I used to like Nixie tubes.
I’m glad it wasn’t just me. I hit a wall after plane geometry.
@Gordon Nichols posted:...I understand what it is doing, and even why it does it that way, but the tedium of going through all that to arrive at the answer just gets to me. ... Of course, having class lecturers who could barely speak English didn't help, either.
Agreed, & it sounds like we attended the same school, albeit in different decades and states. I have no proof, but I would postulate that all college math departments are approximately similar. 
And there you have it, the extent of higher level math I want to do short of running load simulations in CAD and letting it do the math for me.
Y'all caught that Mr. Big Brain (masquerading as a retired photog from the Sacramento Bee) took calc back in high-school, correct? Like my kids did in their AP math classes?
... exactly unlike Mr. Pipefitter who topped out in HS Geometry, and spent Senior year sitting on the hood of his car in Mr. Schaidle's Engine Testing class eating Dolly Madison Donettes, and bench racing with his fellow slackers.
He learned everything he knows about Newton by applying his laws to physical things in the physical world - the same way he knows about Mr. Ohm and his laws. Get shocked enough times and any large primate would want to learn all he could about the 'lectrixity.
When he doesn't know (which is often), he goes down some rabbit-hole on the interwebs, and quotes Wikipedia so he can look smarter than he is.
'lectrickery is a harsh mistress. As also with gravity.
As an English Major I'm proud to say that I, for one, noticed that @Gordon Nichols just outed himself as a bloody rocket scientist.
As some of you know doubt already know, this means that, next time there is a get-together, he is required to face off against Kelly Frazer with Roman candles at 20 paces.
This is how the rocket scientists do it in their honor society. It's like samurais touching swords in a crowded market....
Godspeed to you both.
Electricity explained:
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@Gordon Nichols posted:I spent many a fun-filled afternoon cranking out "Ball Clash Calculations" to properly balance miniature gyroscopes at 30,000 rpm with a Texas Instruments TI-99 programmable calculator. Those gyros became part of the inertial guidance system for the Harpoon missile.
@Lane Anderson posted:"Fortunately, you don't need a lot of calculus to put together integrated circuits to make them do something." Nor do you need it to write software unless you're calculating orbital dynamics or something like that.
@edsnova posted:As an English Major I'm proud to say that I, for one, noticed that @Gordon Nichols just outed himself as a bloody rocket scientist.
As some of you know doubt already know, this means that, next time there is a get-together, he is required to face off against Kelly Frazer with Roman candles at 20 paces.
This is how the rocket scientists do it in their honor society. It's like samurais touching swords in a crowded market....
Godspeed to you both.
Lane too?
Perhaps a triangular shootout, just like in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (which is the highwater mark for art in Western Civilization).
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All things considered, Stan, your time in high school was probably better spent than mine.
First off, Geometry was probably my favorite math and it went downhill from there.
But more to the point, in the 50 years since, I’ve had to pay somebody else to do anything more than an oil change or valve adjust on any of the cars I’ve ever owned. As it turns out, knowing how an engine comes apart and goes back together is a lot more useful than solving quadratic equations.
As folders of accumulated automotive service invoices have grown over the years and the limits of my own skills have become increasingly obvious to me, respect for talented folks like messieurs Emory and Runge continues to grow, as does respect for the membership here.
Michael, I LOVE that cartoon/drawing!
Electrickery, indeed. I have always found electrics/electronics easy to understand. I still have all my Forest Mims books from Radio Shack. I still have a 3 battery discharger/charger for radio control nicad batteries I designed and built. I also dabbled in speaker design, built quite a few of those. Went on to work at the Shack during my college years.
Geometry, I use that every time I align a car. SOH CAH TOA, people!
But, like Gordon, I have intense distaste for Calculus. I took it in college, failed miserably. Took it again and squeaked out a C-. Calculus is painful. Then I changed my major from Computer Science to Communications.
None of it mattered, in the end. I got into my telco career a few years later. It's been 3.5 years since I've happily retired.
