I went out on the bike yesterday morning and rode a bit over eight miles, which is pretty close to the length of the race I'm planning on competing in at the end of the month. It was a bit breezy and that's the longest ride I've done this year. I averaged about 13.4 mph. That's super slow in most anyone's book but I don't need an injury first thing. I'll try and get out most every day adding miles and doing some wind sprints. Whatever kind of shape I end up with, that'll have to do. It's good to get back out on the bike though. I've been riding the touring bike but I'm planning on getting the "race" bike out this week and switching over to that one at least until the race. There's a real good bike speed calculator here along with some other useful things, by the way. For me, it's easier to plug my numbers into the calculator there than it is to fiddle with the buttons on my speedometer.
Making a little more progress on the VW. Still working on the brakes but I've got the driver's side buttoned up - with one exception. The speedometer is supposed to get hooked up to this one but I should probably get a new cable. It's a rather interesting set-up. The cable runs through the front spindle and is driven by the dust cap. The dust cap has a little square hole in it, the inner speedo cable goes through the hole and then is held in place with a little clip. Clever idea, but those Germans are nothing if not clever.
While that side was jacked up I made a patch for the hole next to the master cylinder. I welded it up and shot a little primer over it. After I've got the master cylinder installed I'll smear some tar over it to make sure it's leak proof. The master cylinder bolts to the bulkhead and there's about 2" of space between the inner and outer bulkhead walls. The cylinder bolts have spacers in between the walls to keep the bolts from collapsing the bulkhead when you tighten it down. When I took the old cylinder off, one of the spacers fell down in between the walls of the bulkhead. Trying to fish it out of there was kind of like the monkey trap. I could get two fingers in the hole but as soon as I got the spacer in my grip, I couldn't get my fingers back out. That was fun.
I got the mirror brackets all done. Kind of hard to see what you're looking at with the "busy" background but it looks like it'll work. I need to go through the boxes of parts and see if I can find the parts for the sunroof. I'll need to bump out the big dent in the roof as well. The theater group at the high school used the car when they put on the production of Grease and one of the stars jumped through the hole for the sunroof and sat on the top of the car and put a big ass dent in it. In this case, literally a big ass dent. I think I can get it to pop back out with out too much trouble, however. Just one more thing on the list.
I got the faux air cleaner made up. I got lucky and found a plumbing fitting that's a snug fit on the BSA carb so it was just a matter of cutting a 2x6 to the proper diameter and drilling a hole for the fitting with a hole saw. Should let us see what we need to get air cleaners and gas lines in sync.
The Missus and I went to a graduation open house for one of the fighters at the gym. He's been coming since almost the beginning and his dad has helped out coaching and he fought a bit as well. Good people - helped me out when I had the heart attack. I also saw several other young men that were either former students or fighters while we were there. It's good to see these guys making good with jobs, wives and children. As a teacher or a coach, you touch a lot of lives. Need to always keep that in mind and give them your best. Not always the easiest thing to do but they deserve your best just the same.
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