Continued sorry . . .

Still insanely busy at work and at home. Fixing holes in the roof and turning the basement into a decent workshop. I haven't forgot about my blog, really :P

(I'm posting this message for my _one_ loyal reader)

Sorry about the absence

It's been a crazy few weeks, the kids are back in the school I work at, and the first few weeks are always insane. By the time I get home I'm pretty dead. I'll get back to posting here in a bit . . . I got a review to write on an Ultrasonic cleaner I just bought :)

- Jason

I have a Honda Nighthawk (CB250) as my daily driver. It is the only vehicle I own that does not have "Historic" tags. I read it would get 70MPG on average., though on the Yahoo Nighthawk group, some guy in GB said he got 90MPG highway, I didn't believe him.


When I drive it, I have fun. Because the engine is so small (Two cylinder 250cc, you know, 0.25 Liters) , I really feel no guilt in just pouring on the throttle. I'd been driving it hard, always topping out gears before shifting, especially to stay away from people driving cars. When I checked at the pump I was getting 50MPG.

After seeing that, I decided to drive conservatively just to see the MPG I could get. I was not driving super conservative, I was just driving like a car, accelerating calmly, turning the engine off at long lights, and still speeding up quickly to avoid people crazy enough to be driving cars.

I checked again at the pump . . . 200 miles . . . 2 gallons of gas . . .

Yay four stroke engines~!

RX-7 Convertible Headrest Modification

All RX-7 convertibles, came with headrests speakers, two to each headrest, with volume controls for the passenger and the driver. I've heard other cars, such as the Miata, also came with these. After upgrading the audio equipment everywhere else, I noticed that the sound from these headrest speakers is pretty bad. The crapiness of the speakers was especially potent because they were right next to my head, and that's not really acceptable.

After disassembling the headrest, you'll get to see this weird oval/rectangle speaker


Yeah, pretty sad. Compare it with these Infinity Reference 3002CF speakers in the picture below. I picked these 3.5" speakers because I liked the high and mid-high range sound. Headrest speakers only need to carry that range, as the lows are for your larger speakers behind you or in the doors.


Here the speakers are side by side so that you can see and compare the backs.


Since I'm not a hardcore audiophile like Dan is, I decided to re-use the stock speaker mounts instead of fabricating a custom box. They are made out of a rather thick hard plastic, and that's a good thing. However, they are prone to cracking because of the way they are fastened to the headrest, and of course their age. Make sure you have some superglue handy.


Here it is! Modded next to un-modded. Make sure the box does not touch the cone of the speaker at any range of its movement.


Here is a picture of the modified unit dissasembled in front of the headrest mounting bracket.



Here you go! All done! You don't need to put Dynamat on the headrest, I just put it there as a joke for Trevor. It's a really thick piece of metal already.

Final results: the sound is awesome! It does not take over the super highs (as those are handled by separate tweeters in front of me) but it handles the high and high middle very well. It's really fantastic for when the top is down and it's really noisy outside, I can still have my music coming in nice and clear.

Picture I took outside of Mustang Magic, after the wall fell.
For the story, click here.

(Click for a larger image)

Tofuball's Reading

I removed all the unrelated stories from the site, because, well, they were unrelated. I moved them over to Tofuball's Reading.

ReadingTofu.Blogspot.Com

How not to remove a tree.

My friend Theo from RX-7Club had a tree problem; in the back of his yard, looming over his tool shed, a dead tree was about to fall on his house. The tree was about about a foot and a half in diameter.

To keep it from falling and breaking things, he wrapped a logging chain around the trunk and used a come-a-long to secure it to a larger tree nearby.


He asked the forum what he should do next:

I have already cut a small wedge out of the tree in the direction of the come-a-long... But not enough to get the tree leaning that way. Once it does start leaning or falling, it'll release the tension on the chain/cable... Then it won't pull anymore. How do I pull it down when the tension is off the cable?

Any other bright ideas before I go killing or breaking something?

He then went out and notched the tree in the direction of the shed:


And the next time he posted, we were graced with the following pictures:



Luckily the shed was crappy and he didn't care much, and the gutters aren't THAT bad ;)

You can read the thread for all the details, and the nom nom shedz tree, here.