@edsnova posted:'
…As an English Major…
…As some of you know doubt already know,..
Sometimes I think the most useful function newspapers serve is to introduce English majors to copy editors.
Har! Very true. Long day.
Many, many years ago I had neighbors who worked for the UM Space Physics Research Lab. They had devices with Nixie tubes.
Oh right, Nixie tubes.
Gordon, I think the last time you brought up that Wang Labs calculator, I mentioned there was one in a Navy electronics lab I somehow managed to land a summer job in. (Insert long story about how temporary summer relief ‘civil service’ jobs were available to teens in the ‘60s if you scored high enough on the test.)
Anyhow, what I remember about the thing is that it did multiplication the same way a slide rule does - by taking the logs of two numbers, adding them together, and taking the antilog of the result.
So, if you multiplied 2 times 3 on this absurdly expensive thing that was the size of an IBM Selectric typewriter, you could get an answer something like 5.999873.
Which any self-respecting, practical engineer would round up to ‘6’.
Q.E.D.
@Sacto Mitch, you're fortunate that most of the denizens of this group know what a slide rule is. There are probably several generations who don't.
When I was in college, a classmate had one that hung from his belt to his knee. Plus, it had a magnifying glass over the cursor.
We once had this very neat lady living in the north end of my town who, when she lived here, was a post-Doc at MIT and founded a series of computer companies, like "Higher Order Software". IIRC, she coined the term "Software Engineering" and pushed really hard for the start of that curriculum at MIT (and nearby WPI).
If you're a software geek, this is a great read and she was a GREAT woman:
@Sacto Mitch posted:All things considered, Stan, your time in high school was probably better spent than mine.
I could argue the point, but Joseph Heller was able to describe people like me so much better than people like me can:
“He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.”
― Catch-22
And OBTW, I got the clutch re-adjusted for the new pressure plate/TO Bearing, installed the carbs/manifolds and re-installed the disti and other wiring. I need to keep up with Rich MacKoul and his original '55 Speedster as he's telling me of all the shows he's been to and the chicks he's meeting. 🤣
I also built a magnetizer/demagnetizer for my neighbor from a free, discarded Cuisinart food processor which I then had to trash because:
(1.) I could never get the pulse button to work reliably with their weird interlocks and
(2.) When I pulsed it for longish bursts, the motor coils heated up - A LOT - and I felt it was an un-safe design. Just goes to show.....Only use coils from a brush-less style motor for your magnetizer or you'll have problems. At least I saved the bridge rectifier for it for the next project.
Give me an old, brushless Oil Burner blower motor anytime.
Today's update: The carbs went back in yesterday, so I got out there after lunch to put the hex bar linkage back in along with the Turbo rain hats and air cleaners, re-routed the spark plug wires, installed my re-painted heat shields (Boy, they look nice!) and marveled at how everything lined up and just went right back in - And this is on a CMC where nothing has ever fit first time!!
It's becoming clear to me, though, that I can't leave something lying around on the floor or the bench from a month ago and expect to always remember exactly where it goes or how it fits. Twenty years ago, sure, but today? Not always. It sucks gettin' old.
After that the oil filter mount went back in - That's always like watching a Calvin and Hobbs fight scene because of a couple of blind bolts, but it's in there and solid (and it wouldn't be a CMC without a few blind nuts and bolts to contend with).
In the end, everything went back in place and I have a small Tupperware container with almost nothing left in it - two screws I decided to upgrade to shorter and a few washers and the Alternator B+ terminal cover (which I would love to upgrade from black rubber to red, once I find one).
So tomorrow, it's set-the-valves day, get some oil in it, pump up some oil pressure and get this baby running, again. It's been way too long, but I take the blame for that. I wasn't in any hurry to Git R Dun, so I let life get in the way as it often does. I got a lot of things fixed or upgraded after over 20 years of driving it (starting with a clutch cable bearing upgrade on the pedal shaft and new clutch cable months ago) so I have very few complaints other than a few moments when I found something and thought "Why the Hell did I do THAT?" and "fixed it" so it'll be a similar question the next time. 🤣
I've got a new clutch and cable, a bunch or new engine tin, an anti-mouse-screen and cleaned everything up so it looks like new. It's gonna be a great Summer season!
