Semi-Recumbent Recycled-Parts Cargo eBike: "CrazyBike2"

[ohzee]

Nice haul looks like some good stuff.

[amberwolf]

I keep having this vision of hte four stem clamps as cargo rack holders, so i could sort-of quick-release side-mounted racks, but have them strong enough to hold LOTS of wieght. Just loosen the "steerer" clamp bolts a little and slide the rack out from under them or something. The handlebar clamp end would go over the frame tubing. Or vice-versa.


Went to Goodwill again with a couple of friends, and picked up one of these:
http://www.slime.com/shop/comp03/
for a few bucks, less than 1/5 of retail, and in very good condition--just missing it's cord/hose compartment cover. I have been looking for a 12V pump that is smaller than my Sears version, and more reliable--the Sears one is getting so worn isnide that it has toheat up before it will begin pumping air above about 20-30PSI, making it a project to just air up a tire--and it will usually not air up the shock on the Fusin test bike enough.

This one easily does both, and it has an LED light on it for a worklamp. It's also less than half the size of the other one, which means it won't take as much space in my cargo pods to carry with me. The only issue is that it doesn't just pop the hose end off the valve easily when I release the lever after inflation, so I always end up letting a little air out trying to get it off the valve stem. Not that big a problem for the tires, but a huge problem when airing up the shock. I cna work around it by only putting in on the stem lightly, and holding it in place so it doesn't pop off from the pressure, but it's still a little annoying.

THey had two of them...i'm sorely tempted to go back for the other one as a spare.

[amberwolf]

I have done various test riding on CB2, and shopping trips that cant' be done on the Fusin test bike, about 60 miles worth. So far I haven't blown up the controller again or burned out the motor, but they both get pretty dang hot.

I still need to see if I can reprogram the controller for less phase current, because while it is nice to have 2.5-3 second 0-20MPH speed, plus at least 10-15MPH on top of that if I have to have it to get out of the way of someone or some situation in traffic where braking would be the wrong solution, I'm going to forget to coddle the throttle at some point and melt something down.


As an example, today I just went to Safeway for some beef for chili, as I only have chicken and turkey around right now, and neither one works well for the chili I want to make. It's only about a 2 mile round trip, but just the mile getting there in the 110F heat plus my lead-thumb got the motor so hot that when I poured water on/in it (because I coudln't touch the windings for the heat), it hissed and steamed. That's generally not good. If it werent' ventilated it would probably have already cooked. The controller was too hot to leave my hand on.

I kept putting more water into the motor on the left side hub-area holes, and spinning it up off-ground, letting it sling the water around magnets and whatnot and then out the outer edge holes on the right side. Took about 3-4 minutes of that off and on to cool it to just noticeably below ambient. It was totally dry by the time I came out of the store about 10 minutes later, and of course felt hotter than the ambient air, even though the motor is shaded from the afternoon sun by the cargo pod, while locked at the bike rack at the front of the store.

The ride back I babied it, so it wouldn't pull more than 1200-1400W peaks at startup, and tried to keep it under 800W for all acceleration, and 300-400W for cruising, at soemthing like 18MPH. Still, both were pretty hot when I got home--too hot to leave my fingers on the windings, and uncomfortable to hold the controller.

Peak battery current on the way there was 108A, and on the way back was 79A, using the 66V (16s) pack.

EDIT: Forgot to note that I changed out the crappy plastic ebrake handle I'd been using for the front rim brakes for one of those Tektro handles Oatnet sent in the box in the previous post. It works MUCH better; I can actually stop using it, though it won't quite lockup the wheel at speed. I also swapped positions of handles, so the disc brake that isnt' working well is on the inside/above and the rim is on the outside/below, for easier and stronger grip of the better-working rim brakes. Still no regen braking till I reprogram it, I guess.


Now back to the chili-makin'.

[Alan B]

Need to use all that motor heat for some cooking.

[amberwolf]

I could probably have fried something with it if I could have transferred it to a pan.

[amberwolf]

Speaking of heat...I am unlikely to get to any of hte bike project stuff this week of vacation; everything else that's priority is taking a lot longer than planned (I just get too tired too easy and have to rest too long).


But, finally, after a few weeks of pondering and preparation, and three days of exhausting sweat-drenched work of shuffling things around in teh house while dodging anxious worried dogs, I have finally moved the bare essentials from the bedroom I've been using for the last 12-13 years to the one my sisters used to use before each one left.

The bed (or rather, the mattress, to a hospital bedframe that has a motor to adjust the shape, acquired for nothing from Freecycle), the computers (because I use them from the bed, whenever I am too tired to do anything else but not able to sleep for whatever reason), speakers, box fan, dog kennels (one is Nana's and one is Fred's, Fred stays closed in hers when I am not here, and Nana likes to sleep in her own sometimes, even when i am here, and sometimes even pulls the door shut after herself). Already had a small window AC unit in there.

The hardest part was moving stuff off of some shelving that would hold up a few hundred pounds of dog foood, up out of reach of the dogs (well, there IS no out of reach if Nana or Hachi really wants it, but....), then moving the shelving into the new bedroom, then stacking hte food up in styfrovoam boxes then the bags on top of those, up to the cieling.

