Category Archives: Photographs

Nuts, bolts and spacers

Motorcycles

Design for design’s sake.

The BMW GS line (GS is German for what we now call ‘dual purpose’) is not only one of the most famous and long-lived motorcycle designs, it also saved BMW from abandoning motorcycle manufacture when introduced in 1980. The idea was to craft a bike as capable on tarmac as it was on an unpaved forest road and the line continues to this day with aggregate production exceeding half a million. That’s a lot for a bike.


My 1992 R100GSPD. Awful aftermarket Parabellum windshield fitted.
The ‘Bumblebee’ color scheme is the one you want.

And the idea took off. It was something new after a long run of high quality but largely identical motorcycles from BMW, more known for their use by police forces worldwide than for exciting exploits off road. BMW pushed the idea by entering one in the Paris-Dakar rally which it handily won and the GSPD variant was born, with a gargantuan 9.25 gallon plastic gas tank. The airhead motor – meaning the trusty, horizontally opposed, air cooled twin – had grown to 1000ccs from the original’s 800, and was putting out a decent 60 horses or so, more than adequate for anything encountered in the real world.

So knowing that I needed a summer project in the furnace-like heat of southern Arizona, and also knowing that my garage would be air conditioned and the very lap of wrenching luxury before the heat arrived, I snapped up a lightly used GSPD from a fellow member of the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America. A decent lot, generally of trustworthy mien. The owner of many years was giving up riding at age 82 and was happy to pass it down to this sprightly 69 year old piker, along with more accessories and spares than you could shake a stick at. Thank you, Chuck in San Diego. I would tell you the cost but it’s not nice seeing grown men (or even women) weep, but when all the extras are disposed of it was pretty close to free. Such is luck. I’ll probably sell it in a year or so. I prefer the older machines.

The immediate and obvious things that had to be done was to send off the speedometer/odometer to Rick Borth at Overseas Speedometer to have the mileage adjusted to the correct 40.9k. BMW hit a bad spell in the ’90s with failing odometers and the certificate of speedometer change which came with the bike testified to its having been replaced with a new instrument in 1994, meaning that the reading on the replacement instrument was wrong, a fact calculated to drive any rational rider up the wall. Rick reset the mileage to the correct reading and generally looked the instrument over, fixing anything else which ailed it. Not least of the adjustments made was to correct the under-reading of speed, a common failing of that era’s Airheads. The speedometer was reading 15% low. Now it’s correct, calibrated using a known speed trap in Scottsdale which keeps the police in doughnuts.

Second, the bike came with both Jesse metal panniers and stock BMW plastic ones. The Jesses are just the ticket if you want to ride across some hell hole like Kazakhstan, though quite why any sane person would want to do that defeats me. They are also known to be nuclear war proof. Suffice it to say that they were in mint condition and after removal and replacement with the stock bags – shown above – the Jesses are for sale for a very tidy sum, for they are no longer available from the manufacturer, and very rarely to be found in any condition, let alone mint.

Third, the shockingly bad aftermarket Parabellum windshield had to go, especially as the bike also came with the factory original, twice as robust and thrice as competent. The Parabellum is so poorly engineered that no matter how you adjust it, you can be sure that the sides will strike the tank as the handlebars are canted over. The maker even admits to this on its web site. Hullo! And it was when refitting the stock shield that I realized just how much thought had gone into the design of the mounting hardware.


With the stock windshield. Odometer recalibrated.

I had removed the fairing sides when installing LED warning lights and gauge lighting, so the first step was to install the sides using the stock compound bolts which are center drilled and tapped for attachment of the windshield. Needless to say these are of unequal length, the longer of each pair going in the top attachment point. Now BMW had decided that the tilt of the stock shield should be easily adjusted, so they came up with a pivot hole and slot opening design, seen here:


The pivoting mechanism for the stock windshield.

So what, you ask? A couple of Allen bolts and spacers, no big deal. Wrong! The spacers, both inner and outer, are canted to adjust to the angle of the windshield. They also differ, the lower having a small spigot to allow the outer spacer to engage just so in the correct orientation, with the inner female threaded spacer having a square surround to properly align with the outer part, also being canted. The upper is also complex, this time with a wider spigot and castings on both the inner and outer parts and when you install the whole thing correctly you can adjust the angle of the windshield – clickety-click – by loosening both Allen bolts and having at it. Fear not, the interlocking mechanisms will see to it that nothing falls apart or becomes misaligned. So there you have great design, if insanely complex. And some smart German engineer poured his heart into the math and production dictates of these seemingly innocuous parts so that they would work just so and continue to function properly for 100,000 miles or more. And that, I suppose, is why my motorcycle of choice is the BMW Airhead.

