More uninteresting crap… Now from England!

Buy a new lawn mower.

My old mower crapped out today. I think it's just a simple carb problem, but I've got too many other things that “need fixin'” to piss around with a lousy lawn mower.

I was tempted to just call the guy who cuts my neighbor's lawn and pay him to do it for the rest of the summer. But something about that just doesn't sit right with me… The $20/cut probably has something to do with it, but really I don't think that's all of it. There is something off-putting about paying someone else to do my chores (nothing wrong with talking my mother into doing it though )

So, $192 ($180 + tax, it was a floor model) later I have a Toro 20016 Variable Speed 12″ High Rear Wheel mower and a nearly scalped lawn. I should have raised the deck a bit, especially considering how lush it was, but I had a grudge against the grass. The mower works reasonably well; it's nice to have a self-propelled mower again. I really wanted a reel mower, but they apparently suck when faced with cutting long grass… that's the only time I cut grass so that option was out.

Next time, I'm buying a goat.

I think this should be the last “another new car” blog entry for a while (Deb hopes), as I now have a car for almost any occasion.

Others look for a Swiss-Army car… one that can do anything. The end result is usually some bloated, fugly, uninspring turd-mobile. I take a different approach… a small fleet of vehicles, each filling a particular niche. With the addition of a truck in November, I had a good winter vehicle, something to haul with, something to tow with, and most importantly (as far as she is concerned), something Deb could drive.

The only thing missing was a true GT (gran turismo) car, a car built to cover long distances at speed in relative comfort and style. Fortunately, I had steered a friend into buying just such a car 15 months earlier, a 1995 Lexus SC400. I did this with the knowledge that he would soon be moving back to NYC, likely never to own a car again.

Now that car is mine… well, that's if I can keep Deb from claiming this car as her's too (as she did with the truck.) The SC400 is an automatic, so she can drive it too. (She's already developing a taste for the V8.)

The first order of business was a good wash and wax. Since my mom needed a little work done on her Acura, we arranged another labor swap. I took care of her car, and she took care of mine. The Lexus really needed it too… I don't think it had a proper wax job since Andrew owned it.

I also removed all the aftermarket window tinting. I might not have bothered if it didn't have a slight purple tint. Smoke or bronze is fine, but purple is ghetto in a bad way. Initially, I was pleased that the tinting came off without much of a fight. I was almost done when I realized that the adhesive remained stuck on the glass. Ack. That meant another few hours with acetone and a lot of elbow grease. I'm glad to see it go. Tint is cool, but it really was diminishing visibility, making the blind spots even blinder.

Now for the photos:

…or now I'm another asshole with loud a motorcycle.

The stock pipe on the Daytona is crafted from equal parts of boat anchor and depleted uranium. That can be the only explanation for its enormous weight. It's ugly too… It just doesn't fit the style of the bike. However, it does the job. The result is a nice burble at idle, and a good bass-y growl on the throttle.

So I had a hard time justifing a new aftermarket exhaust. I never liked loud pipes anyway (I don't need to give the po-po any more reason to give me a ticket.) But while I was replacing the sprockets I saw that the can was starting to split. It was mostly cosmetic, but that was enough for me. Off to E-Bay I went…

I still hate E-Bay, but for some things it's the easiest place to go. Now that I figured out the art of sniping (placing a bid right before the closing of an auction), I'm managing to get some better deals too.

I picked up a Triumph factory high mount race can ($150 with the stock headers too!) By “race” they mean “for off road use only” which really means “fucking loud.” The new can is gorgeous (and 10lbs lighter than stock!) Although it did take some polishing to get it there. Thankfully, Triumph doesn't cheap out on the chrome plating, and all it needed was 30 minutes with a buffing wheel and some polishing rouge. Curiously there was a fair amount of plastic burned onto the pipe at one part that was a pain to remove. But once it was gone, the pipe looked as good as new.

Old and busted, and the new hotness:

Anxious to hear what the new pipe would sound like I fired it up… Holy shit. At idle it sounds like a top fuel dragster… loud, raw, angry. On the throtlle, it is just unreal, just shy of “Call the police” loud. I will need to tip-toe around the neighborhood, because everyone in it will know what I'm up to.

On the road the sound is a bit more reasonable, although quite a bit louder than wind noise below about 110mph.

When I got home I figured out where that burnt plastic came from:

The pipe was melting the heel off my dress boots. I'm going to have to do something about that.

The gearing on the Triumph Daytona is notoriously long… anything less than 20mph is a struggle. Wound out, 1st gear will take you well past 70mph.

Seeing that I was at 12,000 miles with the original chain I figured it would be a good idea to tackle two problems at the same time. After some research on http://www.t595.net I decided on a 45T rear sprocket to replace the factory 43T. http://www.sprocketspecialists.com was one source I considered, but I ended up using http://www.afamusa.com/. I also decided to go with the 520 chain conversion… afamusa made it easy, I called them up and told them what I wanted, no problem. For about $220, I got RK's best Heavy Duty XW-Ring chain, a steel 18T front, and an aluminum 46T rear (I would have had to wait for a 45T, so I decided if 4.5% shorter gearing was good, 6.6% would be better. )

I also ordered some Carbone Lorraine pads through the t595.net shop. The fronts are back ordered for a week or so, but the rears showed up today, just in-time for me to install them with the new chain and sprockets.

The installation was uneventful (other than a few rain showers) and it only took about 2 hours taking my time. I really love working on this Triumph… it's so easy compared to working on my cars. Even the grease on my hands is easier to wash off. I found that my rear brake pads were almost completely shot… almost no pad material left. Must have been the previous owner, as I almost never use the rear.

I did weigh the chain, and the new chain is 525g (1.15lbs) lighter. I forgot to weigh the new sprocket, but it had to be at least half the weight of the steel original.

So far, I am totally happy with the upgrade. 46T on the rear is perfect (IMHO), I lucked out that they were out of 45T sprockets.

Around town the bike is less like my old FZR400 off the line, and much more like a liter bike should be. I barely need to slip the clutch to get away now. Puttering around at parking lot speeds is a lot easier too. And I can't really notice the difference at highway speeds.

Oh yeah, as expected, wheelies come pretty easy too… at about 5 or 6k rpm it is simply a matter of yanking back on the throttle. I'm still too much of a pansy to really loft one (I've wheelied the scooter more impressively) but it still puts a grin on my face.

“Flyger devoted himself to studying squirrels because, as he explains it, they weigh less than a deer and don't bite like a polar bear. He used to smear a tree behind his Silver Spring home with a mixture of peanut butter and Valium and then tattoo the squirrels that he found passed out below.”

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/18/AR2005051802251_2.html]

montage lyrics…

I stumbled across an interesting use of the Google search API today… It's a montage generator, which uses the power of Google Image Search.

It is interesting to see the difference between searching for “denovich” vs. “mark deb denovich”

The addition of Deb certainly softens my image.