I added several layers of styrofoam saved from boxes fish and plants are shipped in to work, to the much smaller windows this room has, to keep heat out. Works pretty well; you can feel the difference just standing there in daytime. Without it you can feel the heat on your face even from the door to the room, when the room itself is cooled to 85F. With it there's no heatsources in the room that you can feel.

For now I blocked off the AC/evap vent, and added blankets across the doorway on the outside, so the dogs can go in and out of the room when i'm not here and still not cause the window AC to run much more than with the door closed. The dogs are mostly smart enough to go in the cool room instead of staying in the very hot (100F and up) house when I'm at work.


I moved to this bedroom because it is the easiest and cheapest to cool, now that I have finally gotten enough trees growing out front and around the side to shade it (been less successful on the rest of the house, except for one on the north side of the other bedroom at this end of the house, but it isn't enough compared to this bedroom, plus this one gets most of the air from the main house ventilation system due to the shape of the duct system.

That means if I use the evap cooler (which is useless with the current humidity level) or the main house AC (whcih I haven't used in years because it costs too much to run for the whole house), I can block off all the other ducts in the other rooms, and only cool this room (and the hallway, if I use the AC), and use less power and make it much more effective than when I was at the other end of the house, where the narrow long duct doesn't let much air thru at all (so little that it actually has a fan built into the duct to move some more air, but still not enough).

The only big issue i ran into was that i'd forgotten i'd taken most of the outlets in teh room offline a coupleyears back, because a breaker was bad int the box and the landlord never has fixed it (needs a new breaker box to do so, which i can't replace as i don't have an electrician's license for the inspection it would need afterward to get power turned back on). i had to reshuffle circuits on the breakers and left out all those outlets because they weren't needed at the time.

So i went out around I guess near midnight to wire them back in, and naturally just as i was in the middle of the rewiring, the clouds that had been threatening all day finally rolled in with thunder and lightning, and sprinkling. The actual rain held off just long enough to finish an close up the breaker box, and as soon as i was inside it dumped pretty hard, and was still drizzling last time i looked a long while ago, i guess i dozed off at some point, cuz now it's predawn and clear skies, but very wet outside, puddles in the yard as i closed everything up after having let it all air out and cool off during the rain overnight. Now it's only about 85F in the house, and might stay cooler today than the usual, with all the wet outside to evaporate away.

Anyway, now i'm laying back in a room that feels cooler than the other one did, even if it's only a few degrees. I tested it over the last day and a half and for about the same running time of the window AC unit, even though the one in the new room is much smaller capacity than the one in the old room, it gets 3-5 degrees cooler and stays that way. Plus the smaller one uses less electricity. So overall it should cost a lot less to cool this room than the other one, to keep part of the house livable until the weather changes to cooler days.


I dozed off again, and I'm forgetting what else i meant to type. oh, yeah, the ball fell out of hte trackball when i was moving it from one room to the other, and now i can't find it. so I'm using this stupid little Fellowes hand-held thingy called a MicroTrac, which has really crappy buttons that are hard to click, but would be a neat device if it wernet' for that. I spent over an hour looking for the ball, but havent foudn it yet.

i hope if the dogs got it that they swallowed it whole, and it comes out whole. Guess i'll see tomorrow sometimes. Sucks because this is a special ball and can only be replaced with the same kind, and it's only used on this one trackball model, that they don't make anymore, and last i checked costs a fortune to get even a well-used on from ebay and the like. The one I liked even better than this one died in it's electronics that scan the ball, and that one sells used for up to a couple of hundred dollars.

Oh, and the dogs are still not sure about the whole move thing, but they are at least content that I'm laying down now and not moving all over the house, so they are all grouped around me finally dozing. They've been pretty upset about the whole shuffling house stuff around thing.

[amberwolf]

Friday the 13th is usually a luckier day for me, but not today.

Needed to go get more cleaning supplies, and thought I would do regular grocery shopping while I was at it, so I took CrazyBike2 out this afternoon just after the rain stopped for what seems to be the last rain today, and the heat started increasing again as it got partly sunny, with humidity still very high, too.


I tried to hold back on throttle usage, and slooowly get up to speed, but there were a couple times I had to hit it harder because of cars changing their mind after the last second and wanting to be where I was--it is indeed nice to have the 4KW on tap for those moments, but with slightly wet streets I had a bit of trouble keeping it from sliding the rear a little under power when I was also turning, which was one of those times.


A bit less than a mile in, though, just as I was starting to turn out of the parking lot I have to pass thru at 29th Ave & Dunlap, the rear suddenly really got sloppy and I stopped before getting into the street much, and then backed out of the way onto the sidewalk corner ramp.

The rear tire (rather, tube) blew out, and fast. Tried airing up with that nifty new Slime brand electric pump from Goodwill, and no go. Couldn't even get 1psi in there, just blew big bubbles of slimy wetness around the rim at the bottom.

