The Spechtacle

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Month: June 2009

2009 Suzuki GSX R-1000.. a beast in beasts clothing.

June 17, 2009 / / 0 Comments
Pic from Bikeland.org

Pic from Bikeland.org

I really love motorcycles. I’ve been riding since 1976, and it’s the closest thing to flying without airplanes or drugs. It’s a blast. But, I think we’ve gone too far.

The new Suzuki is a hot rod. It’s about as refined as you can get in a scooter. Gobs of horsepower, revs up to the sky, computers to control all sort of power functions, great feedback from the chassis and on and on.

But, this thing gets to 60 mile an hour in 2 seconds. 2 SECONDS! Not only that but you can get to a hundred miles an hour in 1st gear! Cut it out. what ever happened to running these machines up and down the gears and working the gearbox? Looks like you only need one gear.

It looks to me that only race bike drivers will ever be able to control this thing. It’s too much. As humans, I think we are too good at what we build. We need to back off a little.

greg

Electrical connectors.. an automotive conundrum..

June 16, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I like electricity. I like everything it does for me, between listening to Neil Young on the Ipod to firing the spark plugs and fuel injectors in my Saab. But for the guy who has to fix his own car, it has a price.

connectors

And that price involves connectors. No matter how your car is set up, things have to be plugged in, and therein is the rub. I saw some statistics somewhere that electrical problems consume 80 percent of warrenty expenditures. And of that 80%, the majority is connection problems. Auto engineers are hot on the trail of this problem too, but they are really getting on my nerves.

They have made some progress though. 40 years ago, there was only one kind of connector. For each wire. And these connectors could be plugged into anything, so you really had to have some kind of idea where they went. This wasn’t to big of a problem because there were few wires.

Then they started gathering wires into groups. There were connectors with 2 wires in them, then 3, 4, 5 and up. However, all the 2 wire connectors were all the same, so you wouldn’t be able to plug a 3 wire connector into the item, but any 2 wire one would fit. You still had to know where the wires all went.

Engineers finally got the problem, and now no 2 connectors will plug into the same thing. Every last one is different, even though they might look the same. One problem solved, and another problem resulted from this.

Connector locks.

Now connectors hardly ever fall off, but we have new problems. Getting them disconnected. Engineers have bent over backwards to devise locks and even extra locks to keep them from falling off. But sometimes to fix something you have to take it off. And trying to figure out how this or that lock even works is almost a race against your sanity. With the advent of unique connectors for every electrical item in the car comes a unique lock solution for that individual connector. And worse that that, Engineers have devised an extra lock system that locks the original connector lock. This is called the quality assurance locks.

Now, I really have to study the connector to figure how it comes apart. And every now and then I don’t figure it out and end up destroying it. (Oh Well…) I’ve got this problem right now on a vacuum motor for a brake booster on a 2008 Saab Combi. I still haven’t figured it out, but a new motor is coming in tomorrow. Maybe I can get some clues from that…

greg

North Korea menacing Alaska?

June 7, 2009 / / 2 Comments

Big news story today about Alaskan worries over the North Korean missile threat, The estimated range of the North Korean missile is about 4000 miles, just enough to reach most of Alaska.

The thrust of the article is that Alaska is home to some high profile targets, like the army bases at Fairbanks and Anchorage, and the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay and the oil pipeline terminal at Valdez. To protect these assets, political leaders want more missile interceptor bases and more F-22’s.

It seems to me that North Korea could give a damn about those targets. If anything, it probably would like to land something on Fairbanks or Anchorage just to get the press. But the statement by Rep. Don Young (R) takes the cake. “while 30 F-22’s may be enough to counter the North Korean threat now, it is clear that it won’t be enough in the future.”

Your kidding. What North Korean aircraft could even make it to Alaska? F-22s are no good against their only card, the missile. While they do have an imposing military from a next door neighbors point of view, they are not about to range out of their own back yard. The fact that they have a few missiles that can reach out put them in scud territory. (although with bigger warheads.) It’s not like they can aim them or anything.

And once they fire them off, they’ll have shot their wad. Their only recourse then will be to hide behind their tanks and artillery till someone roots them out. And you’ll only have to root out the top guys. I know regime change is a bad word these days, but can the world afford maniacs in charge of a country in the sacred name of Nationalism? It seems that if you are a bad guy with a taste for the good life, all you have to do is get control of a country, (any country) and it’s hands off from the rest of the world.

Until the upper echelon of North Korea go away, this threat will not go away.

greg

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