what's the last thing you bought?

[Tank]

Not a 'twitcher' as such. More wildlife in general. In particular the squirrels and wild birds in my garden. It is as cheap as chips but adequate  for the amount of times I'll use it. If I take to it I may upgrade at some point.

what kinds of squirrels do you have?

This one 

And at least one other. We are so bereft of wildlife in the UK that a squirrels are 'exotic' 

{Image removed}

Oh that's cool.
They don't have pouches do they? how bizarre.

No they don't. I wish we had Quakkas though!!!

[billy rubin]

Not a 'twitcher' as such. More wildlife in general. In particular the squirrels and wild birds in my garden. It is as cheap as chips but adequate  for the amount of times I'll use it. If I take to it I may upgrade at some point.

what kinds of squirrels do you have?

This one 

And at least one other. We are so bereft of wildlife in the UK that a squirrels are 'exotic' 

thats odd.

i would swear that thats a picture of a north american fox squirrel, sciurus niger. my son shoots these around the house for dinner.

an introduction, maybe?

[Tank]

Yes. They arrived in the UK about 100 years ago and have pretty much taken over from the native Red Squirrel.



EDIT: I used to shoot the Grey Squirrels as a kid (know better now) as the local farmers would pay for their tails to keep the population down. My mum used to hate it when I got my dad to stop the car by road kill and cut the tail off. Not leaving good money by the road! Never eaten one though. Never felt it was worth the effort of preparing them.

[billy rubin]

i live in temperate,  eastern deciduous woodland so we have a number of squirrels.

one ive never seen is the eastern flying squirrel. my wife has watched them at birdfeeders at night

[Tank]

Wow!

[Dark Lightning]

A battery for my Honda Element.  Turns out that the old battery was not the problem that I thought I had.  Exploring further I discovered that there is a 5 ampere drain in the system when the car is shut off.  Now I have to chase down the many circuits to isolate the problem.  Damned car has two separate fuse compartments. One of them is in a miserably inconvenient place. 

I will disconnect the ground terminal from the battery, install the ampmeter in series with the ground cable and the battery.  The meter will then indicate the leakage.  Pull the fuses one by one. When the the meter shows little or no leakage, I will have found the offending circuit.........that all depends on whether the leakage source is after the fuse in the circuit, not before it gets to the fuse bank.

The other Problem is that at this time I cannot see very well. I had some fairly extensive surgery on one of my eyelids ten days ago.

My wife has a '15 Kia Soul. The battery died after two years. The car would have sat for a week until the dealer could get to it. I took the battery to a local parts store and had it tested. Dead as a door nail. I put a new battery in and discovered that there was a 6 Amp drain! Turns out that some of the electronics are still active after the vehicle is shut down. I went to the dealer and the service manager allowed me to place my inductive ammeter onto the main battery cable of several other Kia Souls, and they all showed significant current flow, one as high as 10 Amps, while it was just sitting. When they did the current drain test on my wife's car, they did it with a battery cable disconnected first. That places all the electronics in a state where they no longer draw a current. I was also told that the Kia Soul's batteries generally only last two years, by the service manager. Their electrical tech also informed me that the charging system doesn't immediately start in on charging the battery on start-up. Crazy shit, where I come from! So, once you pull a battery cable off the battery, you may have lost the utility of the test you want to perform...and it may well be that your vehicle is like my wife's and the battery is only going to last 2 years. Tech is supposed to make things better!

Geez!  What the hell is running that draws that sort of current when the car is shut down?  I can imagine a few milliamperes to keep memory settings in the radio etc, even a few for an engine disabling circuit etc, but Amps?  Who designs these systems, do they not have a brain?

It's supposed to die off after a max of half an hour, but I agree, who the hell ever thought this stuff up?

[Dark Lightning]

The last thing I bought (awaiting shipping) is a pair of Hoka One One shoes.

I recently found out about these and bought a pair. They are the only shoes I can wear that don't hurt my old arthritic feet. You're going to love them! 

[Dark Lightning]

birdwatcher?

We have one for the gun range. [ducks]

Well that's what it is, it's a 'spotting scope' for watching fall of shot. My 'bucket list' has 'Learn to shoot properly' on it. There is a shooting supplies shop a mile or so away so in the spring I'm going to find a course on small bore rifle and maybe shotgun. I doubt I'll ever buy a weapon as my wife would totally freak out.

I have a couple firearms. One is a .22 carbine. I am a certified firearms instructor for rifle and shotgun, training and certification gotten in '92 when my sons were in the Boy Scouts. I shoot 198+/200, which is called Distinguished Marksman. That's at the bench rest position, of course. I'm trying to drill down so that every round goes inside the 10 ring, but that has remained elusive. When I shoot, I can detect my pulse moving my point of aim slightly.

[joeactor]

The last thing I bought (awaiting shipping) is a pair of Hoka One One shoes.

I recently found out about these and bought a pair. They are the only shoes I can wear that don't hurt my old arthritic feet. You're going to love them! 

Cool - thanks much!

My podiatrist suggested them. My feet are extremely flat, and may be headed for arthritis.

Also, she suggested SuperFeet Copper insoles for my other shoes. They're stiff, but with a layer of memory foam.

[Tank]

... {image removed}

birdwatcher?