Not really wanting to try to fix the tube on the side of the road in the muggy sunny increasing heat, I abandoned the trip and gently rode it back home at about 10MPH, which is as fast as I could go without it getting super squirrely. Being Friday afternoon, traffic was already getting pretty bad, so I had to wait many minutes to cross Dunlap, as I needed a very large gap in traffic to ensure I wouldnt' cause anyone any problems or skid out and get run over, trying to gun it to get thru a small gap.

Made it home ok, parked it in the living room, and took the Fusin Test Bike instead, as the next easiest one to get to (as the other Fusin-powered bike, DayGlo Avenger, is still not re-completed for the oil-filled hubmotor testing).

Even THAT was a trial just to get there, shop, and get home, but at least nothing went wrong with the bike itself, just a bunch of stupid little things, like my shaded MC faceshield just randomly splitting in half down the front center vertical, for no reason I can see. Maybe I can make something to rivet it back together and still use it. Oh, well, it was good while it lasted.

Anyway, I did finally get home, made a burger, onions, a sort-of garlic bread out of some frozen pizza crust given to me by some friends, and some frozen veggies solar-heated in a glass-topped pan while I cooked the rest on the stovetop and in the toaster oven (which I use outside in the summer). Now is nom nom nom time, with the dogs all around me in a circle wishign they could have some, too.

[amberwolf]

This wwas a heck of a blowout, not caused by a puncture AFAICT. Looks like the rubber just gave out, as it if stretched thin and just blew. Very strange. There is also no sign of any wear, rubbing, or other damage in the area the tube contacted the old innertube I had sliced open and used as an extra thickener shell, and the slime stirp protector outside of that was still in place against the tire.

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The only other thing, which happened because I rode on it while flat, with enough weight on the tire itsel plus enough power in a burst to force the whole tire, protector, liner, and tube to stay in place whle the rim spun inside it, at least once that I could feel, so it sheared the entire valve stem off. So no patching THIS tube either, just like the many others that failed in the stem.

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I was sorely tempted to just stick in the other airless tube like I did in DGA, but for tonight I just changed the tube to another well-patched normal one, which isnt' as thick as I'd like and still has a valve stem I don't trust, like almost every tube I've had so far.

I also changed from the Maxxis knobby to the slick Ohzee sent me his old (but barely used, if ta all) pair of (the ohter one is on the rear of the Fusin bike still). Didnt' test ride it yet. With this tire I have way more clearance than the knobby, both for the fender and the stays, both of which sometimes had rubbing with the knobby.

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OTOH, my clamping dropouts are doing a great job at keeping the axle from spinning, even with this much power, or what I put it thru before I blew up the controller and turned down the amps afterward.

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[amberwolf]

First test has passed, it still holds air just sitting overnight. Gonna ride it around the neighborhood a little and see how it behaves.


Side note: Last two days have been cool and a little rainy, so it's hard to say exactly what the effect of moving to this other easier-to-cool room is, but the "smart meter" usage on SRP's site shows that the last two days are less than half the power usage I had been having for the previous few, and still several KW less than the typical day when I had the bedroom in the other room, with the bigger AC unit (that still didn't keep the room as cool). And this is with this little unit running a lot fo the time, maybe 75-85%, just so I could see how cool it could get, down to maybe 72F. Set normally, to 85F+ ("min cool", as it doesn't have an actual degrees setting), it should use even less power, and still actually keep the room at that temperature.

The other room even set to 95F for most of the day, would give me total house usage around 24-39KW of power for the day, depending on outside conditions. This one so far is giving 22KWH day before yesterday, when I had it on around 25% setting, and 26KWH yesterday when on 50%. Today I have it on "min cool" and it is hotter outside by around 5-7F so far, so we'll see what it reads tomorrow. (edit: it is now getting heavily cloudy again, and may start pouring again for the afternoon--time to go take the clothes in off teh line!)

As a comparison, having *both* units on, when I was doing the actual move from one to the toher and pre-cooling this room, for those two days total house power usage was still only 47KWh the first day and 45KWh second, and the second I only had both on part of the day. IIRC I only had the new room's AC on "min cool". So it's a dramatic power usage drop to be in this room plus using a smaller AC unit (taht can still keep this room cooler than the other!).

Last month's power bill was $118, where the previous had been $65. Let's see where this one goes--typically it's the highest one of the year--last year it was $195!

[ohzee]

That's one weird looking flat. hope those tires work out well for you. I prob put 30 miles on em. I did like them , but
just having a big bouncy tire is much better for my commute especially since I have a hard tail.

that's awesome also the new controller is working so good for you. I cant wait to use my 18 fet one day.

You'd hate to see my electric bill - I am jealous of even your big one. if I lived out there id probably build myself a
man cave in the ground to just use natural cooling. the temps you have to deal with are just crazy. hope your
keeping cool.

[amberwolf]

That's one weird looking flat. hope those tires work out well for you. I prob put 30 miles on em. I did like them , but just having a big bouncy tire is much better for my commute especially since I have a hard tail.

