Page 12 – Mechanical Sympathy

KDF: Kingfisher Digital Foundry

In my day job I’m a high school computer engineering teacher. The subject is still relatively new and covers a ridiculous range of differing technologies, all lumped under ‘computer technology’ because they all have some vague connection to it. While teaching it in class can be demanding, the upside is that in the decade I’ve been working away at it I’ve become familiar with technology well beyond my background in IT. From electronics engineering to 3d modelling and 3d printing, I’ve had a front row seat to the evolution of digital technology as it rapidly expands and evolves in the 21st Century.

The other benefit of this front row seat is that I’ve gotten to work with some skilled teachers with diverse technical backgrounds. From Jeff who was working in CAD and 3d industrial design when most people didn’t have a computer to Katy the engineer who was one of the only people in our school board who could get the first generation of 3d printers dependable enough to actually use in class, I know some very technically adept adults.

Then there are my graduates, who have gone off to work in fields ranging from robotics and industrial engineering to electronics, IT and computer science; I know years of very technically advanced young adults who bring a staggering array of expertise and intelligence to the table.

On this cold and rainy March Break Tuesday in the middle of the COVID-19 epidemic, I’m wondering how we could leverage all that expertise and create a niche product that could serve a number of different markets.

I recently found myself frustrated by a lack of parts for the late ’90s Honda Fireblade I was restoring. Knowing that Katy has been using 3d printing to create prototypes in her class, including printing in flexible materials, I was wondering why no one has filled this gap as business proposition. To replace one perished airbox rubber tube I would have had to pay to get four them shipped from a place in the UK at over €100; no one in North America had one. I suspect Jeff could have made an accurate model in an hour and then Katy could have printed it in about 30 minutes. We’d then have that model on hand if it was ever ordered again and could be filling individual orders for them in thirty minutes. At $20 plus shipping for the part we’d be offering rare parts that meet specific needs for way less than the market is willing or able to at the moment. For ten bucks more we could put initials or a symbol on a printed piece to satisfy the customizers. Beyond the capital costs of getting the 3d printer needed, printing a part we had a model for is a quick and easy process and would only require maybe $5 in parts and power.

There are other angles to this besides micro-manufacturing old, out of production parts. We could also create small batch bespoke parts for companies building prototypes. By rapidly producing accurate, high tolerance parts, we’d also be creating a library of digital 3d model files that could also be part of the service. Those models could then go on be used in production.

Beyond the out-of-production parts market and assisting companies in with their prototyping needs, there is also the opportunity to pursue bespoke custom parts. Within five minutes of the first time I saw 3d printed additive manufacturing technology, I started thinking about custom motorcycle fairings. The default at the moment is to stamp out cheap copies of fairings, but it wouldn’t cost much more to digitally redesign unique 3d variants of fairings and sell those, it would just need a large format printer. Variations in ducting for people wanting to fit a turbocharger? No problem. Want to get really crazy? A dragon scale fairing for a Game of Thrones fan? This is a 3d printed fairing with scales that have depth and texture. It would take custom motorcycle design to the next level, especially with a sympathetic paint job on top.

As far as the technology needed to create our digital foundry, I’m partial to the Formlabs 3d printers because they look like something out of Terminator. They also produce very high resolution models. Their new 3L large format printer comes close to being able to make detailed, high resolution models almost up to a cubic foot in size.

The process of additive manufacturing (3d printing) is surging forward. It isn’t quite ready for the range of parts I have in mind, which would include being able to print 3d flexible parts that are fuel resistant, but this is more a chemical engineering bottleneck than anything else, and chemistry these days is rocketing ahead.

I’m hoping that just as I’m ready to retire from teaching, micro-manufacturing will have caught up and I can retire right into another profession making locally developed and manufactured bespoke components in a micro-manufacturing facility of my own, Big Hero 6 style.

Front right is a holographic desktop and keyboard – not quite there yet, but I’ve got physical hardware that does the same job now. The blue thing in the back right corner is a large format 3d printer – in the film he prints everything from carbon fibre armour to metal mechanical parts. This kind of localized production will be the norm rather than the exception in the next couple of decades. You can watch Big Hero 6 on Disney – I highly recommend it.

