Between 705 & 1200 SQ/FT From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

[GeddyT]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Well, looks like the database has removed a few days of posts, but luckily my browser cache has me covered. So I'll start restoring them in order...

Wow that is a cool looking bike. I really enjoy your writing style.
Looking forward to seeing it back on the road.
Thanks for sharing.

If it's the headlight that makes it look cool, just keep that to yourself. I'd never hear the end of it... And I hope to get it back on the road in the next month! I have a vacation in July, so I don't see why not. Glad to have you along for the ride.

That is quite the project! The "happy" carb made me lol

If you need some giant heat shrink for any of your battery projects let me know - I scavenged some from work that was headed to the dumpster. Not sure what sizes I have...

That would be awesome! If you have any that could wrap around, say, a small shoebox, send me PM. I can PayPal you for shipping.

That XR project looks like alot of fun. When I was a Honda tech I worked on a couple, one of which was street legal, those things are beasts when uncorked. I've never witnessed the aftermath of a failed choke plate flapper, but I've heard stories. The offroad bike one customer had us looking after, we ended up spot welding a plug into the smile and it choked much better when cold. I'd like to find one but there's too many more on my wishlist in line before an XR that it's not likely to become a reality any time soon. Oh well, keep posting pictures so I can live vicariously through him, unless he crashes.

Everything I've heard about these XRs is that they're absolute monsters, but I've yet to experience this, which suggests we've never had the thing running right. I mean, a bone stock 450 these days makes as much power on the dyno, does so in a more aggressive manner, and weighs 50 pounds less. Many are already also wired for lighting and have more modern brakes and suspension. They also have electric start--and therefore DC wiring in place--and fuel injection. It was for these reasons that I was pushing Andrew toward something more modern. His reason for the XR remained that he wanted performance PLUS reliability (ironic). A modern 450 ridden aggressively on the street would need a new top end every year at least, which just wasn't in the cards. Also, he wanted that balance shaft. For a dirt bike ridden on the street, that balance shaft is worth its (considerable) weight in gold. Everything that makes this bike heavy also makes it a better street bike, but I do hope I can restore the "yank" from the engine that I've seen promised.

Which brings me to my project for the last two weeks: relocating the battery and lighting relay to the open space above the transmission and behind the cylinder.

It started with a block of 6061. Knowing what I know now, this is not the best way. The best way would be 1/4" plate welded into a box and then finish machined. Would have saved a TON of time. I don't weld, though, so when all you have is a hammer...





Finally, after hours of cutting, I was halfway there...



...and had my umpteenth mess to clean up:



I've decided it's time to buy an air/mist blaster and plumb it up from the air compressor to the mill, but for now I've been keeping a light blast from a handheld nozzle going while the mill is cutting. The end result is me looking like the Tin Man with the world's worst case of dandruff after every single pass. I'm also worried about the moisture in the compressed air being bad for the ways when I spray them off. I'm too busy using the thing to actually finish-finish the mill, which would include some kind of way covers and something other than OSB for the table covers (chips just stick to it like velcro). But who's got time for that?...

Once I figured out the compressed air wand and started trusting my numbers and setup better, the second day of cutting--after flipping the box over--went a lot quicker, and in a couple of hours I had a battery box and two lids so perfect that pushing the battery in compresses the air behind it!



The plan is for the battery to fit perfectly in the aluminum case, allowing the case to act as a heat sink for the battery. It only occurred to me about 20 hours into this project that, "Yeah, but then I'm going to put it less than an inch from a hot engine. Might it have been better to insulate the battery from heat?..."

It's a consideration that bothers me enough that I'm going to make the connection to this box modular so that if this ends up being a stupid idea, I can spend another 25 hours reconfiguring the subframe and making another custom box for under the seat that's roomier and can dissipate heat. For now, though, we're going to try this one so that we can get this bike on the road.

Anyway, it was about this point that I got some welcome relief from the insane grind at work. Fathers Day weekend, and I'd have four days off. We kicked it off around the fire pit with a few select family and friends:



Nice way to kick off what would end up being an awesome long weekend. (That's my little niece, Joey's daughter, up on top of the boulder. She's incredibly fearless.)

I think I'll leave it there for now.

 

[GeddyT]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Next up was this:

That was quite the chunk of aluminum you hogged out. I did that once on a chunk of plastic for some application I don't remember. Quickly decided it was a bad idea, but I was committed by then.

I'll check on the heat shrink size and get back to you.

Thanks!

Man I saw antigravity and I got all exited. I was going ot buy one to make moving scrap metal so much easier.

Would also do wonders for my COVID gut...

You could mill find into the outside of the case to make it more like a heat sink. There may also be some value in keeping it silver to help reflect heat. The big concern is cells getting hot and swelling inside that enclosure. The last thing you want is to rupture a cel.

The original design was actually to mill fins into the top and bottom wherever the relay housing and bottom mounts aren't. That's why the top and bottom of the box are quite a bit thicker than the sides. Then I thought, "If I mill fins, would that just help the heat of the engine get in to the battery?" I wasn't too worried about the cells expanding, as I figured the aluminum would expand even more, but who knows.