Yeah, CB2 is hardtail too, but since it is such a long bike it actually flexes some so feels like very minimal suspension to me as a rider. However, to the wheel itself, it odesn't make much difference, so I have many more wheel problems than evena regular hardtail bike. It's aired up just above it's minimum right now, at 55PSI. Seems like whenever I go higher than that I blow the stems on the tubes, and I am tempted to run lower but the bike feels yucky when I do.

I test rode it just now for some laps around the block, and it worked fine, and had better grip on the wet street than the knobby. I only stopped when the sprinkling was just about to turn into pouring rain (though that only lasted a few minutes after I came in, and now it's back to sprinkling again.

that's awesome also the new controller is working so good for you. I cant wait to use my 18 fet one day.

Although I need to either beef up my motor phase wires a LOT, or turn down the phase current, becuase I can always smell the wires when I stop if there's no wind. The windings still look pristine, so I guess I'm not getting them all that hot, even though I can't touch them. Hotter than I'd like. I guess I should do both--phase wires *and* turn down the phase current, assuming this one is even programmable. In theory I'd also like to build gate drive circuits for each FET, rather than one for each phase leg like it has now, but I definitely don't have time to do that.

You'd hate to see my electric bill - I am jealous of even your big one. if I lived out there id probably build myself a
man cave in the ground to just use natural cooling. the temps you have to deal with are just crazy. hope your
keeping cool.

[/quote]
Usually, it's a dry heat, and that isn't nearly as bad when you're out in it. But right now it's humid and hot, which makes me feel like I'm back in Texas where it gets sweltering meltering. I do wish I could just dump dirt and rock over the house, and make the lot into a hill instead. Would probably make it so I didn't NEED to heat or cool the house. I'd only need power for charging stuff and lighting, pretty much. And cooking. If this was my house and land, I would be sorely tempted to dig the north portion of the backyard out like a sand pit, and put the resulting stuff over and around the house. I would probably need to reinforce the roof, though. Oh, and I recently found out this house was probably built in 1948, about 20 years older than I thought it was!

I have worked pretty hard to cut the bill down this far, mostly by skimping on power usage wherever it was possible to do so, and still practical. Always turning off lights I'm not using, keeping all the "vampiric" power drains to a minimum by turning off power strips that connect chargers and ac adapters and such, even things like the microwave with its little clock and stuff. Anything at all that eats power, even a trickle, adds up. Back when I started looking for them, I found nearly half a KW of vampiric drains, in dozens of places around the house. Half a KW means 12KWh a day! That is a LOT. Almost half of my current daily usage the past two days.

Hard to believe it could be that much, now, but at the time there were several computers (set to sleep or even hibernate automaticallly), routers/wifi/cablemodem, various "nightlights", clocks, appliances, chargers and ac adapters for things that werent' often used but still always plugged in and drawing power, etc. If it had a wall-wart, it was drawing at least a little power all teh time, in use or not.

You might want to look around for such things you can nuke out of your power usage.


BTW, if you look around, you can find the old X10 stuff from RadioShack at Goodwill and the like, and somteims a bunch of them will be in the little bagged items on the wall, for like two bucks. Iv'e never gotten one that didnt' work, either. Wherever you have a concentration of ac adapters or chargers that arent' in use when you aren't there, just plug a power strip into an X10-controlled outlet unit. Put the master controller unit by your front door. When you leave or go to sleep or whenever you aren't using all those things, press the All Off button and it will automatically turn off all your vampire drains hooked up like this. Then press the All On button when you get back or need to use them. Can save a lot of power (and money).

A less-lazy and slightly more power-efficient way to do this is to just use the power strips without the X10, and go around turning off all the power strips when you leave or aren't using them. But this takes time and more effort, so it usually doens't happen or if people do start doing it, they eventually stop because they feel it isn't worht the effort.

[amberwolf]

I decided to ride CB2 instead of the Fusin Test bike to work today, partly because I had a split shift with a two-hour break between them, and partly because it was windy and looked like severe thunderstorms would hit either before my second shift started, or be still going on when I went home afterwards. CB2 rides much better in such conditions than a regular bicycle, and even if I did crash on it it would probably hurt me less than on an upright.


No wheel or tire (or other) rpoblems, thankfully, so far, in the 11 miles or so I rode today.

I am still having trouble getting used to having so much power on tap, though. If it had been a normal bike, I would have wheelied it at one point; even as heavy and long as this one is, I still had some skittery steering as I hit the throttle, when accelerating to cross a good break in traffic for a left turn across Dunlap on my way home. As soon as I let off the throttle steering went normal again.

I'm not sure if it woudl be fun or terrifying to wheelie CrazyBIke2.

[Alan B]

...

I'm not sure if it woudl be fun or terrifying to wheelie CrazyBIke2.

Undoubtedly both.

[texaspyro]

I'm not sure if it woudl be fun or terrifying to wheelie CrazyBIke2.

There's one way to find out... and remember, we like videos...

[amberwolf]

Gonna be a little while before I try a wheelie, cuz I dun broke it.

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I mean, I REALLY broke it.