***

This isn’t the first time I’ve kicked around the idea of applying emerging digital technologies to mechanics and manufacturing:

https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2016/04/on-verge-of-future.html

https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2015/11/iihtm-digital-workshop.html

Yesterday I was out in the garage using a Structure Sensor to 3d model my motorcycles, there are so many things we could do digitally with mechanical engineering and manufacturing:

1997 Honda Fireblade CBR900RR

by timking17

on Sketchfab

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1971 Triumph Bonneville T120 Sensible Bodywork Bolt Replacements

I’m in the process or stripping the last bits of hardware from the frame and bodywork in order to clean up and paint the frame and bodywork on the 51 year old Bonneville project bike. The bolts holding the licence plate holder onto the rear fender were 4 different sizes with the longest ones protruding so far toward the wheel that they’d be a safety hazzard on a big bump (the tire would make contact with them on full suspension compression, especially with me on it).

I was talking to a friend online who made a career out of flying helicopters for the military and he said he’s found wrong sized hardware in controls that have actually jeopardized flight safety. One of the rhings I enjoy about motorcycle mechanics is that it feels closer to aviation than four wheel appliance repair where an error like this might cause you inconvenience as you roll to a stop on the side of the road. If you’re up in the air or out on a bike and you have a catasrophic mechanical failure, it’s a very different consequence.

Another pilot friend (the perils of being an air cadet), when we were going up for a flight in a Cessna, brought it back around and landed when the engine didn’t feel right. Everyone was impatient at the delay, but he said something that is simply true that many people don’t consider when their flight is delayed: “it’s better to be down here wishing you were up there, than being up there wishing you were down here.” It’s a shame more people who work on bikes don’t think the same way. I’ve seen even professional work that was half assed to save time/money. Incompetence like that puts a rider’s life at risk needlessly. It can end up costing you far more than you saved.

Pretty sure that last one isn’t a stock Triumph bolt. These’ll all get replaced with metric bolts because they’re easier to find, but they’ll be the right length, matching and be staineless steel.

The 14-0101 bolts used to fasten the fenders on the ’71 Bonneville are 1/4″ X 1/2″ X 28 UNF, which are a bugger to try and find a match for. The longest bolt on the bike was an inch and a half – way too long for where it was. Working with SAE/imperial sizes on this bike makes it a real pain to match hardware out of what I have on hand, but stuffing a bolt that long onto a bike where it can interfere with the wheel isn’t sensible.

SAE Wrench Size	Bolt Size (SI)	Metric Wrench Size
5/16″	1/8″	8 mm
3/8″	3/16″	10 mm
7/16″	1/4″	11 mm
1/2″	5/16″	13 mm
9/16″	3/8″	14 mm
5/8″	7/16″	16 mm
3/4″	1/2″	19 mm
13/16″	9/16″	21 mm
7/8″	9/16″	22 mm
15/16″	5/8″	24 mm

1/4″ bolts can be replaced with an 11mm metric option and finding stainless steel versions of these are easy. I can also get four matching that are the correct length for the job at hand rather than bunging whatever I have in the toolbox onto the bike. Compared to other costs in this restoration, hardware costs are trivial (for under $40CAD I can get a 900+ piece kit). When I’m dropping $600+ on a new head, spending a bit on properly sized bolts seems like a no-brainer.

Of course, body panel fasteners are a different proposition to what you put into a motor or transimssion – in those cases I’d always use stock pieces to manage the heat and pressures involved as decided by the engineers to designed the thing, but for bodywork there is a bit more latitude, you just don’t want to be a pratt about it.

While sorting the
frame I’ve cleaned
up the oil in frame
drain system.

The Amazon bolt set arrived in less than 24 hours. It is (of course) snowing today in mid-April in Canada, so moving the other bikes out of the garage to paint things isn’t likely, and I can’t paint outside if it’s snowing. You need 10°-30°C temperatures, no direcf sunlight and good ventilation. If I can get the other bikes out of the garage, open the door a foot and run the fan, I might be able to retain enough heat to do it, but Canada’s ‘spring time’ isn’t helping things along.

If had a wee outdoor shed I’d use it as a paint booth, heating it to the required temperature and then having a fan to move the overspray out. This DIY paintbooth would be a thing if I had a larger workshop, but a shed outside is a real possibility. It could provide storage, freeing up space in the garage, but with some crafty ventilation it’d also be a paintbooth. If I don’t get to painting today, I can at least finish prepping the frame and body panels and hope for warmer temperatures later in the week.

New tires and innertubes are on hand. The frame is being prepped.
I’ve still got some other body panels to clean and prep for painting.