To be honest, now that I've got this awesome box that took dozens of hours to make, I rolled up a stool and stared at the bike for about a half hour today, imagining a complete change in direction involving making a new subframe, airbox, and wiring/battery enclosure integrated into the tail. If it were my bike, I'd be throwing my cool new battery box away and doing just that. Since it's not my bike, and I want to get it on the road ASAP, I'm going to at least try to make Plan A work. Like I said, I'll just make the loom modular in a way that would make moving that battery and relay super easy if the battery box starts feeling hot.

 

[GeddyT]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Alright! Now that I've restored the missing chunk of the thread, it's time to talk Fathers Day (or is it Father's Day? I've never been able to figure this grammatical conundrum out). The whole year of 2020 can **** it as far as I'm concerned, but Fathers Day wasn't so bad. It was the kind of Fathers Day that has me considering holding off on selling my kids into slavery. At least for a little while.

The day started off with what I've recently learned can be called "QST," doing some milling for the XR electronics box. More on that later.

In the afternoon, it was a LOT of dirt bike riding in the backyard. This new battery pack in the kids' electric bike is near bottomless, so each kid had a pretty lengthy turn. Only late did it occur to me that I should get some video, so the battery was on its last leg at the point that I captured these clips. Or at least that was my son's excuse for not attacking the jumps with his usual reckless abandon. I think it was more likely because he knew the camera was rolling.

After a nice dinner, we drove a couple of blocks down the hill to the local fishing pond, where things got a little interesting. This pond is for kids only, and every year there is a massive fishing derby. Along with your typical pond trout, the city stocks the pond with several huge trout that the kids get a prize for catching. Because of COVID, the derby didn't happen this year, but boy are those big trout still in the pond anyway!







Neither kid wanted any part of holding up their catch. Their arms were too tired from fighting them.

 

[Arclitgold]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Holy moly! Those are some huge trout!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Pluribus]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Still following along with all of the cool stuff you're doing. Thought you'd get a kick out of these photos, as I recall you were up there at one point not too long ago. Low clouds made for some cool effects, especially the one looking west toward Lookout Mountain. Stumbled across these randomly, and they're from fall 2018.

 

[GeddyT]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Holy moly! Those are some huge trout!

Yeah, it's funny how picky they can be, too. On this particular day, the lures that usually kill in this pond weren't doing anything, but simple nightcrawlers beneath a bobber were an instant bite. I told this to Joey, and his response was that it would be awesome for his daughter's first fish to be one of these monsters, so we headed back the next day... Nothing. All of the big trout were still sitting right there in the water (including the two pictured above that we released), but they wanted nothing to do with any lure or worm. It was really strange, considering how crazy hungry they were for those worms just a day prior.

Still following along with all of the cool stuff you're doing. Thought you'd get a kick out of these photos, as I recall you were up there at one point not too long ago. Low clouds made for some cool effects, especially the one looking west toward Lookout Mountain. Stumbled across these randomly, and they're from fall 2018.

That's great! I love that trail and view. 2018 must have been shortly after they finished the trail, right?


Getting back to stuff and things, Fathers Day aside, I spent an awful lot of my four day weekend finishing my battery/relay box for the big XR. Probably the biggest time sink? Simple math and paper scribbling. Sometime earlier in the thread, I observed that most of the time spent on the machine is in fixturing and cleaning up, but I'm going to add generating tool paths as the new king of time-eaters. What any CAM program takes seconds to achieve takes me two hours and five attempts. For a fairly simple box, I now have about 16 pages that look like this laying about:

In school, I was a math standout, but I find myself repeatedly humbled when it comes to plotting tool paths. You'd think it would be pretty simple (origin, plus distance to start of cut, plus tool radius), but I've yet to get it right on the first try! For rectangular pockets, for instance, define 0,0 as the near left corner of the stock, then I define the pocket by the X,Y coordinates of the tool location at each corner. Luckily, I'm lacking enough in confidence that I pass these coordinates through a simple sanity check before taking them to the machine and ruining a lot of stock and time: [end of cut] - [start of cut] + cutter diameter. Measure the pocket I'm trying to cut with calipers or reference the drawing, and if it matches, my math is good.

Narrator: "It doesn't, and it isn't..."

Eventually, the math always works out, and I can get to cutting. After squaring stock and facing to the right dimensions, the next op was pocketing for a watertight flanged 8-pin Deutsch connector that will bring all of the electrons in and out of this little box:

Then rotating and pocketing out the inside and drilling the mounting holes:

Test-fitting the connector (very snug, hence the frayed lip of the socket):

Took a little break to mosey on over to the lathe to make some special socket head cap screws for mounting the relay box to the battery box. M4 socket head screws have a socket head that is a C-hair bigger than a quarter of an inch. I have a quarter-inch end mill but not a quarter-inch-plus-C-hair, and I also lack countersink drill bits, so the easiest path to countersinking these screws is to just turn .020 off the heads. This is probably only a problem if you live in the USA and mix fractional tooling with metric fasteners:

Dishing the top of the battery box where the relay box will mount and milling the wiring passage:

And all together:

I'll replace those socket head screws for the Deutsch connector with button heads once I have some in the right size. I also already have a front lid machined, but, being aluminum, I worry about the battery sliding out and shorting the terminals. At first, I figured I'd chuck the aluminum lid and machine a plastic one, but now I'm thinking it would be easier to just screw a plastic spacer block to the back of the aluminum lid to prevent the battery from contacting the lid.