We have one for the gun range. [ducks]

Well that's what it is, it's a 'spotting scope' for watching fall of shot. My 'bucket list' has 'Learn to shoot properly' on it. There is a shooting supplies shop a mile or so away so in the spring I'm going to find a course on small bore rifle and maybe shotgun. I doubt I'll ever buy a weapon as my wife would totally freak out.

I have a couple firearms. One is a .22 carbine. I am a certified firearms instructor for rifle and shotgun, training and certification gotten in '92 when my sons were in the Boy Scouts. I shoot 198+/200, which is called Distinguished Marksman. That's at the bench rest position, of course. I'm trying to drill down so that every round goes inside the 10 ring, but that has remained elusive. When I shoot, I can detect my pulse moving my point of aim slightly.

I'm looking forward to some quality time with an expert.

[Icarus]

We used to have lots of those cute little flying squirrels in Florida.  The old time Floridians called them "shootyboos, and sometimes captured than for pets.  I suppose that they have become more scarce since so many damned Yankees decided to move here and fuck up the environment with what surely must be at least two cars for every person, thus overwhelming our previously adequate highways and bi ways, trashing our once pristine waterways, using up the potable water supply to grow their pristine lawns, over  fertilizing the lawns so that the runoff enters our beautiful lakes and encourages the growth of nasty algae,  and helping to fill the overburdened landfills with an indescribable array of burden.

If that is not enough, Nestle Corporation has installed huge facilities to produce bottled water, while depleting our limited supply of clean spring water.  Nestle uses millions of plastic bottles every day to additionally defile the territory that was once resembled Camelot.

If that is not enough the Trump has decided to shift his legal residence to Florida at Mar-A-Lago.  The sleazy bastard shifted his legal residence to Florida because we have no state income tax, and also because Florida is a crucial state for his re election......perish the thought.

I might consider moving to Billy Rubin's neck of the woods but I have a dislike of country and western music which i suspect is typical of the area.  I think that there are may be a lot of Jesus freak Trumpers there too.  Maybe I move to Fiji.  No wait, that is a tourist mecca.   Maybe OZ. Hey Bluenose , do you have room in Queensland or somewhere for a crotchety old American?

Whew! Pauses to take some deep breaths.

[billy rubin]

theres less country western here than there is hardcore hillbilly. fiddles and banjoes. on weekends the radio plays barbershop quartets doing gospel.

but on the other hand, this is ground zero for the religious society of friends. im a quaker, and the society here is pretty different from the dominant culture, and has been for over two hundred years.

and i just bought a cup of coffee before i found out i waz laid off fir the day.

[billy rubin]

camwheels!

i'm in search of perfect valve timing on my racing motorcycle. to change between what's available from what  the factory supplied, you have to buy old camwheels and look for the ones that were mis-machined from new. i want to move my cam timing two degrees, ant stck p[ieces only let me move 4.8 degrees at a time.



these were cheap. every pair is a testament to an old triumph 650 that was ended it's life disassembled for parts, so that people like me can make other ones come back to life. i've alread got half a dozen but mnore is better.

i also bought a 13/16-inch spiral fluted straight reamer so i can remove a few ten-thousands of an inch from th ebore of the wheels. as original, they're pressed on and off, and by making them a slip fit i can save time fussing around. there's a big nut that holds them to a little woodruff ky, so they won't be coming loose.



only takes a tun or two




the sixty year old manuals are full of beautiful hand-drawn art. don't do that anymore.

[Icarus]

BR, I am pretty sure that you can change the cam timing at least two degrees by adjusting the valve clearance a few thousandths. ....or you could offset the rocker arms a few thou....which of course changes the valve lift dimension.  Minute changes to the  rocker face to valve tip can also do some fun stuff.  Deepening the valve seat can also change the characteristics of valve timing for a given rocker and cam profile.

I will argue that two degrees of timing does not make a rats ass of difference except where your max torque figure occurs.

Are you aware of the fairly well established rule that max torque occurs when the intake port velocity is at or very near  240 feet per second?  That reality fucks up the beliefs of the home style tuners that want to "hog" out the intake ports.  I have often used epoxy to make the intake ports smaller or reshaped so that the velocities can be adjusted.  Velocities past the valve seat are part of the equation and affects the swirl pattern in the chamber and the efficiency of the burn process.  That you have to use twin plugs is not encouraging.  The piston domes affect the fuel air distribution pattern in the chamber. High domes interfere with fuel/air distribution.

The length of the intake passages including the carb throats are of substantial interest.  Are you using a calm air box to feed the carb inlets?  If not, there is a lot of turbulence at the carb horns or filters that you may or may not be using. The amount of heat that you can generate in the combustion chambers, thus out put energy,  are entirely dependent on the amount of oxygen that you can stuff into the combustion space.  If you are to try for a stoichometric ratio of somewhere near 14 to 1, then you gotta put a lot of air into the mix.

The Stoich ratio is in terms of pounds of fuel versus pounds of air.   Air intake potential is the defining characteristic. You can easily jet the carbs to any fuel delivery  level but not so easily the air level.  Be sure to maximize that area of endeavor.  If you are too successful you run the risk of ventilating the crankcase of that old Triumph.  The rods ain't indestructible. Please 'scuse me if these are not already part of your tuning regime.  I do not know how much of a techno freak that you are.

[hermes2015]

Isn't HAF marvellous? In which other atheist forum can one find advice on cam timing, questions of faith and reason, and personal fragrances on the same day?