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Voracious Reader: Canadian Motorcycle Magazines

With riding coming to an end in the Great White North I’m looking more closely at motorcycle media to sustain me through the long, dark cold. Some magazines have already made the cut and are a sure thing when it comes to subscribing.

The first one I found was Cycle Canada: a local, opinionated and well written magazine that has no interest in editorial-beige. They tend toward the no-holds barred British writing approach. I subscribe to both BIKE and Performance Bike for that approach (though PB has enough grammar problems that I sometimes find it difficult to take seriously).

Cycle Canada is a joy to read, it’s just hard to get a hold of. I tried to renew my subscription in the summer and the publishing company couldn’t get their website to work, which happens. I tried again weeks later and it still wasn’t working. Being told to phone it in doesn’t cut it in 2014 (I don’t like giving credit card info over the phone). You have to wonder what’s going to happen to a media company that can’t make basic internet functionality work in the 21st Century.

I ended up going through Roger’s Magazine subscription service in July in an attempt to get my mits on CC, it’s the end of October and I haven’t seen a magazine yet. Cycle Canada? Great magazine, but pretty hard to get your hands on.

The other Canadian magazine I’ve got a lock on is Motorcyle Mojo. I think of it as the Canadian version of Rider Magazine (the only US magazine I’m subscribed to). Excellent layouts and photography (which feel like an afterthought in CC), original travel pieces and knowledgeable editorials. The writing isn’t as edgy as CC, but Motorcycle Mojo knows what it’s talking about and presents it well. They also know how to run a website and communicate really well with their subscribers.

Two on the cusp are Inside Motorcycles and Canadian Biker Magazine. I got both as a present, but I’m not sure if I’ll keep them going. IM did an article this month on the Polaris Slingshot. Apart from sounding like an advertisement, it also kept calling the three wheeler “unique”. One of the first cars I ever rode in in England in the early 1970s was my grandmother’s three wheeler. I suspect Morgan would dispute the gee-wiz uniqueness of the Slingshot as well. You can’t be expected to know everything, but if you’re going to write on a vehicle, doing a little research would prevent you from calling the rehash of an idea that’s been around since the birth of motor vehicles, “a whole new class of vehicle.” Lazy writing like that is what’ll stop me renewing that subscription.

At the same time Canadian Biker Magazine had an editorial by Robert Smith that not only demonstrated a deep and nuanced understanding of the history of three wheelers, but also accurately and incisively deconstructed why this type of vehicle can never let you experience flying in two dimensions like a motorcycle does. This kind of knowledgeable and opinionated writing is what would keep me re-upping that subscription.

Riding an Iron Horse in The High Desert

Since missing the opportunity to ride in the desert last time I was in Arizona, I’m aiming for a day out on two wheels over this Christmas holiday. Since the adventure bike I want isn’t available, I’m looking at a pavement orientated trip. That doesn’t mean I’m suffering for choice in Arizona though.

Route 60 from Globe to Show Low has fantastic reviews and offers a winding way through the mountains. The views are so spectacular that I won’t tire of seeing them twice. You see different things riding the other way anyway. The section of sweeping switchbacks on the way down to the bridge over Salt River look fantastic…

…though I hope I can keep the bike in my lane unlike Sparky in the streetview above.

Route 60 over Salt River looks special.

Phoenix to Superior on the edge of the mountains is about an hour, then it gets even better!

From Superior, AZ into the mountains it’s beautiful riding… easily a hundred miles of sweeping curves and glorious high desert scenery. It’s only about an hour from AZRide on lightly trafficked, arrow straight roads to get to the good bits, and even there you’re in the desert surrounded by massive saguaro cactuses soaking up the heat.

Once into the mountains, the roads are interesting and the views astounding.

A nice thing about not doing a loop means that we’ll know when enough is enough and turn around. I was knocking myself out in BC to make sure the bike was back on time. It won’t be an issue on this out and back excursion.

I’m hoping to get the new Concours from AZride.com sometime between Dec 24th and the 30th for a foray into the high desert, hopefully on a weekday when the roads are quiet. It’ll handle my son and I with ease while making mince meat of those twisty mountain roads.

The latest generation of my twenty year old Concours. It looks like a rocket ship and is nuclear powered. Hope it’s available!

Motorcycle Gear as a Pre-Game Ritual

Long before I got into riding motorcycles I discovered ice hockey as a new immigrant to Canada. I played whenever I could from backyard rinks to 5am practices to driving miles for games on evenings and weekends. The smell of a hockey rink is a happy one for me, as is the process of getting ready for a game. For many years I played net, which involved putting on over 70lbs of gear each time (this was back in the day when it was made with leather and bricks rather than the fancy space-aged stuff they have now).