You can barely see the wire pass-through cutout above the battery here, and I think it'll work nicely:

And here it is, roughly placed in its final location on the bike:

Is it going to be the most attractive solution? No, I don't think so. But there's plenty of room there for it, and it's straightforward and mostly finished aside from a pair of mounting brackets, so I'm going to go with it for now. After looking at it, there's a decent amount of space on all sides for heat dissipation, so I think it'll even work from that standpoint. My inspiration for this battery location came from a couple of pictures of other builds that I found online such as this...

...and I figured that if I were going to put a battery there, I'd rather it be fully enclosed. Seeing it all finished, I think the best practice is to modify the undertail to make room, but this will work. It was good practice on the mill if anything...

 

[BORING HOP YARD]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Nice mill work!
Your as machined finishes look very good and I like the radius on the corners.
DRO's are a wonderful thing, those pockets can be time consuming and difficult if distracted.

 

[GeddyT]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Nice mill work!
Your as machined finishes look very good and I like the radius on the corners.
DRO's are a wonderful thing, those pockets can be time consuming and difficult if distracted.

Oh, I have an incredible amount of respect for those who can do this sort of thing without a DRO. I get by without one on the lathe, but the only reason I would even think about taking on a project that involves mill pocketing is the DRO. It would be impossible on this mill with any kind of precision without it.

And speaking of "distracted," a careful observer might notice I crashed into my brand new vise in the process of making that part. I had the machine set to one of its slowest feeds, needed to return the spindle to my established origin and was feeling too lazy to crank the handwheels dozens of times, needed to take some part measurements with the calipers and check some math anyway, so I started the machine and sent it on its way back to the starting point so I could reload the stock and establish zero again with a new setup. Figured at that slow of a feed rate, I'd have all day to get there. The measurements weren't adding up, I got distracted, realized this, and turned around just in time to shut the machine off as the 1/4" ball nose kissed down on the vise. Gah!

Even with the DRO, I find that having this machine just makes me want a VMC even more. "Wow, this thing I made that just erased two weeks of my free time is great! Imagine if I could have made it even better in under three hours..." Just generating the tool path coordinates for the corner rounding operation on the front and back sides of the relay box (up, right, up, right, down, right, down) took well over an hour, and it didn't even come out perfect.

Deep down, I'm more of a geek than a machinist. I lack patience and have a short attention span. I also know there's an art and talent to hand-drawing, turning wheels, watching your part slowly form, and sweeping chips that's appealing to many in the same way that draws people to forge steel or cast aluminum or make furniture at home for fun. Being a "maker." Me? I'd rather sit down at the computer, design a solid model, let CAM do the math, watch the chips fly, and very quickly have the part in hand so I can proceed with the project.

Alas, I keep making regular retirement contributions to my 401-Powerball, and to date it hasn't proven to be a smart investment...

 

[mybigwarwagon]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

I have found that if anything can distract me it will. Usually with disastrous results.

 

[BORING HOP YARD]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Having career in manufacturing I can tell you first hand the benefits from having the designers come from the makers side of the house. 3d printing has exposed geeks to manufacturing as a career, they design and get to see the results in class.
Milling pockets on a manual is what I call "white knuckle fever" always be on the ready, do I turn the dial left or right and so on, make a wrong decision and you make scrap.

 

[zmotorsports]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Very nice work. Tucks in clean and neat into the chassis.

Great job.

 

[H1Pete]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Minor hijack - not sure who posted the magnetic chip collector in this thread (looked back but couldn't find it) but whoever it was - Thanks! Didn't know they existed until this thread and it's been a nice thing to have on a current project.

GeddyT - box looks great. And keeps the weight nice and low.

 

[GeddyT]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

I have found that if anything can distract me it will. Usually with disastrous results.

My nickname at work is "The Squirrel." I acquired this during console training (think air traffic control, only with distillation). If I didn't stare at a task until it was completed, it was going to be forgotten while I jumped to something shiny.

Milling pockets on a manual is what I call "white knuckle fever" always be on the ready, do I turn the dial left or right and so on, make a wrong decision and you make scrap.

There are two mistakes on that whole battery box project. Both involved turning the wheel the wrong way. Yuuuuup...

Very nice work. Tucks in clean and neat into the chassis.

Great job.

Thanks! It's thicker and heavier than it needs to be, I think, but I'm starting to think it'll work just fine. Not even worried about heat now that I see it there. I think I'm going to stop overthinking it, go with it, and get this bike on the road.

Minor hijack - not sure who posted the magnetic chip collector in this thread (looked back but couldn't find it) but whoever it was - Thanks! Didn't know they existed until this thread and it's been a nice thing to have on a current project.

GeddyT - box looks great. And keeps the weight nice and low.

