son of a....!" Themore I looked at the bulb the more I kept thinking - it sure doesn't look burned out or damaged. For some reason I decided to plug it in and lo and behold - the M-effer works. Don't understand - don't care. That meant I could now put everything back together.

Took the bike out this morning to a local bike hang out and saw some nice rides including a prestine 1983 GS1100E just like Sean has. Of course I didn't bring my camera...doh. Not a huge turnout, but I ran into a guy that I knew and we had some good conversation. Good times..

If it isn't one thing......

I noticed on my way home today that my right turn signal was flashing much quicker than normal. Crap - a bulb is out. I got home and sure enough - the back one is out. Of course since I have custom signals installed the bulb swap isn't that easy. The weather is nice so I might as well have at it..

I knew I had a broken mounting tab on one of the tail panels, but after taking the bike apart I realized I have a total of three broken mounting points...FRICK. And of course one is on a different panel. I was thinking about replacing the one panel that I knew was broken, but I sure don't have the $$ to replace both.

Thankfully when I repair the plastic, none of it will be seen because it's on the backside of the side panels. Here's one of the broken mounting points:

Before I knew the bulb was out, I realized it could be a wiring problem since I had different connectors on the new signals. On a postive note, my wiring is totally fine and the bulb was simply burned out.

Here's a photo of what my rear turn signals look like: Pic

Anyway - it looks like I have something to do this weekend!

Enough with the stupid support ribbons

Everyday on my commute to work I see countless cars and trucks with these magnetic ribbons. The first ones I remember were the yellow ones that said "Support our troops." Then I saw a pink one for breast cancer awareness. Now you can get a ribbon for just about everything. The reason I had to put in post here about this stuff is because I saw a ribbon for probably the most obscure thing - Autism Awareness. Ok - what the eff. Apparently April is Autism Awareness month. I guess I did learn something. Am I going to do anything different now that I know this? Um...no. Am I being an insensitive prick? Probably.

My problem isn't because people have these ribbons - it's the fact that in probably almost all cases - the purchase of these magnetic ribbons does NOTHING for these various causes. I noticed a buddy of mine had a yellow "Support our Troops" ribbon on his truck. So I asked him - "did any of the money you spent on that ribbon go to the family's of the troops?" His answer - "oh, I dunno."

People - wake the fuck up and STOP buying these lame-o ribbons! If you want to make a difference - give these various charities your money! If you MUST have something stupid on your car - here ya go:

These can be purchased at Antimagnet.com, but I strongly suggest you save your money.

It lives!

Ok - so the title of this post is similar to one posted less than a month ago.. bite me.

My mom's neighbor was cleaning out his house before he moved and thought I might be able to use a few items. Some of the items include a hedge trimmer, car ramps, a crappy ladder, and best of all - a Weed Eater brand gas powered trimmer. Score!

I know these things aren't that expensive, but I've always been to cheap to cough up the money for one. My electric trimmer has served me well but with this house that I'm in, hooking up all the extension cords just to trim along the fence has been a pain. I think I trimmed only two or three times total during the past summer.

This thing has definitely seen better days. It looks like he put some crappy head on it with no line feeding mechanism and I don't think it's EVER been cleaned. I couldn't hold it anywhere and not have a handful of grime on me. After cleaning the drive shaft with some steel wool and using some degreaser cleaner on the rest of it - it now looks almost new. Checked the spark plug and it was ok, lets just say I've seen worse.

Since I never owned anything with 2-stroke engine I had to go out and get some 2-stroke engine oil and an addional gas can to keep the gas/oil mix in. I found some manuals for it online and it expained the starting procedure. Seemed simple enough so I figured "let's fire this baby up!"

Switch to full choke - check!
Press Prime 6 times - check!
Hold down throttle trigger and pull starter cord up to 6 times in a row - on the 4th pull it fired...yes!

Put it to half choke and let it warm up for about 5-10 secs - seems to idle just fine and it didn't even die on me.. not too bad. Of course I was in the garage while testing it out.. so now the garage is a bit smokey and I smell like 2 stroke engine exhaust.... ahh - the smell of success.