I enjoyed getting to a game early and made putting on the gear a pre-game ritual. It gave me meditative time to get into the zone before I had to peak-perform. Perhaps this is why, when I saw this question on Facebook, it took me by surprise:

My ride starts when I go out into the garage and start putting the kit on. This isn’t tedious, it’s a chance to echo all those hours spent in cold arenas getting ready to lay it all out there on the ice; it’s an opportunity to put on my game face. I never end up on the bike out on the road half paying attention or thinking about something else because putting on the kit is a integral part of getting ready to ride for me.

I don’t know about a different person, but I am a focused person. Here’s the MotoGP video.

Getting my gear on builds a sense of anticipation, so the idea that this might be tedious feels very foreign. How can you be bored when you’re preparing to do something awesome? Robert Heinlein gives a good description of the feeling in Starship Troopers:

I always get the shakes before a drop. I’ve had the injections, of course, and hypnotic preparation, and it stands to reason that I can’t really be afraid. The ship’s psychiatrist has checked my brain waves and asked me silly questions while I was asleep and he tells me that it isn’t fear, it isn’t anything important—it’s just like the trembling of an eager race horse in the starting gate.

Perhaps riding a bike for you is a flipflops, t-shirt and loud radio half-paying-attention kinda thing, but I take my riding a bit more seriously. Every time I’m able to get out onto a bike it’s worthy of my full attention, every time. Making sure I’ve got the right gear is an integral part of that, but so is the opportunity it provides to cultivate a strong mental riding game.

Back in 2015 we rode down to the Indy MotoGP round. Helmets are optional down that way and we went out once to pick up dinner just up the road without helmets, and it just felt wrong. The right kit means you can ride longer without getting wind or sunburned and can even make you more comfortable than free bagging it. Once you’ve got that approach, trying it the other way just feels wrong.

The gear makes the rider angle also means you don’t buy the cheapest junk you can find to check a box. I’ve spent years honing my gear so that when I put it on it fits, feels right and does what I want it to do. I started off cheap but soon found that if you spend a bit more you get the kind of quality that makes the extra outlay worth it. You can sometimes save money getting quality things second hand or on sale, but it’s false economy to get cheap gear and then expect it to work. If you get quality ventilated kit for the summer, it can keep you cool while keeping the sun and wind off you. If you get properly insulated gear for cold weather riding, you can sail for hours in temperatures approaching freezing. Good gear makes you superhuman.

Helmets are especially important. I’m partial to Roof Helmets because they’re of high quality and are an advanced, modular design that lets you change from a fully safetied full face helmet (lots of flip ups are only safetied as open-face helmets) to an open face ‘jet’ style helmet with a quick flip. They’re aerodynamic, quiet and ventilate well. I’ve tried many different lids, including a dalliance with that beaked adventure nonsense, but (for me) a helmet that lets me feel wind on my face quickly and easily (I can flip it up when passing through a town then be back to full face comfort again in seconds without stopping) was what worked. Getting into kit that feels this right and is well made is all part of the pre-ride ritual and is no hardship.

I frequently see people out on bikes that are wildly unequipped. They’re usually the cruiser-Captain Jack Sparrow types who are into riding for style rather than, um, riding. The bikes they tend to ride aren’t really into going around corners (or much else) and their riding gear follows suit. If that’s your kind of motorcycling then you’re probably not reading this anyway.

If you’re curious about sports psychology and how it might serve your bikecraft (assuming you see riding as a sport that demands practice and focus to improve your performance), there are a lot of links below on getting in the zone, peak performance and pre-game rituals. Pre-ride rituals work the same way, giving you a chance to clear away the clutter and get your head on straight.

If you watch any motor racing you’ll be aware of pre-race rituals that many riders adopt. Valentino Rossi was famous for his pre-race contortions, and those are only the visible ones! Doing this sort of thing looks eccentric, but you do what works for you in order to get yourself into a peak performance mindset. The amazing things you see athletes do don’t happen without mental preparation. Riding your bike well won’t happen without it either. Don’t get frustrated at putting your gear on, use that time to get yourself into the zone for your ride.