Excellent update, Gordon.
Congrats and great to hear, Gordon. Spring should be in your area any month now!
It has truly been a weird weather year for many of us so far. Noel probably hasn't seen his lawn at Lake Tahoe yet from the 40' of winter snow, we had 70's in January for a week and upper 20's in April here on the East Coast and it seems like Lane is growing moss between his toes from all of the rain down there.
At least I'm in a dry, comfy garage and not in a car port!
"...and it seems like Lane is growing moss between his toes from all of the rain down there."
You betcha! And today it's almost tropical storm winds, possibility of heavy rain (not doing it at the moment, though), and temps in the 50s and 60s. Un-freakin'-believable weather.
So it's Saturday around 4pm. Everything has been returned to it's proper engine place, the mufflers are on, the valves are set to loose zero and all is right with the World.
Then I put 4 quarts of oil into the engine and......... There's a leak. Not a lot, just a few drops at the bottom of the oil pump. I don't know what's going on because it looks like it might start at the top of the oil pump or higher right there and I didn't touch anything there so I'm gonna wait a while to see what happens - God knows, it may be a fluke. It was also burping somewhere (the alt pedestal?) when I put the oil into the filler and I don't remember it doing THAT before, either, but dumping in a quart of oil onto the louvered seal at the bottom of the stand might be a lot for it to drain without burping, so I declared, "That's enough for today" and headed to the house. Nothing else leaks, like hoses or filter or cooler (which probably doesn't have any oil in it at this point) so as I said, I'm gonna sit on it overnight. Maybe a miracle will happen and it'll heal itself - Stranger things have happened.
And what's the worst that can have happened? I have an oil pump gasket leak or something and have to pull the engine and remove a few tins to get at the pump, but I have a pump puller and all of the paper gaskets in stock so what the hey. At least I've got prior engine pulling experience.
Keep reading ⬇️
So it's now 5pm - an hour later. I had put a rag on the floor right under the oil pump so see how much oil it's leaking and when I went out after an hour or so there was nothing. Looking up at the pump, I don't see anything there, either.
I don't know what happened, but somehow Divine Intervention has happened and my leak has healed.
Do I really believe that? No. But I'll take it.
When I took my 968 in to get the belts done, the tech got me all worried my rear main seal was leaking. When I replaced all the pans and the splitter two weeks ago, I started off with a good spay of degreaser and a rub down. Just as I suspected, the “leak” was ATF from when my PS reservoir to pump or return line leaked and coated the bottom of my car.
“GUNK” engine degreaser is a wonderful thing……
It works great, but I usually get it all over me when I’m blasting it off with my Garden Hose. So I get degreased, too!
@Gordon Nichols posted:“GUNK” engine degreaser is a wonderful thing……
It works great, but I usually get it all over me when I’m blasting it off with my Garden Hose. So I get degreased, too!
Degreaser, Bedliner, chassis paint etc. = disposable painter's coveralls, gloves and my old crusty sneakers, I learned the hard way long ago.....
Well, it’s running, at least long enough to move the oil around and stink up the garage. I’ll get it off the lift and take it out tomorrow to get oil into the oil cooler and then check the level.
It was running less than smooth at idle, but I maybe ran it for only two minutes and it never smoothed out that fast. Besides, I want to give it a good dose of Seafoam and let that work before I start “adjusting” things that may mot need it.
I also put a rag on the floor under the oil pump and, so far….
No leak. 👍
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@Gordon Nichols posted:....I also put a rag on the floor under the oil pump...
It'll never leak that way, Gordon — especially if the rag was already oily.
Try it with no rag on the floor.