Other fixes? You can see the alloy puck. the previous owner had attached to the foot of the sidestand in the first image, above. This reduces the lean angle with the machine on the sidestand where the heavy, large fuel tank makes the bike want to tip over. Sadly, as with all Airheads since the mid-1980s, BMW makes it extremely difficult to deploy the sidestand from the saddle as it cannot be seen. So I removed the puck, drilled a transverse hole and epoxied a steel rod in the hole as an extension for the left foot, thus:


Puck deployment extension – the whole thing painted a jolly yellow to match the color scheme.

There’s lots left to do. As with all Airheads drive to the rear hub is by shaft, no chains here, and the dual universal joints fitted to the shaft – dictated by the anti-torque design of the rear suspension – are known weak points, frequently failing without warning at 40,000 miles. My machine is at 40,900 …. Removal and inspection is no big deal and the aftermarket Airhead community is so robust that much improved designs with proper Zerk grease fitting can be had for peace of mind – and piece of wallet. Then there’s the panoply of odds and sods to be attended to which is normal for a bike of this age, but nothing to lose sleep over.

And I will be doing that work here:


Inside the air conditioned garage. It’s a toasty 100F outside.

Adding a/c to the garage

Motorcycles, Photographs

Not trivial, but maybe essential.


Scottsdale, AZ temperatures.

The problem with this graph is that it’s incorrect. The last three years’ summer highs have been 115-122F, and while we have negligible humidity, 115F without a/c would see Phoenix and Scottsdale at 1900 population levels.

I have been grumbling about how unusable the garage is, for this committed mechanic, in the summer months. 5 years of complaining is enough. Temperatures soar up to 125F, rubber parts rot, batteries die (I wonder how many AZ Tesla buyers have contemplated replacement of their $10,000 batteries after 5 years?) and you enter the garage space at your peril.

There are two kinds of people in this world – those who only see problems and those who conjour solutions. My a/c maintenance guy belongs to the former population judging by his answer to my request for a quote to add a/c to the garage. A litany of “no can dos” only taught me two things. I need a new a/c guy and this is not nuclear physics.




My 1975 BMW ‘Airhead’ was formerly stored in the home
to save it from premature heat death in the summer garage.

So I researched the matter the way any good, numerate, engineer would and identified the following issues:

  • Air conditioning hardware. A ducted system is a not an option. High cost, lots of messy construction work. A ductless one, which splits the compressor (outside) from the evaporator (inside) is the answer. Run power, freon and condensate drain hoses through a 3″ hole in the wall and construction is done. Integrated wall units and portable devices have insufficient cooling capacity for my setting.
  • Attic insulation. In the good ol’ American Way, meaning chintz on cost wherever you can in pursuit of the sacred God of profit, the attic was completely uninsulated. A major source of heat. This will have to be insulated.
  • Door insulation. There are two garage doors, a double and a single, aggregating some 216 sq. ft. of radiating area. While the doors face north, a good thing, the inside temperature of the un-insulated doors is equal to or greater than the ambient temperature outside, meaning 216 sq. ft. of heat radiator in the summer months. The doors require insulation.
  • Wall insulation. The south interior garage wall is part of the home so it is insulated, as code requires. But the east and west walls are un-insulated, hurting energy efficiency, but these are a relatively small part of the problem, so I am deferring insulation considerations until more data are to hand.

The air conditioner:

At the quality end of the spectrum three manufacturers dominate – Mitsubishi, Fujitsu and Daikin. All come with long warranties and all claim to be made in Japan …. which means they are probably made in China. They use R410a freon, the version which claims to slow global warming from emissions. Uh huh. And I also have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale, if you are interested.

My garage is 20′ x 36′ x 9′ high, and the typical recommendation is 0.0035 tons/sq.ft., meaning a 720 sq.ft. garage requires a 2.5 ton a/c unit. (2.5 tons = 30,000 BTU). Quite why square footage rather than volumetric data are used beats me, but that’s what everyone seems to do. For a small incremental cost of $700 I went with 3 tons (36,000 BTUs).

A ductless system keeps the compressor outside, with feed (liquid) and return (gas) rubber hoses to the internal evaporator unit, along with a 230v power cable and a drip tube to route the condensate to the outside. Scottsdale summers are fairly dry, but you still want any condensate outside, not on your garage floor.

I got a vast range of estimates on a 3 ton system, covering an installed price range of over 2:1. My final installed price, including the electrical work (230v 30 amps to the compressor, then 230v from compressor to evaporator) was $5,600 for a Daikin unit (RX36NMVJU/FTX36NVJU) which also includes a heater for the winter months. That includes 10 year parts and 10 year labor warranties, which may well be worth yesterday’s discarded cheese sandwich. I elected not to pay the $2,000 premium for a Mitsubishi unit, the claimed increase in efficiency taking some decades to recover in terms of energy costs. The Daikin can be purchased for $3,000 but you will lose the 10 year warranty which comes with installation by an authorized reseller. So that means I paid $2,600 for the 14 hours (2 men, 7hrs each) to install the unit and run 230v power. As the electrical work alone was separately quoted at $1,000 by another proponent, the labor rate for the a/c work comes to $114/hr, which includes the tools and expertise of the installers. I think that’s a decent price.