LINKS

Take advantage of pre-game routines:

Athletes stand a much better chance for getting in the zone when they make it a point to engage in a pre-game routine that allows them to think about the upcoming game, elevate their mood state, and lower their negative anxiety.

https://www.peaksports.com/sports-psychology-blog/how-a-pregame-routine-helps-athletes-succeed/

https://thevarsity.ca/2019/01/15/the-power-of-pregame-rituals/

Moto Specific:

https://www.motorcyclistonline.com/valentino-rossi-motogp-rituals-from-circuit-of-the-americas-austin/

https://www.motogp.com/en/news/2018/01/18/racing-together-superstition/248214

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/racing-pre-race-rituals-traditions-and-rules-2015.html

https://www.worldsbk.com/en/news/2022/Rider+rituals+how+do+WorldSBK+competitors+get+ready+for+a+race

https://www.asphaltandrubber.com/racing/motorcycle-ritual-motogp/

https://www.motosport.com/blog/motocross-superstitions-rituals-10-best

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Emissions & Where We Hide Them

Ah, the wisdom of the internet…

This article on how motorcycles might be less green than you think was shared by Zero motorcycles online. A number of people underneath the article posted responses that had little to do with the article and more to do with a general hatred of motorcycles. The loud pipe crowd seems to raised the ire of the general public quiet effectively. Thanks for that.

I’d heard about the Mythbuster motorcycle pollution test mentioned in the article previously, and had seen annoyed responses pointing out how unfair it was. I felt obliged to put something up that wasn’t just angry motorcycle ranting.

“The Mythbusters they refer to compared a 1990s family sedan to a 1990s Honda super bike. A fairer comparison would have been an 90’s Corvette vs. the Honda super bike (vehicles with similar performance and intent), but then it wouldn’t have been close. The other comparisons were equally unfair. It seemed to be the result of what they had handy, and one of the mythbusters was a sports bike guy, so that’s what they used.

If you think hybrids are the magic bullet you should look into how current battery technology is created and retired, it isn’t pretty. An accurate accounting of the e-waste from hybrid production and operation overshadows their minimal pollution output – you’re basically showing a green face to what is a very polluting industrial process. That hybrid vehicles are utterly tedious and heavy because they carry redundant power trains is yet another problem; heavy things are never efficient.

The idea that some bike owners remove pollution gear for performance is no less true for four wheelers – except when the idiot on my street straight pipes his massive Dodge pickup you can actually see the hole he’s making in the sky. Meanwhile I’ll keep getting 50+mpg out of my Triumph Tiger.”

After that I started poking around to try and get a feel for just how magically ecological electric vehicles are. It turns out lithium based batteries are nasty, both to create and to recycle:

http://www.technobuffalo.com/2012/03/30/why-hybrids-and-evs-dont-help-solve-the-energy-conundrum/
http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/hold-smugness-tesla-might-just-worse-environment-know/
http://transweb.sjsu.edu/project/1137.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lithium-ion-batteries-hybrid-electric-vehicle-recycling/
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/10/what-happens-to-electric-car-batteries-when-the-car-is-retired/index.htm
https://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/graphics/2015-04-28-carbon-emissions-from-electricity-generation-for-the-top-ten-producer.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214993714000037
http://www.mai.org.my/ver1/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1934:recycling-the-hybrid-battery-packs&catid=42:global-auto-news&Itemid=165

“A Prius battery begins life in a dirty nickel mine in Sudbury, Ontario. This mine has caused enough damage to the surrounding area to be called a “dead zone.” There is no natural life of any sort for miles around. NASA used that area to test its Moon rovers because the area resembles its craggy surface. Acid rain from the toxins of the mine killed all the plant life in the area and washed away the hillsides. All of this sounds positively wonderful, but don’t worry, it gets better. These battery components are then shipped to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. After that, they make their way to China to be turned into nickel foam of sorts. Finally, the batteries make their way to Japan to be put into the cars, which are then shipped all around the world to happy Prius buyers who are anxious to drive their new hybrid.”

“EVs that depend on coal for their electricity are actually 17 percent to 27 percent worse than diesel or gas engines. That is especially bad for the United States, because we derive close to 45 percent of our electricity from coal. In states like Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, that number is much closer to 100 percent.”

“The initial production of the vehicle and the batteries together make up something like 40 percent of the total carbon footprint of an EV – nearly double that of an equivalent gasoline-powered vehicle.”

