Skully's Blog

I’m glad I didn’t hit this with my bike

skullyface — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 21:12:37 +0000

I was driving my Wrangler home from doing some photography on Saturday and I heard a very loud THWACK sound. I knew something had happened but since I was close to home I just kept driving. When I got home and parked the Jeep, I got out only to hear the steady ssssssssss sound of my tire going flat. I couldn’t believe what I saw. The bolt that was embedded in the tire was the single biggest “nail” I’ve ever pulled from a tire.

I’m planning to take the tire to Discount Tires this week just to see if my road hazard will cover this. I seriously doubt it can be repaired.

Tailgaters

skullyface — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:10:08 +0000

Drivers who tailgate other drivers (especially bikers!!!) should be pulled out of their vehicles and bludgeoned to death with their own torn off limbs. I was riding my motorcycle home in the rain on Friday and some moronic, SUV-driving, mobile-phone-talking broad was following about 6-10 feet @55mph. I gave her my polite “back off” hand motion which she promptly ignored. So I moved into another lane. It’s cold and raining…mind you. At that point some other idiot (also in an SUV…surprise) started doing the same thing. At least he responded to the back-off gesture a little better. Sheesh. If anything ever makes me snap it’s going to be one of these “people”.

I wonder…do federal prisons allow inmates to blog?

Repairing a stripped shifter shaft

skullyface — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:58:48 +0000

In November of 08 I rode my 2006 Harley Davidson “Street Bob” from San Antonio, TX to Scottsdale, AZ for a work-related conference. On that trip, my shift level went slack. I stopped in to the HD dealer in Tuscon and they helped me stay on the road by tightening the shift lever down so tight that it wasn’t going anywhere for the rest of the trip. Well, the problem was that the 800lb gorilla that torqued down the lever screwed up the gaskets and seals that keep the chaincase lube inside the primary. So I developed a lube leak at the shifter shaft. So now it was stripped AND leaking oil. Time to repair it.

The shifter shaft is not an expensive part. It was about $30 from HD. No big deal. The problem is that it goes through the primary chaincase. In order to get to this $30 part I had to remove the battery, the battery box, the starter, the left foot peg bracket, the chaincase cover, the compensator sprocket, the clutch pack, the automatic chain tensioner and the chaincase housing.

All of this took about 5 hours total. If I had not already had all of the right tools for the job [table lift, speed sockets, torque wrenches, retainer clip pliers, etc] the job could have taken twice as long.

“New” strobes for the studio

skullyface — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 04:49:52 +0000

Crystal

Originally uploaded by skullyface

We (my wife and I) got a “new” set of strobes for our home studio. Not really new, in fact, they are probably 30 years old but they are new to us. We had a photo session with Crystal (our live-in model) and we did some playing around with settings and power. Anyway, this was one of the resulting photos. You can check out my flickr page for some of the others.

Apathy

skullyface — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:19:56 +0000

This is my blogspace. I’m notorious at not keeping these things up to date. I doubt this blog will be any different.