Thanks! In my regular job, before I took on my current temporary assignment, things can get slow, and I'll have hours and hours of free time and an internet connection on my hands. A lot of my coworkers watch movies or keep up on shows and whatnot, but I tend to research. One of the luxuries of my job is that I have all the time in the world to figure things out for my personal projects, so I don't waste a lot of my precious free time at home researching and learning how to do things when I could be just doing them. As a result, I've developed a reputation as somebody who has at least a crappy level of understanding of a LOT of subjects, particularly automotive, computer, and construction related. I get asked all the time for advice helping people pick out things like cars or motorcycles or computers or cell phones, etc. My observation from a few decades in this role is that if somebody comes to me with, say, five cars they're trying to choose between, and I rank them one through five for their needs, nine times out of ten the car rolling off the lot will be the one at the very bottom of my list. Nobody wants advice, they want confirmation of their emotional decisions.

This has annoyed me frequently enough that I go out of my way to not be a hypocrite and do likewise. Particularly on a forum like Garage Journal, full of super knowledgeable (and, let's be fair, ridiculously **** retentive...) people. When somebody posts, "You need a wand magnet like this one here," I just click the link and buy.

Like you, I'm really glad I did! Love that thing. Now if they'd just make one for aluminum chips...

 

[capterik]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

I get asked all the time for advice helping people pick out things like cars or motorcycles or computers or cell phones, etc. My observation from a few decades in this role is that if somebody comes to me with, say, five cars they're trying to choose between, and I rank them one through five for their needs, nine times out of ten the car rolling off the lot will be the one at the very bottom of my list. Nobody wants advice, they want confirmation of their emotional decisions.

This has annoyed me frequently enough that I go out of my way to not be a hypocrite and do likewise. Particularly on a forum like Garage Journal, full of super knowledgeable (and, let's be fair, ridiculously **** retentive...) people. When somebody posts, "You need a wand magnet like this one here," I just click the link and buy.

Like you, I'm really glad I did! Love that thing. Now if they'd just make one for aluminum chips...

I got a kick out of this, my boss asked me to review a mercedes, audi and jaguar for leasing , I did all the research, told him number one choice was a certain Mercedes, second was the audi, and whatever you do, don't get the Jag, sure enough calls me up and says , get the Jag, you have to laugh, otherwise you'll go nuts.

 

[mybigwarwagon]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

I rank them one through five for their needs, nine times out of ten the car rolling off the lot will be the one at the very bottom of my list. Nobody wants advice, they want confirmation of their emotional decisions.

Those are the ones I make a note of to be the first to offer an "I told you so" when they dislike their purchase.

 

[GeddyT]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Fourth of July weekend was a mixed bag for me. MGT is very close with her family back home, I really like them as well, and the kids loooooooove their relatives east of the mountains. Due to COVID, it had been an awfully long time since the kids had seen Grammy and Grampa. So, in preparation for a trek over the mountains, the four of us all made our way to testing locations and got nasal-swabbed, a procedure that is IMPOSSIBLE to make it through without crying. I mean, holy **** was that uncomfortable! Pretty sure they made off with a few of my remaining brain cells.

All tested negative, so the trip was on. Until a big spanner was thrown into the works. My dog is over 12 years old, and she's been slowing down at an alarmingly accelerated pace of late. Just days before we were set to leave, she started limping badly on one of her front legs and really struggled to hold her head up. Two days before the trip, we got the news that she has bone cancer and won't live much longer.

I just couldn't stomach crating her up for an eight hour round trip in that condition, so I decided I'd stay home with the dog while the rest of the family left for the visit. I figured it would be a win-win, as I really wanted to start wiring up this bike as well, and the lack of distractions would be welcome.

On my first day home alone, the pain killers and muscle relaxers were doing wonders for the dog, but she still wasn't wanting to move around a lot, so I brought food and water dishes and one of the couch blankets into the shop so she could hang out with me while I worked:



It's not as bad as it looks, she's just taking a nap there.

Right. To the bike. First order of business: ruin my favorite jeans and T-shirt by dumping what I assume at one point was gasoline all over them. I (yes, stupidly, Honey!...) didn't change into grubby clothes because I figured I'd just be stripping and crimping wire, so nothing dirty. On my way to this lab-conditions-clean wiring job, though, a very small detail--luckily--caught my eye. I noticed the accelerator pump cam on the carburetor wasn't resting on the throttle cam like it should. The spring should have been holding them together. So I turned the throttle cam, and the AP cam didn't turn. Huh. I tried just pushing the AP linkage shaft down and stopped quickly when it started to bend instead of move. Huh.

So off came the carburetor. I don't know why I just assumed it would be empty--probably that it was sitting with no fuel tank connected for nearly two years--but it WASN'T. Upon turning it over to unscrew the float bowl screws, the overflow tube spewed what smelled like gas but looked like Simple Green all over me. ALL over me.

Want to see what a carburetor full of E10 looks like after sitting for two years?



That's going to have to find its way to the ultrasonic tank at some point...

After a change of clothes, it was finally to the wiring. First off, I had remembered having a difficult time a few months back when I installed the new stator. After getting things buttoned up, I read that with some aftermarket stators you have to grind out internal ribs from the stator cover. That's been weighing on me since, so I thought I'd take it back apart and make sure I didn't miss that critical step.