We live in a time of compromise, but thinking that you’ve somehow solved the entire vehicular pollution thing by leaping into a hybrid or EV sourced from parts delivered by oil driven transport from all over the world and powered by whichever lowest hydro bidder your miserly government is supporting this week is a bit much. The harder choice in the short term is to live with less, which no one is willing to do (that’s probably what’s driving hybrid/battery e-vehicle evangelism – a chance to bypass that choice).

I suspect that hydrogen fuel cells driving electrical motors are where we’ll go next in personal transportation (though why that’s only happening as a college project in motorcycling is a bit vexing). Fortunately, Honda is doing something on the four wheeled front. A super light weight hydrogen celled electrical vehicle bypasses the battery production nightmare, but then we aren’t moving toward light weight, minimalist vehicles. Would you want to drive a thousand pound hydrogen vehicle next to a massive SUV? That would be as dangerous as riding a motorcycle!

While that’s happening, advancements in nuclear engineering will hopefully drive us out into the solar system. The outer planets are a virtually unlimited store of non carbon based fusion energy, we just have to get there and collect the fuel (which is rare on Earth). If we took half of what we spend on military budgets world wide each year, we’d have an unlimited source of clean energy on tap within my lifetime. Instead we just keep doing what we’ve always done, stumbling forward in ignorance driven by greed instead of driving for real global advances in sustainable energy production.

Of course, none of that matters to personal transportation if we can’t find a better way to store electricity locally. Chemical batteries are an eighteenth Century solution to a twenty-first century problem. We really need to start advancing hydrogen fuel cells, kinetic storage and other non-chemical battery technologies. A near perfect scenario would be using d-He3 fusion to produce hydrogen with no carbon footprint. The hydrogen then works as an electrical generator in a fuel cell as it fuses with oxygen producing pure water.

A truly zero emissions vehicle with an abundant and
powerful fuel supply? I’m dreaming of that future.

I have no doubt that the internal combustion engine’s days are numbered and that the future is electrical. Companies like Zero Motorcycles and even EVs like the Nissan Leaf are doing their part to improve electrical engine efficiency, but depending on globally sourced, polluting chemical battery technologies isn’t the future. One day I’ll hop on my hydrogen fuel celled Zero Tsunami (because it produces only water, get it?) and zip off down the road knowing that I’m riding a vehicle that is truly sustainable.

Arguing between gasoline power and hybrid/EVs that depend on extremely polluting chemical battery technologies and fossil fuel driven electricity generation is like arguing whether your coal fed steam powered train is less polluting than my wood burning steam powered train – neither solve the problem, and one seems more about hiding it than fixing it.

***
Originally shared by Zero Motorcycles
Are motorcycles greener than cars? They are if you ride a Zero! Interesting discussion. Your thoughts?

Arguing on the internet, I should know better…
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1105626_why-motorcycles-may-not-be-greener-than-cars-missing-emission-gear#comment-2845856393

I’m beginning to think that a few years ago a very smart MBA type walked into auto manufacturers and said the whole environmental thing can be resolved by moving the burning of fossil fuels out of sight of the general public.

The issue with climate change is that it’s obvious to consumers that they are responsible! Every time they put gas in the car they’re burning it. Simply move the carbon production out of sight and everything is good again, and you get a brave new legion of e-vehicle evangelists who will fight tooth and nail to ignore any evidence of this shift.

That your intermediate step is itself very environmentally damaging is easy to ignore. State that the batteries used in electric vehicles are very recyclable and everyone (especially your believers) will happily state that this is what is happening. Don’t demand laws that require recycling, don’t have any oversight over what happens to batteries when they’re done.

With carbon emissions and the pollution from the new systems that hide it happily out of sight, the general public can get their pride on riding around in hybrid and electric vehicles and never once see the damage they are doing first hand. Problem solved!

1971 Triumph Bonneville: More Bike Archeology from Tires, Wheel Restoration & Rear Brakes

I got the rear tire off the rim today in the ongoing ’71 Bonneville project during a late March snowstorm. It had a Lien Shin tire on it. I’m unfamiliar with that brand and I can’t find a heat pressed time stamp on it. Tires produced before the year 2000 use a 3 digit code that makes it difficult to determine which decade they were made in (first two digits are month of manufacture, last digit is the year). Tires after 2000 use a four digit code (week # of manufacture followed by a the last two digits of the year, ie: 0501 would be the fifth week of 2001). A 511 would be the 51st week (December) of a year ending in 1, ie: 1981, 1991.