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This is the toptube of the center frame section, here:

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A view without the seat in teh way:

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Theoretically it's easy to fix, but it reveals a problem I hadn't (but should have) expected. The point at which it broke is where the cargo pod rails join side to side, with a square tube that runs under and is welded onto that toptube. This means that every time I hit a pothole or bump, especially with heavy cargo, that whole cargo section is leveraged against that point, upward or downward. I can see from the color of the edges that it had already had a small crack in it for a while, down at the bottom, where it is dark. Perhaps 1/4 of the whole circumference?


The actual failure today was caused by a *sideways* force, as I laid down the bike in a skid. I was approaching a red light at Cheryl and Metro Parkway East, when a cyclist with a phone to his ear and only one hand on hte bars, oblivious to everyhting except whoever he was talking to, riding on the wrong side of the road (coming toward me in my lane!) went thru that red light and was narrowly avoided by a car going thru crossways on the green. The car screeched to a stop, very loudly, but the cyclist didn't react at all. He just continued thru the red light and crossed the intersecton , then went around me to my right as if he was the only person on the road.

I however was watching him to see where the heck he was going to go, in case he was going to not go around me so I could go around him, and I couldn't just change lanes because a vehicle (I forget what--it was white) was coming up quickly behind me on my left, and I was watching *him* also, in my left rearview mirror, to be sure he wasn't going to change lanes into mine and rear-end me.

So I began braking very very late, and had to squeeze hard on both front rim and disc brake, as I don't yet have regen braking for the rear yet. This caused me to skid, and I lost steering control as I crossed onto the very slick area right before the crosswalk lines, and slid sideways and onto the left side of the bike, fishtailing the rear to the right.

I have no idea what the car that stopped for the cyclist or the truck on my left did, as they weren't there next time I looked, after I got going less than a minute later (maybe 20 seconds?)

I wasnt' hurt at all except a little scrape on my left knee by the fabric of my work pants, which themselves don't seem to be damaged. But I pulled the bike upright and sat down, and it didn't feel right, and as I tried to accellerate away from the now-green light the bike wiggled a lot and I realized also that the entire steering column and front frame appeared to be bent to the left. At first I thought it was just the seat tilted to the right, as that would easily be possible from such a crash/skid, but the seat was straight.

I rode rigth up onto the sidewalk on the other side of the intersection, on the ramp to the right of the light pole, and looked at the bike, and saw the problem pretty quickly. Fortunately due to the design of the bike and happenstance, the damage left the bike perfectly rideable once I pushed the frame back into alighnment so the tube halves locked into each other sort of, with the seat acting as lever to hold them together. Teh bike was a little wobbly in the steering, but not really a problem--it was FAR worse in the Deathrace where I managed to handle it for quite a ways in those torturous turns, so this was easy; I was only worried that the frame might slip the tubes apart and cause it to collapse under me if I hit any big holes or bumps, so i took it real easy on any kind of those.

It held together perfectly the other mile or so to work, and then the two and a half or so back home after work. I hope to have time to repair it tomorrow before work, but if not I will just ride the Fusin Test bike.



While at work I found this stainless-steel-braided hose in the parking lot, as I went to look for missing carts, and the two shipping straps came from our incoming load today:

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and when I came home, I found these 7" open-reel tapes sitting on my porch, along with this Tasco telescope. I don't know who left them, as there is no note.

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And just before I left for work a package arrived from Kin, with more needs-repair RC LiPo packs and a 3PDT relay:

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and the how-to on an origami wolf:

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I might perhaps use that basic idea to make one from plastic sheet as a "hood ornament" on the front of the bike, if I ever find time. I have lots of plastic sheet saved from various old ad signs at work, from very thin to nearly 1/4" thick. Most of it has been saved to try to make a fairing from at some point.



.

[amberwolf]

I started the repair process today, although it's not as straightforward as I had hoped. In order to insert the new piece of reinforcement tubing, I had to cut out a section that was dented in during construction, to provide a place for the seat's crossbar to embed into at the time (it's not used that way now).
(Pic later)


I measured the diameter as well as possible, using a pair of pliers to hold the tube and a ruler across the far end of the pliers' handles, then measured the various bike frames I have, and settled on the seattube from an already-chopped-up Mongoose as the best fit to go just inside the toptube but still be friction fit, requiring a hammer to install it. But when I cut it and test fit it, it was LARGER than the toptube! How does this happen?

I dunno, but anyway I then used that tube to compare for other tubing, and found some EMT conduit that would easily slip inside the Mongoose tube, and thus ought to fit inside the other--and it almost did, but not quite. So I had to slit it, and I couldn't get the tube to stay in the vise to cut it with the hacksaw, so I had to use the angle grinder to do it. Of course, I could not find the cutoff wheels, or any of the wheels for it, and only had the well-used gridning wheel on there, which cut a WAY too wide slot thru the tube lengthwise, but at least it was done.

Well, almost done. About halfway thru, my hands did their "thing" and I couldn't hold onto either the tube or the grinder, and hit the inside of my forearm with the grinder, taking the skin off a few square inches of it.

