Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

 

More death and destruction started yesterday - when will they ever learn? If this is going to be the start of WWIII, I don't want to play. 

A shot of the bike radiator with the heat sink putty applied. I had to work some water into it first, but it did the job.

Not the prettiest job ever but it should work. There's a couple of spots that look a little iffy. The one on the bottom is a crater, not a hole. The other spot by the outlet might actually be a leak. I had one hell of a time getting things clean enough to weld. I sanded off the radiator tank with a flap wheel, hit it with some emery cloth, wire brushed it, and rinsed it off with some aluminum cleaner. Once the heat sink putty was on there I couldn't wire brush it any longer. Being able to brush it would have been a great help. The aluminum tank has been anodized, and I thought I had all of that removed but most of the trouble might have been coming from residual anti-freeze inside the tank or grit embedded from the abrasives. Anyway, it's done. I'm going to check it over real well today when I attempt to weld the filler pieces together. Hopefully, I'll be able to get that done with a minimum of struggle, but I doubt it. 

Aluminum Work

 

It's nice having a decent collection of CDs to play in the truck, especially for someone like me who enjoys a wide variety of music. I had this one going yesterday morning and then rehab had oldies playing as well. Hard to beat "The King" on a beautiful late winter morning.

I postponed machining up the parts for the bike radiator project due to the weather. When I saw there was a 60-degree day in the forecast, I decided to wait for it and work on my taxes instead - good trade-off. I finished up the taxes and machined the parts when I could have the big doors open in the shop.

Next up is the welding. I'm not too worried about welding the plugs in the radiator, but welding the filler neck is liable to be a stretch. Wish me luck on that one.

Brain Health

 I received an email from the Michigan Brain Study group of which I'm a member the other day. Nothing much exciting in it, mostly just an update for those of us involved. However, it mentioned there was an article in Welder magazine about the study with a link. The study itself is looking for commonalities between the environmental factors in welding, fabricating and metalworking occupations and brain issues such as dementia and ALS. The study is still looking for volunteers, by the way. Read the article if you get a few minutes. It just might spur you to volunteer, which in turn may help all of us metal workers with a better future as far as our brain health goes.

Pluggin' Away

 

Harley Shovelhead with a real "peanut" tank. I'm no fan of that tank, but otherwise I like the bike. If I was going to be real nit-picky, I'd change the seat - lower it down into the angle of the frame so the fender would stop your butt from sliding back under acceleration. Beautiful bike just the same. Probably can't tell from the photo, but the frame and fender are a nice color of green. 

I put the kill switch on the trials bike yesterday. If the pigtail that came with it was just a couple of inches longer, it would have eliminated a splice. No biggie, not going to be much wiring anyway - just an ignition circuit and a couple of wires keeping the battery charged up. I'll get the coil swapped out from the tractor in the next couple of days. 

I started on the motorcycle radiator job yesterday as well. I got the two fittings cut off and took some measurements for making the two plugs as well as what it's going to take to hook up the filler neck. All of the pieces will be easy enough to make but keeping everything else cool enough while welding is going to be the challenge.

Production has slowed down lately due to the cold weather, cardiac rehab and the fact the Missus has shingles. She's been dealing with that for a couple of weeks now, leaving me as chief cook and bottle washer. She's over the worst of it, thank goodness. The old girl's been miserable.

I've got a couple of other projects I need to add to the list. One's pretty easy, just a bit of lathe work. The other will require a shovel and concrete, in addition to some fab work. No hurry on either of them, just tidying up a couple of loose ends. 

Update

 It seems the video about the safe deposit boxes was bogus. I did a bit of searching and came up with nothing in the way of confirmation. I talked to my financial advisor on another matter and then asked him about it. He hadn't heard anything. Surly sent me an email and called BS on the thing saying it was AI generated fearmongering. 

So, sorry if I sent anyone down the wrong track. However, at this point, nothing would surprise me with the banking industry.

The Time Has Come

If you have a safety deposit box at the bank, the time has come for you to watch this here, and do it before March 1st.

The video is about 25 minutes in length but definitely worth watching the whole thing. I didn't look for anything else to verify it, but I've watched a couple other videos by the author and he seems to be very well informed and legitimate. And if you're as paranoid as I am, this will take it up another notch. I try to avoid much in the way of politics, but once again I say, follow the Constitution and keep your hand out of my pocket. Simple enough.

Parts

 

My shipment came in with the trials bike parts and the heat sink putty. The kill switch is supposed to be waterproof. I don't know if that'll ever be a necessity, but for the bargain basement price of $7.00, why not? I ordered a new coil with a resistor because I'm going to put it on the tractor. The one I swapped out a couple years ago is chrome plated and a little larger in diameter. I already have the bracket made for the bike to fit the larger OD, and the chrome is a little out of place on the old Allis.

The heat sink putty isn't really putty at the present time. I took the cap off and it's not quite hard as a rock, but it's going to take a little work to get it useable. I put some water in the jar and "stirred" it up. If I can't get it pliable, I'll send it back and try something else. Regardless, I'll work on cutting off the two pieces of the radiator and make the patches and the transition piece for the filler neck.