While I couldn’t find a stamped date on the Lien Shin tire, there is a three digit date stamp on the Inoue front tire: 511. Based on the bike’s last sticker on the SATAN license plate (’84), this probably dates the front tire to the 51st week (December) of 1981. I was 12 when this tire was manufactured. I’m still amazed that it works at all and the inner tube holds pressure.

Taking a tire this old and stiff off was tricky, but as with the TIger tire change last year, a judicious application of heat really helps soften the rubber and makes removal easier, especially in the winter. It was -17°C outside so I put the shop heater next to the tire and let it warm up, then removing it with the irons was pretty easy.

Once I had the old rubber out of the way, I went at the rim with a wire brush and it cleaned off the surface rust well. Some SOS soap pads and then a bout with the pressure washer out in the snow storm and the rim came up nicely.

Next time I have some time and space I’ll get the front tire removed and prep that too, then it’ll be time to order some wheel hardware (bearings and brake pads). With the wheels rebuild, I’ll clean up the frame and repaint it and then it’s time to start putting the rolling chassis back together.

While I had the wheels off I took the rear brake apart. I keep being surprised by how simple this bike is. The rear brake is a mechanical mechanism, no hydraulics in sight. You press on that big brake lever (it’s big because you need the mechanical advantage for it to work) and that pulls the rod connected to a spinner on the top of the rear brake drum. The drum spins and applies the brake. When you let go, a spring on the drum spinner disengages the brake. You must get pretty good feel out of a direct mechanical system like this, and you’re not carrying any extra weight from a hydraulic system (fluid container, piston, pipes, caliper cylinders, etc), but I bet you’ve gotta have big calves to lock it up.

I’m back at work this week so it might be a few days before I take another swing at it, but it’s exciting to get to the point where the bike is enough pieces that I can see how it’ll go back together again.

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300kms in Two Days

It was a long winter this year, made particularly difficult by grinding through a second year of COVID19. I find a great deal of satisfaction in spannering my own bikes, but that isn’t an end in itself for me, riding is. With a few days off work and the weather finally breaking, I got over 300kms while I could. Both the nineteen year old Triumph Tiger and the twelve year old Kawasaki GTR1400 worked like a charm.

Guelph Lake is still frozen…

All photos taken with a Ricoh Theta 360 camera mounted on a flexible tripod and set to shoot automatically every 10 seconds. I select the good’uns and sort them out using the Ricoh 360 camera software and Adobe Photoshop. If you want a how-to, here’s one: https://www.adventurebikerider.com/how-to-capture-360-photos-while-riding-a-motorbike/ Here’re others!

That many-things-my-eyes-have-seen face!

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1971 Triumph Bonneville Restoration Project: Frame Breakdown & Rear Brakes

I’d initially planned to do a rolling restoration of the 1971 Triumph Bonneville project, but the state of the engine and my desire to get it back to a place where I can enjoy an updated, dependable but mechanically sympathetic restoration (I want the bike to retain its patina, but I also want it to be dependable) made a rolling restoration impractical. The engine is lined up for a new 750cc head and electronic ignition system, but before all of that I have to get the frame and wheels sorted out so that I can put the upgraded engine back into a sorted rolling chassis.

To that end, it was finally time to take it to pieces, which also gave me a lot of space back in the one car garage once the bike stand was stacked to the side:

The frame out means I don’t need to fill half the garage with the bike stand.

Black rubber bands cover the frame to swingarm joints (to prevent water getting in?).

Way more space in the garage with the Bonnie in pieces.

With the bike in pieces, I’m restoring all parts that I can reuse. This usually involves some WD40, a toothbrush or wire brush depending on how filthy it is, and then a dip in a hot ultrasonic bath for small pieces to get them back to fresh.

The front wheel Smiths speedometer.

Into the rear brakes. Like everything else on this old bike they are much simpler than modern hydraulic brakes.

Bringing old parts back from the brink is very satisfying.

The entire rear brake system – the brake lever is so long because it is the only mechanical advantage you have when applying the rear brakes. Instead of using hydraulics to amplify your push on the pedal, the old Bonnie is a simple mechanical system. You press the brake lever which pulls that long metal bar which rotates the top of the drums, pressing them into outside of the drum. No hydraulics, and I bet you have to press that lever like you mean it to lock the rear wheel.

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You Didn’t Prepare Me for Post-Secondary

Over the past several years I’ve been contacted by graduates or their parents with a similar complaint: why didn’t you prepare me/my child for post secondary math?