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Didn't hurt a bit when I did it, but I knew it would as soon as I touched it with anything... So first thing I did was go cut off a couple of Aloe Vera leaves, and slit them in half lengthwise along the flats, to expose a broad surface of the gel inside. Then I scraped that gel until it was all gooey liquid, and smeared that on the raw area, which hurt like a @)(&#&@#%#@&%(_@#&%)(@#)#%R()@ and I cried but it was done.

Three of the dogs were all around me worried at my noises which were probably scary, because Loki wasn't anywhere to be seen. Fred and Nana were looking like they might not be happy with each other so I had to put Fred up in teh bedroom, whcih she had somehow gotten out of not long before. Here's Hachi and Nana after settling down finally:

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Anyhow, I then cut an old worn-out sock for the elastic top part, and used that to secure another Aloe Vera leaf, also split in half, gel-side onto my raw arm, to let it help heal it. I've found that fresh real live AV does WONDERS for raw skin wounds, burns, etc. Much much better than any of the first aid treatments or antibiotic ointments, etc. So I keep a bunch of them growing in both front and backyards. Real handy to have, as clumsy as *I* am.

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Finally I was all bandaged up, but the throbbing was too much, so I decided to wait on going back to cutting the slot. I had not had a chance to really play with that telescope left on my porch the other night by some nice person, so I dug out an old big heavy videocamera tripod (the kind used for those old 3/4" cameras that probably weighed 50 pounds and were bigger than my dogs), and some zip ties (wanted to use hose clamps but can't find them), and put the TS on the tripod, took it out back, and set it up to stargaze.

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It was just getting past full dark after sunset. About the time I finsihed setting it up, and was trying to focus on some points of light, they got blurry and vanished.

My first thought was GREAT NOW I'M GOING BLIND, TOO! but no, it was just clouds. Clouds everywhere, probably forming as the humidity condensed as the air cooled rapidly up there after sunset. So much for relaxing stargazing.

By this time it was time to feed the dogs, whcih nowadays also means coaxing Hachi to eat, as she no longer inhales her food like she used to, and I have to stay with her to talk to her while she eats, or she just leaves. She still has a heck of an appetite, just doesn't want to eat without me there, I guess. I dunno what the deal is.



Finally, once that was all done, I just said heckwithit and cut the slot, and then I could squeeze the tube to get it into the toptube. But fitting it in there was not as easy as all that. First I had to lift up the whole center and front of the bike, and bend down the front end to give me space to insert the new tubing inside the front part of the toptube, and then lower it down into the rear part of the toptube.

I had hoped to do it by taking out the toptube and steering from the seattube at the front frame, but there was no way I could insert the very long seatpost that's part of teh steering frametube down into the seattube once the reinforcement tubing was installed--the only choice was to bend the entire front frame downward at the former chainstay points at the front BB, then back upward to put it back together with reinforcement tube already in the front toptube, pushing it (with a sledgehammer on the front of the seattube/steertube assembly, inline with the toptube) into the rear stub of toptube still present on the rear half of the frame.

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This worked, and so now the reinforcement tube is in place. But since I had to split the tube to get it in there, it's not as strong as it originally was, even after I weld it into place (which might happen tomorrow, I'm too wiped out to do it tonight).

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Oh, and in the process of retightening the seattube/seatpost/steering clamp bolt,

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I managed to whack my eyebrow area with the end of the ratchet when it slipped off the nut. Took about ten minutes to stop dripping blood; was worried I'd have to superglue it to fix it.

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So some extra reinforcing triangulation bars are going to be added--these black tubes, formerly off the old futon daybed frame I think I have pictured in the new Full Suspension Cargo Bike thread, will go from the front ends of the square tubing used for the cargo pod rails, down to the chainstay meetup points with the front BB. That should effectively triangulate this area in 3 dimensions, and help prevent a future failure of the same type.

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I'd also like to add triangulation from the same rear points up to the point the toptube joins the steering point/seattube, but I can't find the rest of the pile of those black tubes. Gotta be here somewhere, but I still have huge piles of stuff scattered all over that isn't yet in it's new place, after moving the bedroom into what used to be the bike workshop, and all those parts are everywhere in the house until I rearrange the backroom to be the new bike workshop.


Anyhow, I can't weld it until I wheel it out the front door, around the side and thru the backyard to the only 220V outlet I currently have for the welder. Theoretically I could run the cord for the welder thru the bathroom window and then the hall and into the front room, but it won't reach out the front door, and it would be bad for a number of reasons to be welding inside the house like that. For now, it sits like this, without the seat on it:

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I passed by the frame for hte full suspension new bike a few times in all this, and kept considering just finishing it up as a hardtail, instead, without the NuVinci, or some other variation of rear suspension using just a regular biek triangle and BB as pivot, etc., instead of fixing CrazyBike2 up. But there is so much work left to do on that frame, and I don't yet even know if it will turn out rideable with it's current geometry. So...I left it where it sits for now. If I had another week's vacation I coudl take right now, I would consider doing so just to build it up as a CB2 replacement witout all the fancy stuff I envision for it, and build another one to do all that instead. But I don't, and coudln't take it right now even if I did. So...hopefully tomorrow I can weld up CB2 and see how it rides again.