In addition to air conditioning the unit also includes 36,000 BTUs of heating, though that is not a major need in southern Arizona winters. We get snow twice a century here ….


The retaining plate for the evaporator goes in.


A 3″ hole is drilled though the wall for the freon hoses, the drip hose and the power supply.


The installed evaporator/heater.


A 230 volt, 30 amp breaker is added to the breaker panel, the power
being routed in steel tube conduit as required by code.


The casing will hold the hoses, drip tube and power cable.
The slight slope of the upper casing is required by the drip tube.


Even with uninsulated doors and attic, 91F outside is easily constrained to 76F inside.


Garage door insulation commences. All hardware must be removed for a proper job.


14.5″ of Owens-Corning fiberglass insulation is sprayed into the
uninsulated attic, for an R38 insulation rating. The installed cost was $1,167.
You can pay less to ‘mom and pop’ and get ripped off. If the installer
does not use rulers to confirm insulation depth, go elsewhere.


The finished outside installation. Two 4 ton ducted home units are in the back.
The new casing has been painted to match. The exhaust fan of the ductless compressor
is faced away from the center ducted unit. Blowing hot air into those fins
is not a good idea. The compressor sits on added cement plates. The
proximate on/off switch on the wall is required by AZ code.


Completed insulation on the double door. The single door gets like treatment.
I used this product from Amazon. $200 for both doors. Never remove
the bottom plates, circled. These retain the tension cables for the lifting mechanism.
Reckon on 60-90 minutes to insulate each horizontal panel.

Some added thoughts.

The garage door insulation is attached to the ribs of the doors using double sided tape. Your ribs must be scrupulously cleaned first, for proper adhesion. I used isopropyl alcohol. Additional bonding is provided by removal of the hinges/locks/handles/drive attachments by removing these when installing the insulation. Once replaced these help keep it in place. The rear of the insulation is silvered and leaves an insulating air space to the inside of the door. That’s good for energy efficiency. The material adds little weight, though I had to tweak the ‘down’ torque limiter on the motor box a couple of turns to prevent the door reversing. The small incremental load was causing the logic mechanism to think it was encountering an obstacle, causing reversing at the limit of its travel.

My son helped me with this installation as removal and replacement of the long cross braces on the double door is a bear. As the locating holes for the screws can no longer be seen once the insulating material is in place, you need to do some careful measuring to know where they are.

Noise levels? Here are the manufacturer’s specifications:


Noise levels are commendably low.

The electronics in the evaporator have an option to swing the baffles back and forth. I find that to be an irritant and have them set to stationary. There’s a button on the remote for a 15 minute ‘turbo boost’ of the a/c in the event a door is opened to move a car (or motorcycle!). Further, the electric eye on the evaporator senses motion, slightly accelerating the fan when you are working in the garage. All told, there is a good deal of programmability. Nice.

Theoretical incremental energy cost:

My electricity use for the home in the warmest summer months costs $480 per month. $360 of that is for a/c, comparing summer bills with winter bills. Winter electricity use is for the kitchen oven and lighting/appliances only. The home is heated by gas. These are AZ rates. If you are in TX, reckon one half of these amounts. If in MA, NY or CA, double them.

The volume of the garage is 32% of the home.

Therefore, I conclude that the incremental electricity cost for the garage air conditioning system will be:

$360 x 32% = $115, assuming the garage is maintained at 76F, the same as the home.

An alternative approach is to compare the tonnages of the garage a/c versus that of the home system. Those are 3 tons and 2 x 4 tons, respectively. Thus, you would expect the ductless system to consume 37.5% (3/8) of the energy used by the home system, which gives an incremental energy cost of $360 x 37.5%, or $135/month. A similar result.

Whatever it turns out to be, it’s going to be a whole lot cheaper than lying on the loony doctor’s couch. I find wrenching to be far more of a salve for what is between my ears.

Actual incremental energy cost – update August 29, 2021:

With four months’ bills on hand, the incremental average monthly cost has been $132. Daily highs have been in the range 90-117F. For the summer of 2022 I will program the unit to allow 90F overnight, which should see some modest savings.

The highest daytime temperature recorded so far this summer is 117F and the system had no issues with maintaining all areas of the garage at 80F.

Here’s the garage door outside (116F ambient) and inside:


The inside door insulation, courtesy of NASA, is a winner.

The evaporator (the unit inside) has three removable air filters under the decorative flap. The maker says these should be removed and flushed with water monthly. My setting has very low airborne dust and I have found that a quarterly cleaning frequency is fine. It took me a couple of minutes to do. At the same time I also hosed the fins on the compressor (the outside unit) with a water to clear detritus and maintain optimal ‘breathing’ of the unit.


