NickDG

>>Have you thought about black ceramic coating like "jet hot" nice Matt black finish,

Julia's airline just confirmed - no going to Germany today. She's re-booked for Monday. Thanks for the good information everyone! NickD

Thanks, Gypsy, I think so too . . . Nina's parts are coming in fast and furious now. I finished the mount for the voltage regulator and got that set up. I also enlisted Julia for a little help. She's a brilliant PHD'd aerospace engineer who had a big hand in designing and building the two Martian Rovers, "Spirit" and "Opportunity." Both Rovers were only planned to last six months on the Martian surface and now they are 2000 days past that time period and they are still sending back data. So yeah, I'll let her turn a wrench on Nina! http://marsrover.nasa.gov/home/ NickD

Yeah, I think it's Hank testing what would later on, and in different form, become the bomb drogues he sold to the military. NickD

Julia is flying into Germany tomorrow morning. Anyone know if the Iceland volcano eruption is affecting the Frankfurt airport? I checked their website but there's nothing about it there one way or the other. But I just heard in addition to Heathrow some airports in France are also closing down. Anyone in Germany? How's it looking? NickD

>>I would have put some black exhaust wrap on the first 1/2 of the pipes

Here's another photoshop with Nina's air cleaner mounted. (I'd better get out into the garage and go to work. I need to stop shopping and start chopping!) Oh, also wanted to say I changed course on the handlebar controls. I mentioned upboard I ham-handily stripped the banjo bolt hole on the front brake master cylinder. I started looking for another one on Ebay (it's just a stock black Moco unit that a lot of people take off and replace with chrome) but the first one I bought was already partially stripped (I just gave it the coup de grace) so rather than chance that happening again I bite the bullet and purchased all new custom handlebar controls and switches. They're also black, a bit slicker looking than stock controls, and include black levers - so I can't wait to see them when they arrive . . . NickD

Yes, I know about those methods. Some also install a thumbscrew in the pipe about an inch back from the output end. With those you can alter the angle of the thumb part and get some control of your back pressure. The downside with that is the pipes would certainly be too loud. And why I got the baffles. Nina will still be loud enough so when I'm lane splitting on the freeway people will hear me coming. (I've been startled many times by "quiet" bikes splitting lanes while driving my truck and I can't help thinking that guy's gonna get hit sooner or later.) But Nina will be muffled enough so the neighbors don't get too pissed off. Here's a photoshop of how I think Nina might look with her new pipes. (Also a picky of the thumbscrew I mentioned.) NickD

>>Re-peat after me : MickeyRooney

>>We it a big job?

Yeah, okay, and stop volunteering others for shit while you're safely ensconced over there in Oz . . . NickD

>>Friggin BLASPHEMER those two flick are bloody Masterpieces

The late John Hoover did it too . . . After crashing through a building window he was laying there in some guy's office looking up at pictures of the some guy's wife and kids, and wondering what the hell had just happened, when a gust of wind re-inflated his canopy still hanging out the window. It dragged him back outside and he thought, "Oh shit, it ain't over yet!" He crashed into the building three or four more time under a partially inflated canopy coming to rest on a ledge just above the first floor. He gathered up his gear and jumped the 12-feet to the sidewalk as his ground crew drove by to pick him up. He did a reported $50,000 worth of damage to the building and they were still looking for him, and their 50G, when John was killed in an automobile accident a short time later . . . NickD

LisaH came by yesterday so I could fix her car and in the midst of that UPS started dropping off Nina's latest parts I'd ordered. I wanted badly to rip into the boxes but I was good boy and finished fixing her car first . . . Today I started fabbing up the voltage regulator and coil mounts. I also picked up a pretty small battery that physically fits the space I have. It's an AGM type battery. I wasn't familiar with them (pretty new technology) but it looks like it might do the trick. AGMs were developed for the military and it's a deep cycle maintenance free battery but the electrolyte is held inside of glass matting instead of floating free like in a normal flooded battery. It can sustain several gunshots and keep on powering as it's totally leak proof. (Might help me escape a tough situation some night in the hood!) Nina's Mikuni carb, programmable ignition, and several other items came too. Her pipes haven't but they are on the way. I'm going to be a busy kid for the next few days! NickD

That stunt's so old it's moldy . . . The Black Cats were doing plane to plane transfers in the 1930s without wearing parachutes. NickD

That stunt was originally done by Moe Viletto for the movie "Drop Zone" or "Terminal Velocity." Those films were both so forgettable I've forgotten which one it was and it was a bit different than Troy's jump as it was a direct bag instead of a freefall. (But owning to the times that's okay.) It was supposed to be Don Swayze (Patrick Swazye's brother) doing the actual stunt for the movie shoot while Moe was providing the technical advice and rigging. But while they were gaffing it Don realized he wasn't experienced enough so he deferred and Moe made the jump. Troy, a very cool un-redbullshit kind of guy, did a nice job on his version of the jump too. Not as cool as his streaking naked through the tennis courts or flying from Elsinore to Temucula in a one man helium balloon deal (where he had to shoot out the balloons to land) but cool nonetheless . . . NickD

