Old Car and Bike rambling

I've been wanting to upgrade the headlight bulbs on my Miata ever since I got it almost 5 years ago and I figured I should probably do it now before I need to drive home in the dark this winter.  I didn't want to be forced to do it when a light burns out because I wanted the luxury of doing it when I had light and warm weather. I picked up a $12 set of LED H7 Bulbs on eBay (free shipping) hoping that LED bulb technology has advanced far enough for them to be useful. I was specifically looking for lights where the chip is very nearly at the same distance as the original halogen bulb so the optics in the headlamp assembly's reflector won't act too weird. This is termed "1:1 design form factor". Passenger side : -remove the windshield washer fluid tank with a 10mm socket.  There is 1 bolt and a nut. -press the tiny button on the plug for the bulb and pull it straight back. I was pulling for 10 minutes before I discovered the dumb button and needed to review the c...

  I picked up that ubiquitous center brake/turn signal from one of the online resellers for less than $10 several years ago. It has worked flawlessly despite having super thin delicate wires. No stray flashing and does everything it's designed to do.  For most cafe/brat builds that's pretty much all that is needed with an eye towards simplicity and minimalist design. I've always preferred a little extra visibility when I'm out because I don't want to get killed if I can do something to avoid it.  So when I saw those turn signal stalks that have "flowing" amber turn signals as well as flashing brake lights I thought it would be a great addition especially since they came as 4 lights. 2 for the front with day time driving lights (white) and 2 for the rear with flashing brakes for less than $15 if I remember correctly. Unfortunately, I discovered that they were really sensitive to stray voltage and either the brake or the turn signal would randomly flash depe...

When that pile of rust you drive doubles in value from filling it with gas, it doesn't make a lot of financial sense to spend $500-600 to pay someone to replace a noisy wheel bearing. It makes even less sense when this is the 4th time the same wheel bearing has needed replacing in roughly 6 years of ownership. After the car left my daughter stranded last year, I paid a shop $1,200 for a tune up to get it running again only to have them tell me it needed another $1k in various other repairs such as a wheel bearing and valve cover gaskets. I was hoping to replace the car with something newer, but the COVID related chip shortages pretty much destroyed the used car market in 2021 making people sell junk for twice their worth. My own goal of retiring in 2022 made spending another $8-10k on a car for my kid a hard pill to swallow so I let my son drive it until it couldn't be driven anymore. The car was marking it's territory wherever it parked, eventually needing a quart of oil e...

I recently ordered these air filter pods from the Internet (cutting out Amazon, just to minimize business with them) before watching a bunch of YouTube builder videos that heavily criticized the quality of these type of cheap pod filters. Each influencer warned viewers avoid these cheapo filters.  To be honest, I'm not sure why I ordered these since I already have pretty good foam Pods installed . I was surprised to find that they were decent quality. The filter material was better than I expected and the sealing was fairly good compared to what I was seeing in those builder 'review' videos. I just wanted to throw out my 2 cents on the topic. I also discovered that the opening wasn't too restrictive, so if spending less than $8 per POD is not too spendy for you, it's OK to give them a shot. I was teaching myself to do some designing in Tinkercad and thought it might be a neat thought exercise to adapt these pod filters to use the rubber boots from the airbox for a ...

 I was finishing up the wiring on the LED Turn signals on the rear of the cb750. The bike had been running pretty good so I didn't think anything to reach up and start the engine to check if the lights worked without any stray voltage flashing after I added resisters to the brake and turn signal circuits. I had forgotten that my son was sitting on the bike a few days prior and left the bike in gear so when I cranked the engine the bike lurched forward off the side stand and I was just barely able to break the fall as it dropped onto the left side. Somehow this resulted in a no start condition with the engine cranking and backfiring but ultimately not turning over. I checked the fuse panel and found the glass tube fuse for the Neutral and Oil pressure blown. No worries, I'll replace it with the spare and boom, blown as soon as the ignition turns on.  This is a head scratcher for me. The wiring looks good so I'm not sure why it's suddenly acting like this after a controll...

When I last installed led blinkers, I fashioned a crude bracket to use the existing seat installation post but felt the lights stuck out a little further than I wanted.  The LED blinkers that I wanted to use were longer than the ones that were installed but have brake flashing as a feature and I wanted that for safety reasons. Old setup with metal bracket A little measuring and some time designing a bracket in Tinker CAD. Then a couple of test fits and redesigns. Translucent green is not a cool motorcycle color but nothing a little spray paint can't fix.