1975 BMW R90/6 on the lift and the 1992 R100GS PD in back.
It’s a toasty 117F outside, wrenching heaven inside.

iPhone 12 Pro Max images.

Christine

Photographs

Better than the movie.

The 1983 movie Christine may well have the most asinine plot of any movie yet made. It’s about a car that eats people ….

I was reminded of that horror when chancing on this 1965 Chrysler New Yorker at the local tire place. The owner/mechanic came over to regale me with the upgrades which see the 454 cubic inch motor (that’s a whopping 7.4 liters) put out some 450 horsepower. It’s a testament to American craftsmanship and paintwork if I tell you the car is but 56 years old, and appears completely shot.


454, four on the floor.

The owner assured me he regularly gets offers for it. Uh huh.

iPhone 12 Pro Max, UWA lens, processed in Nik Silver Efex 2.

Fields of Wheat

Motorcycles

An egregious marketing error repeated.

In the 1980s Toyota and Nissan decided that the last bastion of the car market – Germany’s luxury brands – was ready to be conquered. Both spent immense amounts of money developing and perfecting their 5 seater sedans with new V8 engines, a first for the Japanese. And both came out with magnificent vehicles of which a BMW engineer remarked “What are they trying to do? Kill us?”. And indeed the Japanese sedans, marketed under premium names, Lexus for the Toyota maker with the LS400 and Infinity’s Q45 for Nissan’s offering, were superior to the German high end offerings in every way. Performance was equal or better, the interiors were severe just like the Germans’ but, crucially, the Japanese vehicles were reliable, which could not be said for Mercedes’s S Class or BMW’s 7 series. They were also $10-20,000 cheaper.

Yet of these two great machines the more modestly spec’d LS400 wiped the salesroom floor with Infinity, and has maintained that lead since 1989 by a large margin. The cause was the now famous ‘Fields of Wheat’ advertising campaign waged by Infinity and its disastrous US marketing advisers. To emphasize the zen perfection of their car they showed waving fields of wheat with a pretentious voiceover, but omitted to show the vehicle. The LS 400 sold by the dozen as its prosaic ads actually deigned to show the rather staid looking vehicle. The Q45 was disregarded. No one knew what it looked like.

Now let’s jump forward 30 years and we see a variation of this marketing disaster rolled out by none other than Harley Davidson, one of the savviest marketers out there. After all when you saturate the US and much of the rest of the world where roads exists with antiquated, poorly engineered and premium priced motorcycles you must be doing something right and Harley has been doing that for a very long time. But some marketing whiz at HD decided that the time was ripe to introduce an electric Hog and here it is in all its glory:


Probably worth $5,000 or so.

What brought this to my attention was a recent reality TV show named ‘Wrong Way Up’ where two famous long distance riders decided to ride their electric Harleys from the southernmost point of South America to Los Angeles. Those riders – Ewan McGregor of Star Wars fame and Charley Boorman whose dad is a famous Hollywood director – are as likable as they get. Grown men who never outlived their boyhoods, they are fun to watch and are great motorcyclists. So they decided to ride their electric bikes, supported by a large staff driving Rivian electric trucks, seemingly amazed that in cold temperatures the Hog had a range of maybe 70 miles, provided you could even find a charging point with sufficient current to ‘fill up the tank’.

Now it is true there are many unfortunate souls reading this journal who have never thrown a leg over a motorcycle saddle and regard powered two wheels as the work of the devil. Their loss. But even these poor folk know that the one thing above all which Harley sells is noise. So much so that the company tried – and failed – to patent the noise of the Harley’s exhaust a few years ago, a noise which results from the uneven firing intervals of the two cylinders in the gas bikes. This approach to ‘engineering’ also ensures the bike vibrates as if infected with St. Vitus’s Dance. Next time you pull up to one idling at a red light check it out for yourself. A silent Harley is anathema to its white trash buyers and, boy, is the electric Harley silent or what? It does not rumble. It whines. All those jokes about aficionados of other brands riding washing machines will come back to haunt Harley as they look down the barrel of the worst marketing idea since that Infinity Q45 of yore. Comical. Then check the price ….

As for the LS400, mine is a 2000, last of breed before the engines started growing. At 140,000 miles it is like new and it’s some testament to its reliability if I disclose that failure of a stop bulb a couple of years ago saw me angered. But temperate mien returned quickly when I reminded myself that repairs on the predecessor Mercedes S Class were pretty much a monthly occurrence. Switch gear, gearboxes, motor mounts, disastrous air conditioning, awful radio, you name it. All failed regularly.

Got $30,000? Buy a nice BMW classic airhead and bank the $23,000 left over.