I wouldn't be putting on the turn sigs if I didn't need to for registering a "special construction" bike. Nina will be undergoing a light inspection and they need to be on there. You guys with "store bought machines" don't get these inspections. But they're coming off as soon as Nina gets her license plate . . . NickD

I'm working on drawing up the wiring schematic right now. And I'll start on the actual wiring when Nina's battery, ignition, coil, and voltage regulator arrives in about a week and I get them mounted up. There's a couple of ways to go with the overall wiring. You can purchase a pre-made wiring harness for bike builds like Nina but they run about $200. Another way is doing it from scratch. And that's what I'm going to do. I'll need to buy a couple of modules I can't make myself. One for the turn signals (the unit that make them self canceling) and also a load equalizer module for the LED bulbs. LEDs draw so little current the flasher (car flashers work here) thinks the bulb is absent or burned out so just like in your car when that happens it just clicks real fast. The load equalizer fixes that. I'll also need a 30 amp main circuit breaker (to protect the battery from the bike and the bike from the battery) and a 30 amp relay (so the smaller load rated ignition switch and handlebar mounted kill and start buttons can handle the high amp loads.) Then some fuses, heat shrink tubing, and of course the wire itself. My current soldering iron is the cheap "always on" type so I'll invest in a good gun too. Below is the wiring scheme I'm working on. (I haven't added the grounds for the turn sigs yet.) Once I get it completely sussed out I'll take a profile photograph of Nina and then using photoshop I'll overlay the wires on the frame and to the various components to figure out the most direct and logical way to make the wire runs. Then comes the smoke test! Even if you do continuity checks on everything as you go along, there will come a moment when it's all done. And there's nothing left to do except take a deep breath and hit the starter switch hoping to hell you don't fry something spendy. NickD

You're a lot closer to the Lake Elsinore and Perris DZs (from LB) than Sandy Eggo . . . NickD

LOL, MickeyRooneys they are from now on . . . ! NickD

I remember when Booth first came out with his meshless/vaneless reserve PC. And I understand Bernoulli's principle well enough to think it was a stroke of genius. Plus it was more snag proof than anything manufactured thus far. But I never owned one. I saw the test data that supported its use but since I was doing a lot of B.A.S.E. jumping at the time I was really tuned in to PC performance and I just couldn't get passed the nagging feeling its slow speed performance just wasn't there. Please don't throw the supporting numbers and test data at me. There's just some things in this sport you decide in your gut! NickD

It's a "pig horn" because it came came off a Kawasaki 1000 police bike. I mentioned it early on in this thread. (Seems like ages ago now.) I also have a regular Moco horn but when I hooked both up to a battery to see if they worked the Harley horn sounded anemic and the pig horn was LAF . . . No, there's nothing skydive related on Nina. I always felt doing that sort of stuff is a fun jumper thing. When skydiving is your job who wants to be reminded of work when you're off doing something else? Someone once made me a very beautiful quilt covered in F-111 (really nice with different colors and canopy logos on it) but damn if I ever slept under it. The only jump related thing I might consider for Nina is if I eventually switch her over to a jockey shift I have an old Blast Handle that would make a really good shifter knob. But that's only because they're such good handles. I've been studying up on the carburetor I have on order. This is going to be another jump in technology from my last Harley. On that bike I had a Zenith Bendix carb with a butterfly valve in its throat. The new one is a Mikuni 42mm Smoothbore. Instead of a butterfly valve it uses a "slide" valve. So as you open the throttle the slide raises up into the carb body and when wide open it completely disappears. I guess they added some other way to create the turbulence needed for good fuel/air atomization but I haven't figured out how they did that yet. It also has a nice clean round air cleaner body that should look pretty good. It's also a low profile carb so the air cleaner won't stick out too far and hit my right leg. NickD

Yup, the second way . . . NickD

Mounted the redone rear fender this morning before work. Also installed the "pig horn" JayBird was cool enough to give me when I helped him pick up his 1000cc Kawasaki cop motor for his drag bike project . . . NickD

The hole for the bolt in my starter that holds the jackshaft is 10-32 and the bolt that came with my belt drive is a 1/4 so I need to go find the smaller bolt (it's a screw at that size actually.) So I re-turned my attention to the rear fender and decided I needed to re-work it. The paint came out too glossy and there's a few high points I missed in the metal. I doubt anyone would have noticed them but they were absolutely killing me. So I hammered down the high spots and raised a few low spots I found, smoothed it out with body filler, primed and re-shot it. This time however I tuned up my spray gun (it was way out of whack) plus added a dab of reducer (tones down any gloss) to the paint. And it all came out way better. Tomorrow I'll mount it up and then I can take a little break until the last of Nina's parts come in. In the meantime I'll start working on a wiring diagram. Hope I can remember my Ohm's Law . . . NickD