Or, put something underneath you need to keep clean, like a shop manual open to a table of valve clearances.
If it doesn't leak then, it's fixed.
The darn things are always watching us, aren’t they?
Hopefully, we can close this thread as things are winding down.
Took it out for a spin around town, staying close in case something happened.
Nothing happened.
And @Sacto Mitch - No Leaks! (although I'll be watching just the same).
Runs like the carbs are out of sync after they were off and back on and the linkage was removed and replaced (DUH...) so I'll get to that this week. I'll wait til I get rid of this tank of gas with Seafoam and get some fresh gas in there and then sync.
That new Sachs clutch I installed is really nice! If I wasn't so cheap, I should have replaced it over a decade ago - Live and learn.
I even got followed home by Rick Muhr on his BMW motorcycle. He details it after each ride. 90K on the ODO, so that's a lot of detailing.... Darn thing is quieter than my Speedster. Cleaner, too.
So that's about it. A few little details to wrap up and then just enjoy the driving season. Thanks for the supporting posts (and different topics!)
gn
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Wait a minute, Gordon. Does Pearl have her own blankie?
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Geez, Gordon, you're surprised the carbs are out of synch after taking apart the linkage?
Just putting that rag on the floor under the oil pump could have thrown them off.
But I don't see this as a bad thing. Coaxing carbs into synch is one of the most satisfying things in all of human experience. A dog circles in its bed half a dozen times before canine feng shui leads it to the perfect place to settle. Birds fiddle endlessly with the leaves in a nest until all is arranged harmoniously.
But God gave us carburetors. There's a reason that thumbscrews are thumb screws. Carburetors need us. They literally reach out to us for guidance. There is no better thing than bringing an unruly mob of velocity stacks into perfect, four-part harmony.
Fixing oil leaks is menial labor.
But this is nice work if you can get it.
And you can get it if you try.
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@Michael Pickett posted:Wait a minute, Gordon. Does Pearl have her own blankie?
I believe that's a "Woobie"
@Sacto Mitch posted:.Geez, Gordon, you're surprised the carbs are out of synch after taking apart the linkage?
Coaxing carbs into synch is one of the most satisfying things in all of human experience. A dog circles in its bed half a dozen times before canine feng shui leads it to the perfect place to settle. Birds fiddle endlessly with the leaves in a nest until all is arranged harmoniously.
I agree, Mitch. I got my carbs perfectly synchronized and put in a box under my bed. They never get out of synch, unless I sneeze, and I'm convinced their harmony brings sweet dreams.
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I've seen the ads for your website, Michael.
EFI_Harmony.com
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@Michael Pickett You would like Rick's motorcycle. It's EFI, too. LOTS cleaner looking than the old days with those big Bing carbs on there.
Nope..... No Blankie, no Woobie. She's on guard over my tool collection whenever she's in the garage, like a Jack Russell watching over it's turf.
Nothing wrong with Bings, and I've probably rebuilt a couple dozen of them, but not in the past 35 years! My brother once had an R69US BMW and rode with the Central Mass BMW group a long time ago.
Rick's BMW has (I believe) manifold or throttle body injectors on the intakes (? - I just glanced at it) which look like a very clean design. The whole bike was immaculate for a 2004 (or any) motorcycle. He stopped by to check out my garage as he's thinking of something similar in size for his collection of 8 Motorcycles plus workshop.
He's about to do a sweep down through Skyline Drive to some bike event in North Carolina where he'll be speaking to the group of doctors about his crash last year and his recovery process from the perspective of training. Then he heads to Alabama (I think) to some big motorcycle museum and another event where he's speaking about endurance riding (he has a umber of awards for endurance rides). He should be back after three weeks. That's a lot of saddle time. And I thought he rode a bicycle a lot.... He gets a lot of saddle time on his motorcycles, too.
@Gordon Nichols posted:to Alabama (I think) to some big motorcycle museum
if you mean this: https://www.barbermuseum.org/the-barber-story/
you have a gift for understatement. 