Our own leaning tower of Pisa.
The procurement corruption that gave the world the leaning tower of Pisa continues to this day.
I took that snap in January, 2011, when the vaunted Millennium Tower, a blot on the skyline of San Francisco, was being completed.
Here is the story today:
There again, when the Big One hits, it’s going over in any case.
Panasonic G1, kit room.
Future grandmaster.
While waiting at the car wash, dad decided to teach his young daughter chess. As he taught her the permitted moves for each piece he was rewarded with a squeal of delight. A joy to watch.
iPhone 12 Pro Max, processed in Focos.
Admirers.
With the furnace that is summer in Scottsdale gradually cooling, early morning runs to the bagel place are once more on the cards.
This admirer, with his fine companions, gets it:
The old BMW Airhead is in fine fettle after a summer overhaul, and much prefers the cool morning air to the alternative.
iPhone 12 Pro Max snaps.
A better mousetrap.
Multi-purpose tools are generally useless. The perfect example is the Swiss Army knife which some bozo, who has never turned a nut or bolt with intent, gave you for Christmas.
Of the dozen tools on mine only one is of use, the magnifying glass, and even that cannot be deployed without breaking a nail. I use the rounded end of a paper clip. I keep it because my long deceased mum gave it to me, thinking she was doing me a favor.
But the Swiss thing is, after all, a toy. A serious mechanic will never use his and keeping this whopper in your pants will invite Mae West’s greeting wondering whether that is a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see her?
Now let’s look at the four most useless tools that just about every mechanic has in his tool chest.
First there’s the Crescent wrench which all and sundry brought up in England know as the Bodger Wrench:
You try and adjust this horror to grip the hex head of your choice, find the jaws parting and the air gets blue with the ensuing garage language as you round the corners on the hex. So why do I have so many, you ask? Because I too was once young, foolish and ill educated. Now they reside on my peg board for decoration and as reminder that there’s one born every minute.
Moving on, we have Channellock pliers:
These specialize in brutalizing your fastener, insist on slipping, require near Schwarzenggerian feats of strength to use and, into the bargain, do a nice job of rusting out after a while. The patina may give you that warm glow of prizing a well used tool, but there’s nothing to prize or use here.
Aaah! you emote. But there’s always that handy standby, the pair of pliers.
Uh huh. And shame on BMW for including this in the Airhead toolkit. The jaws are never parallel, meaning whatever they grip will be trashed, you can apply no effective leverage to the short handles and the cutter simply does not cut it. Useless for either gripping or parallel squeezing.
Finally we have the ultimate vice, the Vise Grip:
This device has probably been the cause of more garage injuries than any other. It will fail when you need it most, your busted knuckles testimony to its gripping power. No more need be said.
The solution to all of the above comes, unsurprisingly, from Germany, or West Germany as I remember it, which is where my BMW R90/6 motorcycle originated in 1975. (Except for Walter Kaaden’s magnificent two stroke MZ racing motorcycles, I struggle to think of anything good that came from East Germany). The machine came with one of the very best toolkits ever included with a motorcycle, and once I discarded the pliers it looks like this:
The red handled beauty at the left is a Knipex (pr: ‘Kinniepex’) pliers wrench, and it looks like this:
This costly alternative to the above four shockers is actually cheaper than the aggregate outlay on the garbage tools. The jaws are always parallel, ensuring a proper grip on the flats of the hex. The jaws are smooth, meaning no marring. The cam system results in a tightening of the jaws as you apply torque to the tool and they are perfect for parallel squeezing of two surfaces to reduce their separation.
I bought the 175mm (7+ inches) as it fits nicely in my on board tool kit and allows me to easily apply a massive 85 ft.lbs. of torque to any fastener in sight. There is a metric size indicator in the window, thus ….
…. but if you watch the video in this link you will see how to use the tool without having to guess the size of your fastener. You want to emulate the ratcheting action of a ratchet handle? Yup, it’s there. Check the video.
Will I chuck out the horrors introducing this piece? No. They serve as reminders of errors past. But the Knipex is my ‘go to’ upgrade for all of those. And the heirloom quality means your son will enjoy the tool as much as you did. Does the Knipex obsolete those nice six sided sockets and ratchets and German (Stahlwille) or French (Facom) wrenches in your garage? Of course not. But it’s just the thing for on-the-road-repairs.
Keeping cool.
The missionary work to insulate and air condition the garage is paying off mightily.
As the riding season here in Scottsdale runs from September to April that leaves the furnace months of May through August to catch up on annual maintenance tasks on the motorcycles. And as it’s many years and miles since I attended to the sealing of the top end on my 1975 BMW R90/6 it was high time to see who is who and what is what.
Aficionados of the breed will tell you that, unlike British bikes, BMWs do not leak. Uh huh. The reality is that those large horizontally opposed cylinders contain connecting rods which move merrily up and down with every stroke, causing vertical vibration of the barrel against the engine case. Eventually that leads to oil seepage, as this image discloses:
The problem is compounded by the hardening of the rubber pushrod tube seals below the cylinders. These serve to connect the pushrod tubes to the engine block and with age these seals lose their pliability and can even crack. The airhead will not cease running, but the resulting mess eventually manifests itself as oil on your boots.
So the cylinder barrels have to come off to permit cleaning of the engine block and replacement of the base gasket and pushrod tube seals. Mercifully, the design of the horizontally opposed airhead twin makes this a relatively simple task.
Once one of the circlips is popped out the wrist pin can be extracted using a puller and the head with the attached valve assembly comes off, disclosing the mess underneath:
And that’s about it.
Yes, it hit 117F outside yesterday while I was doing the work, luxuriating in 80F comfort in the air conditioned garage.
iPhone 12Pro Max images.