Ah, methinks, the sharper-eyed reader spotted that Sunday was originally missing. That’s because I took the day off and forgot about it. At my age, that is allowed. It means for an easy day so here are the important items in any order. First, it pleases me that my system back West works so well that everything fell into place in record time. My people are completely efficient except for a couple of rotten apples, both Canadians. I’m reviewing the results now but it looks like all the paperwork made it back here before I did. That, peeps, is the way things work with people who keep their word. They don’t know it yet, but everyone gets a $100 Xmas bonus over this.
Like all histories, this blog can convey happenings, but it is as bad as the encyclopedia for communicating the rate at which things occur. Since I got back, the pace has been breakneck, most of it due to all that was accomplished last month in the snow and cold. Hey, I lived in that climate so long, I will always be able to work with it if I have to.
But you know what it is like to have a zillion small items to do, but they are so interrelated that order becomes important. That would sum up a lot of why I’m happy, since proper management is what causes things to fall into place. I’m able to move on and plan what to do with the motorcycle. There is some kind of oil leak, and the clutch has been set up so often, it probably needs new plates. These two problems would cost as much to repair as getting a newer Honda.
Paco, the repairman, knows how to install sidecars. Good thing I asked, because I thought I’d have to buy a new rack. His advice is to keep running this Honda until it actually craters. I didn’t tell him I may consider building a second unit while that happens, but it is never wise to let your mechanic know you have that kind of money. How does the old saying go, that’s like asking a barber if you need a haircut?
While I don’t watch the news, I follow the important developments and I see two other countries are about to launch space vehicles of considerable significance in my books. India and China. I discount all LEO (low Earth orbit) missions as a repetitious waste of money duplicating what the Americans and Soviets perfected by 1960. And even they were slack-assed about that, taking 15 years after the Germans launched V-2s into the stratosphere to achieve orbit.
To me, space means at least the Moon and certainly anything further, so India gets mentioned. My visit there in the 80s told me how dead set that nation was on copying western technology using their vast pool of cheap (meaning starving and underpaid) labor. But they are incredibly good at this type of reverse-engineering and will soon flood the space market with bargain launches, mark my words. They may be buffoons who do it all by trial and error, but they are better at it than Japan ever was.
Note that Japan has consistently failed to get to Mars. India is sending an orbiter there, not to be confused with the immensely more complicated landing of a probe. But that won’t be long following. The Chinese are on a similar path but my spider sense says their technology is far more military-motivated and thus not as sensitive to costs. They are landing a probe, but only to the moon. I’d say both projects rival in terms of mission complexity. And both launches are reputed to cost less than $100 million, something America hasn’t managed in decades.
Make no mistake, these countries have learned from our mistakes and carefully adopted only what works. They have replaced all the expensive American parts with home-grown versions. The boosters have a distinct Soviet look but common sense says the circuit boards and miniaturizations are totally duplicates of USA-based design.
ADDENDUM
What did we learn today? When not traveling, new information is a priority around here, and I told you about the club decision to look at motorcycle wiring. Do not confuse this with becoming a motorcycle electrical repairman. Nobody said that. But yes, we learned plenty so far without any hands-on.
Top of the list is that most electrical problems are a bad ground. That’s a pleasant finding because we know that about wired circuits and are used to testing for that systematically. The majority of booklets specify a test instrument we do not have on the club bench, but I’ll source it: a self-powered test light. I’m going to presume they mean battery power.
We discovered the 55-wire rule of last day is nearly bang on for all but the most complicated motorcycles. The two types of ground are direct and wired. Most components are wired grounds, and this is a major source of opens and shorts. The wires are stranded for flexibility. These are the colored wires normally found in bundles called a harness.
The common point for these wired grounds is the fuse box. Most direct grounds are served by a single fuse near the battery case. Only recently manufactured motorcycles consistently use waterproof connectors because special tools are needed to replace them. I found many warnings about wire gauge, but we already know to measure the wire, not the insulation. Different thicknesses of insulation on the same size wire is a headache to work with.
Most components work on 12 volts, some don’t, such as the sensors and fuel injectors. Good, because those are the very parts we are least likely to test. We are looking for corroded connectors, bad grounds and damaged insulation. Other than that we need only test for voltage and voltage drops, which the club is already proficient at.
We are currently amassing groups of diagrams that separate out major components from the messy schematics that try to show the entire electrical on one page. The engineer that came up with that idea needs a few volts applied to his nether regions. No, Harley and Honda, I am not kidding about that. The grief caused by all-in-one wiring diagrams is inexcusable.
The next step is to get a motorcycle chassis and find all these wires. At this point we are not going to troubleshoot components. Most have functions so obvious that either they work or they don’t. And when they don’t, it is probably because the voltage has dropped below 11.5 V, something the club learned the hard way about DC electricity.
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