Turns out it was all fine and I'd done enough already to prevent wire rubbing, so no grinding necessary. Put that back together, and the next thing to wire was the regulator/rectifier. The way this stator works is it has two 100 watt charging coils. You can combine the two coils to make one 200 watt charging system. The way I've wired it is to make it optional. We'll try with 100 watt, and if that can't keep up with all the lights at idle, we'll plug in the other set of connectors to double the wattage:



While I was doing all of this, I gave one of my Fathers Day gifts a try: It's a bracelet with magnets sewn in so you can stick your bolts and small tools to your wrist while working:



Although I usually swap fasteners out for stainless, these stock Honda bolts stuck to my wrist just fine. In the end, I think it was a bit more novelty than something I'd use all the time, but we'll see.

Next up was to get the battery/relay box wired and mounted to the bike. First step was getting two mounting points in the same plane. I already had some brass chucked in the lathe, so I turned a spacer with an M6 hole that's the right length:



Then I made a bracket out of a couple of lengths of aluminum angle ground to shape, drilled, and riveted together:



Bracket in place:



And at this point it was time to break for the night and cook some dinner for myself like a big boy. Nailed it!



After dinner, a lot of locals started getting a one day early start on the fireworks, and my dog wanted no part of it, so no going back to the shop. Spent the evening with the dog shivering on my lap, as she's always been terrified of fireworks. This is about as far away as she was willing to get until things quieted down late in the evening:



On the Fourth, I didn't have a whole lot of free time in the shop, but I was able to get the battery/relay box all wired up:



It wasn't until after I got it all wired and assembled that I realized I needed reliefs machined for the battery cables so that the battery would have room to slide in:



All mounted and ready to tie in:



And that's about where things stand at the moment.

 

[mybigwarwagon]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Sorry to hear about your pup. My girl is 16 and slowing down a lot.

 

[Bigblockyeti]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Is that an AG-401 battery? Looks like it fits in there quite nicely.

 

[Pressingonward]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Nice work on the bike. Looking good.

Your comment about people wanting you to validate their emotional decisions is spot on

Excellent machining work! I've been spoiled with access to a CNC machine and I've never done a project that detailed by hand. Manual mills are very useful for certain ops, but a VMC opens up a lot of possibilities and saves time as soon as the part gets more complicated than a rectangular block with drilled holes in it.

 

[ODIS]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Fun read and lots of "life" stories. Enjoy the pictures and the videos too. Great projects and like your adventures with the mill, something that is a small part of my thread although, have yet to make anything with it other than modify a coffee scoop that was broken and to extend the slots in unistrut to make it fit a project here.

Thanks for the YouTube tip on JohnnyQ90 and was happy to read you like My FordBoy. If you haven't seen ClickSpring, it is worthy of your time.

I can see the greater Bellingham area from my location, that is, as the Crow Flies and of course, Mt. Baker. Save your back.....

My best,

Ody.

 

[Jagmandave]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

I'm sorry to hear about your Pupster, don't let her suffer......

 

[GeddyT]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Sorry to hear about your pup. My girl is 16 and slowing down a lot.

Thanks. And SIXTEEN!? Man, can't complain about that kind of life for a dog.

I'm sorry to hear about your Pupster, don't let her suffer......

Thanks. No way will I let this dog suffer. Best pet I've ever own. Got her as a puppy, and she's spent every night since sleeping on the bed between my wife and I (it's a miracle we have any kids, let alone two...). A couple of years back, she came down with pancreatitis and I thought she wasn't going to make it. Ended up spending about $3K in vet bills, but she ended up making a full recovery. The vet said it was probably the fatty diet. See, she knows she always gets at least one bite of every single thing I eat (except for known dog no-nos like chocolate), and this really ramped up after the kids were born and started protesting the injustices of the world with daily hunger strikes. She started eating for three. We even once had a turkey get freezer burn, so instead of throwing it away, I cooked it and fed it to the dog for like three weeks.

Anyway, super good dog who will be missed, but I also know that she's had a great life, so no complaints.

Is that an AG-401 battery? Looks like it fits in there quite nicely.

It is indeed an AG-401. Smallest battery with actual terminals that I could find. This bike is kickstart only (in such a leg-breaking way), so the battery only has to act as a buffer for the lighting system. Still, I didn't want another overly small one with sub-micron wire gauge to start on fire again. The 401 is a good compromise.

Nice work on the bike. Looking good.

Your comment about people wanting you to validate their emotional decisions is spot on

Excellent machining work! I've been spoiled with access to a CNC machine and I've never done a project that detailed by hand. Manual mills are very useful for certain ops, but a VMC opens up a lot of possibilities and saves time as soon as the part gets more complicated than a rectangular block with drilled holes in it.

Yeah, halfway through the pocketing operation for the box, I'm like, "This is nuts!" Took multiple hours. Mostly, I miss being able to chamfer curved edges and things like that. As I was scanning eBay for a good US-made used rotary table, I came to the conclusion that I'm reaching the dollars/time spent fixing up this manual mill that I'm really starting to scratch my chin and think that buying an old VMC that's straight and tight on the cheap and replacing its motors and controllers would be a worthwhile project. I still think I'd keep the manual mill, though.