In the meantime, I've injured myself much more today FIXING the bike than I did when I CRASHED it. All I got then was thils tiny scrape, which is already half-healed with the scab peeling off.

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[amberwolf]

Today the skinless area was swollen a little, am working with vitamin C and garlic and topical antibiotics to see about fixing that.

Before work I managed to partly weld the new section of tubing into place, as well as basically tacking the reinforcement triangulation tubes. One issue I found AFTER tacking is that the chain rubs on the rightside tube, but I don't remember this being a problem when I was test fitting it all, so either something moved (I don't see how) or I totally missed the interference when doing the test fits, even though I specifically checked for that. Probably it's just me, especialy since missing-skin-pain is pretty distracting.


I did not get to re-tie-down the wiring so it hasnt' been test ridden. Probably I will finish the welding, after I redo the rightside tube to miss the chain (have to ponder that one), and then maybe do that rewiring I've talked about before, replacing the spaghetti on here with something easier to troubleshoot on those rare occasions something goes wrong.

Sorry no pics yet, probably have to wait for tomorrow.

[Solcar]

Telescope-cool.

For skin sores, I have discovered that a type of massage therapy speeds up healing by boosting circulation. It clears out infections, for one thing. It involves pounding on a spot somewhere usually pretty close to the sore. For the knee, you might try somewhere on the thigh, for example, maybe on the lower inside part. It is trial and error to find a spot that works, and I find the effect usually feels good when it is working.

I have bad feet skin from diabetes damage and I find that pounding on the ankle front, toward the forward side of the joint bones, helps with healing sores or stress of having to be on them. I use the heel of the hand palm (the part near the wrist) to pound there to get rather a resonance going. I used to have infections on the inside of my ankle, but since using the pounding massage therapy, haven't had much of anything, especially ones that have needed a lot of antibiotics like in pre-therapy times.

On the feet, an alternate pounding location is the heel. It is a fairly safe place to try it since the skin there is tough. Then you would use the bottom of the fist. But the effort for good effect seems much greater.

If you get a paper cut on a finger, try pounding the finger on something solid to double, or so, healing time and keep infection away.

My dad had diabetes and did a form of the pounding therapy unknowingly. He used to bounce his foot up and down on the floor. That is the original pounding therapy I thought of too, and I later recalled that he did it prior to me. Later I figured out the passive method that I talk about above, using the hand, that requires much less effort than bouncing the foot on something solid.

[Sancho's Horse]

Attack of the tools!! I know people who never get hu,rt or even dirty while working with tools. For me, this is where I draw the line for hobbyist. Unless there is blood, sweat and/or tears, you are a hobbyist (although sometimes I suspect they might just be smarter than me...perish the thought). I have a grinder scar across my wrist, looks like an attempted suicide with a grinder. I also have a cut across my palm which required 14 hours of surgery (at least that is what they say, I was out...incidentally the gown started with the opening in the back before surgery and ended up in the front...weird, but not a problem until I put on the demonstration of post-surgery walking prowess...well, hello nurse).

I would put some serious gussett on that thing. Even if you triangulate, I would gussett it up. It looks like catastrophic failure just waiting to happen.

[amberwolf]

I might, but it survived over 3500 miles including lots of abuse with heavy loads on bad roads, before this happened. I still have to inspect the whole frame out in the sunlight to see what else might be crackin' though. Really, at this point, anything I do on this bike is just to hold it over till I can complete the next one, so any work I do on it is work I could have done on the next instead, including pondering time. It's still good as a testbed, to find faults like this toptube failure, which upon hindsight looks extremely predictable but I definitely never expected it to fail that way.

If I gussy this one up I will have less reason to buidl the next one; if I know that this one has more failures awaitin' I have more incentive to hurry up on it's successor.

But this has at least taught me one thing not to do, and that's to put a lever arm with cargo pods hanging off of it pushing up on the toptube like this. The new bike is already designed not to do that, so that should help.



re: telescope: I did finally get to try it out just before dawn on Jupiter, Aldebaran, and Venus. It's good enough to easily see the Galilean moons as bright dots, and just barely make out that Jupiter is striped. But it has a color-blurriness to it, even at the center, from something akin to chromatic abberation. I suspect there are deposits inside on the backs of the lenses, and I'd have to take it apart to clean those out. Not enough time to spend on it for something I am not regularly using (even though I'd love to, it would waste many hours a week if I did, getting lost in the sky).


Re: wounds and such: I can't pound on anything with my hands, it hurts way too much. Sometimes they hurt like I slammed them in a car door even just in day to day living, so anything that abuses them is out of the question. Same thing with most other joints, though except for my knees, none are quite as bad as my hands.

The principle seems sound, however, to force bloodflow to increase. What might be better is a pneumatic blood pressure cuff, using it to repeatedly squeeze and release an area of limb to force blood in and out of it and adjacent areas.

