80 amp fuse update

I lost one friend to a automobile fatality during my pre-30 year old days, and no really serious auto accidents to any friends or family.

By contrast, I had two friends die and two friends who needed pins in their major legs bones after having wrecks on motorcycles. I also know one former co-worker who suffered severe back injuries when rear-ended at a light. Would those same injuries have happened if he had been in a car? Maybe, but I doubt it. My guess is that the back injuries would have been a lot less, maybe no more than whiplash.

I just have a feeling that I would not be beating the odds. I am not an extremely aggressive driver, just a fairly unlucky one...... :-)

Lots of people here who have driven bikes for a long time with no major problems, though, so maybe I could have been one of them.

I do have a friend who is a motorcycle builder and mechanic who will build one for me if I ever wanted. I have seen two of his projects and they are very nicely done.

Also, I know that life itself is not safe, and that nobody gets out of this life alive.........

Pat

or a shoe lace loop gets on gear leaver and ooooof y'aaaa goooo!!!

I used to play. Could never develop a decent serve. Can't win without one.

I know somone who broke is collar bone twice about a year apart, losing control of his bicyle on loose gravel at exactly the same spot. When I was a kid, two kids who lived across the street from each other were killed by cars a week apart. One was a little girl hit right in front of her house. The other was a teenager. Unfortunately I witnessed his death. We were talking a shortcut home from track practice in 9th grade across Wantagh State Parkway on Long Island. We ran across, he dropped his track spikes, stopped to pick them up and that was the end. Bummer.

Back home, got the bucket.......

great stuff! Chris

you're the man!

cd

Do you ever get over such a shock? Sorry you had to witness such a thing! cd

Fuel gauges? Wow, I've been away too long! ;-)

Chris

Yup. And anti-lock brakes too.

At least it's still air-cooled and has carburetors. Though if I have to spring for getting the carbs/jets cleaned one more time I'll probably wish for fuel injection. I'm a microprocessor and sensor/actuator guy, so at least I understand fuel injection. Carburetors are pure black magic. I consider it pretty much a miracle they work at all reliably.

One of the problems with this group is it's infested with you kids. ;-)

I never had fuel gauges on bikes I owned. Problem with the trip meter method was that miles per gallon decreased about 3x when riding in a spirited manner. The old mental trip computer became very unreliable when trying to work out how much of the trip was spirited, and how much wasn't.

It doesn't seem to have caused any damage. No fears of highways or track spikes, anyway The family moved away not long after and it was kind of easy for the neighborhood to collectively forget. Not so with the little girl, though. I recently had an e-mail exchange with her sister who is my age. First contact since high school graduation in 1965. We caught up a bit an I mentioned remembering her sister. She was very moved.

I once took part in what's known in the UK as a 'Banger Derby'. Not sure if you call it something different in the US, but it involves racing cars ready for scrapping around an inhospitable course.

My cousin had a late 1980s Ford Sierra with a 1.6l Petrol engine. He burst the rad in the first round and continued racing for the rest of the day without any coolant at all. At one point the engine got so hot that the oil which had leaked from the camshaft cover caught fire with flames and everything.

After the fire was extinguished, the engine fired right up and he carried on.

In the end I think the front suspension gave out and he had to retire.

I had no idea any engine would take that amount of abuse with no coolant.

We call them demolition derbies. There's no course as such, just a large dirt melee arena. The object is to immobilize one's opponents, and the last car still moving under its own power is the winner.

One particularly amusing variant is the figure-8 race: it's just as you'd imagine, with no right-of-way rules at the intersection. Many years ago, these events were televised on Wide World of Sports.

That part about the inhospitable course with cars ready for the junkyard sounds like a typical drive down Interstate 35. ;-)

Pat

If you haven't seen one, the odd thing about a DD is that most of demolition derby is spent with the car in reverse.

Since the engine/radiator is in the front (generally), drivers try to back into the front ends of other cars with the radiator as the primary target, while trying to prevent damage to their own front end.

While I find the normal oval-track stuff is pretty dull, I do think figure 8 racing is pretty entertaining. Another fun one I've see involves putting a flag towards "infield" side of one of the straight-aways on an oval track. Everybody must approach the flag on the outside and loop around it once before continuing down the straight-away.

Many years ago (back in the mid-60s) 4 friends and I decided to head out of the city (Calgary) for a resort area to celebrate Canada Day. We loaded up with fireworks that we planned to set off. The car was an old Ford Tudor (2 door) of which only the driver's door would open and close. So, three of us in the back seat and 2 in the front, paper bags full of fireworks and others full of liquor, we headed North on the highway at about 70 MPH. The front passenger decided to light a smoke, and I opened the rear vent window. Unfortunately the lit cigarette end blew off and landed in one of the bags of fireworks which ignited. Immediately the windows completely sooted over, the driver slammed on the brakes, and fortunately brought us to a stop on the shoulder of the highway. You have never seen 5 guys bale out of one door son quickly in your life. Now we had a nice fire going and had to figure how to put it out. In the trunk was a pair of rubber boots, and water in the ditch, so we formed a fire line passing the rubber boots filled with water and throwing the water in the car from the one open door. We lost everything, fireworks, liquor and the car's interior. A good Samaritan stopped and picked us up and took us back into town. Certainly a July 1st I will never forget.

Stuart H,

That's funny, old man ;-)

Chris (racing toward 50)

Good stuff! Pat may change his mind on the 'top post' of 2010.

Chris