Fun read and lots of "life" stories. Enjoy the pictures and the videos too. Great projects and like your adventures with the mill, something that is a small part of my thread although, have yet to make anything with it other than modify a coffee scoop that was broken and to extend the slots in unistrut to make it fit a project here.

Thanks for the YouTube tip on JohnnyQ90 and was happy to read you like My FordBoy. If you haven't seen ClickSpring, it is worthy of your time.

I can see the greater Bellingham area from my location, that is, as the Crow Flies and of course, Mt. Baker. Save your back.....

My best,

Ody.

Hey, welcome aboard! Shoot, now I have to watch ClickSpring... I'm trying to be good and productive and stay away from YouTube, but sometimes I just can't help it. Case in point: Do not--I repeat DO NOT search for "Project Binky" on YouTube. It will render you useless for about 14 hours. Aw, what the hell, here's the link. Taking ten pounds of drivetrain, stuffing it into a five pound chassis, pretty much throwing it all away and rebuilding it from scratch in the process, all the while repeatedly telling sophomoric **** jokes in an utterly British humour kind of way? After finally caving in to YouTube's insistence that I watch an episode, I ended up holing up in front of my laptop until all 34 episodes were watched, I had grown a beard down to my *******, and my best friend was a volleyball with a face painted on it named Wilson.

You've been warned.

 

[Pressingonward]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Project Binky is epic. Which reminds me...I'm one or two episodes behind...

A used VMC with new Centroid controls might be a good way to go. No personal experience other than quoting a Centroid system for our knee mill which currently has an old Anilam CNC kit on it. The professional level Centroid control is a bit $$ ($8k-$16k depending on whether you reuse the servos, what options, and whether they install it or you do it yourself), but it looks like their hobby stuff is pretty good at a far lower price point. Haven't researched the hobby stuff to see what you're giving up, but I might in the future. One of these days I'd like to have a VMC in my shop and run an engineering + prototype machining business. I like doing both, and I think it could work out quite well. Don't really want to go into debt to start it though, which means I need to get my home shop functional and do it in stages. Or start on the engineering side of things and add machining capability later, which is probably more realistic.

We just bought a used VMC at work for $25k to replace the slightly better (and much newer/lower hours) machine that we were stupidly forced by management to sell for $20k fully tooled 2 years ago. I would have bought it if I had had the cash at the time. All of which to say, I've spent a fair amount of time CNC shopping recently which I've enjoyed (and learned a lot). Now we're losing our rented space where our machine shop is, so the new (used) cnc is just sitting unhooked until we find a new spot for the machine shop. I hope they get it figured out soon - I want to machine a set of triple clamps to adapt the KTM 85SX forks I bought to my 1988 KDX. It's the perfect project to learn how to use the new machine on

 

[Pressingonward]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Just checked my heat shrink stash - I only have up to 2". I think the really big stuff is still sitting on a dusty shelf in the warehouse at work.

 

[GeddyT]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Thanks for looking into the heatshrink. I'd probably be too lazy to take the battery out of the bike and re-wrap it anyway, as it's working too well to mess with a bad thing. Five different kids rode that bike over the last two days without recharging, and it's still going!

Centroid CNC control is something I've looked into. It's super expensive, mainly because the complete kits give you the touchscreen and on-machine controls like an out of the box VMC. I'd be willing to leave all that off and save nearly $10K for a completely PC based solution. I'd just need the servos, servo cards, and interface. I've read this can be done for under $2K. Sure, no on-machine buttons and jog controls and whatnot, but still a million times more functional than a manual mill, and I'd still have the manual mill for those sorts of jobs anyway. This is all pipe dream territory, though, until after a lot of money has been spent on house improvements, so I should just put a cork in it for now...

As for the triple clamp for your fork conversion, have you given All Balls Racing's fork conversion chart a look? I've swapped a CRF250R fork onto an XR650, a GSXR600 fork onto a Yamaha FZ07, and are well into swapping that FZ07's fork onto a 1978 TT500. All Balls fork conversion chart is always the first stop.

Although I've wanted to make Joey a proper triple clamp for that FZ07 conversion since we built it (cost of CNC machining meant having to keep it to pretty much 2-axis machining), a triple clamp is an awfully complex part. A steering stem or steering stem bearing bushings are much easier to turn! I'm assuming your KDX is a 200? If so, that 85's upper and lower bearing OD and width are both within the envelope of the KDX's, so you could quickly turn bushings to press into the KDX steering stem top and bottom, and it's a bolt-on job. KTMs already have pretty fancy triple clamps out of the box (not sure what year 85 and whether it's billet or cast).

