Petrol head thread!!!

[billy rubin]

got the wiring installed on the 1969 ^^^A65. and got the new shifter quadrant to replae the one with the stripped out splines that i discovered halfway through. the new one (well, repaired, maybe thirty years ago) is a big improvement:





what i do with motorcycles is different from what some people do, i suppose. all but two are over 50 years old, and the new ones were built 16 and 25 years ago. so for me, the involvement is pretty intimate. i don't just get on them and go places. i have to know how they work, what parts are likely to fail, what i need to take with me to be sure i can get home, and what ancient maintenace schedules need to be adhered to from the age when dieselpunk wasnt history. not to mention how to accommodate old technology to modern fuels and traffic.

but for me its therapy, like racing. i dont think about stuff when im working inside a machine. everything goes quiet, and the inner monologue just isnt there. i dont really think, either, certainly my brain isn't processing anything verbally. my eyes observe something, and my hands just know what to do about it, apparently skipping the intermediate steps where i use words to process information.

i suspect woodworking and sculpture are both the same way, but creative art is something i only incompletely understand.

[Dark Lightning]

Yes, especially when I'm carving wood. I focus on the item and what needs to be removed to make what I have in my mind's eye. I used to go to a class/club at the local senior center, and it could be like that, a lot. But some people bring power chisels (bad, they are NOISY) and power tools (OK, but too much dust, and they don't provide protection for everyone).

[rant] Despite all that, I went there for years, until the guys running the class got to be too much in the way of assholes. I complained to the center management; nothing changed, and I quit going. I've seen the "management", so-called "teachers" drive many a person off. It took 6 years to wear my patience down. At least I complained to the people running the facility. I'd bet money most people just walked away, wanting to avoid a confrontation. [/rant]

[hermes2015]

The only time I get into that state of total absorption in the process is when I am wedging clay using the cut and slam method. My wish is to paint and sculpt in that state, but sadly I overanalyse the painting and sculpting process too much. If only I could be more spontaneous, I feel I could produce better art. But then, I suspect that it is not possible to switch improvisation on by trying too hard to become spontaneous.

[Tank]

The world goes away when I'm in my workshop.

[billy rubin]

If only I could be more spontaneous, I feel I could produce better art.

how do you decide when a creation is better? not whether your skill managed to make somethingbthat matched an inner vision, but when youre choosing what to create in the first place?

leaving aside spontaneity for the moment

[hermes2015]

If only I could be more spontaneous, I feel I could produce better art.

how do you decide when a creation is better? not whether your skill managed to make somethingbthat matched an inner vision, but when youre choosing what to create in the first place?

leaving aside spontaneity for the moment

That is a difficult, perhaps even impossible, question to answer. It's like expressing an opinion about one's own sanity. In my case, the best I can do is precisely what you said: how well I think the work expresses my inner vision. So, I have this suspicion that I may be more successful if I do not over think and over design things. The opinion of an impartial professional critic about the merits of my work may be different, though.

[billy rubin]

i am not convinced that critics serve s useful purpose. i think they can offer immensely valuable advice on technique and execution, but to actually critique creativity they have to share your vision of what you wanted to do, and also share your understanding of the rules by which the creativity will be judged.

look at wahols tomato soup can pyramid. its garbage on a pedestal, unless you also share warhols understanding of context.

[hermes2015]

i am not convinced that critics serve s useful purpose. i think they can offer immensely valuable advice on technique and execution, but to actually critique creativity they have to share your vision of what you wanted to do, and also share your understanding of the rules by which the creativity will be judged.

look at wahols tomato soup can pyramid. its garbage on a pedestal, unless you also share warhols understanding of context.

I agree. For most lay viewers, conceptual art is even more difficult to appreciate than Warhol's soup cans or Brillo boxes. Consider for instance Carl Andre's bricks. 😏

[billy rubin]

i would have to see his stuff in person to try to understand what he was doing. just one piece to me is meaningless. even then i might not figure anything out.

it may be a stretch, but conceptual art to me is like trying to read james joyce. i have gotten halfway through ulysses a dozen times, only to be defeated in the middle when he becomes abstract.

yet there are images throughout jkyces work that are vividly preserved in my head, for decades, inclyding out of ulysses.

even reading with an accompanying commentary leaves me behind.

what was he doing? what was he presenting that i cant see? what can i see if i keep looking?

[Icarus]

Give it whatever name you like. Grooving ? concentration?  Escapism?  I am one of you in that when I concentrate on a project, I might not even be aware of a trainwreck in my front yard. I believe that being "dialed in" can be therapeutic.  It can be a useful escape mechanism from the day to day grind.