A few years ago it was a college bound student with learning challenges. His mom was… outspoken (that’s being very charitable) while he was in school, but I was able to work well with him and he eventually went into information technology at a local college. He dropped out in his first semester with failing maths grades. Mom emailed me in a rage blaming me for this. I pointed out that I teach computer technology and asked how he was doing in those classes (he was getting 90s). That ended that particular interaction, but it wasn’t the first and it won’t be the last.

I’ve also had students who I worked closely with both in class and on school teams, students who know me well enough to be straight up, get in touch while in post-secondary to say that they too are struggling with maths. It’s a familiar refrain; a student who got high 90s in high school maths suddenly finds themselves dysfunctional in post secondary. A recent multi-award winning graduate put it well: “when we’re given a problem, other students apply their maths skills like taking tools out of a toolbox. They assess the problem and then apply the right mathematical approach to solve it. I feel like we spent all our time learning mechanics on worksheets but spent no time contextualizing what we were doing.” This would be like trying to learn how to play hockey by drilling yourself independently on stick handling, skating and shooting, but never contextualizing those skills as a whole in a game.

When some of our most academically decorated students come back to me with this kind of feedback, I’m left wondering how to address it. I don’t think it’s fair that the blame falls entirely on teachers. Thanks to our community’s everyone-can-go-to-university-if-they-want-to sense of privilege, many of our academic classes are populated by students without the background or interest in using what we’re trying to teach them. This means teachers have to simplify and compartmentalize their content to such a degree that the students who actually need it aren’t getting it. I frequently see students with weeks of absences who are still expected to earn a credit (you got auto-dropped at 10 absences when I was in high school). When you’ve got students who barely attend, compartmentalizing the learning becomes a survival technique. It also makes it nearly impossible to contextualize learning beyond single period lessons.

Last year my son was told, “don’t worry, everyone fails that unit” in his grade eleven maths class. If I had a unit that everyone failed, my first assumption would be that I’m teaching it wrong and I’d change my approach, but one of the ways we appear to drag students to the end of the Ontario maths curriculum is to just keep pushing through it, regardless of comprehension, context or mastery of previous concepts. This isn’t a new phenomenon, it happened to me in the 1980s too.

I’d quote statistics to you about how successful our graduates are once they leave the building, but no one in Ontario public education keeps those statistics. Instead of quoting EQAO scores, what we should be doing is collecting data on the success rates of our graduates in post-secondary. If we all claim to be about backward design, this kind of data would make that possible on a meta-level, but it’s better to fly blind, then we don’t have to take responsibility for those failures or change anything.

There is a lot of talk around destreaming as a cure-all to systemic prejudice, but the people framing it that way are usually the ones happy to see larger class sizes for everyone at a lower cost. Streaming wasn’t designed to denigrate anyone, it was instituted to let classes focus on learner needs with higher needs students having smaller classes and students aiming at advanced post-secondary programs working in a room where everyone is driving for the same goals. The unfortunate truth is the destreaming has already occurred thanks in large part to parents and guidance ignoring it. When I last taught university level classes I found that less than half the class was university bound and a number of those directionless students were put into university stream to ‘keep their options open’. In keeping their options open these students were knocking others out of contention. In curriculums like English and mathematics, where skills development is vital in order for students to operate at the senior end of the program, this kind of watering down of intent hurts many of our graduates.

Even in my technology courses I see this. My ‘M’ level courses are supposed to be for post-secondary bound students but I typically see 10-20% of the class coming out of credit poor essential and applied situations who have no intention of going into post-secondary. I then spend an inordinate amount of my time catering to these high-needs children instead of helping the students who selected the right stream get to where they want to go.

I’m not sure why, with the pressure to reduce costs, we’re not offering alternate pathways that allow the students who don’t need senior classes to take alternate pathways. An early graduation workplace/apprenticeship pathways option for students should be available for anyone who has passed the literacy and maths testing in grades 9 and 10. If those students who would rather be out working were, we could refocus our classrooms on preparing the students in them for post-secondary success instead of watering everything down in order to babysit those who don’t want to be there. Instead we’re all handcuffed by Ontario’s learning until eighteen law. If we’re all really advocates for life-long learning, then it should be obvious that this doesn’t just happen in schools. There would be many benefits to stepping away from this mandatory restriction and refocusing our classrooms on developing rich, contextualized learning opportunities for students who show up and want to be there in order to go on and tackle post-secondary specialities.

This issue goes well beyond maths, but the structured development of skills over many years in mathematics exacerbates the problem in ways that make it much more visible.

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