For the top, you need to turn a bushing with a 47 mm OD, 42 mm ID, and 15 mm width and press it in. For the bottom, turn a bushing with a 55 mm OD, 42 mm ID, and 15 mm width and press it in. Only thing stopping you from there is the length of the 85's steering stem. Since the 85's steering stem in every year is apparently 42 mm upper and lower, this would be the easiest stem ever to modify or replace with custom longer one. Lower press-fit diameter, stem diameter, thread, step down, thread, done. WAY easier than the stem I made on my crappy Chinesium mini lathe, and a billion times easier than a whole triple clamp.

Then again, getting to play on a cool machine is getting to play on a cool machine...

 

[mybigwarwagon]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

BTW I Forgot to ask, did you take cooking classes from my ex wife?

 

[Pressingonward]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

I could certainly adapt the 85 triples to fit on the KDX, but there's two little catches with that. First, the forks are 2" shorter, so it would lower the bike 2" - don't want that. Second, the 85 uses a 19" front wheel - don't want that either. The Freeride uses the same forks with less travel to fit a 21" wheel (and I have a Freeride wheelset), but the 85sx has the same travel as the KDX (10.5" if I recall right) and I'd like to keep all of it.

The plan is to build a 2" drop/lift into the triples so that I can keep the front end at the height I want, easily fit a 21" tire, and run whatever steering stem I find or make.

You might ask why I'm going through all the effort and not just use a different set of forks (I ask myself this sometimes too...) - the answer is weight. This will shave at least 5 lbs off the bike, and weigh ~8 lbs less than any other modern fork set. I'll end up with 43mm USD cartridge forks with full travel and a full sized wheel. The goal is to get the bike under 200 lbs wet with the current frame, and eventually go full custom and shave off another 20+ pounds for the ultimate lightweight woods bike. Crazy project that'll probably never get finished, but if I can keep chipping away at it I might get there someday.

 

[GeddyT]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

BTW I Forgot to ask, did you take cooking classes from my ex wife?

True story: Not to be discouraged, I buttered and sprinkled garlic on two more rolls, threw them in the oven for Take Two... And they came out looking the same. It's like I said, SQUIRREL!

I could certainly adapt the 85 triples to fit on the KDX, but there's two little catches with that....

Sounds like my kind of project!

A few years back, there was a company making ~150 lb. hybrid dirt bike/mountain bikes with Honda clone little motors. Made nothing for power, but didn't weight anything either.

 

[Pressingonward]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Yeah, I saw those. FXMoto I think?

If I was to buy something new I'd be really tempted to try out the KTM 150XC with fuel injection. Under 200 lbs with e-start. But it costs more than both my car and truck combined, so I think I'll pass. Of course I'm probably $1200-1500 into this $450 KDX that I should have parted out and waited for one that wasn't thrashed...I still have yet to start it, much less ride it, and I'm just trying to get it rideable in stock form as a baseline.

 

[GeddyT]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Yeah, I saw those. FXMoto I think?

If I was to buy something new I'd be really tempted to try out the KTM 150XC with fuel injection.

It was FXMoto, yes. And I actually recently passed up a chance to ride the blue and white version of the 150XC. It was the last time I got out past my backyard on a dirt bike. The last day any riding areas were open (the guy from DNR or Forest Service or whichever agency was there in the lot waiting for us to load up and leave so he could post the "area closed" signs as we left), some coworkers and I hit up Tahuya. First time riding with one of these guys, as he was picking the sport up again after a long absence due to neck surgery and complications. He'd just bought the brand new Husqvarna 150, farkled it up, and really wanted all of us to give it a go.

Two of my buddies (one of them quite a good rider, and both them quite a bit better than me) tried it out and came back absolutely giggling. It was quite the hit! Before I could take my turn, the owner of the bike took a bad spill, hit his head pretty good and tweaked his neck, so it was decided he should stay on his own bike for the rest of the ride, as that's what would be most familiar to him. So no dice for a firsthand account, but the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

 

[Pressingonward]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

That's a bummer that you didn't get to try it, and that your friend got hurt, glad he was able to finish the ride.

Here's FXMoto's site, had to go look them up again https://www.fxbikes.com/ look like fun at only 134 lbs, but definitely a bit small and limited suspension (6"). My boss had the first (afaik) KTM Freeride (250 2 stroke) in the U.S. and I rode it around the parking lot a bit. Felt pretty cramped and I'm only 5' 11". Would have liked to try it out for real though.

Most of my inspiration on my KDX project has come from a guy on Thumpertalk who goes by Woodsryder and built a 178 lb XR200 in a BBR frame.

 

[F451]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Yeah, I saw those. FXMoto I think?

If I was to buy something new I'd be really tempted to try out the KTM 150XC with fuel injection. Under 200 lbs with e-start. But it costs more than both my car and truck combined, so I think I'll pass. Of course I'm probably $1200-1500 into this $450 KDX that I should have parted out and waited for one that wasn't thrashed...I still have yet to start it, much less ride it, and I'm just trying to get it rideable in stock form as a baseline.

Most of the modern 125 2 strokes are in the 200-210 range and they are cheap. And there are a lot of kits out there for increasing cc's if you need more torque on the bottom. Of course that option isn't a project, but its the cheapest and fastest way to get what it sounds like you're shooting for.

Loved my '07 KTM 125 SX and my '06 Husky WR125 with the WB165 kit on it. Single track slayers, and I'm 6'5", 210 lbs.