I used to be a smoker. When I was at one with my race bike, my sailboat, my mechanical drawing board, I forgot to smoke. I could go hours without ever feeling the slightest intrusion from my addiction.  I am not at all certain that everyone is capable of that kind of focused concentration....or perhaps they simply choose not to experiment with laser focused attention to the subject at hand..

When I was a teacher and later a tutor, I have had people, tell me: "it hurts to think". That was exasperating for me, but maybe there was some truth in their statement. I hope that is not the reality of the human condition.

I am pleased to know that my HAF friends have the capacity for deep focus. 
 

[Dark Lightning]

In math, physics and programming, we called it "the zone". I remember doing homework as a student and writing code as an engineer, solving propagation and scattering problems for Electromagnetic waves, and being completely oblivious to my surroundings. Once the problem was solved, I'd become aware of people talking around me, or the radio playing, etc. I don't get that as much with carving or running machinery for making wood projects, but that's a good thing. Just running wood through a saw with no consideration of injury is a sure way to get hurt. It's just a lower lever of the zone. I have told my wife repeatedly not to interrupt me when machinery is running. That startle factor is one way to get real hurt, real fast.

[hermes2015]

i would have to see his stuff in person to try to understand what he was doing. just one piece to me is meaningless. even then i might not figure anything out.
...

what was he doing? what was he presenting that i cant see? what can i see if i keep looking?

I think these two points in your reply are the key for me. The key to keeping the little grey cells active and having fun. Even if I have little hope of comprehending what motivates these artists, at least I am enjoying the journey of discovery.

Wow, in a thread dealing with maintaining motorcycles, we have strayed into a discussion of conceptual art. There is something Zen in that.

[billy rubin]

lol

one of my favorite books

his inner conversation while adjusting the valves was the best part.

[hermes2015]

lol

one of my favorite books

his inner conversation while adjusting the valves was the best part.

[billy rubin]

i have achhieved an odd milestone in my personal relationship with obsolete machinery, specifically motorcycles built before 40 years ago.

i can now look at an exposed wire in a lucas harness and know what it is by the colours.

but only in that very narrow field. elsewhere im blind as a bat.

joseph lucas and son manufactured electrical components for british cars and motorcycles for over 100 years. they were so important to the industry that BSA abandoned one of its most popular and successful motorcycles-- the 500 cc goldstar-- because lucas stopped making magnetos for them. lucas stuff was odd and quirky, but in reality, only because it was pre-modern. their unreliability had more to do with their primitive nature than anything wrong with their design. but after re-wiring an old 1969 thunderbolt with a factory-correct harness, i now know that:

- any brown blue wire is hot unfused, and runs from the battery negative to th ehot side of the ammeter, the horn, or the capacito.

-- any white wire runs from the switched side of the ignition swith to an ignition circuit or the zener diode

-- any white-brown wire runs from the same place to the lighting circuit.

-- any black bro is an oil pressure light

-  any wire with blue in it is one side rr another of the headlight switch. it might be blue, blue-red, or blue-white . .

-- brown is the brake light circuit

-- and so on. i was familiar with all this long ago, but paid no attention to the underlying systems that were carefully organized by color. now i understand the electrics in the same way that i understand the human circulatory system-- pulmonary, cardiac, venous, arterial . . . with a dorsal aorta and a left ventricle, and so on.

apparently lucas wiring was consistent across everything-- triumph, mg, lotus, bsa, norton, vincent, whatever. the wires might go to any of a myriad different makes and styles of components, but the colours stayed the same, because . . . lucas . . .

i hated the lucas harnesses on all my old machines, and generally threw them away and re-wired from scratch. but in the course of working on this BSA, with new conductors, bullets, and snap connectors, i have mellowed somewhat, realizing that most of my wiring problems had to do with aged harnesses than with their designs.

so now i have a box full of new rolls of wire in lucas colours, tins of odd little crimp-on lucas bullet connectors, and the breathtakingly expensive tool that makes th ehexagonal crimp to hold the appropriate bullet on lucas wires of 6-strand, 14-strand, 28-strand, and so on. all set to annoy the next owner in another 50 years.

more to the point, i have come closer to mastering a worthless and obsolete skill. the last of the machines using this system was made in 1983, and the knowledge i have gained is without value for anything built since then.

an arcane skill. but then, how much of what we considered routine over our lives is any less arcane? i can adjust a carburetor, set valve timing, operate a key punch machine, program in job control language, sort cattle, castrate a pig, graft queen bees, predict the weather from the clouds, bake cornbread from scratch, distinguish american fox species by their lower mandibles, navigate at night by the stars, and on and on. some of these skills are useful, some are dead arts, and lots more has been inserted into human culture since to replace them.

i use my teenagers to set the digital clocks in my vehicles, for example. and to show me how to change the settings on my telephone.

lol

one generation cometh, and another generation passeth away. but the earth abideth forever.