Keeping Busy

Painted, assembled and installed - and it works, too! Had a comment on the last post from Rich saying he had seen one of the store bought ones in the wild. Said it looked a little flimsy. I can believe that. You have to build 'em to sell 'em. However, around here we try to adhere to the Uncle Pete philosophy of "Ain't much for looks, but hell for strong.

Ducati single case repair. Broken fin and a couple of cracks in one of the bosses for the footpeg. In on Monday, out on Tuesday.

Plate for Cuzzin Ricky's new trailer. About the time I was starting to work on the Ducati case he showed up with this. 

I need to drill some holes in the plate to mount this winch and then weld it to the tongue of the trailer. The winch is designed to have the mounting bolts come up through the plate into holes in the winch base. There are slots to put the nuts into so you don't need to have a wrench on them. However, I measured the holes and they're not quite 7/16" in diameter. If you use 3/8" bolts, the nuts will spin in the slot. I'm going to check the hardware store and see if they have any square or heavy duty nuts that might work. If not, I'll make some up that will fit the slot and not spin so they can be tightened up and come off without a lot of grief at a later date if need be. Once I figure out what I need Rick can get some Grade 8 bolts to fasten the winch down.

Surly picked up a couple of parts for my old Honda. He wants to get that thing gone and I'm in total agreement. I don't need it and even if it was running, I wouldn't ride it anyway. It just takes too much work to maintain  a fleet of any type of gas powered rigs running as they should. Peddle it off, use the money to buy parts for another project and gain a little room in the bargain. Not a bad thing, I suppose.

Not a bad looking rig. It's a shame they laced up the "chopper" rim on the back. Needs a valve job and a battery and a little TLC from sitting around but that's about all. I had it running a few years back. Every thing checked out fine except for one cylinder with low compression. 

It's Spring and the weather will be warming up, I'm back to two days per week on the job so I should be able to get a few things done. I've been thinking about a couple of things that I'd like to investigate, however. Maybe get in touch with Frankie Flood at Handverker and get some advice about doing some anodizing. I remember him doing a workshop on the process when he was in Milwaukee. I wish we had a Maker Space around here.