 

[mybigwarwagon]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

With my bad back I learn that 2 wheels are not for me. The wife had a Yamaha something or the other dirt bike. I don't remember exactly. I was riding it in the field and I made a turn, grabbed the clutch, to downshift, and the clutch handle broke. It grabbed the ground and tossed me over the bike and I landed flat on my back. No more riding for me.

 

[Pressingonward]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Most of the modern 125 2 strokes are in the 200-210 range and they are cheap. And there are a lot of kits out there for increasing cc's if you need more torque on the bottom. Of course that option isn't a project, but its the cheapest and fastest way to get what it sounds like you're shooting for.

Loved my '07 KTM 125 SX and my '06 Husky WR125 with the WB165 kit on it. Single track slayers, and I'm 6'5", 210 lbs.

I've never ridden a 125 but I would be curious to try that approach if I found one cheap. This build is going to be done piecemeal as funds allow, but I want to get it rideable in stock form to start with.

 

[F451]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

I've never ridden a 125 but I would be curious to try that approach if I found one cheap. This build is going to be done piecemeal as funds allow, but I want to get it rideable in stock form to start with.

I hear you on the piecemeal build, its a good plan and can be fun.

Re the 125's, for years everyone told me not to get a 125 2 stroke, it was too small for me, too underpowered, too peaky, etc. I think they were thinking of the 125's from their childhoods.

Modern 125's, I would say 2004+ are amazing. First ride I did on my basically stock '07 KTM 125 SX I was kicking myself for not buying one sooner. SO MUCH FUN.

My Husky 125 > WB165 was even better.

When I first bought the KTM 125 it was an experiment and I figured if I bought right I could sell it for what I bought it for if I didn't like it.

Same thing when I was thinking of buying an old Porsche 928, every know it all tried to scare me off. I bought an '85 auto, daily drove it, very reliable, LOVED it. Sold it and bought an '88 5 sp, same deal. Great cars.

 

[GeddyT]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

All this talk of lightweight bikes is making me jealous! Alas, I'll have to settle for my heavy pig tomorrow, as I just got word that the seasonal closure on my favorite trails in the state will be lifted by the time I get there! I am stoooooooooked!

In other news, fun times at the homestead. I had to snap a picture of my wife's garden:



The wide angle lens doesn't do justice to how HUGE everything is already! Weeds included, but let's not talk about that... She didn't do a garden the last couple of years due to all the work going on around the house/shop, so it's cool to see it back and going gangbusters.

Also, with the allowance of small gatherings again in our county, the local parents are collectively feeling better about letting the kids play outside together, and our house has become quite the hot spot. Every day, there are anywhere from two to four extra kids running around. The big attractions seemed to be the electric dirt bike and the rabbits, but that's all changed since I stupidly agreed to this:



Introduce video games to the equation, and that's all they're going to want to do. This was my son's request, and I thought, "Why not?" I now see why not. With the 18 foot door rolled up and all the windows open, though, they might as well be outside as far as air movement goes.

As for the electric bike, I had to do major surgery again today, as it died a couple of days ago while the gang was riding it. After tearing the battery pack open, I found that three of the BMS balancing leads had frayed on the edge of the battery terminal I milled. Today was splicing them back together and repacking the battery with foam in strategic places for wire protection. We'll see how long it lasts this time...

The main news coming out of the shop, though, is that I milled a part that I'm quite proud of. It took quite a few operations and different setups. I wish I would have taken a before picture, but I stumbled upon another problem while working on wiring up the XR. I got a new handlebar light/signal/horn switch for it, and a dry fit-up didn't go so well. The XR650R both wasn't designed for lights and also has a manual decompression lever on the clutch perch. This is a bad combo. Try to place the light switch housing in its normal location against the clutch perch, and the decomp cable gets in the way. The last switch housing was thinner, so it wasn't as big of a problem, but it still required the cable to make an immediate hard bend out of the perch and hang out in the air looking ugly.

After looking at things for a bit, I starting taking some measurement and then cutting and squaring stock. About six hours later, I'm really pleased with what resulted!

Here's a progress shot, boring the handlebar hole:



And milling off half of it, as this part is only the back half of the perch clamp:



Finished part:



One forced design change was to make a nylon pivot for the lever instead of a raised threaded boss like on the stock part:



Stock left, my part right:



And stock right, my part left:



You can see that the idea is to drop where the decomp cable enters the perch by just enough that it clears the light switch housing. Like this:



I wish I had the right countersink bit or end mill to not have to oversize the mounting bolt countersinks so much, but it is what it is. Functional and--I think--looks good!

 

[mybigwarwagon]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Looks good from NC!

 

[Pressingonward]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Nice work!

 

[BORING HOP YARD]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

Great work, isn't amazing how much of the material ends up on the floor.
I would thick most of the parts you fabricate on the handle bars would have the same head size attachment bolts. A piloted spot face tool shouldn't be too spendy.
Thanks for sharing.

 

[capterik]

Re: From losing everything to being cash-poor and shop-rich in "only" five years!

thanks for mentioning project blinky, thoroughly enjoying it