ATM my forearm seems to be healing, as the redness has gone to pinkness, and it isnt' hot anymore. I have been applying the "triple antibiotic cream" as an extremely thin layer over the entire inner forearm, where skin is thinner anyway, and rubbing it in to help force absorption of the active ingredients. Plus munching on garlic cloves, which taste terrible but raw potatoes and some canned stewed tomatoes eaten at the same time help a lot to wash the bitterness down, and keep my stomach from rejecting it later. Vitamin C I take a 500mg tablets every few hours, which is overal some several-dozen-plus times what my body actually needs, so I pee a lot of bright yellow when it dumps the excess. But it is helping as it constantly has as much as it needs to help rebuild things, instead of just a single dose once a day that mostly is gone as soon as it hits the bloodstream, either by usage or filtration by kidneys.

[amberwolf]

Some pics of my welding; it's pretty bad partly cuz it was so hot yesterday I couldn't see well with the sweat running into my eyes, and partly cuz I had troulbe holding things and welding; bad day for my hands I guess. Also because I was in a hurry and did not clean off paint or rust or anything, and just welded right over it. I still need to finish the welding and fix the chainline/tube interference, but it is 104F out there right now, and I dont' feel well enough to be out in it doing hot welding and tool manipulation just now. It's actually only 80F in the cooled bedroom right now, and 93F in the rest of the house, increasing slowly.

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On the topic of energy savings from moving the bedroom, you can clearly see the changeover point:

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The two-day spike is the time I ran both rooms' window AC units, during the actual changeover moving stuff from room to room.


According to SRP's estimator, my bill next month will only be $110, instead of the usual $200+ it has been. Makes me wish I had done this move before summer, as I would then probably have an "extra" $100 or so already saved in cooling costs between late May, June, and early July. At least it will be cheaper from now on, even when they raise the electricity prices.

If I could rebuild the food refrigerators to be better-insulated, and more effective at moving the hot air away from them during their chill cycles, I could probably cut another few percent off the bill. But until I can get a third unit to experiment with, I can't afford to lose the storage space for the food I already have, should I do something wrong and break one unfixably.

I really would like a deep freezer, and I could make a smallish one if I had another full-size refrigerator. I'd just insulate it much better, and remove the separators between compartments, so that it can reach the same low temperature everywhere inside. Then I can modify it's thermostat to run longer if necessary, and add better circulation fans to the heat-exchanger coils on both inside and out. I'd also probably take out the defroster coils, and I can add insulation on the *outside* of it as well as inside, so I dont' have to make the interior compartment quite as small as otherwise with the added insulation thickness. I'd also be laying it on it's back instead of upright, to keep the cold air inside it when opeingin the door.

[texaspyro]

For the wounds, just douse 'em with 91%+ isopropyl alcohol and table salt. It won't hurt a bit. I promise...

[bigmoose]

I'd also be laying it on it's back instead of upright, to keep the cold air inside it when opeingin the door.

Amber that would not be a good idea for longevity. As I understand the freon system, the oil has to be able to return down the suction line if it drops out of solution. If you lay it flat, it will disturb that function and the normal oil circulation in the compressor. If a freon system is designed for vertical, it should stay vertical; horizontal, keep it horizontal. Great savings with the A/C!

[amberwolf]

As I understand the freon system, the oil has to be able to return down the suction line if it drops out of solution. If you lay it flat, it will disturb that function and the normal oil circulation in the compressor. If a freon system is designed for vertical, it should stay vertical; horizontal, keep it horizontal. Great savings with the A/C!

I didnt' actually say it, but I would also be moving the compressor, at least correcting it to remain in it's own vertical axis, as well as anything else that needed to be shifted, as long as I can do so by simply carefully bending the existing coolant lines. Often on older ones (which I am more likely to run across as discards), most of the system is on the bottom and in the back, and thus shoudl be easy to access/alter as needed. I almost snagged one a few weeks ago that only had a bad cooling fan, but they chose someone else as the recipient.

I do appreciate the advice, though--there was a time when I didn't know that and would have probalby killed the compressor.

The A/C savings is better than I expected, especially since this is even with the temperature in the room kept quite a bit lower than in the other room.

Weather today just after 4pm just changed suddenly from lightly cloudy at 105F and a little breeze, to intense sandstorm with winds high enough to pick up my lawn chairs and yard-clipping buckets and toss them about, and scare the dogs into going inside (except for Hachi, who would probabloy stick by my side in an earthquake during a hurricane). Sand and dust was so intense I could look at the sun directly, only a little brighter than a full moon! After the dust passed, temperature dropped almsot 20 degrees for a few minutes, and with the wind not quite as bad, maybe only 20MPH with gusts higher than that, I mowed the grass with the weedeater, and some poopy-raking too. Never did get to raining, though, not evena sprinkle, despite black clouds to the north and west, and some to southeast. Maybe later tonight we'll get some. At least it's only 89F out there right now, and cooling, with wind still going a little.

[ohzee]

Man sure glad that wreck was not any worse then it was and that you are ok.

I sure hate people who are oblivious to everything around them while moving at a fast rate of speed.

You runnin those tires they working ok for ya ? Also how's your lipo looks like with some work you should
have some decent ah to move you around hopefully when U got time to repair.

hope you heal up ok Amber nice to get a good update.